This miscellany offers a fascinating look into one of the signs that Edwards sees as pointing to true godliness and piety. That sign, in this case, is sincerity. Edwards muses on what constitutes true sincerity and how such an affection is related to true godliness.

868. SIGNS OF GODLINESS. SINCERITY.

As the Scripture is plain concerning faith, that the operative or practical nature of it is the life and soul of it, so this is doubtless true concerning all other graces. The Scripture is as plain that ’tis the operative nature of love (that sum of all grace) that is the most peculiar criterion of the sincerity of it, and indeed, that wherein the sincerity of it consists. That sense of divine things and those religious affections are true, sincere and saving, that reach the bottom of the heart, and that gain the heart. If the heart ben’t gained and given to God, there is no sincerity, and nothing is accepted; for the heart is what God requires and looks at. But then only is the heart gained when the will is gained; but when the will is gained, the practice is gained, for the will commands the practice. And indeed, practice, so far as the heart or the soul is concerned, consists in nothing else but the acts of the will. Indeed, there are external motions of the body, but these are no part of the man’s practice, than those motions are the expressions of his will; we don’t call the motions of the body in a convulsion any part of the man’s practice.

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 20, The “Miscellanies:” 833-1152, ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 109.

Filed under:
miscellany mondays, the miscellanies