August 26, 2009
In the last couple of years, several short introductions/brief biographies pertaining to Jonathan Edwards have been published. The impetus behind the publications appears to be a concerted effort to make Edwards more accessible to the average reader, even targeted groups of average readers. Such is the case with Douglas A. Sweeney’s new book, Jonathan Edwards [...]
August 24, 2009
97. HAPPINESS. As [to what] was said in No. 96, that no being could be happy without the exercise of this inclination of communicating his happiness. Now the happiness of society consists in this, in the mutual communications of each other’s happiness; neither does it satisfy in society only to receive the other’s happiness without [...]
August 19, 2009
The following passage comes from Edwards’s The Nature of True Virtue. It is one of the best known sections of his extensive writing corpus. It is also, for me personally, one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. It really captures the beauty and aesthetic that so characterizes much of Edwards’s writings. The [...]
August 17, 2009
10. PASTORS. This is certain and evident concerning its belonging to the people to choose their own pastor, that it is either the people’s part to choose with what food they will be fed—let what will be offered them, ’tis their business to judge whether it be best for them to receive it in as [...]
August 7, 2009
I expect by very ridicule and contempt to be called a man of a very fruitful brain and copious fancy, but they are welcome to it. I am not ashamed to own that I believe that the whole universe, heaven and earth, air and seas, and the divine constitution and history of the holy Scriptures, [...]
August 5, 2009
I’m currently reading Doug Sweeney’s new book, Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word: A Model of Faith and Thought, and came upon this quite helpful description of the type of worship service that one could expect in an 18th century colonial American church. Sweeney describes, After an Old Testament reading (usually at least [...]
August 3, 2009
dd. SCRIPTURE. Some may ask why the Scripture expresses things so unintelligibly. It tells us of Christ living in us, of our being united to him, of being the same spirit, and many other such like expressions. Why doth it not call these things directly by the intelligible names of those things that lie hid [...]
