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 their food—or else, that they in some cases are to receive that as their food, which they at the same [time] judge to be their poison; that is, they are to believe those things which at the same time they believe to be false, and are to think it best for them to do those things which they at the same time think it is best for them not to do: which are contradictions.

It [is] every man’s business to choose that food which he thinks to be best for himself; that is, it is every man’s business to choose that food which he thinks to be best for his eternal welfare, as certain as it is his business to get as much happiness as he can for himself in the other world; as all are fools that will not. And it is certainly the effect of folly, to suffer men to hinder us from it if we can help it. Wherefore, if it be the people’s part to choose with what food they will be fed, it is also their business to choose with what feeders they will be fed. If I may choose my food, I may choose that feeder that will give the food that I choose, if I can obtain him. And I am a fool if I will be hindered by men, when I can help it, from being fed by such a feeder as I judge will be a means of my greatest eternal welfare.

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 205.

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miscellany mondays, the miscellanies