489. FAITH OR SPIRITUAL KNOWLEDGE.

Preamble to the Discourse on Faith, or Spiritual Knowledge. There are these two ways, in which the mind may be said to be sensible that anything is good or excellent: (1) When the mind judges that anything is good or excellent, as by the agreement of mankind is called good or excellent, viz. that which is most to general advantage, and that between which and reward there is a suitableness, or that which is agreeable to the law of the country or law of God. ‘Tis a being merely convinced in judgment that a thing is, according to the meaning of the word, “good,” as the word is generally applied. (2) The mind is sensible of good in another sense, when it is so sensible of the beauty and amiableness of the thing, that ’tis sensible of pleasure and delight in the presence of the idea of it. This kind of sensibleness of good carries in it an act of the will, or inclination, or spirit of the mind, as well as the understanding.

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), 533.