Jonathan Edwards Collection: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology: Chapt 01 Sketch of Edwards Life

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Jonathan Edwards Collection: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology: Chapt 01 Sketch of Edwards Life



TOPIC: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Chapt 01 Sketch of Edwards Life

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Chapter I

A Sketch of Edwards’ Life



A scholar who specializes in American literature insists that Jonathan Edwards’ most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” is a rhetorical masterpiece. This is the same as saying that it is justifiably selected to illustrate Early American Literature in collegiate English composition courses. Nevertheless, it is not merely - if ever - for that reason that the selection is made. It is not because of its literary merit but as a supposed sermonic monstrosity that freshman read this celebrated sermon. God’s displeasure with sinful mankind Edwards compares to a man holding a hideous spider over the fire. Today we assume - if we assume a God at all - that God is friendly to sinners. For the modern deity to be angry would be considered “odd of God.” For him to detest, loathe, and hate sinners is beyond our proud comprehension. Even Evangelicals insist that God loves impenitent sinners and hates only their sins (though sending them and not their sins to hell).

Consequently, to listen to Edwards (who is quite typical of the bygone century, and not without many echoes in our own), describe God as wrathful with sinners is more than the modern world in general will endure. Instead of being appreciative of this sermon as the people at Enfield, Connecticut, we consider its preacher a great “American tragedy.” *1* How is it possible that the same “saint of Stockbridge” can be called the greatest saint in Christian history and be seen by Yale’s President Stiles, even in 1787, as obsolete? When posterity occasionally comes across his writings “in the Rubbish of Libraries, the rare character who may read & be pleased with them, will be looked upon as singular and whimsical. . . .” That statement led Nancy Manspeaker to say in 1981 that scholars “have now ceased to be haunted by the thought that they may be accounted singular or whimsical.” But, she cautiously adds, “Presumably they have been reassured by the conviction that there is safety in numbers,” *2* alluding to the rash of modern researchers.

I will merely sketch the story of Edwards’ “life.” His real life was in the thought which will be systematized briefly in the pages that follow. *3*

In many ways the life of Jonathan Edwards parallels that of his Lord. Until about thirty years of age he was little known beyond his family and immediate friends. However that period may have seen the unfolding of the greatest intellectual genius in the history of the human race. It depends. It depends on whether he wrote what he wrote at the age he is traditionally supposed to have written what he wrote. Today’s researches have raised deep questions about, if they have not destroyed, the historic tradition. What is certain is that in these hidden years, Edwards learned by his “sufferings” that God “calls me to expect no other than to meet with difficulties and trials while in this world.” *4*

This demythologizing of Jonathan Edwards’ genius raises seemingly irresistible objections to the very early writings: Of Insects, On Being, Notes on the Mind, etc., and the statement of Samuel Hopkins that Edwards at thirteen years of age said he was enraptured by the reading of John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

I will question some of these questions later when we come to the writings and statements in question. Meanwhile I can say that this son of a Congregational manse in East Windsor, Connecticut, born October 5, 1703, was one of the most precocious figures in history even if not superior to Locke, Newton, Descartes, and a couple Pascals combined as *5* says would be the case if traditional dates are correct.

A balanced life and curriculum was Edwards’ at home before he left for Yale at twelve. Growing up in the learned atmosphere of the academic Harvard graduate pastor-father who had his son studying Latin at six, the ability Jonathan did have was thoroughly exercised virtually from birth. Surrounded by a loving mother and ten affectionate sisters, refinement of sensitivity was not neglected. His spiritual stirrings were evident, too, though in his own opinion, they were not truly religious affections, which were to come much later at his conversion.

Among the great theologians of the church Jonathan Edwards is somewhat unique in having no “past.” As a young man he was writing a famous ethereal ode about the thirteen-year-old girl he was not to marry for several years: no Augustine. Thomas Aquinas had to escape worldly parents to pursue his career: not Edwards for whom it was a natural. Luther was a superstitious coal-miner’s son whose call to ministry had to be a bolt of lightning. John Calvin spent his life combatting the theology in which he had been reared. Edwards’ life was of-a-piece from birth to rebirth to death. Yet no one was to write more profoundly of the absolute difference between nature and grace. One might have anticipated Christian Nurture, a century before Horace Bushnell, instead of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

In September of 1716 Edwards matriculated at a nascent Yale which was younger than he was. An unsavory split occurred while Edwards was among the few students. More than half of his collegiate education had to be in Wethersfield. His education there and at New Haven included thorough grounding in reformed theology *6* along with avant-garde Lockean empiricism and Newtonian thought. *7*

According to tradition, Edwards’ precocity, which became evident during his collegiate years, was anticipated by “Insects” written before matriculation. The well-known anecdote of Professor H. C. McCook discovering that young Edwards had anticipated his own discovery of the ways of the balloon spider by a hundred and sixty years would still be impressive, even if Edwards were some years older when he wrote the “Spider Letter” to an English scholar-friend of his father’s. *8* It is, incidentally, the finding of this dated letter (October 31, 1723) that is taken as demonstrative that “Of Insects” was written at a much later time than previously supposed. However, “Of Insects” admittedly was written much earlier than the “Spider Letter.” Wallace Anderson calculated it was written near the end of Edwards’ collegiate course (1720). Dwight calculated it was before the beginning of Edwards’ collegiate course. Anderson did far more research. Dwight was much closer to the time and family of Edwards. Is it possible that Edwards wrote it when a child, refurbished it later, and wrote the “Spider Letter” on a particular occasion? In any case, Edwards’ cultivated genius was in philosophy and theology, not zoology. Here the new theories, if true, remove him to precocious rather than as Professor Edward H. Davidson supposed, if tradition were true, the greatest intellectual prodigy in the history of the race. *9*



The evidence for his mere precocity versus his precocious precocity turns especially on the date of his exuberant discovery of John Locke and his own writing of Natural Philosophy, The Mind and other works about the same time.

The case for the early discovery of Locke’s essay rests entirely on the testimony of his friend and disciple, Samuel Hopkins. Hopkins in his biography of Edwards wrote:



In his second year at college, and the thirteenth of his Age, he read Locke on the Human Understanding, with great delight and profit. His Uncommon Genius, by which he was, as it were by Nature, form’d for closeness of Thought and deep Penetration, now began to exercise and discover itself. Taking that Book into his hand upon some Occasion, not long before his Death, he said to some of his select Friends, who were then with him, That he was beyond Expression entertain’d and Pleas’d with it, when he read it in his Youth at College; that he was as much engaged, and had more Satisfaction and Pleasure in studying it, than the most greedy Miser in gathering up handsful of Silver and Gold from some new discover’d Treasure. *10*



Here is a Puritan ear-witness and intimate friend of Edwards whom no one suspects of excessive credulity or being given to exaggeration making the statement in a matter of fact manner with chronological detail. Edwards himself must have either mentioned his age from which Hopkins would know he was studying at Wethersfield rather than New Haven or his location from which Hopkins would have deduced his age. The very fact that Hopkins expresses no surprise at the remark suggests that such precocity in Edwards was not at all surprising to his biographer and the others who were in the company on that occasion. It is a minor matter but interesting that no one of those who knew Edwards and this story or any among the later descendants apparently expressed any recorded doubts.

But in 1980 editor Wallace E. Anderson had slight doubt that the story was inaccurate. *11* He lined up several considerations which, he felt, show Edwards’ contemporary to be mistaken. First, in 1717 there was only one copy of Locke’s Essay and it was apparently not available to Edwards at Wethersfield. *12* Nor was one up for sale in any publicized contemporary book-sale. *13* Before 1722, the date of Miscellany aa, Edwards displayed no written evidence of familiarity with Lockean ideas. *14* On such slim evidence Anderson comes to his confident conclusion against antiquity.

Anderson has studied the early philosophical and scientific writings of Edwards more intensively than anyone. However, this hardly weighs out with contemporary testimony avowedly from the mouth of Edwards himself. Showing the difficulty in accounting for Edwards’ finding a rare copy of the Essay is not tantamount to a disproof of his own testimony relayed by a contemporary. Nor does Anderson’s inability to find early evidence of Locke’s influence in Edwards’ writing prove there was no oral tradition or even any more deductively remote evidence. Nor has the fact that Edwards was ultimately in greater disagreement than agreement with the British empiricist any force against his excitement when he first read the Essay. And, of course, if Edwards discovered Locke at thirteen his lack of excitement a half decade later would hardly belie his original enthusiasm, especially if he came to differ.

The Mind is another matter. Here Anderson puts up an impressive case for a much later that traditional dating. *15* It seems that when an Andover copy of the still missing manuscript was examined by Sereno Dwight he wrongly concluded that the original was written during the collegiate years. Harvey Townsend, Leon Howard, *16* E. H. Davidson, and most later writers have assumed Dwight was right. In fact, he was a half-dozen years premature and Edwards that many years less precocious, so far as the Mind is concerned. Of course, Anderson was aware that this was no evidence against but only not evidence for precocious precocity. *17*

In spite of his mere precocity or precocious precocity, Edwards went through his “little known” period without becoming a household word, apparently even in his own household. Puritans were not prone to excessive praise. Nevertheless, he was graduated at the head of his small class, completed his divinity school work, held a pleasant eight-month pastorate over a small New Light Presbyterian flock on William Street in New York, and served a brief Yale tutorship before being called in 1726 to assist and succeed his eminent grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, as pastor of Western Massachusetts’ most noted parish.

And also while Edwards was just twenty he had noticed that:



They say there is a young lady in [New Haven] who is beloved of that Great Being, who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything, except to meditate on him - that she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven; being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always. There she is to dwell with him, and to be ravished with his love and delight forever. Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affliction. She has a strange sweetness in her mind, and a singular purity in her affections; is most just and conscientious in all her conduct; and you could not persuade her to do any thing wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world, lest she should offend this Great Being. She is of a wonderful sweetness, calmness and universal benevolence of mind; especially after this Great God has manifested himself to her mind. She will sometimes go about from place to place, singing sweetly; and seems to be always full of joy and pleasure; and no one knows for what. She loves to be alone, walking in the fields and groves, and seems to have some one invisible always conversing with her. *18*



About four years later Jonathan Edwards married this young lady named Sarah Pierrepont.

During those obscure years, however, in addition to the finished works mentioned there were continuing ones begun. His Resolutions *19* were written only from December 18, 1722 to August 17, 1723 but were conscientiously carried out in practice the rest of his days. December 1722 he began his Diary (mainly to check his progress on the Resolutions). It came to an end two decades before its author (June 11, 1739). His Miscellanies, considered by some the most important incompletely published and edited works Edwards ever produced, began about the same time but were ended only by the end of his life in 1758.

The early part of the Northampton ministry may be considered Edwards’ period of obscurity for he labored under the shadow of his famous grandfather. Though Stoddard died in 1729 this “shadow” followed Edwards’ twenty-three year ministry. The prestige of Edwards’ office as pastor of Western Massachusetts’ most distinguished parish accounts for his invitation to preach in Boston (1731), resulting in his first publication, the strong Calvinistic sermon, God Glorified in the Work of Redemption By the Greatness of Man’s Dependence upon Him, in the Whole of It. *20* The publication of his exposition of Mat_16:17, The Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, Shown to be both a Scriptural, and Rational Doctrine, (1734), was based on requests by his own Northampton people.

Jonathan Edwards’ “year of popularity” began with the “first” awakening” under his ministry in 1734-35. The congregation listening to his deeply penetrating studies of scripture always full of searching “application” or “use” must have sensed that a greater than Solomon Stoddard was there. Whether they did or not God “hit them over the head” when He Himself seemed to add heavenly power to His servant’s fiery messages.

Though “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” was not preached at Enfield until July 8, 1741, the Northampton sinners were made aware of their peril long before. Even before 1734 a few of the minatory messages that congregation heard were:



“That it argues great danger of being finally left of God, when sinners have lived long unconverted under eminent means of conversion.” (Jer_6:29-30) *21*



“Punishment in another world will be in proportion to the sin they are guilty of.” (Mat_5:22) *22*



“The wicked hereafter will be cast into a furnace of fire.” (Mat_13:41-42) *23*



“When the saints in glory shall see the wrath of God executed on ungodly men it will be no occasion of grief to ’em, but of rejoicing.” (Rev_18:20) *24*



Suddenly Northampton was ablaze and the flames were soon all over the adjacent area. After the revival fires were put out by his own uncle’s suicide, Edwards himself was to tell the story of this forerunner of the first Great Awakening (1740-44). A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, and the Neighboring Towns and Villages *25* was written in 1735 but not published until 1737. Edwards noticed the suddenly changed behavior of young and old, moral and loose, as the revival spread up and down the Connecticut River Valley. When the events interested Benjamin Coleman, pastor of the Brattle Street Church in Boston, Edwards obliged him with a correspondence account which when shown to excited readers in England led ultimately to the revised publication.

From scientific observer, to philosopher-thinker, to expository preacher, Edwards now becomes historian. The same care and unvarnished but scrupulous attention to detail are distinguishing marks of this early work also. The tidy study that went into the habits of the balloon spider, the making of a rainbow, the nature of being, now is given to the changed life of Northampton’s loosest woman and the searching spirituality of a four-year old convert, Phoebe Bartlett. With an eye for aberrations and an ear alert for criticisms, Edwards outlines the most remarkable work of God that had ever befallen his town and village after village round about.

The rather purely historical account that was generally recognized as evidence of God’s converting activity was followed - as the Awakening itself was - by later greater works of God and, on Edwards’ part, better understanding of the nature of true conversion, and the characteristics of genuine “experimental religion.”

So in 1740, following the visit of George Whitefield, Gilbert Tennent, and other noted evangelists (including Edwards himself as itinerant), the Great Awakening brought much wider, though perhaps less profound, effects in their train as America’s keenest psychologist of Christian experience probed the realities beneath the epiphenomena. Some Thoughts concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England *26* compares to A Faithful Narrative as the principle to the practice. The “surprising work” having been described, it behooved Edwards to defend it as genuine, see how it came about, expose the human weaknesses in it more ruthlessly than the critics, call upon New England to champion even while correcting this demonstrated work of God, all the while warning opposers that they were in danger of fighting against the God they themselves preached.

This work was to provoke its classic critique by one as critically opposed to the Awakening as Edwards was critically defensive of it. Charles Chauncy’s Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New England, A Treatise in Five Parts *27* by its very structure was obviously designed as a point by point refutation of Some Thoughts. Chauncy was no match for Edwards even in what he did best - find fault. Edwards’ criticisms coming from a friend caused even deeper wounding with healing in their wings because, as Dr. Gaustad has neatly observed, both men were trying to separate the wheat from the chaff but Chauncy was interested in the chaff while Edwards was concerned with the wheat. *28*

A closer look at the analysis will come when we consider Edwards’ overall estimate of the revival with its chaff as well as its wheat. After the first great Awakening passed into history its greatest literary-theological monument, A Treatise concerning Religious Affections, was published in 1746. As Henry Rogers has remarked:



The work on the “Religious Affections” is one of the most valuable works on practical and experimental piety ever published. It is more defective in point of style, as we have already had occasion to remark, than any other pieces put forth by Edwards himself. This renders its perusal tedious, and has perhaps detracted from its value by deterring many from its pages altogether. To those, however, whose robustness of mind or whose strength of piety, is not to be repelled by such defects, and who are never disgusted with truth, even when she comes forth divested of all her ornaments, there is no work of the same kind in the English language which will better repay a careful perusal. *29*



Religious Affections is ranked with Freedom of the Will as the two greatest products of Edwards’ pen. Both are classics of analysis, the latter of the will itself and the former of the will engaged in true spirituality. Edwards’ final work, The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended analyzes to the bone the nature of false and spurious religious affections and their root in original sin.

While Religious Affections showed what was the very essence of true religious experience it revealed at the same time what were the “Qualifications Requisite to a Complete Standing and Full Communion with the Visible Christian Church.” Everyone could admire and agree with Edwards’ well-nigh perfect and exhaustive definition of what conversion is but when that definition became the condition of church membership the application was too close for Northampton comfort. In general, Religious Affections was approved; in particular it was insufferable. The definition may be admitted but its definer-applier must go. As soon as this “Treatise” in simple form became a covenant of church membership Edwards had to leave. As a theorist the best, this troubler of Israel must find work elsewhere.

Before we trace the trauma of Edwards’ “year of opposition” at Northampton, I note - or rather he noted - a poignantly comforting aspect of the drama. Edwards testified that at the very time that God’s Spirit seemed to withdraw from the congregation and leave its pastor disconsolate and alarmed, the Spirit paid a special visit to his own family.

Edwards’ descendants are possibly the most famous in American history for providing the nation with useful and distinguished professional servants. Its glory seems to have begun during the times men were most hostile to him. It was then that Edwards’ God was most gracious to him and his beloved family.

Even An Humble Attempt to Promote Visible Union of God’s People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion (1747) *30* and An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd (1749) *31* could not save its author. Rising well above Northampton and New England, Edwards’ writings were a powerful plea for the first great Protestant world ecumenical effort. Going deeply into a study of the doctrine and piety of the great father of American foreign missions, David Brainerd, could not save Jonathan Edwards from the fury of the locals whose carnal access to the Lord’s Supper itself had been the heritage of the “Pope” of Western Massachusetts, Solomon Stoddard, whose ghost rose to slay his nobler grandson. Samuel Hopkins describes this event:



“At length,” observes Dr. Hopkins, “a great uneasiness was manifested, by many of the people of Northampton, that Mr. Edwards should preach there at all. Upon which the committee for supplying the pulpit called the town together, to know their minds with respect to that matter, when they voted, That it was not agreeable to their minds that he should preach among them. Accordingly, while Mr. Edwards was in the town, and they had no other minister to preach to them, they carried on public worship among themselves, and without any preaching, rather than invite him.”

“Every one must be sensible,” remarks Dr. Hopkins, who was himself an occasional eye-witness of these scenes, “that this was a great trial to Mr. Edwards. He had been nearly twenty-four years among that people; and his labours had been, to all appearance, from time to time greatly blessed among them and a greater number looked on him as their spiritual father, who had been the happy instrument of turning them from darkness to light, and plucking them as brands out of the burning. And they had from time to time professed that they looked upon it as one of their greatest privileges to have such a minister, and manifested their great love and esteem of him, to such a degree, that (as Paul says of the Galatians,) “if it had been possible, they would have plucked out their own eyes, and given them to him.” And they had a great interest in his affection: he had borne them on his heart, and carried them in his bosom for many years; exercising a tender concern and love for them: for their good he was always writing, contriving, labouring; for them he had poured out ten thousand fervent prayers in their good spoil; and they were dear to him above any other people under heaven. - Now to have this people turn against him, and thrust him out from among them, stopping their ears, and running upon him with furious zeal, not allowing him to defend himself by giving him a fair hearing; and even refusing so much as to hear him preach; many of them surmising and publicly speaking many ill things as to his ends and designs! surely this must come very near to him, and try his spirit. The words of the psalmist seem applicable to this case: “It was not an enemy that reproached me, that did magnify himself against me, then I would have hid myself from him. But it was thou - my guide and mine acquaintance. We took sweet counsel together, and walked unto the house of God in company.” *32*



The actual dismissal of Jonathan Edwards from his Northampton pastorate came about in this way. Suspicious from the beginning of the “Converting Ordinance” doctrine of Solomon Stoddard, Edwards gradually became convinced that the Lord’s Table was only for the Lord’s children, not for the unconverted. That is, only those who in addition to orthodox belief and outwardly Christian behavior (Stoddard’s criteria), could give some credible claim to inner grace as well could be properly members of the visible church welcome to receive communion for themselves and baptism for their children. With this clear departure from his grandfather Stoddard and without the protection of his most powerful friend and defender, Colonel John Stoddard, Solomon’s son recently deceased, Jonathan Edwards was set upon by an enraged parish (its feelings aroused by no other than the son of the suicide victim of the earliest awakening), viewing itself and its children as suddenly unchurched and exposed. Its male members voted ten to one that the greatest preacher ever to adorn an American pulpit be ignominiously dismissed.

Now, as the grey champion of God, Edwards moved through the crucifixion of his last months as if utterly untouched by all the clamor except as his farewell sermon revealed deep concern that those who now hated him so, not hurt themselves and their and his dear children as well.

So went the years of obscurity, popularity, opposition. The exile-burial was fifty miles west on the brink of civilization with Indians as the bulk of his congregation and their arrows often flying around him, Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Its tiny church with its few white colonists, who belonged largely to the same family that drove him from Northampton, was about all that was practically available for Edwards and his “numerous” family.

From this grave outside the city wall came the greatest theological achievement in the western hemisphere. The definition of a church and church membership was settled with Misrepresentations Corrected, And Truth Vindicated, In A Reply to the Rev. Mr. Solomon Williams’ Book, Entitled, The True State of the Question Concerning the Qualifications Necessary to Lawful Communion in the Christian Sacraments (1752). Arminianism was set back a century by The Freedom of the Will (1754). An Essay on the Nature of True Virtue (1755), at first opposed in the house of its reformed friends is still rising in esteem while A Dissertation on God’s Last End in Creation of the World (1755) though still under-appreciated brings definition to the meaning of meaning.

A kind of resurrection came in Edwards’ becoming President of the College of West Jersey (Princeton) which was the belated recognition by the struggling young American church of her spiritual father. As if to show that He disapproved of Edwards’ willingness to leave the ideal isolation of Stockbridge, God himself removed His servant before his star could rise again and his long contemplated Summa Theologica, A Rational Account, be completed. After a few months of earthly glory, Jonathan Edwards went to heaven, March 22, 1758.

As Edwards was passing to the next world, this volume was passing through the presses as his final will and testament to this one: The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin defended; Evidences of its Truth produced, and Arguments to the Contrary answered. (1758)

On an inconspicuous tombstone in Princeton, NJ, these words (in Latin) constitute his memorial:



Wouldst thou know, oh Traveller, what manner of person he was whose mortal part lies here? A man indeed, in body tall yet graceful, attenuated through aciduity and abstinence and studies most intense; in the acuteness of his intellect, his sagacious judgment and his prudence second to none among mortals; in his knowledge of sciences and the liberal arts remarkable, in sacred criticism eminent, and a theologian distinguished without equal; an unconquered defender of the Christian Faith and a preacher grave, solemn, discriminating; and by the favor of God most happy in the success and issue of his life. Illustrious in his piety, sedate in manners, but toward others friendly and benignant, he lived to be loved and venerated, and now, alas! to be lamented in his death. The bereaved college mourns for him, and the church mourns, but Heaven rejoices to receive him: Abi, Viator, Et Pia Sequere Vestigia. (Go hence, oh traveller, and his pious footsteps follow.)



Here are some of the thousands of tributes to Jonathan Edwards at the end of the last century while the approaching end of ours will list still many more thousands.



Daniel Webster: “The Freedom of the Will” by Mr. Edwards is the greatest achievement of the human intellect.

Dr. Chalmers: The greatest of theologians.

Robert Hall: He was the greatest of the sons of men.

Dugald Stewart: Edwards on the Will never was answered and never will be answered.

Encyclopaedia: One of the greatest metaphysicians of his age.

Edinburgh Review: One of the acutest and most powerful reasoners.

London Quarterly Review: His gigantic specimen of theological argument is as near to perfection as we may expect any human composition to approach. He unites the sharpness of the scimetar [sic] and the strength of the battle-axe.

Westminster Review: From the days of Plato there has been no life of more simple and imposing grandeur than that of Jonathan Edwards.

President McCosh, of Princeton: The greatest thinker that America has produced.

Lyman Beecher: A prince among preachers. In our day there is no man who comes within a thousand miles of him. . . .

Hollister’s History of Connecticut: The most gifted man of the eighteenth century, perhaps the most profound thinker in the world.

Moses Coit Tyler: The most original and acute thinker yet produced in America. *33*