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TOPIC: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Chapt 15 cont 3
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The Divine Trinity
Shortly after Edwards’ death a well-known rumor began that he had departed from traditional trinitarian doctrine. In time the matter was cleared, and those who had hoped for one reason or another to find heresy in the great champion of orthodoxy were disappointed. *228* It is interesting that Calvin, too, had been suspected of this heresy.
We can only speculate on the reason for the suspicion concerning Edwards. As we shall see, he was orthodox on this doctrine from the beginning. Perhaps the trouble was Edwards’ profound way of expressing the traditional doctrine. We have seen that he raised some doubts because of his idealism, which philosophy, he thought, could be expressed in the traditional manner. One familiar with the history of the doctrine of the Trinity will see nothing aberrant in the Edwardsian formulation. Those less familiar and less inclined to speculation may find it strange if not unitarian-sounding. To be sure, it was not the way puritans usually expressed this foundational teaching, but it was not heretical.
Compare, for example, the statement of Richard Sibbes, the English puritan of the preceding century:
How, and in what respect is Christ thus beloved of God?
First as he is God, the Son of God, the engraven image of his Father, so he is primum amabile, the first lovely thing that ever was. When the Father loves him, he loves himself in him, so he loves him as God, as the second person, as his own image and character.” *229*
By contrast, Edwards writes:
That image of God which God infinitely loves and has His chief delight in, is the perfect idea of God. It has always been said that God’s infinite delight consists in reflecting on himself and viewing his own perfections or, which is the same thing, in His own perfect idea of himself, so that ’tis acknowledged that God’s infinite love is to and his infinite delight [is] in the perfect image of Himself. But the Scriptures tell us that the Son of God is that image. *230*
Sibbes and Edwards are probably saying the same thing, but not in the same way. Sibbes seems to speak of the Son of God as existing and being the image of God; Edwards seems to see the Son of God existing as idea in the mind of God. Edwards will go on to prove that this is one and the same thing, but it may not have appeared so on the surface.
Augustine had expressed the doctrine similarly in his On the Trinity, and the Middle Ages had gone along with this as the orthodox formulation. Whether Edwards compared himself with the Augustinian tradition or not, he was aware of it in Chevalier Ramseys work from which he quoted at great length with apparent approval. *231* Delattre notes how Edwards had from the beginning conceived this love between the Father and his Idea, the Son, as substantial. *232* In Edwards’ words:
I believe it will be plain to anyone who thinks intensely that the perfect act of God must be a substantial act. . . . The perfect delights of reasonable creatures are substantial delights, but the delight of God is [much more] properly a substance, yea, an infinitely perfect substance, even the essence. *233*
As Allen has observed at some length, the Trinity was being challenged in Edwards’ own time, and he must have felt called upon to rise to its defense. *234* The only prevailing reason for still holding to the doctrine was that the Atonement required the deity of Christ and sanctification the power of the third person of the Godhead. With the Trinity sinking to the utility of the economic Trinity exclusively, a great need to reassert and defend the underlying essential Trinity became evident. If this could not be done, Edwards sensed that the economic Trinity, in which he was greatly concerned himself, could not long continue. *235*
Edwards surely felt early the urgency of defending this basic Christian doctrine, although he never published a treatise on the subject. Such a treatise was printed posthumously. But in his very early M 94 Edwards gives not only his fullest single development of the doctrine, but also a basic statement of it from which he never departed. The rest of his entries in the “Miscellanies,” sermons, and especially the Treatise on Grace amount to a filling out of important details and proofs of the doctrine originally presented.
Even before M 94, however, Edwards had laid the foundation for the doctrine in “Excellence,” his first entry in “The Mind.” “In a being that is absolutely without any plurality, there cannot be excellence, for there can be no such thing as consent or agreement.” Since harmony with being is essential to excellence and excellence is essential to the concept of God, God must have harmony, and harmony required plurality of persons. So, for God to be excellent he must be multi-personal. Later Edwards went into more detail on this fascinating theme. God’s love of himself is equal to his love of or consent to all being. So love of himself is the begetting of the Son, and this mutual love makes the third, the personal Holy Spirit. . . .”
M 94 was written about 1722, possibly before “The Mind” and well before the beginning of the ministry in Northampton in 1727. Edwards begins in a polemic tone, observing that “there has been much cry of late against saying one word particularly about the Trinity but what the Scripture has said, judging it impossible but that, if we did, we should err in a question so much above us.” Edwards disagrees vigorously, believing that it is within the “reach of naked reason to perceive certainly that there are three, distinct persons in God, the nature of which is one. . . .”
When Edwards speaks of “naked reason,” he does not mean de novo thinking but rather speculation about what has been revealed to show many of its implications with certainty. He begins his reflecting on the accepted notion that God is infinitely happy from eternity. Since the divine way of knowing is not essentially different from ours, God’s delight too must be in the ideas he has. But what idea could satisfy an infinite being except the idea of an infinite being, which is himself? This idea is his image. His Son is born eternally by the Fathers beholding himself. “By God’s reflecting on Himself the being is begotten, that is, a substantial image of God.” So convinced is Edwards of his reasoning that he concludes that, if the word “begotten” had not been used in Scripture, it would have been used in this case because “there is no other word that so properly expresses it.” *236*
Out of this relation between the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds:
The Holy Spirit is the act of God between the Father and the Son, infinitely loving and delighting in each other. Sure I am that, if the Father and the Son do infinitely delight in each other, there must be an infinitely pure and perfect act between them, an infinitely sweet energy which we call delight. This is certainly distinct from the other two. . . . It is distinct from each of the other two, and yet it is God. It is in the Spirit that God is eternal and pure Acts *237*
In M 117 Edwards writes that from all eternity there must have been an object which God infinitely loves. “Otherwise He could not be happy, because happiness is consent to Being or God. Therefore, this other Being must be of the same essence as Himself.”
In a somewhat later “Miscellany” Edwards seems to be summarizing what he had already written. This brief entry breaks no new ground but serves, apparently, to remind Edwards of what he has already formulated:
Trinity. It may be thus expressed that the Son is the Deity, generated by God’s understanding or having an idea of himself; the Holy Ghost is the divine essence flowing out or breathed forth in infinite love and delight, or which is the same, the Son is God’s idea of himself; and the Spirit is God’s love to and delight in himself. *238*
Having somewhat speculatively articulated the concept of the Trinity which Edwards thought was clear to “naked reason,” he went on to find solid biblical evidence that his rationalizing was not amiss.
In the original, it is Jehovah Elohenu Jehovah Ehadh; the more proper translation of which is, Jehovah our God is one Jehovah. The verb is is understood, and properly inserted between Jehovah Elohenu and Jehovah Ehadh, thus, Jehovah Elohenu is Jehovah Ehadh; which, if most literally translated, is thus, Jehovah Our Divine Persons is one Jehovah; as though Moses, in this remark, had a particular reference to the word Elohim being in the plural number, and would guard the people against imagining from thence that there was a plurality of Essences or Beings, among whom they were to divide their affections and respect. . . . Not only is the word Elohim properly plural, the very same that is used, ver. 15, the gods which your fathers served, &c. - but the adjective holy is plural. A plural substantive and adjective are used here concerning the True God, just in the same manner as in 1Sa_4:8. “Who shall deliver us out of the hands of these mighty Gods.” And in Dan_4:8. “In whom is the Spirit of the holy Gods.” So verse 9, 18. and chap. 5:11. That the plural number should thus be used with the epithet Holy, agrees well with the doxology of the angels, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts,” &c. - Isa_6:1-13 and Rev_4:1-11.
§64. It is an argument, that the Jews of old understood that there were several persons in the Godhead, and particularly, that when the cherubim, in the 6th of Isaiah (Isa_6:1-13), cried, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord of Hosts,” they had respect to three persons: that the seventy interpreters, in several places, where the Holy One of Israel is spoken of, use the plural number; as in Isaiah 41:16. . . . *239*
Preaching to his people, Edwards tended to discuss the economical Trinity more than the essential. Thus, in one of the sermons on Joh_16:8, we read: “In the Trinity there is such a thing as degrees of dignity or excellence. The Father is prior in the sense that he subsists of himself and therefore stands first in relation. The Son proceeds from the Father and therefore is second, while the Holy Spirit is said to proceed from both and therefore is third.” *240* The sermon on John 1423 is a practical and warm application of the Trinity doctrine to the Christian life. *241*
In our discussion of the attributes of God we notice that Edwards listed and discussed many. However, when he considers the Trinity he finds only three essential ones knowledge, holiness and joy. The first is a natural attribute, and the latter two are moral. The first is especially associated with the first person, the second with the second person, and the third with the third person. Delattre has a good discussion of the Trinity in terms of the attributes. *242*
Edwards sees many analogies of the Trinity in nature: the sun, the rainbow and especially man. There is yet more of an image of the Trinity in the soul of man. There is the mind, its understanding (or idea) and the will (or affection) answering to God, the idea of God and the love of God. *243*
The traditional objections to the Trinity are met by Edwards in a characteristically untraditional way. He meets the objection against his own speculation early and head-on:
It may be objected that at that rate one may prove an infinite number of persons in the Godhead; for each person has an idea of other persons. Thus the Father may have an idea of his Son, but you will argue that his (i.e., the Son’s) idea must be substantial. I answer that the Son himself is the Father’s idea himself, and if he (i.e., the Son) has an idea of this idea, ’tis yet the same idea. A perfect idea of an idea is the same idea still to all intents and purposes. . . . If you say, “He has an idea of the Father,” his idea is still an idea of the Father and therefore the same with the Song of Solomon *244*
Later, Edwards returns to this objection, saying it is “color without substance.” But in responding to it he goes much deeper, offering two arguments against the contention. First, the three persons of the Trinity are not
three distinct beings that have three distinct understandings. It is the divine essence that is understood. Second, the Father does not generate the Son by understanding the Son but by understanding his own essence. The Father understands the Son not otherwise than as he understands the essence, that is the essence of the Son. The Father understands the idea he has, merely his having that idea, without any other act. . . . So the Son understands the essence of the Father. . . . After you have in your imagination multiplied understandings and loves never so often, it will be the understanding and loving of the very same essence and can never make more than these three: God, the idea of God and the love of God. *245*
On the problem (if it is not an objection) of the kind of union that could exist among members of the Trinity who are one in essence, he answers by saying that there is no answer. At least, that is the way we construe the comment, “What insight I have of the nature of minds, I am convinced that there is no guessing what kind of unions and mixions by consciousness or otherwise there may be between them. So that all difficulty is removed in believing what the Scripture declares about spiritual unions of the persons of the Trinity, of the two natures of Christ, of Christ and the minds of saints.” *246*
In responding to criticisms of the Trinity, Edwards does not apparently resort to a favorite, the tu quoque. He does quote Deism Revealed which gives just that kind of argument, and it is difficult to doubt that Edwards agrees with that approach. Nevertheless, his approach here is to show that the Arminians have no problem with this doctrine that they are not already reconciled to. They can accept the idea that God knows all that is to come to pass (which shows these things to be necessary) without violating “free-will” (though they say that necessity does violate free-will). They should raise no objection, therefore, because they cannot fully comprehend the mystery of the Trinity. *247* “Those that deny the Trinity, because of the mysteriousness of it and its seeming inconsistence, yet generally own God’s certain prescience of men’s free actions, which they suppose to be free in such a sense as not to be necessary.” And once again he reverts to his usual critique of Deism that “[t]o reject every thing but what we can first see to be agreeable to our reason, tends, by degrees, to bring every thing relating not only to revealed religion, but even natural religion, into doubt. . . .” *248*
We have seen something of Edwards’ handling of the trinitarian doctrine in general terms. He does not neglect the individual persons in the Godhead either. While saying less about the Father and much more about the Son, he pays greatest attention and makes his greatest contribution to the concept of the third person.
Edwards says relatively little of the Father, or first person, in Himself. Almost all Edwards’ remarks concern the Father’s thinking of Himself, thereby and therein generating the Son. But occasionally Edwards thinks of the First Person in Himself. The sermon on 1Co_11:3 considers Him as the head of the economic Trinity. “God the Father acts as the head of the Trinity in all things appertaining to the affair of man’s redemption.” *249* Perhaps the fullest statement is found in M 238:
Trinity. Those ideas which we call ideas of reflection, all ideas of the acts of the mind (as the ideas of thought, of choice, love, fear, etc.) - if we diligently attend to our own minds we shall find they are not properly representations but are, indeed, repetitions of these very things, either more fully or more faintly. They, therefore, are not properly ideas. Thus, ’tis impossible to have an idea of thought or of an idea, but it will [be] that same idea repeated. So if we think of love, either of our past love that is now vanished, or of the love of others which we have not, we either so frame things in our imagination that we have for a moment a love to that thing or to something we make represent it, or we excite for a moment that love which we have, and suppose it in another place; or we have only an idea of the antecedents, concomitants, and effects of loving and suppose it in another place, or we have only an idea of the antecedents, concomitants and effects of loving and suppose something unseen, and govern our thoughts about [it] as we have learned how by experience and habit. Let anyone try himself in a particular instance and diligently observe. So if we have an idea of a judgment, not our own, we have the same ideas that are the terms of the proposition repeated in our own minds, and as being something in our own minds that is really our judgment, and suppose it there; that is, we govern our thought about it as if it were there, if we have a distinct idea of that judgment, or else we have only an idea of the attendants and effects of that judgment, and supply the name and our actions about it as we have habituated ourselves. And so, certainly, it is in all our spiritual ideas. They are the very same things repeated, perhaps very faintly and obscurely, and very quick and momentaneously, and with many new references, suppositions, and translations; but if the idea be perfect, it is only the same thing absolutely over again.
Now if this be certain, as it seems to me to be, then it’s quite clear that, if God doth think of Himself and understand Himself with perfect clearness, fullness, and distinctness, that idea He hath of Himself is absolutely Himself again, and is God perfectly to all intents and purposes. That which God knowest of the divine nature and essence is really and fully the divine nature and essence again. So that, by God’s thinking of Himself the deity must certainly be generated. This seems exceeding clear to me. God doubtless understands Himself in the most perfect sense; for therein His infinite understanding chiefly consists. And He understands Himself at all times perfectly, without intermission or succession in His thought.
When we have the idea of another’s love to a thing, if it be the love of a man to a woman that we are unconcerned about, we neither love in such cases nor have generally any proper idea at all of his love. We only have an idea of his actions that are the effects of love, as we have found by experience, and of those external things which belong to love and which appear in case of love. Or if we have any idea of it, it is either by forming our ideas so of persons and things, as we suppose they appear to them, that we have a faint vanishing notion of that affection; or if the thing be a thing that we so hate that this can’t be, we have our love to something else faintly, at least, excited and so in the mind, as it were, referred to that place. We think this is like that. *250*
This is, to be sure, the generation of the Son without the Son being mentioned. We cite it because it seems incidentally to describe the Father as He is in Himself in the very act of thinking that leads, as it were, to generation. The description is particularly affecting because Edwards tries to illustrate it by our own corresponding experiencing of love.
As we said, much more of Edwards’ theologizing about the Trinity concerns the generation of the Son than the being of the Father distinct from Him. Of course, the Father does not exist apart from the Son. His thought which begets the Son is as eternal as He is. While we do not recall Edwards ever citing Athanasius or referring to his argument that the Son must be eternal as the Father for the reason that the very term Father has no meaning apart from Son, there can be no denying that the thought is in Edwards too.
We have already noted that God did not need to create because of any deficiency in Himself but, rather, created from His sufficiency. This cannot be said about His need to generate. Edwards bases his rational argument for plurality in the Godhead on this very fact that God is love, and love must have an object. To be good is to desire to communicate goodness. Goodness cannot exist without the desire to communicate itself. Therefore, God must have an adequate object of communication. *251* The Father must have a Son to love or He could not exist as a Father. “The love which the Father has to his Son is great indeed; the deity does, as it were, wholly and entirely flow out in a stream of love to Christ; and the joy and pleasure of Christ is proportionably great.” *252*
Edwards finds a confirmation for his theory that the Son is the Idea of the Father, in his own metaphysics. One of the very first notions that he had established in his thinking, probably while still a college student, was that bodily things are only ideas. That being firmly fixed, it seemed to Edwards to follow that the object which God eternally beholds, the Logos, must be His own Idea. *253* In a later “Miscellany” he proceeds somewhat more biblically from the very name Logos itself:
The name of the second person in the Trinity evidences that He is God’s idea, whether we translate the word “The reason of God” or “the word of God.” If the reason or the understanding of God, the matter is past dispute; for everyone will own that the reason or understanding of God is his idea. And if we translate it “the word of God,” ’tis either the outward word of God or his inward. None will say he is his outward. Now the outward word is speech, but the inward word, which is the original of it, is thought, the Scripture being its own interpreter. For how often [is] thinking in Scripture called speaking when applied to God and men! So that ’tis the idea . . . that is the inward word. *254*
Edwards finds many intimations in the Old Testament also of the divine nature of the second person. Christ is called the face of God in Exo_33:14, and Edwards asks: “What can be so fitly called so as God’s own perfect Idea of himself, whereby he has every moment a view of his own essence? This is that face, aspect, form or appearance, whereby God eternally appears to himself, and more perfectly than man appears to himself by his form or appearance in a looking glass.”
Allen compares Edwards’ Treatise on Grace to Athanasius Incarnation of the Word and Anselms Cur Deus Homo as one of the small but profound works of the ages. In it he “brings out as had not been done before in the whole history of theology, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as related on the one hand to the inner mystery of the divine nature, and on the other to the spiritual life of man.” *255* The Holy Spirit comes into His own in this Treatise, although especially in relation to sanctification.
It is in considering the Holy Spirit that Edwards links the ontological and economic trinities. The Holy Spirit is commonly symbolized by oil in the Bible, and this for Edwards is not merely because He anointed the Christ for His incarnate ministry or even for His mediatorial ministry but for His eternal relationship to the Father. *256*
The name of the Son of God is MESSIAH and Christ, not only because there was an extraordinary pouring out of the Holy Ghost upon the man Christ Jesus and giving the Spirit without measure unto him, as separating him to and preparing him for his work; nor are these names proper to Christ only as man or as Mediator. But God the Son from all eternity was Christ or anointed with the Holy Spirit without measure, strictly speaking, or with the infinite love of the Father towards him. As the sons of God are begotten of divine love or born of the Holy Spirit. *257*
The Holy Spirit is also called the Breath of God for that signifies affection. *258* This is an appropriate figure consistent with references to him as river, fire, etc. Such figures as pouring out could never be used of knowledge and idea. *259*
Edwards has an interesting explanation of the apparent omission of the Holy Spirit from the Trinity in the benediction of 2Co_13:14 :
The Apostle’s blessing, wherein he wishes “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of the Father, and the communion of the Holy Ghost” (2Co_13:14), contains not different things but is simple: ’tis the same blessing, even the Spirit of God, which is the comprehension of all happiness. Therefore, the Apostle in his blessing to the Corinthians (1Co_16:23-24) says, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. My love be with you in Christ Jesus. Amen.” - Christian love being the communication of Christ’s love, and the Holy Ghost dwelling in us. *260*
There is a great deal more in Edwards, especially in his sermons, concerning the Third Person. But since this largely deals with sanctification, I will not consider it here.
Postscript
One of the most interesting aspects of Edwardsian studies is what came after and how. Of course, change came. It came slowly - Warfield says Edwards delayed the triumph of Arminianism by a hundred years. Conrad Wright thought the change was already taking place in Edwards’ friend, disciple, and contemporary, Joseph Bellamy. Warfield is right and Wright is wrong, but the more interesting thing than that the change occurred is how it occurs. It came not so much in spite of Edwards as in slight of Edwards. He was essentially ignored. What else could one do if one wanted to change? Who was able to refute him? What was left but to ignore him? Ramsey notes that this was the way Freedom of the Will was usually “refuted.” It is even more obvious that this was the way the world of “thought” got around The End of God in the Creation of the World. It chose to reject its position by not bothering with its argument. It preferred to state a preference where Edwards gave a “case.”
Wright, for example, simply - and I mean, simply - says that the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the end of God in the creation of the world to be beneficence for the world and not for His own glory. As if Edwards had overlooked the point! As if Edwards had not argued that benevolence and divine glory were one and the same thing! As if his Dissertation had not been written to demonstrate the folly of trying to separate the glory of God and the good of man. As his son wrote about his father’s writing on these two goals, the glory of God and the good of the creature, “Mr. Edwards was the first, who clearly showed that both these were the ultimate end of the creation, that they are only one end, and that they are really one and the same thing.” *261*
One does not have to agree with a master reasoner. But if one is going to disagree with a master reasoner, it would be appropriate first to ascertain what that master reasoner has reasoned. If a master reasoner takes the trouble to critique certain “modern” views, the minimal form of response before rejecting would be a critique. If a person chooses simply to disregard the master reasoner, the decent thing to do would be to admit it rather than give the impression one has advanced beyond him.
Let us see then what Edwards has attempted to do that has been so carefully ignored while presumably being refuted. There are anticipations in the sermon of August 1748 *262* and other earlier writings in the “Miscellanies” and elsewhere, but without doubt his classic defense of the glory of God in the creation was the 1755 Dissertation on the End of God in the Creation of the World. It was published posthumously in 1788 together with The Nature of True Virtue. After completing his Freedom of the Will Edwards had an attack of the ague in July, 1754 that lasted until January, 1755. It seems that sometime after that, his worst illness, he began this little masterpiece of metaphysical and biblical reasoning. It is interesting that in that same year, 1755, he returned to Northampton and preached from 2Co_4:6 on the glory of God. *263* “In one word,” he said, “the glory of God is that excellence of the divine being whereby he is worthy of divine regard.” He then discusses the natural attributes under “greatness” and the moral under goodness,” making the observation that “great knowledge and strength without holiness and goodness would make a being terrible but not glorious.” But there is no anticipation of the Dissertation he must then have been writing dealing with this glory in relation to the creation of the world.
In his attempt to ascertain God’s “last end” in creation, Edwards resorts to two sources of information: reason and Scripture. “Modern” man, then and now, is more interested in the former than the latter; but, for Edwards, the former was significant only because “modern” men were more interested in it. In itself it could not yield the answer.
Why, then, consult reason at all on a subject which is ultimately beyond its reach? This is the way Edwards answers that question in the conclusion of the whole rational discussion where his acuity is quite as sharp as in The Freedom of the Will:
I confess there is a degree of indistinctness and obscurity in the close consideration of such subjects, and a great imperfection in the expressions we use concerning them; arising unavoidably from the infinite sublimity of the subject, and the incomprehensibleness of those things that are divine. Hence revelation is the surest guide in these matters, and what that teaches shall in the next place be considered. Nevertheless, the endeavours used to discover what the voice of reason is, so far as it can go, may serve to prepare the way, by obviating cavils insisted on by many; and to satisfy us that what the Word of God says of the matter, is not unreasonable. . . . *264*
In other words, reason was consulted, and it showed that it could not meet the job description (finding out the purpose of God in creation) but could offer no objections to that which could meet the description - the Word of God itself. Reason, which men make the queen, is only the handmaid of revelation, according to Edwards.
So, reason having been tried and found wanting, Edwards comes to the fount of wisdom itself, Holy Scripture. It is odd that many today admire Edwards for what he deplores and deplore Edwards for what he admires. But if one admires Edwards, he will have to admire his Bible; and if one cannot admire his Bible, there is no way to admire Edwards (though some men keep trying). Here our award for consistency goes to Peter Gay who considers Edwards in a biblical cage and leaves him there. Gay is consistent - if consistently wrong - for Edwards is in that cage and there is no extricating him. He does not want to come out. Nothing has happened in the two and a quarter centuries since his death to change his mind about the Bible. As I have shown in volume I of this present study, Edwards faced essentially the same criticisms against the Bible as divine that are the rage today. His refutations of those criticisms a or invalid today as when he uttered them. One will have to judge them for what they are worth. Separating Edwards and his arguments is not a live option.
The Word of God reveals that it is in the Trinity that the attributes, in a sense, are reduced to their essentials. According to reason and revelation only wisdom and love are ultimate. “[T]he whole divine essence does truly and distinctly subsist both in the divine idea and divine love . . . [E]ach of them are properly distinct persons.” Only logos and agape are called God and deserve to be called God. God is immutable, for example, but could never be defined as immutability, as he is called love and logos. These two alone are ultimate, and all other attributes can be explained in terms of these and no other. Edwards does not say this, but he may have been thinking that these two are the quintessence of the natural (idea) and the moral (love) attributes.
In April of 1738 Edwards told his congregation that New England, by her behavior, had acted as if her God were guilty of scandal. *265* He reminded them that the fathers, when they first came here, “solemnly entered into covenant with God and were often renewing their covenant;.” At first they “cleaved” to God. All parts of the country were of one mind, the people being vitally Christian, the rulers religious and against immorality. There was vice, but now it has become common. “We have now greatly departed from God and are hankering after Arminianism which eats out the heart of religion.” “Multitudes of the pulpits” are not preaching vital Christianity. All the vices and debauchery so widespread show a profound disrespect for the God they so frequently covenanted to honor and obey. God has been tried and found wanting, judging according to the conduct of pulpit and pew.
Even earlier, in 1734, Edwards had noticed that the more degenerate people became, the more outwardly religious they became. At such times, professors “are ordinarily hypocritical in keeping fast days,” preached Edwards at a fast. *266* He noted also that degenerates were all the more religiously devoted to the things that were not the commands of God. So they are very wicked and very zealous at the same time. Nevertheless, Edwards held out hope that there may be good people remaining, like the 7,000 who had not bowed to Baal in the days of Ahab and Jezebel.