Jonathan Edwards [1720], Sermons and Discourses 1720-1723 (WJE Online Vol. 10) , Ed. Wilson H. Kimnach [word count] [jec-wjeo10].
Chapter IV: Literary Theory and Practice
Jonathan Edwards was very much concerned with literary theory, particularly with those aspects of it that related directly to the writing of his sermons and treatises. Moreover, without actually abandoning either the traditional sermon form or the manner of the plain style, he experimented and innovated to a surprising degree, considering the limitations imposed by such conservative allegiances. It is appropriate to examine with some care Edwards' general literary theories, but even more his practices, particularly those specific stylistic techniques that made possible a highly individual voice in spite of superficial stylistic self-effacement.
1. Seminal Thoughts on Writing
In his writing, Edwards seems always to have been more interested in persuasion than mere expression, and the bulk of the writings he published are clearly propagandistic or polemical. Even his earliest notes on style and literary strategy, the list of rules on the "cover" (an ordinary folio leaf that may have been an end sheet) of the notebook, "Notes on Natural Philosophy," are the thoughts of one who viewed writing as a utilitarian engine of psychological power. These notes were apparently written for the specific purpose of preparing a scientific treatise, but they nevertheless constitute a general theory of writing which provided a foundation for Edwards' later writings, including sermons. A review of these early principles is necessary to an understanding of what was, at least in a chronological sense, the starting—point of Edwards' recorded literary theory.These rules have been transcribed and edited by Wallace E. Anderson in Works, 6, 192–95, along with other rules on the same leaf pertaining more specifically to a scientific treatise. Since the rules are more material to literary than to scientific matters, they have been reproduced here for the reader's convenience, along with the rules from The Ladies' Library which Anderson does not reproduce. In certain particulars this text varies from the Anderson text, usually because of editorial intervention (annotated).
In order to present the "entirety" of number 12, including that which is only referred to in Edwards' note, the full list of six rules from The Ladies' Library is inserted here:
Obviously, this set of rules is intended to help the writer (or speaker) become master of his thought and thus a formidable, though perspicuous, advocate in any inquiry or debate. A compend of thought popular in the early eighteenth century, the rules are reminiscent of Arnauld and Nicole's The Art of Thinking, Descartes' Discourse on Method or Rules for the Direction of the Mind, and Locke's Essay (particularly Book IV). But to continue Edwards' own list of rules:
In this apparently random compilation of twenty-one numbered reminders, maxims, and rules for writing, certain preoccupations and attitudes that were to endure in Edwards' thought and writings are revealed through patterns of repetition. Thus, Edwards' preoccupation with clarity and precision in his style appears in six entries while number 7, in particular, embodies Edwards' youthful optimism concerning the possibilities of verbal precision, and states his high aim of writing so that "the ideas shall be left naked." Number 12 refers him to those six rules or elaborate directions in The Ladies' Library that would help him to discipline his thought and writing so that his expression might have such precision and stark clarity or realism as would be required to evoke the shock of recognition implied in the word "naked." Another stylistic preoccupation that looms very large in these rules is the reiterated insistence upon modesty. Again and again, in at least nine entries, Edwards admonishes himself in one way or another to be modest. Before one makes any observations on Puritan neuroses or virtues, however, it should be noted that number 6 clearly identifies this particular variety of literary modesty as a stylistic strategy; moreover, it shows Edwards to have been conscious of the subtlety requisite to the success of such a ploy.Here and elsewhere in his style notes JE reflects the literary ambience he shared with contemporaries such as Benjamin Franklin, who discovered that nothing worked so well as to "put on the humble Enquirer" (Autobiography, ed. Leonard W. Labaree et al., New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1964, p. 64). The immediate source of influence in this particular instance seems to have been James Greenwood's An Essay towards a Practical English Grammar (London, 1711), a work used and cited by both Franklin and JE. Other numbers detail particular tactics to be employed in this generally defensive strategy. The very frequency of these reminders suggests that perhaps Edwards was concerned with self-control, as well as with stylistic effect. Of the various attitudes, or casts of mind, evident in these entries, one notices more than a hint of sheer personal ambition. Indeed, the very first rule states that it is not enough to defeat the opposition with polemic or proof, but that it is equally important to win a following of readers. Thus, at this early stage of his career, Edwards was planning to stake out a claim in the world of letters; he had not yet published anything, but he was thinking of the conditions necessary for the favorable acceptance of successive future writings. The extent of his ambition and the tenor of his self-confidence are further adumbrated in number 17, where he identifies London as the center of his cultural world and lays plans for a methodical, prudent siege. Even Boston was no more than a playground for this unknown backwoods upstart! Well might he caution himself about allowing immodesty to show; these entries prove him to have been supremely ambitious and coolly, though not foolishly, self-confident. Of course, there is more than the mere absence of foolishness in this list; rather, there is a canny worldliness which tinctures many of the entries as the aspiring author identifies his intended audience, notes the peculiarities of his personal relationship to it, analyzes the literary problems arising from these peculiarities of situation, and makes precociously sage notes toward a plan for overcoming such problems as can be overcome by a rhetorical strategy. Some of these entries are so worldly-wise, so sure in their diagnoses of the problems, that it seems more than probable that Edwards was not their originator. In at least two entries (12 and 15) Edwards makes explicit his dependence upon the precepts or example of printed works, and other entries may well have been so derived. Several of these entries, however, sound like "tips" that an older person might have given to a young author seeking advice. Certainly, throughout his life, Edwards appears to have been always ready to learn from every book, conversation, and experience that might be in any way useful to his purposes. But whether original or borrowed, all of these precepts are valuable indicators of Edwards' early thought on his literary career. His selection of just these points, rather than many others that must have been in one way or another available to him, and the values exhibited through his choices, provide material sufficient for a sketch of the author as a young man. The emergent character study derived from the implications of literary theory is not entirely unfamiliar. In fact, it seems to be the young man described in the first pages of Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography: the ambition to excel in writing, the willingness to learn from literary precedents (even from the same works, apparently) and the advice of others, the assumption of a guise of modesty, the preoccupation with clarity and precision in thought and word, and the precocious pragmatism or worldliness. Certainly these young men were cut from the same cloth. If anything, Edwards' notes suggest the more soaring ambition, directing him to a conquest of the London "world," while the young Franklin seems to have been satisfied when he triumphed before his provincial fellows. How deeply Edwards sympathized with the mainstream of the Enlightenment at the time of writing these notes is difficult to say, but it does seem evident that he was willing to challenge the likes of the Royal Society in their kind of game and, ultimately, on their home court. Of course, to succeed in such an enterprise he would have to master their literary strategies. There is little evidence that Edwards did not take the Ladies' Library rules seriously at this time, however, and his phrase, "the ideas shall be left naked," suggests more optimism about the efficacy of rational communication than even Thomas Sprat evinces in his advocacy of "a close, naked, natural way of speaking."The History of the Royal Society of London, 2nd ed., London, 1702, p. 113. To speak (or write) nakedly is only a step in the direction of a naked idea, but here again Edwards shows his talent for pursuing the implications of ideas to a logical, but often radical conclusion. However, the treatise anticipated in these notes was not to be written, and the Augustan establishment was not to be put "clean out of conceit with [its] imagination" by the "very rational philosophical truths" of the young man from Connecticut. Rather, Edwards would turn his attention to an analysis of the fundamental factors that condition all verbal communication, the nature of the human mind and the nature of words. Perhaps, after having meditated upon Locke's Essay or some attacks upon it, those very biases of perception that are indicted in "Of the Prejudices of Imagination"Printed in Anderson, ed., Scientific and Philosophical Writings, Works, 6, 196–201. (originally intended to serve as a preface or "lemma" to the scientific treatise on the mind) seemed to loom ever larger as impediments to mere rational arguments. Particularly after the commencement of his personal conversion in 1721, he must have been increasingly aware of the role of the senses in realizing those very nearly ineffable experiences of the "religious affections" which became the new center of his life. Certainly, the "Personal Narrative" emphasizes a wide variety of sensory experiences and nebulous "imaginings" as at least concomitants of the true religious sensibility, and as the yet-aspiring author turned to this new area of study, he found himself necessarily less concerned with the externals of the world scene and more concerned with the "inscape" of the mind. The notebook entitled "The Mind" seems to represent, in part, an attempt to ascertain the limits of verbal argument in a world of public dogmas and private sensibilities.Such an approach was hardly unprecedented, and the popular rhetoric text of Bernard Lamy, The Art of Speaking (London, 1676), insists that study of the mind is prerequisite to eloquence (p. 110). Lamy in fact anticipates several emphases in "The Mind," such as the analogy between the operations of the senses and the mind, the power of imagery in language, the idea as the object of perception, and the power of beauty. It was one thing for a philosopher to appeal to the Augustan world's ostensibly solid foundation of reason in the course of demonstrating a few "rational philosophical truths." It was something else to write persuasively about the evidences of religious experience for a learned world that increasingly looked askance upon "eccentric enthusiasms." How could one convince the most sophisticated audience that he had identified a functioning spiritual system as surely as Newton had identified the true physical system? Indeed, how could one discuss the spiritual-patently irrational or suprarational in itself-at all in a world that increasingly urged conformity to a dead level of rational consensus? Poised between the rhetoric of Locke's Essay and the Cartesian approach of The Art of Thinking, Edwards first sought for a viable alternative to the "old logic"The complex influences of the "old" logic of Ramus and Burgersdijck, radically modified by the "new" of Arnauld and Locke, are discussed in the introduction and annotation of the Scientific and Philosophical Writings by editor Wallace E. Anderson. which would enable him to discuss the most subtle and exalted experiences in a way that would meet the most rigorous philosophical standards of the age, while yet permitting due recognition of the all-important spiritual dimension. Ultimately, the result might be a systematic exposition of "reality," but as it is experienced rather than as scientific calculations objectify it, and with the human sensibility as the efficient measure of reality when informed by the Divine Mind. But knowledge, apprehended by the mere natural mind was a dubious thing, and the communication of knowledge a perilous enterprise, particularly when the knowledge to be communicated was of a spiritual or complexly intellectual sort. Thus the notes in "The Mind" dwell frequently upon such problems as the limitations of the mind, the elusiveness of knowledge, and the perils of words.
These two entries, alone, suggest some of the great obstacles that Edwards saw in the way of effective rational argument, for they assert that both minds (of listeners or readers) and words are encrusted with associations that would obscure or even destroy the fine pattern of a rational discourse, especially when it is concerned with the evanescences of subjective experience. How could one hope to clear the heads of his audience, or having done that, keep from introducing new confusions through the very words of his argument? Even if one could make a clearing in the mental overgrowth and introduce terms that were precisely and truly defined,Entry no. 48 of "The Mind" gives JE's notion of "a true definition": "that, which would give anyone the clearest notion of the meaning of the word, if he had never been in any way acquainted with the thing signified by that word." (Ibid., p. 367.)
As an idea is apt to fade in the mind during the course of a lengthy argument, it seemed almost inevitable that the "prejudices" of the listeners or readers would combine with the vagaries of verbal associations to threaten all true precision and the ideational coherence of an argument; that is, unless the argument were set back on the straight and narrow track from time to time with some kind of redefinition. But the very descriptive definition Edwards is inclined to employ in his argument involves just that lengthy process cited in entry 5 as a source of the weakening of true conceptions of ideas. Indeed, after studying some of Edwards' meditations in "The Mind," one might wonder if Edwards believed in a wholly efficacious rational argument at all. In all this morass of confused significations, decaying meanings, and mental mists, there was apparently at least one bright spot of certainty for Edwards. In entry 66, he asserts that there are "All sorts of ideas of things [that] are but the repetitions of those very things over again…"Ibid., p. 383. That is, there is a whole category of human experience in which there seems to be a direct and exact correlation between the experienced reality, the idea or concept of it, and the word for it. Thus, one's argument might be clear and efficacious if only he could talk in such authentic terms continually. But this category is restricted, according to entry 66, to the most simple and immediate of subjective experiences, "the ideas of colors," and such. Obviously, one who restricted himself to a vocabulary of such severely limited concepts would be able to discuss only literally superficial topical areas. Indeed, at least once, Edwards suggests that perhaps humans-philosophers included—are inadequately equipped to discuss, in any profound, precise, and effective way, the very things that were, in the eyes of a zealous young minister and student of theology, the most important:
In the course of his studies in the Scriptures, however, Edwards discovered at least the hint of a solution to his predicament, and this hint is most vividly expressed in "The Mind" through two successive entries which seem to be intentionally juxtaposed:
Despite all the limitations of the human mind and the terrible difficulties posed by the spiritual realm, it seemed that the ancient prophets had received communications about spiritual things that were as clear, as true, and as memorable as the simplest sensory experiences. Moreover, they had succeeded in conveying their notions in a most effective way, for they had preserved the simplicity and immediacy of the truths while directing the minds of their audience to the very heart of the "abstract mysteries." What method had they employed? The very language of modern philosophers seemed to preserve the secret: [23]. The reason why the names of spiritual things are all, or most of them, derived from the names of sensible or corporeal ones, as "imagination," "conception," "apprehend," etc., is because there was no other way of making others readily understand men's meaning when they first signified these things by sounds, than by giving of them the names of things sensible to which they "They could thus point it out with the finger" is a characteristically Edwardsean statement; he not only understands the way of the ancient prophets (and of modern poets), but employs their device himself when he would identify it. He achieves simultaneous definition and illustration; he gives the sense of the thing.JE's inclination to employ this type of metaphorical definition when he approaches "abstract mysteries" is now well known. Notable examples are his definition of "absolute nothing" as "that the sleeping rocks dream of" ("Of Being," ed. Anderson, in Works, 6, 206), and his conclusion to the discussion of God's role in maintaining the universe in time: "And, if it were not for our imaginations, which hinder us, we might see that wonderful work performed continually, which was seen by the morning stars when they sang together" ("Things to be Considered and Written fully about," ibid., 241–42). In a lifetime of sermon writing, Edwards continued to employ the power of imagery, not as decoration for an abstract argument nor even as illustration—though these functions were incidentally fulfilled—but rather as a source of stability and certitude, of freshness and immediacy, of meaning. Imagery, fused metaphorically to abstract concepts, would touch the mind of the auditor as surely as an "immediate sensation"; moreover, the simple image had a way of sticking in the mind as an indivisible unit. A well-chosen image could transform thought into experience and neatly fix the most paradoxical of concepts. All this may seem to leave the whole matter of rational argument—let alone an old or new logic-far behind, and in a way it does. Edwards shows signs of becoming increasingly indifferent to the mere logical proof, or pure rational argument, as he becomes more involved with pastoral teaching. At least one entry in "The Mind" shows a healthy awareness of the very real limits of human reason:
One immediately thinks of entry 28 in "Shadows of Divine Things," which identifies thunder with God's majesty, or of Edwards' comments on thunder in the "Personal Narrative."One of the stranger passages in JE's writings is his illustration of changed perceptions of thunder storms following his awakening, in which he does not suggest any change in the storm itself or in its threat to himself, but rather views it from the divine perspective as mere high spirits or play. Of course, no rationalization is given of the change, nor could there be without introducing the idea of being killed for the sport of God. In the context of the "Personal Narrative" the change in attitude toward thunder exactly parallels the changed estimate of the doctrine of election. See the passage in Samuel Hopkins, Life, p. 27. Perhaps with the "religious affections" particularly in mind, he insists that reasoning is not the sole guide to the truth, and that other ways of knowing and communicating essential truths are practically superior to reasoning. Certainly, an argument which relied upon imagery and metaphor as prime vehicles of thought had several types of justification in Edwards' eyes. First, the precedent of the ancient prophets and the Scripture: how frequently they "pointed it out with the finger," and with what efficacy! Then the sensational psychology of Locke gave epistemological precedence to the senses and sense [intuitive] experience, a "modern" theory which yet seemed to correlate with the mode of ancient prophecy, particularly as interpreted by John Smith and the Cambridge Platonists. Edwards was familiar with the longstanding Puritan interest in the historical symbolism of typology, and the practice of "improving" the commonplaces of life after the manner of Thomas Manton and John Flavel.John Havel's Husbandry Spiritualized (London, 1669) was very popular in JE's time and JE quotes Flavel, even naming him, in his sermon on Numbers 23:9. Thomas Manton's theories on "improving common objects," briefly summarized in the Epistle Dedicatory of Husbandry Spiritualized, are propounded in A Practical Commentary, or an Exposition with Notes on the Epistle of James (London, 1651)—a book owned by JE and cited in the interleaved Bible (p. 875). These last preachers argued that common objects (aspects of the natural scene, domestic and farm implements, and so forth) "may be improved two wayes; viz., In an argumentative, and in a Representative way; by reasoning from them, and by viewing the resemblance that is betwixt them and spiritual matters."Thomas Manton, A Practical Commentary, p. 545. Manton appears to have been esteemed by JE, and there are a number of references to his works in JE's notebooks. Undoubtedly Manton's theories confirmed JE's general tendency to perceive common phenomena in symbolic terms. Such an approach-particularly that of the second way—is a favored strategy in Edwards' sermons. Thus it is not surprising to see Edwards, in the early and middle years of his preaching career, attempting to improve upon, and extend the limits of, rational argument and learning in religious writing. It is only fair, however, first to acknowledge the place he consistently gives to the intellectual content of religion: …'tis in this way only that God gives grace to the world, by instructing of them in the principles of religion. If knowledge were not a necessary means of grace, there would [be] no need of the Bible.… There are some are so ignorant that they are scarcely capable in an ordinary way of having grace. (Sermon on Proverbs 8:34; 1732.) He asserts, moreover, that reason is a very important guide in the pursuit of religious truths:
Edwards adhered to this seemingly rationalist position throughout his life; on the other hand, he frequently "put reason in its place," as if his listeners might mistake the true center of balance in his position. For instance, one early sermon contains two separate arguments in proof of the doctrine, and joining the arguments is the following transitional statement: Thus I have proved a future state and another world from the light of natural reason. The reason why I have spoken so much on this head is because many men are more easily convinced by such kind of arguments than those that are drawn from Scripture. I shall now, in the second place, prove it from the clearer light of Revelation, or the Word of God. (Sermon on Hebrews 9:27; 1722.) Perhaps even in the pulpit, at least in the first years, Edwards wanted to demonstrate that he knew the way the world was going and that he could keep up with the best of the avant-garde if he so desired. But he also wished to declare his true position and, as it were, stand above the current intellectual fads. There are several other early sermons that give proofs from "natural reason" while suggesting that these arguments are "only for those who are impressed with such proofs." As the years passed and the time of the Great Awakening drew near, Edwards appears to have placed even less emphasis upon the rational argument, and sometimes, as in one ordination sermon, he is openly contemptuous of man's "natural" understanding: Divine Revelation in these things don't go a begging for credit and validity by approbation and applause of our understandings… (Sermon on 1 Corinthians 2:11–13; 1740.) On the whole, then, there is in Edwards a nice balance between reason and faith. He suggests that religious truths are all, at bottom reasonable, but that human reason frequently falls short of an adequate comprehension of them. The fault would seem to be in the very cumbrousness of the reasoning process itself in the imperfect world of men. When salvation or damnation is the issue—or when thunder cracks in the sky overhead—the process of reasoning may seem ludicrously inadequate, particularly if other means of ascertaining the truth are available. It is obvious that Edwards was fascinated by the possibilities of his reasoning powers and by the vistas opened through the newer approaches in William Brattle's compend of logic, the Essay of Locke, and The Art of Thinking. The refinements made the Ramist approach seem like an old toy, and it is almost a note of embarrassment that one hears in the entry on Logic in "The Mind": [17]. LOGIC. One reason why at first, before I knew other logic, I used to be mightily pleased with the study of the old logic, was because it was very pleasant to see my thoughts, that before lay in my mind jumbled without any distinction, ranged into order and distributed into classes and subdivisions, that I could tell where they all belonged, and run them up to their general heads. For this logic consisted much in distributions and definitions; and their maxims gave occasion to observe new and strange dependencies of ideas, and a seeming agreement of multitudes of them in the same thing, that I never observed before."The Mind," p. 345. But when the evidence of hundreds of Edwards' sermons is considered, the question of the precise role of the "new logic" becomes more than a little dubious. It is true that many of Edwards' writings contain superb rational arguments, and that Edwards is a competent and confident logician. It is also a truism to refer to Edwards' "pitiless logic" in his polemical treatises and admonitory sermons. But when one asks what, precisely, is the contribution of logic to the literary effectiveness of any of these works, he is very likely to find himself uttering phrases such as "very pleasant to see… thoughts… ranged into order and distributed into classes and subdivisions…" Indeed, it is probable that Edwards relied on logic and rational exposition in great part for what might best be termed aesthetic effects. A symmetrical structure, clarity of focus, pleasingly neat distribution of parts and wholes, and the sense of a progressive movement through the stages of a developing argument: all are noteworthy aspects of Edwards' mastery of rational discourse and logical argument. But the actual proof hardly depends upon either sweet reasonableness or iron syllogisms; ultimately, proof is the simple proclamation of the revealed Word of God. Truth is in the Scripture, and after the Word has been made known there is only the matter of deducing a logically ordered list of particular implications and relating these to the common experiences of life. If the proof comes from authority, whence the power? Again, it seems that the logical structure is peripheral to the source of literary power in Edwards' sermons. Though the subtle persuasion which results from a carefully structured argument is important, the prime source of power lies in Edwards' use of certain literary devices such as imagery, metaphor, repetition, and allusion. As the justification is essentially authoritarian, so the appeal is directed as much to the emotions as to the intellect, specifically, as imagined experience. That this preoccupation with the human heart or emotional apprehension did become intensified through years of preaching experience, resulting in even less reliance upon mere rational arguments and logical proofs, is attested in several of Edwards' papers, particularly in "The Mind." The bulk of "The Mind" notebook is a metaphysical inquiry and its language is theoretical if not always abstract. At the end of the manuscript, however, is a list of some fifty-six Subjects to be handled in the Treatise on the Mind. This list, written in two series, seems to have been compiled some time after the bulk of the entries in "The Mind" were made in the mid-1720s; in fact, internal evidence suggests that the first series may have been written at the time of the Great Awakening (though perhaps in the late 1730s), while the second series was probably written as late as 1747.The manuscript no longer exists, but Dwight, who saw it, says that there were two series of entries, the point of division coming after entry 26 (Life, p. 668). The list is printed in Anderson, ed., Works, 6, 387–93. In any case, the whole list shows a reorientation in Edwards' approach to the subject matter of "The Mind." He has turned from metaphysical theorizing to the practical implications of many of the earlier speculations. In brief, he has moved from philosophy to psychology, and from the realm of the student/thinker to that of the thinking pastor. Edwards may have had in mind a more modern, psychologically oriented sequel to Stoddard's A Treatise Concerning Conversion, with special emphasis on preaching and the ministerial office in the context of the revivals.This unwritten treatise, entitled "The Natural History of the Mental World," is identified as a "great synthetic book in moral philosophy" by Norman Fiering in Jonathan Edwards's Moral Thought and Its British Context (Chapel Hill, Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1981), p. 72n. However, the scientific-sounding title notwithstanding, the work outlined was clearly directed to the professional conduct of preachers and pastors, as is indicated by references to preaching style (no. 6), differences between enthusiasm and grace (no. 9), the sense of the heart (no. 14), and the practical nature and limitations of language (nos. 35 and 54). The thrust of the work as a whole is directed to the larger issues of communication and leadership. The "mind" in question is now less an ideal "Mind of Man" and more the perverse and mysterious "minds of men" which a preacher must address. Likewise, the focus of the projected treatise would seem to be less directed to the internal world of Edwards himself and more inclusive of the mental society he saw roiling about his pulpit. This change clearly parallels the development of the sermon notebooks discussed in Chapter II. The issues that now loom large are not merely metaphysical problems involving "old" and "new" logics, but such practical issues as the popular resistance, through social forces and cultural conditioning, to particular ideas or pastoral leadership in general; the weakness and instability of the human mind "in the flesh"; the very important and yet mysterious "laws" governing the religious affections, and finally, the secrets behind success or failure in the pulpit. Answers to the problems posed here could hardly be discussed adequately in the technical vocabulary of eighteenth-century rationalism. Many of the basic terms and issues remain constant throughout "The Mind" and its topical lists; however, as the center of Edwards' attention moved from the study to the pulpit, the focus of his inquiry became ever more intently centered in that area of the human mind he at first sought to master or overcome, the emotions. For his primary concern became the religious experience, and this experience seemed to be hidden away below the rational surface of the mind in a welter of feelings, impulses, and dark forms. The story implicit in the document, "The Mind," is Edwards' gradual acceptance of his calling to work with human minds in all their messiness as the theater in which he, as spokesman of the Savior, must operate. 2. Light and the Heart Edwards redefined two conventional concepts during his prime preaching years which imposed a kind of order upon the area of his operations, at least in his own mind. These concepts are "a divine and supernatural light" and "the sense of the heart." With these two notions and certain supportive concepts, he could justify in rational language the very enterprise of his ministry despite all the barriers and pitfalls adumbrated in "The Mind." He could hope to touch the souls of his people and effectively guide his congregation despite the inadequacies of language and the evident mental labyrinths which presented an apparently impenetrable barrier to the best of mere rational arguments. "Divine and supernatural light," defined most successfully in the sermon of 1734, is the name Edwards gives to the experience of "A true sense of the divine excellency of the things revealed in the word of God, and a conviction of the truth and reality of them, thence arising."Works, Worcester rev. ed., 4, 441. "A true sense" means "an accurate knowing and feeling" of these spiritual [supernatural] truths, a total apprehension of the "naked" ideas—in all of their complexity and subtlety-despite the limitations of the words used to represent them. Such a stupendous feat of cognition could only occur, Edwards maintains, if there were a sudden infusion of "light" [awareness] from a superhuman source. Thus, he seizes upon the visual image of a burst of light from the sky, suddenly flooding a landscape that has been identified but hitherto largely hidden in shadows. The moment of realization is a moment of the most intense emotion, a shock of recognition so great that the "distinct image" which replaces the old shadows is never erased, and thus the subject of the experience is never again the same. Although the actual illumination of the religious truths might come immediately from God and thus be utterly beyond the control of the minister, the mapping of the territory, or the presentation of structured concepts, is very much his duty. The landscape of shadows must be presented to the mind or there is nothing to illuminate. In "Miscellanies" entry 782, probably written late in the 1730s, Edwards recorded his speculations on the mysterious process of cognition. In this meditation, variously entitled by Edwards, "Ideas, Sense of the Heart, Spiritual Knowledge or Conviction, Faith," he traces the levels of meaning from the minimal level of "signs" (mere words or concepts known only "by sound") through to the highest level of affective perception. The preacher, he maintains, is inevitably a purveyor of signs, since the necessity of discussing many abstract and complex issues in a short time requires his merely mentioning ideas that would have to be described in all their parts before one had even a complete speculative understanding of them. The listener, however, suffused by a "divine light," might hope to perceive instantaneously the full depth and subtlety of the message. Edwards divides the ways of knowing into three main divisions: (1) "only some sign that the mind habitually substitutes in the room of the idea"; (2) "apprehension, wherein the mind has a direct ideal view or contemplation of the thing thought of"; (3) "the SENSE OF THE HEART… all that understanding of things that does consist in or involve such a sense or feeling is not merely speculative but sensible knowledge." The "sense of the heart" necessarily involves the will; it predicates choice, affirmation or rejection. For Edwards, this involvement of the will (the affections) is the essence of religion.As Perry Miller puts it, "Edwards' 'sense of the heart' was precisely the mind filled with the idea and with all its associates, and then consenting to it.… The rational conviction becomes transformed into the spiritual." ("Jonathan Edwards on the Sense of the Heart," Harvard Theological Review, 41, There were, then, some significant changes in Edwards' attitude toward the interrelationship of reason and emotion in human nature, the nature of knowledge, and the function of language. At first, when an inexperienced (and seemingly unawakened) but ambitious young man, he apparently believed that he could effectively control people's minds and opinions by the sheer power of his arguments. He saw himself as a kind of Christian Philosopher before the citadel of the Enlightenment, ready to turn its lauded powers of reason and scientific inquiry back upon the worldly establishment in the cause of Christianity. But the treatise on Natural Philosophy was never written and soon signs of grave doubts about the omnipotence of reason and the nature of the human mind appear. Perhaps Edwards' personal religious experiences (later described in the Personal Narrative) suggested how little the speculative intellect is involved in some of the most important of human experiences, and his growing appreciation of the beauties of the girl across the New Haven churchyard may have made him more aware of significant experiences that were exceedingly difficult to "rationalize."Dwight assigns the date of 1723 to the "tribute" to Sarah Pierrepont, and the tone on the piece suggests that JE's love for Sarah was in full bloom by that time. (Life, p. 114.) Finally, the mental dialogue with Locke, Norris, and others must eventually have caused grave doubts about the adequacy of words and "rational discourse" in general, particularly when the task was mediating a subject as vast or exalted as those with which Edwards seems always to have been concerned. At any rate, a second phase in Edwards' development is signalled by the writing of "The Mind." Around 1723, after having had the experience of some kind of conversion, the call to the ministry, and a period of preaching activity in New York, Edwards began a thorough re-evaluation of the mind. It is not that he ever questioned reason as the "candle of the Lord," or that he for a moment abandoned the notion that logical discourse is the most effective mode of communication, but rather he realized that after reason and logical discourse have exerted their full influence over the human mind, there are vast areas that may be left untouched; specifically, those areas conventionally designated "the heart," "the affections," or "the will." Doc. That the reason why men no more regard warnings of future punishment, is because it don't seem real to them. (Genesis 19:14) Thus, in a sermon preached in 1727, Edwards seizes upon the crucial point: though reason and logical arguments may make theological dogmas seem true, do they make them seem real? Is there a due sense of the message as well as a mere understanding of it as an abstract principle? The amazing complexity of the mind itself and the subtlety of experience preoccupied Edwards during the period in which he worked on the main body of notes in "The Mind," and though this notebook seems abstract and rationalistic in its language, it is significantly concerned with the knowledge and experience of beauty (Excellence),There are fifteen entries in "The Mind" explicitly devoted to excellence or excellency—the sum of ethical and aesthetic beauties. The next most often cited topic has a mere six entries. For a full discussion of excellence, a central concept in JE's thought, see R. A. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1968). the most exalted and significant, yet subtle, supra-rational, and even mysterious of common human experiences. The third phase of Edwards' development corresponds roughly with the flowering of his career as a preacher. It is characterized by the tone of the lists of topics at the end of "The Mind," by the revival tracts, and by many sermons preached during the period. During this third phase Edwards is fully aware of the complexities of the human psyche and the limitations of the English language when one is dealing with the religious affections. But he is beyond the period of inquiry and discovery so far as the basic principles are concerned; rather, he is a professional preacher and pastor, concerned mostly with the effective application of his knowledge of men and words. Considering the acknowledged limitations of language and the problems inherent in discussing the "high and abstract mysteries" of religion-compounded by the notion that mere natural men could not possibly see the truths and beauties of religion without a supernatural infusion of light-one might suppose that Edwards would have quailed at the challenge of the pulpit. Of course, he did not quail, nor did he show the slightest reluctance to bring a great arsenal of mind-and sense-disturbing rhetorical devices into most of his sermons. Indeed, the sermon notebook entry which laconically directs Edwards to "Preach a sermon… to stir 'em up to love the Lord Jesus Christ" indicates that, in practice, Edwards operated pretty much in the spirit of his advice to his congregation when he told them to prepare themselves for the infusion of saving grace: "'Tis as much men's duty to be converted as 'tis to perform any act that is in their own power." One acts as if preaching, in itself, could bring down grace, as if salvation could be won by an effort of free will. Is this open hypocrisy, or some kind of psychological game?
The principle that permits this kind of thought is designated in Edwards' writings by the word "fit."JE's occasionalist doctrine of fitness is traditional, having been shared by seventeenth-century Puritans, Cartesian philosophers, and Neoplatonists. However, the concept of fitness must have been most apparent and palpable to JE in the context of his own preaching and rhetoric, and especially in the context of the awakening sermon. The term, as he uses it, is an ethical-aesthetic description of the relationship between the inherent and external means of an operation, between the two discernible aspects of the same operation which occur simultaneously and are thus not themselves causally related. In the case of conversion, the faith and the converting ordinance are simultaneous, paired aspects of God's single gift. Likewise, preaching, when it is a converting ordinance, is necessarily accompanied by an infusion of supernatural light. If a would-be saint struggles mightily for saving faith, he does not actually "earn" the saving grace, though it would be "fit" that he receive it; likewise, a great and powerful preaching performance (or written sermon) does not, of itself, engender conversion, though it may be so good as to become a "fit" vehicle for the transmission of saving grace. God supplies the Word immediately through the Scripture and the preaching; he has also provided each person with a faculty of understanding and a sense of the heart. It is the task of the preacher to fill the understanding by clearly expounding the Scripture and to "stir up" the heart by introducing the idea of self into the context of the Word. Then, if God wills, the words of the preacher become God's Word and the auditor's heart is filled with a "divine light" which permits an immediate recognition of the truth and reality of the Word. If the logic and rhetoric of the preacher are very effective, and if the auditor is attentive and earnest, it is fitting that God give his Spirit simultaneously to the words, thus making them His Word, and to the heart of the auditor, causing a gracious infusion of faith. But God's acts are never commanded or conditioned by either preachers or auditors, and the most brilliantly apt sermon may leave the most earnest auditor sitting cold and hopeless, though intellectually informed.The relationship between preaching and conversion is discussed at length in the third chapter of Conrad Cherry's The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal (New York, Doubleday, 1966), aptly entitled, "Word and Spirit." If the secular mind finds all of this to be yet a little improbable or abstrusely theological, one might consider the parallels with a common phenomenon in aesthetic experiences. It is that experience which underlies the platitude, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," and which sometimes occurs when one contemplates an esteemed work of art, such as the majestic "David" of Michelangelo, in a conscious effort of appreciation. Assuming cultural background has conditioned one to expect the experience of beauty when viewing this statue, his first act is to study it. One takes stock of the overall proportions, then of the details; he walks back and forth or stands and meditates, attempting to gain possession of all the aesthetic "facts" of the statue. Then, having seen all that the eye can see, and having thought of all the relevant ideas and arguments he can summon up, he must sooner or later become aware of a response. Is it beautiful? Do I really feel the beauty, or do I just know that "it is beautiful" because I have been instructed to hold that opinion, or because the statue fulfills a set of academic aesthetic criteria? Or perhaps it is more complicated than that. Perhaps the statue is beautiful on some days and not on others, not because either the statue or the lighting has changed, but obviously because of the viewer's state of mind. Sometimes, when personal anguish or bitterness is great, things that usually seem most beautiful are empty forms. For Edwards, the preacher's role in the abstract medium of language is analogous to that of the sculptor. As Michelangelo attempts to embody in stone the fact of masculine beauty, making immediate and concrete at least one version of an ideal beauty, so Edwards attempts to set forth, as clearly, precisely, and poignantly as possible, the reality of the Word. In order to produce effective works, both sculptor and preacher must be inspired, and a large part of this inspiration is experienced as a submission of the artist to the informing ideal he labors under. Thus, sculptors sometimes speak of "freeing the form from the stone," while Puritan preachers spoke of "earthen vessels" which contain "shining light." But once the piece is completed and every last detail has been articulated, the work is not truly fulfilled. Someone must view the sculpture or listen to the sermon. And when all the surfaces and details of the sculpture are revealed to the viewer's eye, or the several heads of the sermon are digested and the doctrine understood, the work is not fulfilled. Indeed, not until the sense of the work's power and beauty suffuses the viewer's consciousness; not until, in an instant, the viewer suddenly perceives the principle investing the whole aggregate of surfaces and details, and he joyfully consents to the aesthetic validity of the work, is that work really fulfilled. The work has then become an experience, involving the whole person, and the quality of that experience is beauty. In the case of the sermon, of course, the sudden realization of the informing principle is the confrontation with God's Word, and the consent is to the beauty of holiness rather than to the holiness of beauty. In both cases, the final stage of fulfillment is strange, unpredictable and hence exciting and wonderful. No one can be made to see beauty through the greatest art; least of all can one make oneself see it. One can only prepare oneself for the confrontation, yield to the work's presence, and hope. Beauty must be in the eye of the beholder, for in the final analysis all he ever possesses is a subjective impression-an image-of the statue. In the chronology of fulfillment of the "David," from the gleam in the artist's eye to the experience of beauty, the last formative blow is struck by the viewer's eye. Sermon and carved marble provide the essential objective focus for the experience of beauty. Doctrine and surfaces must be created first so that the experience of beauty is "responsible." For Edwards, to experience holy beauty without the controlling Word in one's mind is to be an enthusiast, to suffer from "vain imaginings." On the other hand, to possess only the "facts" of the work and not sense its true beauty is to be damned. This analogy between preacher and artist calls attention to the perspective of Edwards' thought on the working of the divine Spirit. Just as he contends in "The Mind" that the essential quality of God is excellency or beauty, so his conception of the working of the Spirit through the preached word has the same basic structure as generally held theories of the experience of art. Having thus identified the real psychological limitations of the sermon, Edwards set out to do all that the peculiarities of the English language and the human mind would allow him to do. He strove with all his might, it seems, in the weekly sermons and lectures to create images of the Word so perfect and powerful that the experience of saving faith would be wholly fitting in his auditory. He conceived of the operation of the sermon upon the hearers dually. Because he considered the "mind" to comprise an intellect or understanding and a heart or will, he attempted to appeal to both, for the saving image must have its substance in order to have its form. In his sermon on Hebrews 5:12 (1739), Edwards asserts flatly that No speech can be any means of grace, but by conveying knowledge. And concomitantly, according to his personally definitive Treatise Concerning Religious Affections,
Both the understanding and the affections must be brought into play; indeed, as Perry Miller has observed, … when the word is apprehended emotionally as well as intellectually, then the idea can be more readily and more accurately conceived. When the word sets in train a sequence of passions, out of it—not invariably, but frequently—there emerges, like Venus from the foam, a "sensible" concept."The Rhetoric of Sensation," reprinted in Errand into the Wilderness (New York, 1964), p. 181. The "sensible concept" of the preached word finally emerges, however, only when there is an infusion of "divine light" from God: an experience more wonderful, though less inexplicable to Edwards, than the realization of the statue's beauty in the viewing of it. Because of the supernatural infusion, concepts and tropes, logic and rhetoric, rational discourse and poetical evocation are fused in the vivid experience of faith: A mind not spiritually enlightened beholds spiritual things faintly, like fainting, fading shadows that make no lively impression on his mind; like a man that beholds the trees and things abroad in the night.… that goes in the dark into a garden full of the most Edwards labored to create sermons so effective that an infusion of light and grace would be as fitting in their presence as would be the final realization of beauty in the presence of the most painfully wrought work of art. Of course Edwards, like any literary artist, relied upon certain devices in developing his sermons, some virtually required by his genre and some the product of stylistic innovation. Consideration of the most important of these devices and those aspects of style that give Edwards' sermons their "Edwardsean" character is essential to an appreciation of the conscious artistry investing Edwards' productions.
3. Stylistic Techniques
… he studied the Bible more than all other Books, and more than most other Divines do. His uncommon acquaintance with the Bible appears in his Sermons… He took his religious Principles from the Bible, and not from any human System or Body of Divinity. Tho' his Principles were Calvinistic, yet he called no Man, Father.Hopkins, Life, pp. 40–41. As usual, the precise and veracious Samuel Hopkins is closer to the truth than many more pretentious students of Edwards. His sermons, alone, prove Edwards to have been a "textuary among textuaries," one of the most imaginative and profound students of the Bible's style and substance in colonial America. Not that he was ever a fountain of scripture texts, as some preachers of an earlier day, but the aptitude and penetration displayed in his use of scriptural passages are truly extraordinary. Any consideration of Edwards' literary qualities must give priority to his use of the Scripture. Although each of Edwards' sermons begins with a scripture passage and seems to be derived immediately from that passage, it is now clear, through the examination of the sermon notebooks, that the sermon frequently originated in an occasion or personal inspiration of Edwards himself and that he subsequently located a biblical text to match the preconceived doctrine. So thorough was his knowledge of the Bible that he could always find a text—often in an out-of-the-way corner—that seems the certain source of his doctrine, and it is virtually impossible to differentiate those sermons that began with biblical texts from those that began with doctrines or occasions by merely examining the finished work. So close is the fit in all instances, that Edwards has been accused of drawing "the baldest, most obvious doctrine"Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (New York, World, 1963), p. 48. from his scripture texts; but the very obviousness seems an accomplishment when one considers that in many cases the text was actually preceded by the doctrine. But are his doctrines really so obvious? Surely, they are clear, explicit, declarative statements that usually translate the poetic or suggestive passages of the Bible into abstract propositions, and in this Edwards seems to be a traditional Puritan preacher. However, is the doctrine, "There is nothing that keeps wicked men at any one moment out of hell, but the mere pleasure of God," a bald or obvious recapitulation of the independent clause, "their foot shall slide in due time"—or even of the whole verse? The doctrine goes beyond baldness or obviousness as a flash of lightning enhances a dark cloud. The very explicitness, concreteness, and thoroughgoing particularity have a poetic potency all their own, and what was before ominous is now awful and immediate. Such pungency in doctrinal statements is not rare in Edwards' sermons and many of his doctrines must have given an edifying shock to his sermon-wise congregation. Here are a few examples of his art in drawing doctrines:
These examples are not atypical in any way, nor are they even the best of their kind; rather, they represent the quality of statement that Edwards was apt to make on any ordinary sabbath in Northampton. They show Edwards at work within the tradition of the plain style, each doctrine clear, simple, and logically apposite to the text. Indeed, they are so "plain," so colloquially forthright in tone, that the declarative simplicity becomes noteworthy in its own right. A kind of humility is implicit in such statements; the stated doctrine abstracts an essence from the biblical passage without pretending to rival the original in rhetorical beauty, making the Word immediate without seeming to emulate or improve upon it. On the other hand, there is such a confident sweep in these doctrines, such uncompromising clarity and particularity, that they abstract and concentrate the essence of authority which inheres in the Scripture. Authority is, of course, the primary quality of the Scripture, and the sermon's text is the formal root and foundation of the entire sermon. In the light of the opened text which precedes it the preacher's argument is authoritative, a link of communication between God and man. However, Edwards, like Puritan preachers before him, was not content merely to found his sermon upon the Scripture. He braced his argument at various points with "scripture proofs," citations of passages that confirmed or paralleled his argument, and virtually every sermon has its sprinkling of biblical citations, like so many pins securing the joints of the logical structure. Sometimes, as in the Opening of the Text in "Wicked Men Useful in their Destruction Only" or throughout much of "The Perpetuity and Change of the Sabbath,"Works, Worcester rev. ed., 4, 300, and 615–37, respectively. biblical citations cluster thickly about a point, and in some of the manuscript outline sermons, such as Deuteronomy 32:23 or Isaiah 8:9–10, a main division of the sermon may consist of little more than an extensive catalogue of biblical citations. Of course, such citations function as scripture proofs, and they would have been appreciated by Edwards' note-taking congregation as references for Bible studies, but when the density of biblical passages reaches a certain point one feels the presence of a new type of rhetorical argument, incantation. Incantation, or the ritual invocation of the Word through the quotation of Scripture passages at crucial points in the sermon, is one of the most ancient and even primitive of the preacher's rhetorical devices, yet in Edwards' day Holy Writ still had much of its divine aura, its mystery and subliminal powers. There are numerous instances in his sermons where the sheer accumulation of Scripture passages obviously surpasses the requirements of scripture proof or even elucidation, though these needs may be met along the way. In such passages, Edwards is employing the raw quantitative power of massed Scripture citations to substantiate his argument and make his auditory see him as one "who would Speak as the Oracles of GOD."Cotton Mather, Manuductio ad Ministerium (Boston, 1726), p. 103. Mather heartily endorses "scriptural preaching." Often, Edwards achieves a subtly impressive presence even in print through incantation, though he is sparing in the use of the device in comparison with some of his seventeenth-century forebears. Whatever its relative importance, incantation always strengthens the impression that the preacher is in command of his subject, or in touch with the Word. But Edwards' most impressive use of the Scripture is in the very fabric or verbal contexture of his sermons. The average Edwards sermon contains many images, metaphors, aphorisms, and seemingly prosaic phrases from the Bible, very often from the immediate context of the sermon's identifying text. It has been remarked that, in the imagery of Sinners, "for the most part [Edwards] fails when he depends upon [biblical images] rather than upon the careful, artistic elaboration of the symbols of his own imagination."Edwin H. Cady, "The Artistry of Jonathan Edwards," New England Quarterly, 22 ( in the organic texture of Sinners, rather than a single category of tropes, that "burned into the minds" of the people at Enfield. By his peculiar blend, Edwards brought life into the word and the Word into the realm of immediate experience for his listeners. This synthetic idiom, involving the utilization of the full gamut of scripture language, constitutes one of the major evidences of Edwards' true creative genius as a writer of sermons. He was not merely "saturated in Scripture" and therefore tended to sound like it when he wrote, as seems to have been the case with more typical conservative preachers of his day, but he consciously insinuated key words, tropes, and figures from the Bible into the seemingly "natural" or colloquial idiom of his sermons, modifying his materials when necessary so that a true fusion of idioms results. To see this process in action in its most obvious form, consider one biblical text Edwards selected: Job 31:3. Is not destruction to the wicked? and a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity? No notable images, tropes, or figures appear in this text, and one might expect Edwards to formulate a doctrine stating simply that wicked men shall be punished. However, the textuary seized upon the most "workable" word in the text and formulated his doctrine thus: It is a strange punishment that God has assigned to the workers of iniquity. The word "strange"—a common enough word in Edwards' day as now—is then worked into the fabric of the discourse, subtly at first, but with increasing emphasis. As the sermon develops, the vivid images of hellfire preaching are brought forth in abundance: "billows of the mighty deep rolling over the soul… killed with thunder… those perpetual streams of brimstone…" and so forth. A reader (or listener) has become engrossed in the variety of images and metaphors by the time he encounters the clause, "they will have a strange and wonderful sensation of misery under God's wrath," and "strange" takes one almost by surprise, like a half-forgotten memory. But it returns again and again: "The bodies of the wicked, after the resurrection, will be strange, hideous kinds of bodies; there will be a strange crew at the left hand of Christ at the Day of Judgment.… such a strange punishment as being suitable to such a strange and monstrous evil… the torments being principally spiritual and consisting in the horrors of the mind makes it appear like some strange fable or dream," and so on to the peroration at the sermon's conclusion, "and if you continue in this state that you are now in, as you are a strange sort of sinner so your punishment will be distinguishingly strange." Throughout the sermon, there is an ebb and flow of the word as Edwards builds to crescendoes of repetition followed by extended hiatuses where there is no mention of "strange." As a nice twist, the concluding direction of the sermon demands that people must be "singular" in this world, and avoid popular forms of sin and corruption, if they are to be saved at last. That is the essence of the technique, though this example is the simplest possible form of it. More often, Edwards employs several words, images, tropes, or figures from the Scripture (though not all from the sermon's text) in developing his argument. The resultant pattern of biblical language forms an allusive linkage between the Scripture and the argument of the sermon that need never be broken, even when Edwards is making occasional references or introducing innovations of his own. Moreover, many of the borrowed words are so commonplace—like "strange"—that even a seasoned Bible reader may not be sure whether a particular term or image is from the Bible or from "life." Of course, that is what the technique is all about. Sometimes, indeed, Edwards displays an uncanny virtuosity in matching his scriptural borrowings to the occasional context of the sermon. For instance, in a day of border raids and Indian attacks along the wooded frontiers of New England, Edwards describes the church, when come upon evil days, as "a woman in a wilderness." The immediate occasion of the sermon (Ecclesiastes 11:2) was an earthquake ( confused and troubled church, than the image of a lost woman, alone in the dismal forests of western Massachusetts? Besides being a brilliant touch of realism, however, the image is a quotation from the twelfth chapter of Revelation. Many in Edwards' congregation would surely have caught the simultaneous impact of ancient biblical prophecy and the immediate local ethos, confirming their sense of the Bible's relevance to their lives and the living tradition of prophesying. The phrase is, as usual, only one of several instances of "scriptural echo" in the sermon. Whatever the character of the auditory, whatever the occasion or theme of the sermon, Edwards could find some outstandingly appropriate words or phrases from the Scripture to insinuate into the course of his argument as mediatorial threads securing an apparently seamless whole. Thus, in several ways—selecting and matching texts and doctrines, choosing apt scripture illustrations and proofs, furnishing incantatory catalogues, and synthesizing a powerful scriptural idiom—Edwards demonstrates his mastery of the Bible's text and his brilliant artistry in its use. One must therefore be cautious about claiming originality for Edwards in any particular usage, for those effects that sometimes seem most original are likely to be derived, directly or indirectly, from the Bible. Of course Edwards himself would have been more pleased by recognition of his imaginative use of the Scripture to define contemporary experience than by claims for his "originality." Of all the materials Edwards borrowed from the Bible or from life, he seems to have done more with imagery in composing his discourses than with any other device. Possessed of an intensely concrete and particularistic imagination, Edwards' abstract logic and his metaphors are alike vivified by simple but poignant (usually visual) images. The vividly delineated image appealed to Edwards from his earliest days, according to the evidence of works such as "Of Insects" which is remarkable for the vividness and particularity of its visual images; but Edwards consciously espoused the use of imagery in his sermons and more mature writings in accordance with his theory of language: 'Tis something external or sensible that we are wont to make use [of] for signs of the ideas of the things themselves. For they are much more ready at hand and more easily excited than ideas of spiritual or mental things which, for the most part, can't be All his sermons are filled with images, nearly every significant idea being linked to, and thus apprehended in terms of, one or more images. Images contribute much to the apparent density of thought and experiential immediacy that characterizes the sermons. The power of specification, most often achieved through the use of carefully selected images, is surely the source of much of Edwards' total rhetorical power. But the merely rhetorical images are comparatively few. The vast majority of the images in Edwards' sermons are directed at a higher goal than making the abstract or complex concrete; they are, in conjunction with similes and metaphors, analogical vehicles for divine truths.JE felt justified in taking images of nature and society for this end since he felt the world about him was essentially symbolic. Entries from "Shadows of Divine Things" define his attitude: A simple example of the elaborated image occurs in a sermon prepared for the Stockbridge Indians. Here (Psalms 1:3), Edwards begins by declaring in the doctrine that "Christ is to the heart of a true saint like a river to the roots of a tree that is planted by it." He then develops his argument, all the while bringing out new implications of the central image of a tree by a river: His blood was freely shed—blood flows as freely from his wounds as water from a spring.… Christ is like a river in the great plenty and abundance of his love and grace.… The tree that spreads out its roots by a river has water enough: no need of rain or any other water.… as the water enters into the roots, so Christ enters the heart and soul of a godly man and dwell[s] there.… a tree planted [by a river] is green in time of great drought when other trees wither. A more elaborate development of an even simpler image occurs in a Northampton sermon on Job 18:15. Here, Edwards takes the image from the text and proceeds to "open" it:
The sheer repose of the concluding sentence in this passage's envelope pattern gives the same sensation of threat as the phrase, "the mere pleasure of God," in Sinners, the impact of the sentence resulting from its position as the culminator of the fully elaborated brimstone time-bomb image. More extended elaborations than these may be found in a number of Edwards' sermons. One outstanding example is Jeremiah 6:29–30 (1729), a sermon preached shortly after the death of Solomon Stoddard. The doctrine announces the theme of the sermon: "It argues great danger of being finally left of God, when sinners have lived long unconverted under eminent means of conversion." But the central, sustained image of the sermon is introduced in the Opening of the Text: The prophets had been blowing the fire so long that the bellows were burnt out, and yet they could extract no good silver: it all proved to be lead. The lead is consumed of the fire. The burnt-out bellows are none other than the deceased titan of the Connecticut Valley, Solomon Stoddard, and the lead is those who remained unconverted under his ministry, now the responsibility of Edwards himself, while the fire is that of hell which awaits the damned. After a powerful elaboration of the image in the Opening of the Text, Edwards begins the Doctrine, arguing abstractly for the most part, but from time to time recurring to the bellows image: 'Tis always the effect of God's Word either to harden or to soften… and the better and more powerful the means are, the more effectually do they harden if they don't soften. There can be no more effectual way to harden a man than for him to go and live in sin under some eminent minister. As the bellows heat up the soul-testing fire, the members of the congregation are tried and spiritually separated. Upon reaching the Application, Edwards returns to a more overt use of the image in his "Use of awakening to the unconverted of this town": … you have stood it out until the bellows are burnt. You had the preaching, the calls and warnings of your eminent deceased minister 'till he was worn out… but the founder melted in vain as to you; he did not cease blowing 'till the bellows were worn out, as it were burnt out in vain trying if he could not extract some true silver from amongst the lead. Other examples of the extended elaboration of an image are the vine image in "Wicked Men Useful in their Destruction Only" and the image of the traveler in "The True Christian's Life, A Journey Towards Heaven."Both sermons are printed in the Works, Worcester rev. ed., 4, 300–12, and 573–84, respectively. Though neither image dominates its sermon as brilliantly as the bellows image does Jeremiah 6:29–30, both are well developed over substantial portions of the sermons.
Much more common than the progressive elaboration of a single dominant image is the massing of several different images about a thematic point. Many a New England preacher scoured Bible, home, fields, and sea for poignant images to illustrate his doctrines, and too often the diverse images were piled upon the doctrine in such profusion that either there was some conflict or discontinuity in imagery, dissipating the force of the doctrine, or the images themselves tended to absorb the attention of the auditory, leaving the doctrine in the background. But Edwards was able to achieve a fine unity-in-diversity in his massed images, so that as he adds more and more images the thematic center of the sermon is more intensely and clearly illuminated. As he elaborates each of several images, often in an interlocking pattern, the dynamic of the argument assumes a centripetal character wherein the complementary conjunctions of the several images coincide precisely with the connotations of the theme that the images are intended to vivify. Thus, the more images added, the sharper the sense of theme or doctrine, and the greater the diversity of images the more intense the light at the central point of fusion. Sinners is the renowned exemplar of this technique and certainly the purest example. On the simplest level, the technique consists of little more than a listing or cataloguing of related images. In the imprecatory sermon, Edwards resorts to such forthright statements quite frequently: [The sinner's] heart… is a sink of all manner of filthiness and abomination… a rendezvous of devils… a grave full of dead men's bones and crawling worms, and all manner of nauseous putrafaction… a jacques of filthiness and abominable stench. (Psalms 24:7–10.) After that, Edwards' congregation must have had a "sensible apprehension" of his point, perhaps sufficiently memorable to evoke an instant response to a sermon (Exodus 16:20) preached a little later which asserts that unregenerate sinners "stink" in God's nostrils. The above list, while exhibiting some variety of imagery, is obviously focused upon the repulsiveness of sin and the concept is not so much elaborated by the accumulated images as it is colored. But colored it is, and the very gesture of listing has the familiar incantatory quality of good invective. Beyond the accretive force of the above example is a kind of synthetic massing of images wherein the images not only accumulate but fuse in new compound images:
In this simple but representative example, Edwards efficiently synthesizes the hearts of two images to make a new and more poignant image. By the insertion of "melted metal" in the second paragraph, he fuses the concreteness and "nearness" of the image of melted metal (most of his congregation having surely seen melted lead) from the furnace image with the sense of vastness and depth suggested by the lake image. By such deft moves Edwards often weaves several images, sometimes quite disparate in themselves, into a single compound image. One of the most exuberantly imaginative instances of this synthetic massing of images occurs in Psalms 24:7–10, a sermon having the doctrine, "Jesus Christ entering into his glory after his suffering was a sight worthy to be beheld with great admiration." Here, Edwards displays his ability to integrate secular learning with biblical and natural materials in artful imagery.
"Heathen" triumphal processions and Old Testament episodes (types) are here fused to create a vision as learnedly elaborate and vivid as a passage from Paradise Lost. Caesar, the young David, and the resurrected Christ seem upon first consideration to be rather incompatible images—certainly diverse colors for a single portrait. And yet Edwards finds, as he so often does, just those facets in each image that can be successfully wedded, making a new configuration both possible and artistically plausible. Moreover, the tension of metaphorical unity in literal diversity serves to enhance this vision of Christ's triumphant entry into heaven, and the passage lacks only the scope of sustained thematic development to show Edwards at his best. Though Sinners remains Edwards' virtuoso piece, there are a few other sermons in which the handling of imagery is comparably inspired. One sermon worthy of comparison with Sinners, and complementary to it in theme, is the concluding sermon of that series (1 Corinthians 13:1–10) published as Charity and its Fruits.The sermon series was first published by Tryon Edwards in a volume he entitled Charity and its Fruits; Or, Christian Love as Manifested in Heart and Life (New York, Robert Carter & Brothers, 1852). As editor, Tryon Edwards significantly modified and amplified JE's text, a practice which has been corrected in the following excerpts. "Heaven is a World of Love," as it is entitled in the printed text, is a sermon of Dantean simplicity, scope, and grandeur. In it Edwards depicts the heaven that awaits those who do not slip into hell. Perhaps for the same reasons that many who have read Dante's "Inferno" have not read his "Paradiso," this sermon has not received the attention given Sinners, and yet its vision of heaven is perhaps the supreme example of Edwards' systematic massing of images about a theme. The structure of his vision makes it comparable to Dante's rosa sempiterna, and in addition to making an exemplary sermon, Edwards has provided in this work a catalogue of his essential divine images:
Though they give no adequate view of the sermon's structure or argument, these excerpts do represent the heart of Edwards' imagery—in this and most other sermons presenting the ecstatic dimension of religion. The diverse images that are here fused and interfused, coalescing about the central image of the Deity as a bright aureole signifying refulgent love, constitute a compendium of such crucial image groups in Edwards' thought that a cursory survey of them would seem most appropriate.
First there is the absolutely essential light imagery, the stuff of Edwards' various symbols for the spiritual world. Logically enough the sun, the seemingly eternal and inexhaustible source of light and life, is the pervasive symbol for God. The image is divided into its facets to symbolize the Trinity: The Father is as the substance of the sun. The Son is as the brightness and glory of the disk of the sun, or that bright and glorious form under which it appears to our eyes. The Holy Ghost is as the heat and powerful influence which acts upon the sun itself, and being diffusive, enlightens, warms, enlivens, and comforts the world. ("Miscellanies," no. 370.) The sun's most obvious effects upon the world provide the basic symbols for the direct influence of God in human affairs. Thus, "the various sorts of rays and their beautiful colors do well represent the various beautiful graces and virtues of the spirit, and I believe were designed on purpose, and therefore the rainbow is a sign of the Covenant" ("Miscellanies," no. 362). Stars, moon (as reflector), flames, lamps, and candles are some of the other more prominent light images. The sky, the metaphor of heaven, is one of the less prominent of Edwards' images, but its various aspects play a significant role in his symbolism. The sky and its blue color suggest the future state of the saints ("Shadows," nos. 21 and 114), and such phenomena as clouds, winds, thunder, and lightning are invested with divine significations. From the earth comes the image of the garden, including images related to farming, and images of plants, trees, vines, and flowers. This family of images is perhaps second only to light imagery in its prevalence throughout Edwards' sermons. One of the most important and interesting clusters of images in this family relates to the practice of grafting ("Shadows," no. 166), used by Edwards to symbolize the mysterious union between Christ and the church and individual saints. The river (-stream-ocean) image, in its various avatars, is almost as important as the garden image. Moreover, Edwards' speculations on the river images ("Shadows," nos. 15, 22, 71, 77, 78) and his use of them in sermons indicate a very important symbolic function of the group: presenting his crucial (and sometimes ambiguous) speculations on time, and the relationship between God's works and time. From man's immediate being and province, Edwards takes images relating to the human body, the home, the family, and the church society. All of these are presented in one way or another as microcosms, and the more concrete images such as the body are frequently used to develop the more abstract, such as the church society ("Shadows," nos. 130 and 193), though all ultimately relate to the universe as a God-invested cosmos. Edwards often delights in dwelling upon the harmonious relationships between the parts that compose one of these images, though he is also ready to utilize the "dark underside" when appropriate. Also from the human province, though not in practice often directly related to it, are images of musical sounds. For Edwards, who displays some musical culture, music represents harmony, and harmony is taken to be the primary factor in all beauty.JE, who received some formal training in music during his childhood, defended the singing of hymns in his Northampton congregation, and when writing to Sir William Pepperell about education, insisted that "music, especially sacred music, has a powerful efficacy to soften the heart into tenderness, to harmonize the affections, and to give the mind a relish for objects of a superior character." (Dwight, Life, p. 478.) The beauties of musical harmony are usually attributed to the heavenly sphere (as in the sermon excerpts above) and symbolize the perfection of all relationships there. So far, this list of images and image groups has presented essentially static images; but there is one image in the sermon excerpts above that is eminently dynamic: the fountain. A "supportive image" usually fused with another, the fountain is nevertheless one of Edwards' most important images, signifying a creative process or dramatic outpouring. Almost as prevalent as light imagery, the fountain usually appears as one aspect of the following central images: the sun, the river (a kind of horizontal fountain into the sea), the vine or tree (slow-motion fountains because of the life-giving sap systems), and the heart. In a few instances the image is used alone to indicate a spring of water, but most often it is Edwards' device for calling attention to the dynamic quality in other images, and thence to the underlying dynamism of the powers and principles of the creation. The centripetal focusing of massed images, each of which is rich with associated meanings for those familiar with Edwards' writings, is thus responsible for much of the success of "Heaven is a World of Love." All the main images discussed above are represented in the sermon, but despite the fact that they constitute a veritable survey of Edwards' "positive" images, the sermon is unified and economical in its development. Edwards often displays the truly integrative imagination of the finest metaphysical poets, and this quality is probably most evident in his handling of imagery. From these illustrations of Edwards' handling of imagery, it is evident that most of his images, including biblical images, are presented through tropes. There are some metaphors but far more similes, and the reader sometimes becomes aware of insistent qualifiers: "as if," "as it were," and so forth. As he tends to use the more obvious device of the simile, foregoing the dramatic metaphor, so Edwards tempers all of his symbolic images and tropes. He not only insists that each trope be relevant to the doctrine it illustrates, but he insists that it be subservient at all times, never seducing the reader's mind from what should be engaging his attention. In essence, Edwards' is a chaste rhetoric. He gave much thought to developing a theory of tropes, and as usual the Bible was consulted as his first authority. In a sermon (Revelation 21:18; 1723–24) which presents the glories of heaven in the imagery of the vision of Revelation, Edwards states that
All biblical imagery that purports to describe the unseen or the spiritual realm is a form of accommodation to man's imaginative limitations, and a certain amount of suggestiveness or richness of appeal is required of the similitudes in order that they may touch all the members of a diverse auditory; in general, the spiritual is literally sensationalized. Scriptural metaphor is suggestive rather than precise, but Edwards insists it is true to meaning in terms of human experience:
In a sermon on Luke 16:24, he presses the point even further:
Thus, while admitting that the images and tropes of the Bible are "aids to reflection," Edwards argues that they are more true, in a literal sense, than false, and that the use of them in preaching would be no error so long as the preacher did not understate them.
Finally, in his second sermon on Romans 9:22 (1741), Edwards sanctions, at least by implication, the free play of the preacher's imagination in his attempts to suggest the nature of the spiritual world:
The principle would apply likewise to virtuous yearnings and the joys of heaven. Thus Edwards defends the right of the preacher to stretch his imagination in depicting the spiritual realm through metaphors and similes. For even non-scriptural tropes and symbolic images, such as those fabricated from personal experience and the power of the imagination, are ultimately under the control of God. However liberal or experimental Edwards seems in such statements, in his study he strove to determine the limitations of a responsible and realistic rhetoric. In his "Notes on the Scripture," "Miscellaneous Observations on the Holy Scriptures," "Notes on the Apocalypse," "Miscellanies," "Shadows of Divine Things," and "Types" he devotes much attention to speculation on matters that are as literary and rhetorical as they are theological. Likewise, many of his sermons are preoccupied with the specifically literary dimension of passages from the Bible. All this was not unusual for a minister of the English Puritan tradition, of course, but the scope, depth, and imaginative vitality of his work set it apart. At the heart of these literary-theological studies was an attempt to define a vocabulary that would bridge the apparent gap between the eternal world of spiritual reality and the Lockean world of sensational experience in which men lived. Though the existence of the world as an idea in the mind of God might be demonstrably "true" ("The Mind," no. 13), the observant and practical minister knew that as far as the members of his flock were concerned, the world of concrete phenomena perceived through the senses was "real" ("The Mind," no. 34). In order to bridge that crucial gap—as Newton had bridged the gap between physical phenomena and the abstract principle of gravity—and, in doing so, give his flock a greater chance of recognizing the "supernatural light," Edwards had to find both an authoritative sanction for the undertaking and a way of relating his vocabulary to those orthodox religious principles that he wished, ultimately, to uphold and substantiate. Finally, inasmuch as his intended auditory would have a higher percentage of New England farmers than members of the Royal Society, the "new vocabulary" had to have currency with the commonalty or nothing at all would be accomplished. Up against seemingly insuperable odds, Edwards turned once again to his basic text for all studies, the Bible. There, in the New Testament, he found the luminous paradigm:
He had long been aware of the practice of typological interpretation; in fact, the passage quoted above comes from a sermon (Hebrews 9:27; 1722) written at the very beginning of his career before he began making his notebooks of scripture commentary. And "the types" should have been familiar to his congregation, as typology in one form or another had had currency since the days of the Fathers in the Christian church and was increasingly popular among theologically conservative preachers in the New England of Edwards' day.For discussion of the history of typology including JE's milieu, see the introduction to Perry Miller's Images or Shadows of Divine Things (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1948), the essays by G. W. H. Lampe and K. J. Woollcombe in Essays on Typology (Naperville, Studies in Biblical Theology, No. 22, 1957), the special typology issue of Early American Literature, 5 (Spring 1970), which includes an extensive checklist of works on the subject (separately bound as Part 2), Literary Uses of Typology: From the Late Middle Ages to the Present, ed. Earl Miner (Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press, 1977), and Mason I. Lowance, Jr., The Language of Canaan: Metaphor and Symbol in New England from the Puritans to the Transcendentalists (Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press, 1980). The first two volumes of his "Notes on the Scripture" show Edwards himself to have been not only aware of the practice of interpreting types but an ardent practitioner. Moreover, he saw the great value of the types as artistic vehicles of communication:
Thus, as the years passed and his notebooks proliferated, he kept typology always in the foreground of his meditations. Perhaps his final statement on conventional typology is that written at the head of his notebook entitled "Types":The small (ten leaves, octavo, bound in gray paper), half-filled notebook entitled simply "Types" is apparently one of the later notebooks, ca. 1747–50. All of its entries appear to have been made within a few years at most. Though it contains some lists of types or images with Scripture references, it is primarily devoted to the theory of typology as ultimately interpreted by JE. Thus, it is a kind of theoretical companion volume to "Shadows." Apparently, Miller did not know of "Types," perhaps because it is in the Andover Collection. TYPES: texts of Scripture that seem to justify our supposing the Old Testament state of things was a typical state of things and that, not only the canons of the law were typical, but that their history and state and constitution of the nation, and their state and circumstances, were typical. It was, as it were, a typical world. So far, one might call Edwards an avid typologist, but not notably different from the more conventional typologists of the late seventeenth century. However, since the publication of Perry Miller's edition of Images or Shadows of Divine Things in 1948, it has been evident that Edwards did not stop with conventional typology in his search for a new rhetoric. After all, conventional typology was preoccupied with linking the Old Testament to the New; what Edwards wanted was a "vertical typology,"The term "vertical typology" attempts to define JE's peculiar innovations in typological interpretation; it suggests his conception of functioning hierarchy within a monistic cosmos. Although his application of typological methodology to nature and non-biblical history makes his thought comparable to that of allegorists or Platonic exegetes, JE is to be differentiated from them because of his apparent insistence upon the actual organic unity, temporal and spatial, of the cosmos. Obviously influenced by the new science in his youth, and familiar with the work of Newton, JE envisioned a single cosmos, the ideal aspect of which was eternal, and hence "true," and the subjective sense of which was "real." To the mathematically "deficient" JE, Newton's language of mathematics was a truly esoteric, mysterious language, yet it had precisely defined the unity of the "true" and the "real" in the "lower" physical universe or shadow world. Thus, using modern physical science as a suggestive model and biblical typology as a guide and precedent, JE sought for the language that would permit efficient definition of the unity of the "true" and the "real" on the highest (spiritual) level. The eternal act of God's will and the fleeting subjective sensations in men might be successfully discovered as one, just as Newton had perceived an eternal principle in a falling apple. something to link the "true" and the "real" worlds in a simple, "sensible idea." Early in his speculations, he is obviously testing the boundaries between "types," "images," "shadows," and "similitudes." He finally began to move steadily in the direction of "vertical typology": For indeed, the whole outward creation, which is but the shadows of beings, is so made as to represent spiritual things. It might be demonstrated by the wonderful agreement in thousands of things, much of the same kind as is between the types of the Old Testament and their antitypes, and by there being spiritual things being so often and continually compared with them in the Word of God. And it's agreeable to God's wisdom that it should be so, that the inferior and shadowy parts of his works should be made to represent those things that are more real and excellent, spiritual and divine, to represent the things that immediately concern himself and the highest parts of his work. Spiritual things are the crown and glory, the head and soul, the very end, and alpha and omega of all other works. What, therefore, can be more agreeable to wisdom than that they should be so made as to shadow them forth? ("Miscellanies," no. 362.) His "early idealism," his sentimentalist psychology, and his Newtonian search for the underlying principles of force in the spiritual cosmos: all could be reconciled in this new typology. Moreover, the true "natural" types, if they could be positively identified, would furnish the preacher with a vocabulary that synthesized instruction, illustration, and proof. The type is, in literary terms, fundamentally an image; thus, such a device could be both true (according to the analogy of the world) and real (according to the evidence of the senses). Consequently, there might not need to be a distinction between a new way of thinking and the old way of talking; one might really do both simultaneously. If natural phenomena were invested with spiritual principles, to apprehend the image would be to apprehend the principle, and to apprehend the principle is to see the truth:
As he wrote in entry no. 67 of "The Mind," "An idea is only a perception, wherein the mind is passive or rather subjective." The preacher, by providing his congregation with verbal archetypes of the spiritual world through evoking images from the sensuous world, might place them face to face with a spiritual truth that seemed as near and real as nature and history. As Perry Miller has observed, As against the degraded plain style, with its irresponsible tropes, its reliance on argumentation and meditation, he set up the idea of a pure style. In his art, the rhetorical figures would once more be subjected to the rule of the idea, and the supreme figures would no longer be ingenious compounds of one thing with another but perceptions of the actual identity of those things which are truly united in the eternal system of things.Images or Shadows, p. 23. What right did Edwards think he had to undertake such a task, and what were his anticipations of success? He was no New England Philo Judaeus; he was cautious and precise enough in all his inquiries to seem a very scientist. Perhaps he even had to talk himself into it despite misgivings, as he appears to be doing in these passages from "Types":
If, indeed, there was such a thing as a work of redemption progressing in time, it would be only reasonable to expect God and the spiritual world to be drawing ever nearer and becoming more "visible." As for the nature of the problem posed by typology, Types are a certain sort of language, as it were, in which God is wont to speak to us, and there is as it were a certain idiom in that language which is to be learnt the same that the idiom of any language is; viz. by good acquaintance with the language, either by being naturally raised up in it or having it by education. But this is not the way in which corrupt man first learnt divine language, as by much use and acquaintance, together with a good taste or judgment, [but] by comparing one thing with another and having our senses, as it were, exercised to discern it, which is the way that adult persons must come to speak any language, and in its true idiom, that is not their native tongue. ("Types.") There are, of course, dangers in such an undertaking:
But all things considered, though "God han't expressly explained all the types of Scripture, [he] has done so much as is sufficient to teach us the language" ("Types"). On the basis of such a conclusion, Edwards began a collection of the "divine idiom" he saw in the world about him. "Shadows of Divine Things" is one of Edwards' major specialized notebooks, and compiling its 212 entries occupied him, on and off, for thirty years. Containing primarily "vertical types" from nature and history, the notebook (like his other long-term notebooks) manifests phases in its development. In the early entries, Edwards is evidently enthralled with the learning of God's language and the entries have an aura of wonder and enthusiasm about them; it is enough just to record the wonderful idiom. As the years pass, however, the entries seem to become more perfunctory in tone and, at the same time, more completely analyzed and elaborated. Edwards also manifests an increasing tendency to return to previously recorded images as if worrying them. Finally, in the late entries, he resorts more and more to quoting from other authors. It is as if over the years he became a little troubled by his enterprise, as if he needed more and more confirmation and enrichment of his earlier efforts. There are signs, however, that this project may have been something of a problem from the very beginning. For "Shadows" is his only notebook with so many alternate titles, and some of them have quite different implications from others (see Chapter II, pp. 44–45 n.). Moreover, one might wonder why Edwards did not use the word "type" in one of them. Meticulous, cautious, and judicious by nature, he seems to have been dubious about the precise nature of his collection of verbal specimens. He apparently found adequate sanction for the words "image" and "shadow" in Hebrews 10:1; at least, by the time he attempted formulating the theory of his enterprise in "Types," he made a point of copying in the passage, Hebrews 10:1 For the law having a shadow of good things to come and not the very image of the things, etc. The passage distinguishes between "image" and "shadow" very pointedly, and despite the fact that he could suggest both terms in alternate titles and referred to the notebook in cross-references by either term, Edwards himself carefully differentiated "image" from "shadow." Thus, in a notebook meditation on the types of the Old Testament before the coming of Christ, he observes that On several accounts, the shadow of a thing is an exceeding imperfect representation of it, and yet has such a resemblance that it has a most evident relation to the thing of which it is the shadow. Again, shadows are dark resemblances; though there be a resemblance, yet the image is accompanied with darkness or hiding of the light: the light is beyond the substance so that it is hid.… the shadow [is] ever accompanied with darkness and obscurity… ("Notes on the Scripture," no. 288.) On the other hand, in a comment on Hebrews 1:3 in the interleaved Bible (p. 798), Edwards speculates on the meaning of the words "express image" in this manner: It seems to be well translated "express image," meaning an image that exactly answers the original as the impression does the seal. But it may be observed that whatsoever is the express or exact image of a thing, is in the Apostle's sense equivalent or of equal value with that thing, it having a full answerableness. These passages reveal the connotations Edwards saw in the traditional terms "image" and "shadow." For him, they were not synonymous, and thus the apparent confusion of them in naming and referring to this collection of notes indicates a real apprehensiveness, or at least a tentativeness, in his personal evaluation of the new "language." Within the collection itself, there are signs of problems. As early as entry no. 25, Edwards notes that there are things in the world which are "not properly shadows and images of divine things that yet are significations of them, as children's being born crying is a significance of their being born to sorrow," and by entry no. 169, there is an almost wistful quality in the observation that "some [images] are very bright, some you can scarcely determine… as there is the light of twilight, signifying the approaching sun." The more extensive the quest became, the more likely it appeared that the efficient spiritual image or "vertical type" might turn out to be nothing more than a fusty trope, or a mere Flavelian meditation upon local scenes and manners. Edwards had set his sights very high and he was too diligent in his studies to risk losing what ground he had gained in a rhetorical swamp. Within the book of "Shadows" itself he had left a reminder of where to look for standards when the going got rough: The book of Scripture is the interpreter of the book of nature two ways, viz. by declaring to us those spiritual mysteries that are indeed signified and typified in the constitution of the natural world; and secondly, in actually making application of the signs and types in the book of nature as representations of those spiritual mysteries in many instances. (No. 156.) Taking heed of this reminder, Edwards made a note to himself, sometime around 1750, in his "Subjects of Enquiry": Read the Scriptures, at least such parts as are most likely, in order to observe how the visible things of the creation are made use of as representations and types of spiritual things, that I may note them in my book about images of divine things. (P. 19.) Perhaps after more than twenty years' work on "Shadows," Edwards made this note with a sigh. But if he had to return at last to the grammar school of the Scriptures, he would—anything to put the rigor into his studies necessary to avoid fatal solecisms. At the back of "Shadows," on a blank leaf, there is a single column of seven entries written in a late hand under the heading, "Scriptures." It is a list of images or "natural" types from the Bible (flies, rivers, valleys, and so on), several of them having textual references.This list was not acknowledged in Miller's Images or Shadows. There is also a loose, two-leaf folio sheet, written in the same hand as "Scriptures," which contains some thirty-eight additional entries of the same character, frequently with extensive textual listings. From this evidence, it is obvious that Edwards worked hard in his last years to establish scripturally authoritative standards for assessing the contents of "Shadows." Did he ever achieve the precision and certainty he craved? A partial answer must be that, according to his own statements in the letter to the college trustees and the circumstantial evidence of his extant manuscript notebooks, he was still very much in the midst of his investigation at the time of his sudden death in 1758. A more satisfying answer, perhaps, is that provided by Edwards in a late entry in "Types": I expect, by very ridicule and contempt, to be called a man of This curious passage, with its combination of self-conscious defensiveness and passionate affirmation, seems to reflect Edwards' final doubt about the probability of his mastering the divine idiom while never once doubting the reality of its existence. Moreover, it suggests that Edwards may have finally decided to cease attempting identification of particular divine images while continuing the search for the larger patterns—the "divine syntax," as it were—in nature and history. Whatever one may think of the philosophical and theological qualities of "Shadows of Divine Things" and related writings, he must recognize their literary significance. In his life-long study of images, types, metaphors, and symbols, Edwards went far toward mastering the poetic archetypes of his community and systematizing a mythos of his civilization. He also developed a personal style that is both concrete and suggestive, seemingly colloquial and yet richly allusive. Living at the end of one literary era, he drew upon the best in his theological heritage, combined it with some of the most advanced literary practice of his day, and thus produced several of the most memorable works of the American Puritan culture. Although the development of Edwards' mastery over imagery and metaphor—from the youthful productions characterized by vivid imagery and a naturally particularistic imagination, to the mature triumphs of systematic imagery and symbolism in the greatest sermons—may provide the most important and engrossing chapter in the history of his sustained literary efforts, there are other aspects of Edwards' art that must be considered, both because of their intrinsic importance and because of their being inextricably bound up in the progress of his tropes and imagery. These techniques relate to figurative language and the internal structuring of his sermons: rhythmic devices, logical structures, and the manipulation of perspective.
Most obvious and simple, yet frequently most important and effective, are the rhythmic devices of repetition and parallelism. Indeed, it has been remarked that "repetition of words and constructions is the essence of his style."Faust and Johnson, Selections, p. cxii. In this trait JE is identified with a rich tradition of English homiletics, as is suggested by the fact that Dudley Fenner's The Artes of Logike and Rethorike (Middleburg, 1584) devotes no fewer than three chapters to the repetition of word forms and three to repetition of syntactical structures. His earlier sermon manuscripts indicate that a tendency to repetition was as innate in Edwards as his love of concrete images and details.For instance, in Matthew 16:17, JE originally wrote, "He is the author of the knowledge of all moral prudence; he is the author of all knowledge and skill…," but revised it to read, "He is the author of all moral prudence, and of all knowledge and skill…," thus eliminating the redundant "knowledge" and the needless parallel construction. There are enough such revisions in his sermons—most notably in the 1720s and early 1730s—to indicate that he tended to lapse into pointless repetition of words and constructions. But genius and toil turned what might well have been a rhetorically fatal vice into a source of formidable literary power. The use of simple repetition in the Scripture attracted Edwards' attention, and in "Notes on the Scripture," no. 325, he observes that "such a repetition or doubling of a word, according to the idiom of the Hebrew tongue, is as much as our speaking a word once with a very extraordinary emphasis.… it sometimes signifies certainty, at other times extremity, and sometimes both." The notably soft-spoken and undemonstrative preacher could put such an aid to good use. Even the simplest repetition is carefully calculated to call attention to essential points, and to take advantage of the variegated rhythms of English prose. There is, for instance, the statement of doctrine in a sermon on Ecclesiastes 6:4, There are some persons that are born miserable and live in darkness, and die in darkness, and when they are dead go into eternal darkness. In the course of the sermon, Edwards picks up the verbal lead and discusses "a positive darkness… a darkness that can be felt… blackness of darkness." A comparable use of repetition occurs in the statement of doctrine in "Glorious Grace." The gospel dispensation is finished wholly and entirely in free and glorious grace; there is glorious grace [which] shines in every part of the great work of redemption. The foundation is laid in "Glorious Grace" is one of Edwards' earliest sermons, but he is already an artist, making the repetition of "glorious" and "grace" evocative of the ringing of festive bells. Many times, of course, Edwards uses repetition in sermon passages simply to emphasize the importance of a point local to that passage, as in this example from "Wicked Men's Slavery to Sin," So that these discourses were delivered in the most public manner, at the most public time, and in the most public place that could be: before the whole nation of the Jews, and many of other nations who went up to Jerusalem to worship. From the last two examples, it is clear that Edwards employed alliteration and risked unconventional usage in order to give greater emphasis to the repeated words and, sometimes, to build a crescendo within the passage. A more elaborate and extensive incremental repetition is also evident in the earliest sermons. Sometimes, a head within a sermon may involve the exploitation of a word from the text or doctrine that has not been emphasized previously in the development of the sermon; such is the case in the second proposition under the Doctrine of Daniel 4:35, a sermon having the doctrine that "God doth whatever he pleases." II. The sovereignty of God in doing whatever he pleases… He created the earth as he pleased; he made a place for the sea where he pleased; he raised the mountains where he pleased, and sunk the valleys where he pleased. He created what sort of creatures to inhabit the earth and waters he pleased, and when he pleased he brought a flood of waters and covered the whole earth, and destroyed all its inhabitants. And when he pleases, he'll dissolve this curious frame of the world and break all to pieces and set it on fire, when the earth and all the works that are therein shall be burnt up and the heavens shall be dissolved and rolled together as a scroll; when God pleases, he'll roll all together as when a man takes down a tent. In such things as these relating to the material world does God manifest his sovereignty.
Sometimes, apropos of nothing earlier in the sermon but rather a disposition in his congregation that he wished to toy with, Edwards seizes a word or phrase and plays with its connotations through incremental repetition. Here is an instance from a sermon on Proverbs 9:12. 1. Such is the nature of things that there is a necessary connection in point of justice between those ways [of sin] and utter ruin. Such is the nature of those wicked ways, and such is the nature of justice, and such is the holy and righteous nature of God, and such is the nature of moral government, and such is the nature of the constitution of the world, that a connection between ways of sin, if continued in, and the utter ruin of the sinner is requisite and unavoidable. God is not to blame that justice is of such a nature as it is, and he is not to blame for being himself of a just and righteous nature. And therefore, that misery and ruin that is the consequence of sin may be looked upon as necessary, and not merely arbitrary. The play upon "nature" and "necessary," enhanced by the insistent repetition of "such is the nature," give the passage a lively and righteously mischievous quality that is by no means unprecedented in Edwards' sermons.A comparably witty passage involving similar incremental repetition is to be found in "Great Guilt No Obstacle to the Pardon of the Returning Sinner," Works, Worcester rev. ed., 4, 426, 3rd paragraph (head I.). It may be assumed that the congregation had a new sense of the nature of things after that passage. These samples have demonstrated simple and incremental patterns of repetition in single passages, but much of Edwards' best repetition is of a larger pattern; indeed, in many cases a single pattern dominates a whole Doctrine, Application, or even an entire sermon. Edwards' earliest extant sermon, "Christian Happiness," is dominated by repeated variants of the doctrinal statement. Below are concentrated the main segments of the pattern.
Use
Eleven separate passages, distributed throughout the Doctrine and Application, reiterate the essential parts of the doctrine statement—"good man," "happy man," and "what(so)ever-outward-condition"—with sufficient emphasis and regularity to dominate the sixteen-page sermon. In the course of the sermon's argument, the "good man" is fully identified, his happiness defined, and the conditions under which he might have to live are delineated; thus, in accordance with the definition of incremental repetition, the repeated terms grow rich with associated meaning as the sermon progresses, and since the terms are themselves interrelated, a vivid notion of Edwards' doctrine gradually emerges. From the passages quoted above, it is obvious that the repeated elements neither prove nor illustrate in themselves; rather, they constitute a dynamic point of reference for both argument and illustration which moves through the sermon relating its various elements to the central idea. In the context of the sermon, the pattern of repetition is never clumsily obtrusive, but rather quietly insistent. This technique, illustrated above in a very early and unrefined state, was later developed by Edwards into one of his most effective rhetorical devices. In fact, the matured device is so important and unusual that it deserves to be differentiated from "incremental repetition," and I have thus identified it as the "tonic word (or phrase)."Originally conceived during studies leading to my Ph. D. dissertation, "The Literary Techniques of Jonathan Edwards" (Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1971), the concept of the tonic as a subliminal reinforcer and thematic point of reference within JE's arguments has only been amplified by subsequent study. Within the form of the sermon presented here, the tonic structure of echoes provides the most comprehensive literary structure uniting the multiple subdivisions of the text. Like the tonic chord in music, the tonic word serves as a constant point of reference and foundation for the elaborations and variations which surround it. The somewhat cumbersome series of terms employed in Isaiah 3:10 is reduced, in the matured device, to a single word, or occasionally a phrase. One instance of a tonic word has already occurred in this chapter in the illustration of another point. "Strange" functions as a tonic word in the sermon on Job 31:3 (above, pp. 211–12). Another fine example of the tonic word occurs in Ecclesiastes 11:2, a sermon delivered after an earthquake (
In the second and third sections, however, there is little direct use of the word as Edwards discusses specific instances, such as strange natural phenomena, new diseases, the wars of religious factions, and the earthquake at hand—all instances of threatening changes. Only infrequently is there a statement such as, "the first thing that warns us of great approaching change, viz. the prophecy of [the] Scripture." But in the fourth section of the sermon, as he nears his end, Edwards picks up the tonic word with greater frequency:
With a final juxtaposition of "steadfast" and "change," Edwards returns to the tonic word in his conclusion. So far, only examples of tonic words that continue throughout whole sermons have been represented, and such are certainly the most dramatic. But Edwards often uses a tonic word only within a head, and thus each of several heads may have its own tonic word, as so many separate movements in a musical composition. Usually, a tonic word tends to dominate one of the main divisions of the sermon—Text, Doctrine, or Application—though there are a great many instances, such as the following example from Job 18:15, where a minor head coalesces about its own tonic word. This head concludes the sermon.
Thus, after a gradual increase in the frequency of repetition, the head (and the sermon) ends on the tonic word. On the whole, the words selected by Edwards to serve as tonic words are remarkable for their plainness. They are common words which have no great suggestiveness or particular vividness. Indeed, some of them—such as "unmixed" in Luke 16:24—seem rhetorically useless. But that is the whole point: to select a word that was so commonplace to every member of the congregation that it would be almost beneath notice. The average tonic word has a clear, because minimal, meaning; it neither suggests much beyond a "simple idea" nor possesses the weighty concreteness of an image. Therefore, it has a kind of "negative capability" which enables it to become the nexus of diverse images, tropes, and ideas, as it "moves" through a passage or sermon via the device of repetition. In its passage, this "naked" term acquires associations from the context of the sermon, and in turn forms that context in such a way that the relationship between the tonic word and its context is analogous to that between the cherry's stone and its fruit. With such a device, Edwards strove to create the conditions in his auditory which predicated "the mind filled with the idea and with all its associates, and then consenting to it."Miller, "Sense of the Heart," p. 128. Parallelism—the repetition of syntactical patterns and structures of thought—is also a major device in Edwards' rhetorical repertory. In the case of parallelism, as in so many other instances, one need not look far for precedents and influences: "… the versification of the Bible is of a kind totally unlike that which prevails in English literature.… Its underlying principle is found to be the symmetry of clauses in a verse, which has come to be called 'Parallelism.'"R. G. Moulton, The Literary Study of the Bible (New York, 1899), p. 46. Inasmuch as Edwards' Bible's verse was printed as prose, and he seems not to have differentiated between the prose and verse in the Bible, I suppose that he took the apparent form of the verse as a model for his own highly rhythmical prose, for Edwards' sermons display a remarkable number of variations on parallelism, several of which are recognized as conventional forms in biblical verse. Coordination, the simplest form of parallelism, is the dominant structure in Edwardsean syntax. In the unpunctuated sermon manuscripts, the exposition characteristically evolves through a succession of declarative statements and ampersands. Unedited excerpts from a sermon on Psalms 108:4 give the flavor:
The remarkable thing is that it is as clear as it is, and it is that clear because of the inexorable forward movement of the agglutinative syntax. The formula is essentially that of the ancient storyteller: "and then, and then, and then," although other elements make the total impression far from simple. In this manner of expression, the listeners are given the impression of being led, ever outward and onward, from the point of departure to some unrevealed destination. Or, if one thinks of the auditory as receiving facts, ideas, and experiences, the impression of weight and massiveness is enhanced by the sustained sequence of coordinated units of thought. It is a most simple, yet forceful syntax. Beyond the fundamental level of coordination, Edwards employs parallelism for various rhetorical effects. One of the more effective devices is the doublet, a pair of words, roughly synonymous, which connotatively supplement each other and, together, enhance a point with the emphasis of concise parallelism. A fine example of the technique occurs in "The Nakedness of Job": We have an instance in this chapter of one of the greatest men in the world, in the most prosperous worldly estate and condition, brought to be externally one of the meanest of men… a most remarkable instance of the vanity of worldly honors, riches and prosperity. How soon is it gone and lost; how many hundred, yea, thousands of accidents may deprive the most prosperous of all in a little time, and make him most miserable and forlorn? In addition to emphasizing the point indicated by each doublet, the pairs of words parallel the other pairs, of course, and thus call attention to a pattern of thought: worldly condition-riches-loss-misery. Edwards frequently employs a more insistent, reduplicative parallelism when he wishes to emphasize a major point, the simple structure enabling him to put forward the maximum number of ideas per word. In Luke 17:9, he insists that God is under no obligation to man, and that "obedience and labors and prayers and tears" do not compromise God's essential freedom: This [that God is under no obligation] is certainly plain reason, and if it be, then God don't owe salvation, nor pity, nor pardon, nor the answer of prayers, nor the mitigation of punishment, nor converting, nor assisting grace for any thing that we do in religion, because as we have showed already, he owes us nothing at all, not the least benefit anyway. With incantatory power, the succession of negations represents so many slamming doors to those who are looking for an easy way out. A comparable use of parallelism occurs in "A Warning to Professors," involving a long series of similarly structured queries, though here the effect is that of a probing surgeon's knife.Works, Worcester rev. ed., 4, 535. In both examples, however, the essential effect of the parallelism is to advance the argument at such a rate that the auditor is fully occupied in taking it in, and has little pause to rationalize or reply. It is a rhetoric of brute power. There is, in all the examples cited above, a kind of rhythmic progression, and all of Edwards' parallel constructions give some sense of crescendo—if only through the impression of rapidly increasing mass. Some of his most dramatic perorations, however, are achieved through the combination of parallelism and the periodic sentence structure, as in 2 Kings 7:3–4. If you are so wicked that you are like a dead man; yea, if you are so wicked that you are not only dead, but rotten; yea, if you have been dead so long that your bones are dried, yet God can bring you up out of your grave and bring you into the land of Israel. The gradually altered idea, plus the repeated construction, make this a kind of "incremental parallelism." Such magniloquence is generally reserved for the conclusion of a head or sermon, though less emphatic variants of the pattern, often involving several sentences, may be found whenever Edwards is making a summary within his argument. Other complex forms of parallelism are employed by Edwards to facilitate juxtaposition, antithesis, and contrast of ideas. Among these is the sustained juxtaposition of two antithetical alternatives, as illustrated in "The Unreasonableness of Indetermination in Religion."Works, Worcester rev. ed., 4, 342. And there are but two states in this world, a state of sin, and a state of holiness, a natural state, and a converted state.… There are but two masters, to one of which we must be reputed the servants, Baal and Jehovah, God and mammon. There are but two competitors for the possession of us, Christ and the devil. There are but two paths, in one of which you are to travel, either in the strait and narrow way which leadeth unto life, or the broad way which leadeth unto destruction. The sheer weight of the rhetoric and the vivid simplicity of statement make a passage such as this much more powerful than one with a more varied structure. Edwards frequently employs this formula, particularly when concluding a phase of his argument. An expanded version of this juxtaposition through parallelism appears in the "dialogue" passages, the traditional Objection-Answer formula as improved through Edwards' keen sense of verisimilitude and his dramatic flair. One of the better instances of this technique occurs in "Great Guilt No Obstacle to the Pardon of the Returning Sinner," where the minister appears carrying on a realistic debate with an imaginary sinner.Works, Worcester rev. ed., 4, 426–28. Whether in the briefer or more expanded form, the movement of this type of parallelism strongly suggests the "characteristically Hebrew" Pendulum Figure that is found throughout the Bible.For a discussion of the Pendulum Figure and its importance as a mode of Hebrew thought and expression, see Moulton, pp. 58–59, et passim. The figure in Edwards' sermons sets up the same rhythms of thought and emotion as are found in the Bible. Moreover, one can easily see in the sustained or expanded parallelism a significant source of structure. Already, in passages from Job 18:15 (p. 215), Daniel 4:35 (p. 238), and Ecclesiastes 11:2 (pp. 241–42), statements have been presented that reiterate the opening idea more or less in parallel form at the conclusion, making an envelope figure which structures the passage as a unit.The significance of the Envelope Figure in the Bible is discussed in Moulton, pp. 56–58, 543. Between the sustained parallelism and envelope figures, a prime source of internal structure in Edwards' prose is defined. Syntactical parallelism, whether simple or complex, brief or sustained, is simply the outward form of a parallelism of ideas, for Edwards, again following the tradition of the Bible, thought in terms of parallels: God and man, heaven and hell, salvation and damnation, conversion and reprobation, and on and on. For every concept, there is its parallel: God the king of the universe, man the king of the world; heaven the city of light, hell the city of darkness; salvation the end of the true saints, damnation the end of the unregenerate, and so forth. Moreover, between the extremes cited here, there are hierarchies of parallels between the Scripture and life, the divine and the mundane, Christ and the church, and so on to men and worms, or possibly spiders. Thus the structures of parallelism in Edwards' sermons are more than rhetorical structures for his theological arguments; the rhetorical gesture of parallelism is itself a theological argument. "Christ, the Light of the World" presents a veritable symphony of parallelism—simple and complex, brief and sustained—as well as a synthesis of most of the techniques and devices that have been discussed thus far in this chapter. In his lyrical celebration of Christ, Edwards harmonizes the idiom of the Scripture, images, similes, metaphors, types, repetition, and parallelism in an exuberant style characteristic of the sermons of the twenties. The doctrine of this sermon is, "Jesus Christ is the light of the world;" I quote from the third Observation under the second Proposition of the Doctrine.
Third. And lastly, light is of a quickening, reviving, and refreshing nature. It revives one that hath been long in darkness again to behold the light; so Christ Jesus revives the souls that come unto him by faith. Here you may run a parallel between the sun and Jesus Christ, the Sun of Righteousness. 1. As the sun, when it rises, all things are thereby revived and awakened out of sleep and silence, so when Jesus Christ shines into the souls of men, they are revived out of their deep and dead sleep of sin. When the sun arises, the world that before was all still and silent, and seemed to be dead, now is revived and raised up by the light thereof, and all things begin to stir and move: things seem to have new life put into them; man rises out of his sleep and sets about his business; the husbandman goeth forth to his labor, the beasts come out of their dens, the birds begin to sing and chant forth their notes, and the world is again put into motion. So it is in spiritual matters with respect to Christ. Before he shines into men's souls, they are dead and dull in a deep sleep, are not diligent at their work, but lie still and sleep and do nothing respecting their souls. All their affections are dead, dull and lifeless; their understandings are darkened with the dark shades of spiritual night, and there is nothing but spiritual sleep and death in their souls. But when Christ arises upon them, then all things begin to revive, the will and affections begin to move, and they set about the work they have to do. They are now awakened out of their sleep: whereas they were still before, now they begin to be diligent and industrious; whereas they were silent before, now they begin to sing forth God's praises. Their graces now begin to be put into exercise, as flowers send forth a fragrancy when the sun shines upon them. 2. As the sun by his returning influences causes clouds and storms and cold to fly before it, so doth Jesus Christ, the cold, tempests, and clouds of the soul. In the winter season, the heavens are frequently overcast with clouds that hide the pleasing light of the sun; the air is disturbed with winds, storms and tempests, and all things are chilled with frost and cold. The rivers and streams are shut up with ice, the earth is covered with snow, and all things look dreadful, but when the sun returns with its warming influences, the heavens are cleared of dark clouds and the air stilled from tempests, the ice and snow and cold are fled. So the souls of men in their natural state are like winter, perpetually disturbed with the storms of lust and vice, and a raging conscience; their souls are all beclouded with sin and spiritual darkness. But when Christ comes with his warming influences, things are far otherwise: their minds are calm and serene, warmed with holiness and religion, and the clear sunshine of spiritual comfort. 3. As when the sun returns in the spring, the frozen earth is opened, mollified and softened, so by the beams of the Sun of Righteousness the stony, rocky, adamantine hearts of men are thawed, mellowed, and softened, and made fit to receive the seeds of grace. In the winter, the face of the earth is closed and shut up as a stone, unfit for any thing to be sown in it, but is loosened in the spring by the warm beams of the sun; so [is] the heart in its natural state frozen and like the stony ground, so that the seeds of God's Word take no rooting in it, but it is as if we should cast seed upon the bare rock. But when Christ melts the heart by shining upon it, the seed then sinks into it and takes root and begins to germinate and spring forth. 4. As the sun revives the plants and trees and fruits of the earth, so Christ Jesus by his spiritual light revives the soul and causes it to bring forth fruit. In the winter, the trees are stripped of their leaves and fruit, and stand naked, cease growing, and seem to be dead; the grass and herbs are killed, and all things have the appearance of death upon them. But when the sun returns, then all things have the appearance of a resurrection: things revive again, the trees and fields put on their green livery and begin to bud forth, anew, and flourish and grow. The grass and herbs begin to peep forth out of the ground, and all things look green and flourishing: the fields, meadows, and woods seem to rejoice, and the birds sing a welcome to the returning spring. The fields and trees are adorned with beautiful and fragrant flowers. Just such an alteration is made in the soul at conversion by Jesus Christ, only far more glorious:
To chronicle the varieties of parallelism, alone, in this excerpt—leaving out the synthetic scriptural idiom; the nature imagery from the Connecticut Valley; the similes, metaphors, and symbols; the puns, alliteration, and assonance—would constitute a kind of academic parlor game. Nevertheless, taken as a total impression, the passage offers the prepared reader an authentic representation of the mind and rhetorical manner of the young preacher. Here is his great theme, his central imagery, and his characteristic diction—before the "chastisement of the trope," the years of refining and disciplining metaphors in "Shadows," and the acquisition of that cool self-possession and incisive precision which mark the years of his stylistic mastery. Lacking the focus of an adequate tonic word, or the centripetal cohesion of philosophically systematized imagery, the passage seems to explode in all directions, the constraints of the sermon's numbered divisions and the power of the central metaphor notwithstanding. But it is a joyous, effervescent explosion, and in its final configuration depicts a mind reveling in the very plenitude of parallels (analogies) between the Word and life, the Deity and nature, and finally, its own ideas and its sensations. This is the mind and the style that underlay all the homiletical experiments and developments in Edwards' subsequent career. In concluding this study of the primary rhetorical and literary resources of Edwards' sermons, it is necessary to consider three techniques which, while not of such importance as those already discussed, are nevertheless worthy of consideration: Edwards' use of the a fortiori construction, his "rhetoric of logic," and his manipulation of point of view. The a fortiori or "all the more reason" construction—originally indicating increasing necessity in a logical proof—is employed by Edwards as his primary supplement to simile and metaphor in developing analogical bridges between the seen and the unseen, or in suggesting the plausible route between the present state of sensation and a different state at some point in the future. The apparent reason for Edwards' wanting to supplement metaphors and similitudes is that they have a certain static or self-contained quality that might prevent the less imaginative members of his congregation from having a truly sensible impression of them. To say that God in heaven is "like the sun" supplies a vivid image, but it leaves a considerable amount of the imaginative responsibility of interpretation to the auditory, and some might not be able to meet the challenge. Moreover, because of his adherence to Scripture precedent and the use of familiar images in forming his metaphors, there was always the danger that a similitude would lose its impact through overuse. Thus, in an effort to "open up" the metaphor and give it freshness, Edwards dramatizes the process of the mind's apprehension and interpretation of it through the "what is more" formula. If the natural sun of this lower world be so bright and glorious, how glorious is the sun of the heavenly world, in comparison of which this world is but a dark dungeon? And if the very inhabitants that are enlightened there by the rays of Christ's glory do themselves shine as the sun, how brightly then does he shine who is a sun to them, and does as much exceed them in glory as the sun exceeds our bodies? (Psalms 24:7–10.) In the same way, Edwards labored to bring new life into the notoriously dead metaphors related to the brevity of life and the nature of eternal punishment.
Filling the mind with particulars, and controlling the process of imagined sensation, Edwards guides his audience inexorably along the narrow way from the "reality of here" to the "reality of there." Though tropes and symbolism might indicate the way and illumine the goal, only the painstaking and reiterative a fortiori could drive a lazy or reluctant imagination to the goal, dramatizing the mind's quest for a sensible knowledge of spiritual truth and reality in the process. Indeed, when one considers many of Edwards' series of parallel constructions, and particularly his "lists," there is often more than a suggestion of the upward (or downward) movement of the a fortiori construction: "the meanest object of their lusts is set higher than [God]. He has less respect shown him than a few shillings, or than a morsel of meat, or a draught of strong drink, or a little brutish pleasure with a harlot" (Malachi 1:8). In this way, Edwards intensifies the rhetorical and ideational rhythms of his prose, keeping a highly reiterative style free of dull, dead levels. Obvious and subtle by turns, this theoretically simple device fulfills a variety of essential tasks in Edwards' writings.For a fine example of variations on a fortiori, see the sermon on Luke 22:44 printed in Dwight, Works, 8, 159–94 (particularly the concluding two or three pages). The "rhetoric of logic" sounds self-contradictory since rhetoric and logic are conventionally differentiated as disciplines.It should be observed, however, that classic homiletical manuals such as William Chappell's The Preacher, or the Art and Method of Preaching (London, 1656) effectively conflate rhetoric and logic in presenting student preachers with strategies of argument. Nor do I contend that logic is anything but logic. What I would insist, however, is that Edwards' mastery of deductive logic, and his various uses of it in the sermons, have quite notable rhetorical consequences. Edwards himself was never immune to the aesthetic qualities of logic: One reason why at first, before I knew other logic, I used to be mightily pleased with the study of the old logic, was because it was very pleasant to see my thoughts, that before lay in my mind jumbled without any distinction, ranged into order…"The Mind," Works, 6, 345. And there is no evidence that this aesthetic appreciation of logic, or the old joy in playing with it, departed when Edwards switched to the newer, more "useful" logic.For that matter, JE's near obsession with parallels, juxtapositions, images and shadows, types and antitypes, and so forth, suggests that his mind always bore an impression of the early Ramean stamp. Indeed, most of his sermons, including the imprecatory ones, contain at least a few passages of fine logical argumentation, and many sermons contain displays of logical brilliance that do not always seem to be mere utilitarian tools. From the rhetorical point of view, Edwards' logical mastery is that which enabled him to give adequate form to passages of massed images and heavily particularized sensations, perceptions, and conceptions. Moreover, it enabled him to keep his rhetorical balance when weaving a network of parallels and juxtapositions between the divine and mundane worlds. All in all, Edwards' peculiar density of style would be little more than a massing of particulars were it not for the remarkable logical discipline of his analytic imagination. In the final analysis, "logic is logic," and perhaps Edwards' logic is rhetorically most impressive when it is presented as logic, specifically, in the "rational proof" of the Doctrine where he argues not only a positive proof, but first eliminates alternatives in a negative proof. In many such negative-to-positive proofs, Edwards moves grandly through the whole range of evident possibilities until the espoused principle is left standing alone and dominant.A representative example would be the first proposition of the Doctrine in A Divine and Supernatural Light, Works, Worcester rev. ed., 4, 439–43. The dramatic gesture of such logic—suggesting a metaphysical plow that moves slowly and methodically, yet inexorably and effortlessly to the goal, clearing away all obstacles in its passage—establishes a most commanding "presence" for the preacher, however humble his professions or general tone. Edwards, as a connoisseur of logic, would not be the last to appreciate the power and beauty, or the purely aesthetic qualities, of the grand syllogistic gesture.
With so much of every sermon being formal, symmetrical, and systematic, it seems that Edwards felt the need for a maverick element, an implement of shock and surprise. He found such a device in the manipulation of the point of view. As indicated by the personal pronouns used, the point of view in the "average" Edwards sermon has certain basic patterns. Thus, in the Opening of the Text, the unity of the minister and congregation is emphasized by references to the first person plural: "we are told"; "in this passage the apostle says (to us)," and so forth. In the Doctrine, and sometimes in the Application, references to the saved and the damned are usually in the third person, emphasizing their status as objects of contemplation by the group comprising the preacher and congregation: "they glorify God," or "they writhe in pain," as the case may be. In the Application, however, and particularly in the uses of exhortation, the point of view is radically altered by shifting to the second person. The preacher separates himself from the congregation, as if leaving them to stand alone under the light of the Word: "if you do not, you will surely suffer"; "[you] come to the waiting arms," and so on. Sometimes, Edwards not only isolates the congregation before God, but calls attention to their standing in the world-suggesting that he knew well which was probably the more immediate concern of a Yankee congregation. For instance, in a sermon (Nehemiah 2:20; 1738) preached not long before the publication of A Faithful Narrative in Boston, he suddenly turns the klieg light of public opinion upon his people in the Use of Self-examination:
Suddenly, his congregation is thrust before the tribunal of the world and history. One can imagine the turning of heads. Particularly in imprecatory sermons, Edwards may at any moment alter the point of view, giving the shock of a sudden new perspective. Thus, he may develop an image, say, of a "muck worm," crawling and slithering through the barnyard, apt to be trodden under foot at any moment—all in all a contemptible object—in a third person (objective) narration. Just as the congregation has become fascinated in contemplating the despicable object from the point of view of an attentive human observer, Edwards is likely to assert, "you are that miserable worm!" and then continue the development of the image, but from the worm's point of view, enumerating in detail the heat and stench of the worm's surroundings, the threatening hooves overhead, and so forth. In the same way, Edwards is fond of first delineating experiences and ideas from the human point of view, and then—with little or no transition—suddenly re-envisioning them from a divine point of view. The combinations and permutations of the manipulated point of view yield effects ranging from the thrill of Miltonic cosmic perspectives to vertiginous transits in time and space, from the sense of liberation to the sense of unbearable confinement and oppression. Certainly, as it is sometimes employed, the manipulated point of view seems to constitute the necessary element of madness in Edwards' method.
4. The Historical Mode
The final segment of this discussion of Edwards' literary theory and practice is hardly more than a footnote, though Edwards would have wished that there might be reason for more. In his last years, apparently, he entered a fourth phase as a theorist, though this phase was never brought to fruition in practice. The letter to the trustees at Princeton speaks of his work on "a body of divinity in an entire new method, being thrown into the form of a history." On the basis of this letter and several extant manuscripts, I have concluded that Edwards consciously redirected his efforts, in his last years, away from the essentially expository forms of the sermon and polemic treatise, to the mythic narrative he called history. From his early notes and lists of titles for treatises, Edwards manifested throughout his life an inclination to undertake the most ambitious writing projects. The only question seemed to be what subject to undertake or what form to give the work. He seems always to have wanted to write a vast work that would systematically expound the ultimate unity of the spiritual and material, the divine and human spheres. But in what form? Should it be a "scientific" treatise that proved all of nature to be nothing more than an idea in God's mind, or a psychological study that analyzed the relationship between the human experience and God, or a "rational account" that would presumably outline, in the abstract vocabulary of philosophical theology, the whole system of God's operations—or perhaps a typological account that would indicate the divine thread running through all history? In 1739, at the peak of his preaching career, Edwards preached a series of thirty sermons on Isaiah 51:8 which was published after his death as A History of the Work of Redemption.See A History of the Work of Redemption, ed. John F. Wilson, Works, 9. In the series, Edwards proposes to delineate "the work of redemption… that God carries on from the fall of man to the end of the world." Of course, the title proposed for the "body of divinity in an entire new method" is a History of the Work of Redemption, and thus one might suppose that Edwards thought more and more of the historical form, in his last twenty years, as the most desirable form for his systematic theological work. His extant manuscripts testify to the probability of this supposition. Of course, any or all of Edwards' sermons and basic notebooks might have been put into service as sources for his history, but he also left three notebooks devoted specifically to the "Work of Redemption." The first of these (123 pp., octavo) is devoted to significant historical events, the second (30 pp., octavo) to the format of the history, and the third (21 pp., quarto) to the history of the church in particular. The first two notebooks contain explicit references to Edwards' sermons, and the first and third seem to contain much material from secondary sources. They are all late notebooks and provide indisputable circumstantial evidence that Edwards was very much engaged in his history at the end of his life. In the area of style and form, there is also very interesting evidence. Edwards' regulatory notebook, "Subjects of Enquiry," contains the following notes and directions, written in the 1750s, which appear to indicate his interest in acquiring the essentials of the historical mode of writing:
Several other notes direct him to make tables which would provide working indices for nearly all of his major notebooks, including a "table to papers concerning History of the Work of Redemption." Finally, in numerous late entries related to various biblical and historical studies, the word "fact" occurs with remarkable frequency for Edwards. That Edwards had finally settled upon the historical mode as the only one suited to the expression of his vast accumulation of theological thought seems obvious. Perhaps only the historical approach appeared sufficiently persuasive in an era which emphasized authenticity more than logic or authority. At any rate, the master preacher and controversialist clearly set out at the end of his life to master the art of historical narrative.These speculations should be qualified by the detailed investigation of John F. Wilson into the documents and evident theory of the project in his introduction to the Work of Redemption, Works, 9, 11–13, 63–72, and in his Appendix B to the same volume, 543–56. Had he lived, he might have produced one of the most interesting works in American literature, for he had the intellect and literary talent, the materials and the will. But just as he was getting all his tables in order and thinking out the historical strategy, all efforts ceased. Although Edwards did not live to write his systematic explication of Christ's great works in historical metaphor, he left the vast bulk of material from which he would have developed his narrative. Distributed among the various specialized notebooks and sermons discussed in this introduction, and partially revealed in finely finished fragments through the several major treatises which Edwards composed, the detailed vision can no more be recaptured than an egg reassembled. What is available in the sermon canon now being published in chronological series is Edwards' thought in its own historical context, the thirty-five-year evolution of his theological expression in the only format which enabled him to test its aesthetic validity and spiritual efficacy in the context of life. The present history is the literary history of a homiletical artist whose work decisively transcended New England Puritanism in response to the challenges of a diverse new society.
Jonathan Edwards [1720], Sermons and Discourses 1720-1723 (WJE Online Vol. 10) , Ed. Wilson H. Kimnach [word count] [jec-wjeo10]. |
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