Major Works

Resolutions (1722-1723) Read more >>

Introduction For Edwards, resolutions were neither pious hopes, romantic dreams, nor legalistic rules. They were instructions for life, maxims to be followed in all respects. Edwards depended on the sustaining strength of his omnipotent Deity to enable him to live up to them. The Resolutions ...

Distinguishing Marks (1741) Read more >>

Delivered in September 1741 at Yale College as the commencement address at the height of the Great Awakening, Distinguishing Marks of a Work of a Spirit of God was Edwards's effort to strike a moderating note in the controversy over the revivals. With pro-revival "New Lights" insisting on the…

An Humble Inquiry (1749) Read more >>

One of Edwards' major statements on the nature of the church, An Humble Inquiry was written to explain and justify his effort to change the profession of faith required for entering into full communion in the late 1740s. His change of position arose from…

The End for Which God Created the World (1765) Read more >>

In the mid-1750s, Edwards was working on a pair of "dissertations," one on The End For Which God Created the World, the other on The Nature of True Virtue. They are complementary works. In response to philosophers who would have human happiness as the end for which they were created, Edwards ...

Religious Affections (1746) Read more >>

A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections stands as Edwards’s most penetrating interpretation of the awakenings of his time, not to mention one of the most penetrating of any time. As in Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival, he argued against the extremes of emotionalism on the one hand…

Nature of True Virtue (1765) Read more >>

This dissertation has become widely discussed for its ethical implications, and deservedly so. For Edwards, there are different levels of virtue, as the title, with its distinction of “true virtue,” implies. There is common morality and true virtue, or saving…

Personal Narrative (c.1740) Read more >>

Probably written in response to a request in 1739 from his future son-in-law, Rev. Aaron Burr, Edwards composed a carefully structured but revelatory account of his religious experiences. He utilizes entries from his Diary as well as the very first of his Miscellanies to reconstruct ...

Life of David Brainerd (1749) Read more >>

After the young missionary David Brainerd died of tuberculosis at the Edwards home in 1748, Edwards read through Brainerd?s manuscript diaries. Impressed, he resolved to prepare them for the press. Exalting Brainerd's self-sacrificial faith in the cause of converting the "heathen," Edwards ...

Freedom of the Will (1754) Read more >>

Listed as one of the five hundred most important books in American history, A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of the Will, Which Is Supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, Vertue and Vice, Reward and…

Faithful Narrative (1737) Read more >>

As reports of the awakening of 1734-35 in and around Northampton spread, provincial leaders began to inquire into the truth and nature of the phenomena. Edwards expanded an initial brief description of the revival into a London publication in 1737, and again for a Boston imprint the ...

Original Sin (1758) Read more >>

The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended was Edwards's defense of the Calvinist view of human depravity in response to the increasingly accepted conception of human nature as essentially good and innocent at birth, and that environment, experience, and custom…

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741) Read more >>

For better or worse, the sermon for which Edwards is probably most famous—or infamous—is the one preached to the congregation of Enfield, Massachusetts (later Connecticut) in July 1741. Anthologized in high school and college textbooks, Sinners represents in many persons’ minds…

Justification by Faith Alone (1738) Read more >>

The publication in 1738 of Justification by Faith Alone, as a part of Discourses on Various Important Subjects (Boston, 1738; WJE 19:147-242) marked a significant moment in Jonathan Edwards' public protest against the encroachment of Anglican Arminian theology within New England. In this...

History of the Work of Redemption (1739/74) Read more >>

In this ambitious series of thirty sermons preached in 1739 and posthumously published, in expanded form, in Scotland, Edwards registers his broad vision of salvific history. He takes the plan to a cosmic level, showing…

A Humble Attempt (1748) Read more >>

Through Edwards’s correspondence with a group of revivalists in Scotland, he was able to transmit news of awakenings and religious concerns abroad. One measure that the Scots implemented as a way of furthering the revival spirit was to institute regular, agreed upon days of prayer that would be observed by participating…

Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival (1743) Read more >>

The revivals of the early 1740s divided New England's populous, clergy, and political leaders into supporters and critics of varying degrees. Most disturbing to "Old Light" opposers of the revivals were the irrational behavior, challenges leveled against "unconverted" ministers, and exhorting by...