In the reaction which followed the revival, a case of discipline arose in his parish—many of the young people being charged with read ing and circulating immoral books — the unfor tunate management of which caused strong re sentment and permanently undermined his in fluence. This was in 1744. Four years later, on his attempt to set aside the established cus tom—an extension of the old °Half-way Covenant° of which Mr. Stoddard had been the chief advocate— and require for full com munion a credible profession of godliness, the disaffection became a bitter and determined opposition. The controversy ended finally in his dismissal, 22 June 1750, after a ministry of 23 years, perhaps the most laborious and dis tinguished in the annals of the American churches. His 'Farewell Sermon,' the greatest of his discourses, is a noble expression of his character and the dignified of his ministerial life. Early in the following year he removed with his family to Stockbridge, Mass., then a settlement on the frontier, to do the double work of pastor of the village church and missionary to the Indians. It was while thus engaged that he wrote, during the seven years of his residence in Stockbridge, the theo logical treatises and essays which are the solid foundations of his fame. In the autumn of 1757 he accepted, with some misgivings, a call to the presidency of the college in Princeton, N. J., made vacant by the death of his son-in law, the elder Aaron Burr. He had scarcely entered on the duties of this office when he fell a victim of inoculation for smallpox, 22 March 1758.
The least episodical of thinkers, Edwards wrote no system of philosophy or body of divin ity. The connected scheme of his ideas has to be gathered from the large proportions of his various writings on special topics, mainly con troversial. The professed aim of the major part of these writings is to defend the dis tinctive doctrines of Calvinism against the ris ing tide of Arminianism in the churches in heriting the Calvinistic tradition. He brought to this task a power of keen and relentless dia lectic that left no loophole of escape to one who accepted his premises and that fairly wearied and overwhelmed the opponent with the multitudinous array of the argument. He brought also, what more contributed to the originality of his thought, the spirit and pro found insights of the speculative philosopher, seeking to ground his theology in metaphysics. Finally, he brought the solid character and the rich religious experience which, gave the sys tem for him perpetual practical verification and which certainly, with his moral enthusiasm and vivid imagination, gave it, in his hands, much of its vitality. The central conception about which all his thinking moves is the conception of the absolute sovereignty of God. Metaphys ically, God is the sole Reality. Neither Par menides in ancient, nor Spinoza in modern, phi losophy, is more emphatic in the assertion of the One Absolute Reality than Edwards. He, however, does not stop here. God, the Abso lute Reality, is with him — it is easy to see that the tradition here blends with his metaphysics — spiritual, personal — tripersonal — and su premely excellent. In his on the Trin ity> (1903) he develops the doctrine that the Father is the Deity in prime subsistence, the Son the Deity subsisting in the act of God's Knowledge of himself and the Holy Ghost the Deity subsisting in the act of God's infinite Love and delight in himself. This Love of God, which is thus his consummating, essen tial Excellency, is primarily the love of com placency in the perfection of his Being; but it may be viewed also as benevolent, so far, namely, as it embraces the complete content of the divine Idea in God's Knowledge of him self, and so far as that Idea includes within itself the creative plan of the world and the evolution of its history. Now it is the pro found thought of Edwards' dissertation on the for Which God Created the World' (written 1755), the most speculatively philosoph ical treatise of the 18th century, that such is, in truth, the fact. God finds in himself a disposi tion to produce an emanation from himself in which to reflect his glory and express outward ly his delight in his own excellency. The final end of creation is, therefore, the manifestation of the divine glory in a perfect spiritual soci ety. In his 'History of Redemption,' Edwards endeavors with, to be sure, very inadequate knowledge and, for us, impossible dogmatic as sumptions, but with a genuine philosophical pur pose, to trace the process through which this end is realized in time. The °emanation,'" or
passage into time, of the eternal world-plan. he represents, in his essay on and Election,' as an act of divine Will, the preser vation of the world being a perpetual and con tinued creation. Beyond this indication of a nexus in the divine Will between the world plan in idea and in process of realization, Ed wards does not go; he develops no theory of the metaphysical relation of the temporal and eternal. He is very clear, however, in teach ing that the divine Decree conforms to, indeed is determined by, the divine Wisdom — what must evidently be taken into account in interpreting the many passages in his writings in which he speaks of God's °arbitrary° Will and of his °mere good pleasure.° Edwards' early idealism with respect to matter is in thorough agreement with this doctrine of creation, but is not now in question. His whole concern now is with the divine plan relative to man. The problem of supreme interest here, of course, is the problem of moral evil. No one has depicted the nature, extent and consequences of sin in stronger lan guage than Edwards. Sin is with him literally a guilty disposition inherent since the Fall in man's very constitution, as that even infants, that seem innocent to us, °are in God's sight young vipers?" so that the whole race merits and, in the absence of grace, which is bestowed only on the definite number of the elect, inevitably tends to horrible and everlast ing destruction. Notwithstanding that all this is held to be included in the creative plan, Ed wards nevertheless strongly insists on the sin ner's responsibility. In his treatise on 'Orig inal Sin' (1758), he brushes aside the legal fictions with which that doctrine was com monly invested, and boldly advances to the Au gustinian position that the whole race was really present and really participated in Adam's transgression — a notion which involves him in curious and intricate speculations concerning personal identity. The most celebrated of his writings, the treatise on 'Freedom of the Willy (1754), discusses from other points of view the same general' problem of the relation of the creative Decree to the moral life of man. His object in this work was to refute the notion that the will in choosing is so undetermined with re spect to its motives as to be able to initiate acts really contingent and, therefore, incapable of being included in God's determinate foreknowl edge and decree. He does not deny the fact of choice; "faculty of choice? indeed, is his defi nition of will. But he contends that this faculty is always determined in its preferences by the strongest motive, "is always as the greatest good is? The connection of such motive and choice is necessary. But the necessity of this connection is quite consistent, in his view, with the liberty to do as one pleases, without hin drance or impediment. He modifies, indeed, the usual Calvinistic doctrine, declaring in one of his letters that man now, even after the Fall, has all the liberty that he ever had. His chief attack is against the notion that will is self-de termined, that is, that it determines itself to will, a notion which, thus stated, leads, as he shows, to the infinite regress. But there is noth ing in his contention to preclude the idea that it is the whole concrete nature of a self which determines the act of choice. His whole argu ment, in fact, is based on the thorough-going application of the law of sufficient reason. Each act of will has its reason, or, as Edwards, sug gesting a naturalistic interpretation not in tended, says, its "cause,* from which it follows with "logical* or "moral° necessity. God's Will even is no exception. Human responsibil ity for sin is not dependent on the way the vo lition is motived, but on the evil nature of the disposition. The ultimate ground or reason of all volition is the divine Idea, comprehending the world-plan, within which every finite being has his place and the realization of which is the effect of the divine decree. God is thus, in a sense, the author of sin, yet not so, as in the case of the human will, that his Will is evil, but so that He, being sovereignly good and perfect and creating the world for a supremely good end, permissively decreed the evil foreseen as comprehended in this purpose.