'one of
the most revolting books that have ever proceeded from the pen of man'
('Rationalism,' i. 404). That intense dislike, which is far from
uncommon, for severe reasoning has even made a kind of reproach to
Edwards of what is called his 'inexorable logic.' To condemn a man for
being honestly in the wrong is generally admitted to be unreasonable;
but people are even more unforgiving to the sin of being honestly in the
right. The frankness with which Edwards avowed opinions, not by any
means peculiar to himself, has left a certain stain upon his reputation.
He has also suffered in general repute from a cause which should really
increase our interest in his writings. Metaphysicians, whilst admiring
his acuteness, have been disgusted by his adherence to an outworn
theology; and theologians have cared little for a man who was primarily
a philosophical speculator, and has used his philosophy to bring into
painful relief the most terrible dogmas of the ancient creeds. Edwards,
however, is interesting just because he is a connecting link between two
widely different phases of thought. He connects the expiring Calvinism
of the old Puritan theocracy with what is called the transcendentalism
embodied in the writings of Emerson and other leaders of young America.
He is remarkable, too, as illustrating, at the central point of the
eighteenth century, those speculative tendencies which were most vitally
opposed to the then dominant philosophy of Locke and Hume. And, finally,
there is a still more permanent interest in the man himself, as
exhibiting in high relief the weak and the strong points of the teaching
of which Calvinism represents only one embodiment. His life, in striking
contrast to that of his more celebrated contemporary, ran its course far
away from the main elements of European activity. With the exception of
a brief stay at New York, he lived almost exclusively in the interior of
what was then the thinly-settled colony of Massachusetts.[8] His father
was for nearly sixty years minister of a church in Connecticut, and his
mother's father, the 'celebrated Solomon Stoddard,' for about an equal
time minister of a church at Northampton, Massachusetts. Young Jonathan,
brought up at the feet of these venerable men, after the strictest sect
of the Puritans, was sent to Yale at the age of twelve, took his B.A.
degree at the age of seventeen, and two years afterwards became a
preacher at New York. Thence he returned to a tutor