of what
constituted a true regeneration, as presented in such treatises as
Edwards on the Affections, and others of the times, made this change to
be something so high, disinterested, and superhuman, so removed from all
natural and common habits and feelings, that the most earnest and
devoted, whose whole life had been a constant travail of endeavor, a
tissue of almost unearthly disinterestedness, often lived and died with
only a glimmering hope of its attainment.

According to any views then entertained of the evidences of a true
regeneration, the number of the whole human race who could be supposed
as yet to have received this grace was so small, that, as to any
numerical valuation, it must have been expressed as an infinitesimal.
Dr. Hopkins in many places distinctly recognizes the fact, that the
greater part of the human race, up to his time, had been eternally
lost,--and boldly assumes the ground, that this amount of sin and
suffering, being the best and most necessary means of the greatest final
amount of happiness, was not merely permitted, but distinctly chosen,
decreed, and provided for, as essential in the schemes of Infinite
Benevolence. He held that this decree not only _permitted_ each
individual act of sin, but also took measures to make it certain,
though, by an exercise of infinite skill, it accomplished this result
without violating human free agency.

The preaching of those times was animated by an unflinching consistency
which never shrank from carrying an idea to its remotest logical verge.
The sufferings of the lost were not kept from view, but proclaimed with
a terrible power. Dr. Hopkins boldly asserts, that "all the use which
God will have for them is to suffer; this is all the end they can
answer; therefore all their faculties, and their whole capacities, will
be employed and used for this end.... The body can by omnipotence be
made capable of suffering the greatest imaginable pain, without
producing dissolution, or abating the least degree of life or
sensibility.... One way in which God will show his power in the
punishment of the wicked will be in strengthening and upholding their
bodies and souls in torments which otherwise would be intolerable."

The sermons preached by President Edwards on this subject are so
terrific in their refined poetry of torture, that very few persons of
quick sensibility could read them through without agony; and it is
related, that, when, in those calm and tend