chamber, that they might by his solemn decree be
committed to the flames." On the Sabbath afternoon the pile was publicly
burned amid songs and shouts. In the pile were many favorite books of
devotion, including works of Flavel, Beveridge, Henry, and like
venerated names, and the sentence was announced with a loud voice, "that
the smoke of the torments of such of the authors of the above-said books
as died in the same belief as when they set them out was now ascending
in hell, in like manner as they saw the smoke of these books
arise."[171:1] The public fever and delirium was passing its crisis. A
little more than a year from this time, Davenport, who had been treated
by his brethren with much forbearance and had twice been released from
public process as _non compos mentis_, recovered his reason at the same
time with his bodily health, and published an unreserved and
affectionate acknowledgment of the wrong that he had done under the
influence of a spirit of delusion which he had mistaken for the Spirit
of truth. Those who had gone furthest with him in his excesses returned
to a more sober and brotherly mind, and soon no visible trace remained
of the wild storm of enthusiasm that had swept over New England, except
a few languishing schisms in country towns of Connecticut.

As in the middle colonies, the revival had brought division in New
England. But, after the New England fashion, it was division merely into
ways of thinking, not into sects. Central in the agitated scene is the
calm figure of Edwards, uniting the faith and zeal of an apostle with
the acuteness of a philosopher, and applying the exquisite powers of his
intellect to discriminate between a divine work and its human or Satanic
admixtures, and between true and spurious religious affections. He won
the blessing of the peacemaker. When half a generation had passed there
had not ceased, indeed, to be differences of opinion, but there was none
left to defend the wild extravagances which the very authors of them
lamented, and there was none to deny, in face of the rich and enduring
fruits of the revival, that the power of God had been present in it. In
the twenty years ending in 1760 the number of the New England churches
had been increased by one hundred and fifty.[172:1]

In the middle colonies there had been like progress. The Presbyterian
ministry had increased from forty-five to more than a hundred; and the
increase had been wholly on the "New Side." An e