Sermons and Discourses, 1720–1723 (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 10 | WJE)
Overview
This volume presents the complete texts of twenty-three sermons preached by Jonathan Edwards during the first years of his career. The sermons, which have never been printed before, document one of the least explored periods of this eminent theologian’s life and thought. Fully annotated, they are accompanied by an editor’s preface that combines new information with fresh readings of related texts, such as the “Diary” and “Personal Narrative.”
The volume includes a general introduction that puts Edwards’ thirty-five years of writing and preaching into a broad literary and historical context. Based on the study of his entire sermon corpus—including over seventy printed sermons and twelve hundred sermon manuscripts—as well as related notebooks, letters, and treatises, the introduction enables readers to understand the elaborate network of working papers through which Edwards evolved his thought, as well as the critical function of the sermon in testing and developing expression of that thought. The introduction also explores the literary context of Edwards’ writing, especially relating to the theory and practice of homiletics.
Top Highlights
“Second. Never act anymore as if you were your own. You must consider that in giving yourself to God, you have cast off all pretenses to a right in yourself, and if you go afterwards to act as if you were your own, you thereby deny what you [have] done. You give and take away again: you have given all your powers and faculties to God, and yet you take them and make use of them as if they were your own. If you don’t give yourself to God entirely, it is not worth your while to pretend to give yourself to him at all; for he will accept of no other self-dedication but what is entire. For what do you mean by giving yourself to God except devoting all your powers to him, to be used entirely for him and not for yourself, to act for the time to come as his and not as your own?” (Pages 559–560)
“Reasonable beings, while they act as such, naturally choose those things which they are convinced are best for them, and will certainly do those things which they know they had better do than leave undone.” (Page 296)
“Now most that read or hear this remarkable history will doubtless acknowledge that, if such a catastrophe was to happen to every man’s estate, it would be enough quite to wean him from the world. Almost every man will doubtless say that, if they knew they should lose all their great estate and be deprived entirely of all their outward prosperity, as Job was, they would entertain no thought of striving and laying themselves out for a great estate in the world, seeing they must certainly in this manner be deprived of it, and they know not how soon. If it were so, men would not be so eager and earnest after riches, but would strive only for that that they could not be deprived of; all will grant [that] it would not be worth the while to do more.” (Pages 403–404)
- Title: Sermons and Discourses, 1720–1723
- Author: Jonathan Edwards
- Series: The Works of Jonathan Edwards
- Volume: 10
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Print Publication Date: 1992
- Logos Release Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Congregational churches › Sermons; Sermons, American; Preaching › United States--History--18th century
- ISBNs: 0300051360, 9780300051360
- Resource ID: LLS:EDWARDS10
- Resource Type: text.monograph.collected-work
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T23:37:12Z
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is considered one of America’s greatest theologians. While attending Yale College, he encountered the same Calvinism that had influenced his own Puritan upbringing.
Three years after Edwards was ordained as a minister, the First Great Awakening began in his church, which prompted Edwards to study conversion and revival within the context of Calvinism. During the revival, Edwards preached his most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and penned many of his most popular works, including Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, and Life and Diary of the Rev. David Brainerd.
In 1757, Edwards reluctantly became president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton University), where he hoped to complete two major works—an expansion of his treatise on the history of redemption and a study of the harmony of the Old and New Testaments. The Works of Jonathan Edwards (26 vols.) is a massive collection containing five decades’ worth of study and scholarship on and from Edwards.