Sermons and Discourses, 1743–1758 (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 25 | WJE)
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
This wide-ranging volume covers the final fifteen of the thirty-three years that Jonathan Edwards preached and includes some of his greatest sermons—including his “Farewell Sermons” to his Northampton congregation. The period is defined by Edwards’ inventive strategies to improvise during the delivery of his sermons. Considering dependence on the written text in the pulpit to be a serious failing, he devised a double-columned, outlined format for his sermon manuscripts and continued to use it for the rest of his life. Sermons from this period also include those preached to Mohican and Mohawk Indians at the mission post of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Edwards’ various writings of 1743–58 map the complex terrain of his spiritual, intellectual, and professional life after the Great Awakening. He deals with topics ranging from the spiritual role of youth in the community to the struggles over communion in his Northampton congregation to the war with the French and their Indian allies.
Top Highlights
“It has such a tendency as it implies a discovery and relish of a suitable and sufficient good: it brings a person into a view of divine beauty, and to a relish of that good which is a man’s proper happiness, and so brings the soul to its true center.” (Page 543)
“[I shall] conclude by exhorting all to hearken to the joyful sound as exhibited in the sweet invitations of the gospel.” (Page 710)
“And thither it was that the soul of the penitent thief on the cross ascended. Christ said to him, ‘To day, shall thou be with me in paradise.’ Paradise is the same with the third heaven, as appears by 2 Cor. 12:2–4. There that which is called the ‘third heaven’ in the second verse, in the fourth verse is called ‘paradise.’” (Pages 228–229)
“This the gospel does, as it above all other things whatsoever exhibits to our view God’s glorious beauty and love, in the contemplation of which our most perfect happiness of the soul consists.” (Page 705)
“This peace which Christ has left as a legacy to his true followers is his peace:” (Page 544)
- Title: Sermons and Discourses, 1743–1758
- Author: Jonathan Edwards
- Series: The Works of Jonathan Edwards
- Volume: 25
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Print Publication Date: 2006
- Logos Release Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Congregational churches › Sermons; Sermons, American
- ISBNs: 9780300115390, 0300115393
- Resource ID: LLS:EDWARDS25
- Resource Type: text.monograph.collected-work
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T23:37:27Z
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.