Jonathan Edwards Quotes
There has been a very great alteration among the youth of the town, with respect to reveling, frolicking, profane and unclean conversation, and lewd songs: instances of fornication have been very rare: there has also been a great alteration amongst both old and young with respect to tavern-haunting.
Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758, Theologian & Educator, President of Princeton University, Letter to Thomas Prince describing the improved moral climate of Northampton MA
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A conservative Calvinist weekly periodical. Just as today, there were few politicians who could stand up to such a test.
This Puritanical point of view, has always characterized a significant segment of American society. It is responsible for the rather limited pomp and circumstances, ceremony and protocol of American politics compared with most of the rest of the world. Ironically, when Adams later became President, he thought that America had gone too far and needed more formality and elegance—especially in the treatment of the Presidency. He was then opposed by most who preferred his earlier view and that of his opponent, Thomas Jefferson.
Jonathan Edwards was an American revivalist preacher, philosopher, and Congregationalist Protestant theologian. Edwards is widely regarded as one of America's most important and original philosophical theologians. Edwards' theological work is broad in scope, but rooted in the pedobaptist Puritan heritage as exemplified in the Westminster and Savoy Confessions of Faith. Recent studies have emphasized how thoroughly Edwards grounded his life's work on conceptions of beauty, harmony, and ethical fittingness, and how central The Enlightenment was to his mindset. Edwards played a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening, and oversaw some of the first revivals in 1733–35 at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts. His theological work gave rise to a distinct school of theology known as the New England theology.
