Of the Spirit / Jonathan Dickinson -- The government of the church of Christ / John Thomson -- A particular consideration of "the Querists" / Samuel Blair -- "The Querists," a short reply to Mr. Whitefield's letter -- The wonderful wandering Spirit -- Christ triumphing, and Satan raging / Samuel Finley -- Remarks upon a Protestation / Gilbert Tennent -- A display of God's special grace / Jonathan Dickinson -- Spiritual travels / Nathan Cole --. - Account of the revival at Lyme / Jonathan Parsons -- Gilbert Tennent's powerful preaching in Boston -- Account of the revival at Lyme / Jonathan Parsons -- A song of praise / James Davenport -- The distinguishing marks of a work of the Spirit / Jonathan Edwards -- The spirits of the present day tried / David McGregore -- Enthusi.

In the 1740s Jonathan Edwards emerged as the New Light proponent of the claim that the Great Awakening was, in the main, a true work of the Spirit of God. Conversely, Charles Chauncy led the Old Lights in opposition by offering criticisms of the Awakening. In this book, Robert Davis Smart examines Edwards’s defense of the revival with particular attention to Chauncy’s criticisms, which have often been acknowledged but not previously subjected to thorough analysis. He sets forth historical and contextual factors that shaped Edwards and his generation, shows how Edwards emerged as a leader of the revival from its early days, and offers an updated survey of the modern attempts to interpret the Awakening theologically, sociologically, and historically. Here is a detailed treatment of the contrasting perspectives of Edwards and Chauncy, an extensive analysis of their major works regarding the revival, an able assessment of the essential issues raised by the debate, and an evaluation of the significant contributions of these men. Table of Contents: Introduction to Edwards’s Historical Context Chapter One: Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening Chapter Two: Interpretations of the Awakening Chapter Three: The Distinguishing Marks and Some Thoughts Chapter Four: Chauncy’s Seasonable Thoughts Chapter Five: Edwards’s Final Response to Chauncy Conclusion: The Debate and Its Legacy

Presents a biography of the clergyman who played a major role in eighteenth-century American religious life and served as president of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University.

An important new biography of America's founding religious father. Jonathan Edwards was America's most influential evangelical, whose revivals of the 1730s became those against which all subsequent ones have been judged. The marvelous accomplishment of Philip Gura's Jonathan Edwards is to place the rich intellectual landscape of America's most formidable evangelical within the upheaval of his times. Gura not only captures Edwards' brilliance but respectfully explains the enduring appeal of his theology: in a world of profound uncertainty, it held out hope of an authentic conversion---the quickening of the indwelling spirit of God in one's heart and the consequent certitude of Godly behavior and everlasting grace. Tracing Jonathan Edwards' life from his birth in 1703 to his untimely death in 1758, Gura magnificently reasserts Edwards rightful claim as the father of America's evangelical tradition.

Edwards and the Edwardseans gathers into a single volume eight of the author’s previously published articles and chapters. Suitable as either a basic or supplementary text for interested lay people and graduate students, this book serves as an introduction to the central spiritual and theological interests of Jonathan Edwards and to the long shadow those interests cast on his eponymous followers. The first four chapters (Part One) focus on Jonathan Edwards—his formative role in the Great Awakening, his biblical understanding of conversion, his perspective on petitionary prayer, and his influence on missionary endeavors. The following four chapters (Part Two) trace a well-defined theological movement from Edwards to his second- and especially third-generation followers. The impact of this movement resulted in the creation of a distinct theological culture that, over two generations, was institutionalized in informal seminaries or “schools of the prophets” in colleges attended by New Divinity students and staffed by New Divinity presidents and in missionary outreach both at home and abroad. Taken together, these chapters introduce theological subjects that mattered most to Edwards and his disciples: spiritual revival, conversion, the Bible, prayer, and extending the kingdom of God.

The early United States was a culture of the episode. In Episodic Poetics, Matthew Garrett merges narrative theory with social and political history to explain the early American fascination with the episodic, piecemeal plot. Since Aristotle's Poetics, the episode has been a vexed category of literary analysis, troubling any easy view of the subsumption of unwieldy narrative parts into well-plotted wholes. Garrett puts forward a new, dialectical theory of episodic form to recast this peculiar object of literary history, looking to the episode as a narrative unit smaller than the genre in order to give an account of all the period's major prose genres. Garrett shows how, in ways both magisterial and mundane, episodic forms gave variegated shape to the social, political, and economic conflicts that defined the moment of national formation. Episodic Poetics proposes a new method of reading and a new way of conceiving of literary history. The book asks how we might understand the cultural role of the episode as a literary micro-unit, one that forces us to read individual narratives in terms of an always partial and fraught development toward plot. Episodic Poetics combines theoretical reflection and historical rigor with careful readings of texts from the early American canon such as The Federalist, Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, and the novels of Charles Brockden Brown, along with hitherto understudied texts and ephemera such as Washington Irving's Salmagundi, Susanna Rowson's Trials of the Human Heart and the memoirs of the metalworker and failed entrepreneur John Fitch. Garrett recounts literary history not as the easy victory of grand nationalist ambitions, but rather as a series of social struggles expressed through writers' recurring engagement with incompletely integrated forms.

Why is today's political life so polarized? This book analyzes the ways in which the divergent apprehensions of both 'compromise' and the 'people' in seventeenth-century England and France became intertwined once again during the American founding, sometimes with bloody results. Looking at key-moments of the founding, from the first Puritan colonies to the beginning of the Civil War, this book offers answers of contemporary relevance. It argues that Americans unknowingly combined two understandings of the people: the early modern idea of a collection of individuals ruled by a majority of wills and the classic understanding of a corporation hierarchically structured and ruled by reason for the common good. Americans were then able to implement the paradigm of the 'people's two bodies'. Whenever the dialectic between the two has been broken, the results had have a major impact on American politics. Born by accident, this American peculiarity has proven to be a long-lasting one.

Each entry within this guide outlines scholarly books, authors, editors and publishers that exhibit the most useful information for research. Following each detailed citation is a brief summary of the book. Each book listed covers a wide variety of subjects in American history including Native Americans, slavery, gender and migration to rural life, agriculture, politics, government and communication. This volume is part of a series of annotated bibliographies on early American history and culture. Extensive indexes, thematic chapters and book summaries will assist any researcher in an easy manner. Aside from outlining fantastic scholarly books, this book includes chapters on general early American history, historiography and public history to name a few. This is the only comprehensive guide to early American history and culture for this period and it indicates which books from the 1960s have been most influential in the journal literature of the past twenty-five years.

The story of a unique friendship in colonial America between a Founding Father and a founder of the evangelical movement. In the 1740s, two very different developments revolutionized Anglo-American life and thought—the Enlightenment and the Great Awakening. This book takes an encounter between the paragons of each movement—the printer and entrepreneur Benjamin Franklin and the British-born revivalist George Whitefield—as an opportunity to explore the meaning of the beginnings of modern science and rationality on one hand and evangelical religious enthusiasm on the other. There are people who both represent the times in which they live and change them for the better. Franklin and Whitefield were two such men. The morning that they met, they formed a long and lucrative partnership: Whitefield provided copies of his journals and sermons, Franklin published them. So began a unique, mutually profitable, and influential friendship. By focusing this study on Franklin and Whitefield, Peter Charles Hoffer defines with great precision the importance of the Anglo-American Atlantic World of the eighteenth century in American history. With a swift and persuasive narrative, Hoffer introduces readers to the respective life story of each man, examines in engaging detail the central themes of their early writings, and concludes with a description of the last years of their collaboration. Franklin’s and Whitefield’s intellectual contributions reach into our own time, making Hoffer’s enjoyable account of these extraordinary men and their extraordinary friendship relevant today.