Teaching Resources International

That Jonathan Edwards was a doctrinal preacher has never been disputed. Some have even suggested that every sermon by Edwards was simply an attempt to extract a “theological axiom.”[1] There is almost universal agreement, not only that he was a doctrinal preacher, but that it was his doctrines alone that led to the powerful effects of his preaching. It is at this point that I must strongly differ, not only because it does not coincide with the historical facts, but even more importantly, because such an understanding tends to mislead modern Calvinistic preachers desiring to return to the theology of Edwards into thinking that, if they would only preach the doctrines of Edwards, they would have the results of Edwards. With this, I must strongly disagree and I hope to show you not only why I disagree, but how Edwards can be an excellent model for doctrinal preaching today.

Correction of a Historical Misunderstanding

Let me begin first with a correction of a common historical misunderstanding. The most common misunderstanding about the preaching of Edwards is that he preached in a monotone voice with his eyes buried in his fully written manuscript. Indeed it is rare to find any account that does not advance this interpretation of Edwards’s preaching. Most textbooks on homiletics cite him as an example of one who preached powerfully although lamely dependent on his manuscript.[2] Many church historians and theologians render similar views of the preaching of Edwards. Alan Heimert, in his Religion and the American Mind, suggested:

He spoke in measured tones and just stared at the bell rope as though he would stare it off, and worked his effects, it was thought, through the sheer power of his doctrines and language.[3]

Heimart is not alone in his assessment of the preaching of Edwards. Edward Collins concurred noting that Edwards “did not use gestures, and a heavy dependence on his manuscript prevented any rapport with his congregation.”[4] Even John Gertsner, a prominent writer on the theology of Edwards, provided a similar assessment:

From the standpoint of delivery, he possibly was one of the most mediocre the Church has ever known. He had none of the grand eloquence of George Whitefield or that powerful or sonorous voice. Apparently there were no real gestures, just a solemn reading of the manuscript most of the time, much to the chagrin of his senior pastor, Solomon Stoddard.[5]

Likewise, Lewis Drummond, in his work on revival, concluded:

We would hardly have called him a dynamic preacher. He laboriously read every word from a manuscript. Not only that, his eyesight and writing were so poor he held the manuscript only inches from his nose, rarely looking at the congregation.[6]

That Edwards read his sermons painstakingly from a manuscript appears to be the consensus of historians and theologians alike.

If Jonathan Edwards preached laboriously from a manuscript as many have asserted, then he would definitely be the great exception to the preaching pattern of all the other awakening preachers. Indeed, this exception is often cited by writers of the First Great Awakening to emphasize that these revivals were not dependent, to any degree, upon the style of some of the preachers in that Awakening. But, again, the evidence does not support this, and, for our purposes, this is an essential element to understanding Edwards as a model for doctrinal preaching today. Because, if it was only the doctrines themselves, and not the form of delivery, then perhaps we can excuse any interest in homiletical forms and simply make our sermons doctrinal treatises. But, if Edwards preached these doctrines with passion and power and used forms that were intended to connect with his audiences, then we would do well to consider these elements lest people be bored with the correct doctrines we preach, even if they are the doctrines of Edwards.

Edwards’s Style of Preaching

Let’s begin with an examination of his style of preaching since it is the element most misunderstood. First, how did the tradition of Edwards as a monotone manuscript reader ever develop? It appears that the idea of Edwards preaching with his manuscript held up close to his eyes originated in the writings of Serno E. Dwight over two generations later. In 1829, Dwight mentioned that “He wrote his sermons and in so fine and so illegible a hand that they could be read only by being brought near to the eye.”[7] From this statement, inference has been made to Edwards’s preaching method. However, Dwight only makes reference to the writing of sermons, not necessarily to Edwards’s preaching it.

There are no clear eyewitness accounts that indicate that Edwards ever preached using a manuscript.[8] In fact, those who knew Edwards best make clear reference to the opposite. Take Samuel Hopkins for example. Hopkins was a contemporary of Edwards, who lived in his home and preached in his church. Through that relationship, he had a number of occasions to hear Edwards preach.[9]

Hopkins suggested that “nearly twenty years after he first began to preach” (i.e., approximately 1742), Edwards stopped writing his sermons in full.[10] In all of Hopkins’s accounts of the preaching of Edwards, no reference is made to his reading from a manuscript in a monotone. He did note that

President Edwards, during the later years of his life, recommended the practice of preaching without notes altogether, but not without writing the sermons, which were to be delivered in the great degree memoriter.[11]

Hopkins himself struggled with this type of preaching, which followed the pattern of Edwards, his mentor.[12] His journal reveals that he heard Edwards often and assessed his preaching to be anything but boring and lifeless. Consider the following excerpt:

Sunday, July 24, 1743. Heard Mr. Edwards preach all day. I have been very dull and senseless; much discouraged about preaching. Hearing Mr. Edwards makes me ashamed of myself.[13]

Obviously, Hopkins, who would certainly not be regarded as a monotone, manuscript preacher, often became discouraged as he compared his preaching with that of Edwards.

There are numerous other reasons for suggesting that Edwards did not preach from a manuscript, including the fact that he preached in the pulpit of Solomon Stoddard who had published a tract on “The Defects of Preachers Reproved” in which he soundly condemned the reading of sermons in the pulpit. He concluded:

The reading of sermons is a dull way of preaching. Sermons when read are not delivered with authority and in an affecting way. . . . When sermons are delivered without notes, the looks and the gesture of the minister, is a great means to command attention and stir up affection. Men are apt to be drowsy in hearing the word, and the liveliness of the preacher is a means to stir up the attention of the hearers, and beget suitable affection in them. Sermons that are read are not delivered with authority, they favor the sermons of the scribes, Matthew 7:29. Experience shows that sermons read are not so profitable as others.[14]

Additionally, Edwards own view of preaching stands against the idea of reading manuscripts. According to Edwards, “God has ordained that his Word be opened, applied and set home upon men in preaching,” and that God desires “a particular and lively application of his Word.”[15]

Although his sermons provided deep, doctrinal treatments of topics, he placed the great emphasis on preaching affecting the heart.[16] Edwards himself stated:

Our people don’t so much need to have their heads stored as to have their hearts touched and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching that has the greatest tendency to do this.[17]

He also taught that the preacher should not be devoid of emotion in his presentation. In Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival, Edwards argued in favor of the preacher speaking to affect his hearers’ emotions:

I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided that they are affected with nothing but the truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.[18]

In his Distinguishing Marks, he criticized ministers for speaking of dreadful things without emotions and gestures appropriate to those words. When the preacher does so, “his behavior and manner of speaking contradict” his words, and “shew that the preacher don’t think so; so that he defeats his purpose.”[19]

Finally, there are two pieces of evidence in the manuscript library itself. First, no explanation exists for the change in the size of note paper used by Edwards after arriving at Northampton other than a desire on the part of Edwards to appear more “free” in his delivery. When he came to Northampton in 1726, he changed the size of the paper on which he wrote his sermons from octavo to the much smaller duodecimo. Ian Murray noted that “his sermon ‘booklet’ became about 3-7/8 inches by 4-1/8 inches, a size which could be ‘palmed,’ almost unseen, in his hand.” He suggested:

The obvious explanation for this is that he did not mean to parade his use of notes. Such an exercise would have been pointless had the people seen him reading word for word from an uplifted manuscript.[20]

Second, and even more conclusive, is Edwards’s shift, around 1741, away from writing out his manuscripts in full to simply outlining the leading thoughts.[21]

So what does this have to do with Edwards as a model for doctrinal preaching? Simply this – there is more to doctrinal preaching than simply preaching doctrine! There is a great tendency and danger among modern preachers who have come to understand and embrace the doctrines of grace to think that doctrinal preaching is merely the communication of theological truths. And Jonathan Edwards is usually presented as the example that “if you just preach doctrine, even while reading your manuscript in a monotone voice, you’ll be preaching doctrinal sermons.” Such is certainly not the case and, I am convinced from my study of Edwards that doctrinal preaching must be preaching, not teaching or it will fail to accomplish what Edwards did with his preaching.

Three Observations …

Allow me to make three general observations that might help us to understand how Edwards might serve as a model for doctrinal preaching in the twenty-first century.[22]

1. Doctrinal Preaching must be Relevant to be effective.

2. Doctrinal Preaching must be Concrete, not abstract to be understood.

3. Doctrinal Preaching must be Personal and Passionate to be powerful.

Relevant Doctrinal Preaching

Unfortunately, much of what is called “doctrinal preaching” today may be solid doctrinally, but it all too often fails to be relevant to contemporary audiences. One secret to Edwards’s success as a doctrinal preacher was his ability to preach doctrine in a way that was relevant to the needs and concerns of his congregation.

To this end, Edwards was not only concerned about doctrine, he was concerned to know how to best communicate it to his listeners. According to Wilson Kimnash: “After theology, Edwards thought most about expression: what is language, how operates on the mind, and how its resources might be variously exploited.”[23] In his sermons, he was more interested in persuasion than he was in theological expression. He labored to prove his points and used a variety of rhetorical devices to demonstrate them to his congregation. In fact, in comparison with the sermons of his father and grandfather, it is obvious that he simplified his sermon methods, making them easier to follow.[24]

Such was the concern of all the great Puritan preachers. They wanted to be certain that what they preached was clearly understood by the audience they hoped to reach. Richard Baxter, in his Reformed Pastor, points out this aim of Puritan preaching:

It is no small matter to stand up in the face of a congregation, and deliver a message of salvation or damnation as from the living God …. It is no easy matter to speak so plain, that the ignorant may understand us; and so seriously that the deadest hearts may feel us; and so convincingly, that the contradicting cavilers may be silenced.[25]

The Puritan emphasis on relevance can be seen in their development of what came to be called the “Plain Style” of preaching.[26] Like most of the Puritans before him, Edwards usually divided his sermons into three major sections – text, doctrine, and application or “uses.”[27] The “text” was usually the shortest in length. In this section, Edwards would put the text or verse of scripture in its context, explain any biblical questions, and suggest its importance for believers today.

Next, he followed with “the doctrine” in which he would set forth a central doctrinal truth followed by a number of propositions designed to prove the truth of the doctrine that arose from the text. The “doctrine” section also included various objections to the doctrine that he had set forth along with his corresponding answers. Edwards’s attempt to be relevant in his doctrinal preaching is also seen in this section of his sermons. Through this section, Edwards carefully and completely selected and arranged propositions that logically lead his listeners to affirm the truth of the central doctrine he had set forth. In addition to his propositions, he was always careful to “think with his listeners,” anticipating their objections to his doctrinal propositions and providing carefully reasoned and illustrated answers to those objections.

In the cover of his “Commonplace Book,” Edwards had placed a list of 21 rules for preaching, many which show his great concern to be relevant in his preaching. For example, in Rule #5, he reminds young preachers “not to insert disputable things” that may be exceedingly difficult for his hearers to grasp. Rule #7 contains a caution to “take special care that the matter be so stated that it shall be seen most clearly and distinctly by everyone ….” In Rule #8, he recommends, “In the course of reasoning not to pretend any thing to be more certain than every one will plainly see it is ….” In Rules #9 and #21, Edwards cautions against the use of theological terms where they might not be easily understood by the congregation: “as much as I can to avoid terms of art, to be very moderate in the use of terms of art [the theological arts]. Let it not look as if I were much read or were conversant with books of the learned world.”[28] In other words, Edwards preached doctrinally and theologically, but always with an eye to what his congregation could easily understand. He realized that a sermon was not a lecture on theology and he labored to make clear and logical points to his congregation.[29]

The final section of his sermons was the “uses” or application. Like the Puritans before him, the section called “uses,” “improvements,” or applications often formed the major part of his sermon. In this section, Edwards worked diligently to provide practical applications to show how the doctrines he had advanced could and should be lived out in daily lives. This area of his sermons is the most personal and passionate, as he directs specific applications to specific situations and groups in the congregation. The language of the application is plainly personal, evidenced by his constant use of the second person plural, “you.” We will deal more directly with this when we speak about “Personal and Passionate” preaching. But, suffice it to say, that clearly Edwards’s emphasis on the “application” section of his sermons indicates that he was mostly concerned that the doctrines he preached might be relevant and useful to those who heard him preach.

While modern preachers may or may not choose to use Edwards’s structure of Text, Doctrine, and Application in their doctrinal preaching, there are still many things that we can learn from how Edwards fashioned his sermons so that they might be relevant to his listeners. First, like Edwards, we should make certain that the bulk of our message in concerned with helping our people understand how these doctrines affect their lives today. If we fail to do so, then our doctrinal preaching, no matter how orthodox, and no matter how accepted by our people, will have little impact on their lives. Second, we need to spend as little time as possible dealing with the intricacies of the text. While references to other theologians and explanations of Greek and Hebrew terminology can be helpful at times, Edwards believed that these should be used sparingly, lest our people get the idea that theology is not for them; it is only for those conversant in the original languages and deeply schooled in theology. Finally, we must spend much time discovering the doctrinal truths in every passage we preach. And we must spend much time thinking through the logic of those doctrines and what objections might be raised to those truths. And we must strive to be clear in our explanations, so that even the youngest hearer and the newest believer may be able to grasp both the truth and the significance of that doctrine for his life today. We must be relevant in our doctrinal preaching if we are going to follow in the footsteps of Jonathan Edwards!

Concrete not Abstract

If Puritan preaching was to be clear rather than abstract, it had to be well illustrated. Puritan doctrinal sermons were well received by their listeners because they were well illustrated.

According to John Piper, Edwards labored over language and over images and metaphors because he was greatly concerned that he could communicate the “reality of what he saw in the Scripture.”[30] Take for example, his illustration of the enjoyment of God compared to all other enjoyments in his sermon, “The Christian Pilgrim:”

The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean. [31]

In his illustrations, he sought to make that which was abstract concrete. For example, he described explaining the miracle of regeneration to be like giving a blind man a jar of honey and asking him to describe it. Like conversion, describing honey can only be done by a blind man by experiencing its taste.[32]

His famous sermon, “Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God,” was highly effective because of its powerful illustrations. Even a cursory reader of Edwards cannot forget his illustration of the sinner as that “loathsome spider” dangling by a thread over an open fire, held only by the merciful hand of God. But that sermon is full of other, equally poignant illustrations. Listen to a few of them:

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a fallen rock.

Or consider the following:

There are black clouds of God’s wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder; and were it not for the restraining hand of God, it would immediately burst forth upon you. The sovereign pleasure of God, for the present, stays his rough wind; otherwise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind, and you would be like the chaff of the summer threshing floor.

Listen to one more:

The wrath of God is like great waters that are damned for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose…. and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are constantly rising, and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, that holds the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward. If God should only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power.[33]

Edwards’s sermons were filled with vibrant illustrations of doctrinal truths. And the doctrinal preaching of Edwards was powerful because these illustrations made them concrete, not abstract. As Piper notes: “Experience and Scriptures teach that the heart is most powerfully touched, not when the mind is entertaining abstract ideas, but when it is filled with vivid images of amazing reality.”[34] Jonathan Edwards was a master of utilizing images and illustrations to make clear the reality of doctrinal truths.

Personal and Passionate Preaching

Most of all, Edwards was passionate preacher. He understood that true preaching consisted not merely of what the preacher says, but how he presents it. The message must be passionate if it is going to be received by the congregation. One contemporary of Edwards suggested that his success in the pulpit was “the power of presenting an important truth before an audience, with overwhelming weight of argument, and with such intenseness of feeling, that the whole soul of the speaker is thrown into every part of the conception and delivery; so that the solemn attention of the whole audience is riveted, from beginning to the close, and impressions are left that cannot be effaced.”[35]

Edwards understood from the preaching manuals of Perkins, Ames, and other Puritans that preaching must reach the affections and not just the mind. [36] To preach persuasively, the preacher must first believe and feel intensely he preaches, and secondly, he must communicate his feelings with the message so that the hearers also experience the reality of the message in his heart.

Thus the first and most important step in making a doctrinal message personal and penetrating is to have it applied to one’s own heart. Richard Baxter reminded Puritan preachers of this essential reality: “If the work of the Lord be not soundly done upon your own hearts, how can you expect that he will bless your labours for the effecting of it in other?”[37] Edwards likewise understood the importance of preaching the doctrines of scripture with a tender heart. In fact, Piper suggests that one of the secrets of Edwards’s power in the pulpit was his tender-hearted brokenness which enabled him to address even the most difficult personal and theological matters before his congregation. They listened to his doctrines because they knew they came from his own heart. Piper concludes, “Difficult doctrinal messages are best received by congregations when they are preached by ministers whose hearts love, not only the doctrines they preach, but the people they preach them to.” If we are to follow Edwards’s model for doctrinal preaching, we too must seek to have a heart that is tender before the Word of God and before the people of God.

But the doctrinal preacher must not only feel the message in his own heart, he must also communicate it to his hearers with passion and power. Much of the passion in his preaching came out of his own understanding of the role of the affections in religion. Edwards believed that decisions were made in the realm of the affections, not in the realm of the mind. Knowledge and reason were useful in reaching the affections, but the goal of preaching for Edwards was to touch the heart. This view of preaching, however, was not to be confused with the emotional preaching of the enthusiasts. Edwards was opposed to the style of preaching of both the rationalists and the enthusiasts. The rationalists, he contended, neglected the affections; the enthusiasts neglected reason. Edwards effectively combined both[38] exemplifying the Puritan emphasis on both “heat and light” in the pulpit.

Edwards believed that the primary aim of preaching was to “stir up holy affections.” “If true religion lies much in the affections, we may infer, that such a way of preaching the word … as has a tendency deeply to affect the hearts of those who attend … is much to be desired.”[39] In response to the criticisms of Charles Chauncy against some of the emotional preaching of the First Great Awakening, Edwards argued:

I don’t think ministers are to be blamed for raising the affections of their peers to high, if that which they are affected with be only that which is worthy of affection, and there affections are not raised be on the proportion to their importance …. I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided they are affected with nothing but truth to, and with affections that not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.[40]

In an ordination sermon in 1744, Edwards warned pastors about preaching messages full of light without heat:

“If the minister has light without heat, and entertains his auditory with learned discussions, without … any appearance of fervency of spirit, and zeal for God and the good of souls, he may gratify itching ears, and fill the heads of his people with empty notions; but it will not be very likely to reach their hearts, or save their souls.”[41]

Edwards rightly concluded: “Our people don’t so much need to have their heads stored as to have their hearts touched and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching that has the greatest tendency to do this.[42]

Edwards’s doctrinal sermons were also effective because they were intensely personal. His sermons were filled with passionate pleas to his people to respond to the truth of scripture. In his sermon, “Pressing into the Kingdom,” he pleaded with his people, “now if you have any sort prudence for your own salvation, and had not a mind to go to hell, improved this season! Now is the acceptable time! Now is the day of salvation … do not harden your hearts that such a day is this!”[43]

Listen to the personal appeals in this sermon:

Are there not many here will live long in this world and are not to this day born-again? … oh, sirs, your case, in an especial manner, is extremely dangerous. Your guilt and hardness of heart is extremely great. Do not you see how generally persons of your years are passed over and left, in the present remarkable and wonderful dispensations of God’s mercy? You had need to consider yourselves, and awake thoroughly out of sleep. You cannot bear the fierceness and wrath of the infinite God. And you, young men and young women, will you neglect this precious season which you now enjoy, when so many others of your age are renouncing all youthful vanities, and flocking to Christ? You especially have now an extraordinary opportunity; but if you neglected, it will soon be with you as with those persons who spent all the precious days of youth in sin, and are now come to such a dreadful pass and blindness and hardness.[44]

Or consider the strong personal appeals in his famous “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God:”

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider’s web would have to stop a fallen rock.[45]

Much of what passes as doctrinal preaching today lacks this strong personal element. It generally conveys doctrinal truths apart from a clear, personal application. When you read the sermons of Edwards, although they are packed with theological content, you do not get the idea you are reading a theological treatise, but that Edwards is applying every truth directly to your own heart and life. Such is the essence of true doctrinal preaching.

If we are going to recapture Edwards’s gift of powerful doctrinal preaching for today, we too must preach with passionate hearts, understanding that we are not giving theology lectures, but appealing to men to live their lives according to the truths revealed in God’s Word. Doctrinal preaching that ignores the heart will become cold and boring, even when those great truths are most accurately set forth. As a passionate doctrinal preacher, Jonathan Edwards remains one of the greatest America has ever produced and is certainly a worthy model for our doctrinal preaching today.

[1] Ralph Turnbull, Jonathan Edwards, the Preacher (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958), 57.

[2]One such example is Henry C. Brown, Jr., and H. Gordon Clinard, and Jesse J. Northcutt, Steps to the Sermon (Nashville: Broadman, 1963), 186.

[3]Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 230.

[4]Edward M. Collins, Jr., “The Rhetoric of Sensation Challenges the Rhetoric of the Intellect: An Eighteenth Century Controversy,” in Sermons in American History: Selected Issues in the American Pulpit, 1630-1967, ed. Dewitt Holland, (New York: Abingdon, 1969), 102.

[5]John H. Gerstner, The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, (Powhatan, VA: Berean Publications, 1991), 1:480. Emphasis mine.

[6]Lewis Drummond, The Awakening That Must Come (Nashville: Broadman, 1978), 13.

[7]Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 1:clxxxix. Emphasis in the original. Cited as Edwards, Works.

[8] Jim Ehrhard, “A Critical Analysis of the Tradition of Jonathan Edwards as a Manuscript Preacher,” Westminster Theological Journal 60 (1998):74-75.

[9]Edwards A. Park, ed., The Works of Samuel Hopkins Volume I (Boston: Doctrinal Tract and Book Society, 1865), 13-50. Cited as Hopkins, Works.

[10]Iain H. Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), 190.

[11]Hopkins, Works, 1:39.

[12]Ibid, 38-39.

[13]Ibid, 49.

[14]Solomon Stoddard, The Defects of Preachers Reproved in a Sermon Preached at Northampton, May 19, 1723 (New London, CT: n.p., 1724; reprint, Ames, IA: International Outreach, n.d.), 20-21. Emphasis in the original.

[15]Edwards, Works, 1:242.

[16]John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 82. Cited as Piper, Supremacy.

[17]C. C. Goen, The Great Awakening, vol. 4 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards , ed. John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 388. Cited as Yale 4. Emphasis mine.

[18]Ibid, 387.

[19]Ibid, 247-48.

[20]Murray, 189.

[21]Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 364, note 21. Stout also notes that Wilson H. Kimnach traced this shift of Edwards toward abbreviated sermon outlines in “The Literary Techniques of Jonathan Edwards,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1971), 136, 176-77. One example would be ordination sermons. Helen Petter Westra provides such an example in her “Jonathan Edwards on ‘Faithful and Successful Ministers,’” Early American Literature 23 (1988): 286.

[22] John Piper has perhaps the best treatment of the value of Edwards’s sermons for preaching today in his book, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (op.cit). In his final chapter, he presents ten excellent characteristics in Edwards’s preaching that are helpful for preachers today.

[23] Wilson H. Kimnach, Sermons and Discourses, 1720-1723, vol. 10 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 3.

[24] John Hannah, “Jonathan Edwards and the Art of Effective Communication,” Reformation and Revival 11 (Fall 2002), 114-15.

[25] Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor, ed. William Brown (5th ed. 1656; reprint, Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1979), 170. Emphasis mine.

[26] See Perry Miller, The New England Mind (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 336; Horton Davies, The Worship of English Puritans (1948, reprint, Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1997), 182-203; Davies, The Worship of the American Puritans (1990, reprint, Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1999), 79-123; Peter Lewis, The Genius of Puritanism (1977, Morgan, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1996), 19-52; and Samuel T. Logan, “The Hermeneutics of Jonathan Edwards,” Westminster Theological Journal 43 (Fall 1980), 85-90 for discussions of this style.

[27] The doctrine and application sections have numbered subheads all related to proving the single central idea or doctrine that comes out of the text. Most of his sermons were topical in nature. The only expository group of sermons seems to be Edwards preaching through 1Corinthians 13, published as Charity and its Fruits. All of the material in his subheads were designed to support improved the central doctrine. In the subheads, he used of variety of sources to drive home the meaning of the text, including scripture references, theology, illustrations, and applications. See Hannah, 119-20.

[28] Cited in Turnbull, 56.

[29] For example, while it is clear for the catalogs of his books that he himself was thoroughly conversant with such matters, citations of the church fathers or citations of Hebrew, Greek or Latin terms are almost entirely absent in Edwards’ preaching. Ibid., 61.

[30] John Piper, “The Pastor as A Theologian: Reflections on the Ministry of Jonathan Edwards,” Message from the Bethlehem Pastors Conference, April 15, 1988, http://www.desiringgod.org/library/biographies/88edwards.html. Cited as Piper, Theologian.

[31] Edwards, Edwards, Works II: 244.

[32] Hannah, 117.

[33] Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Listed on Teaching Resources Website at http://www.teachingresources.org/insights/Jonathan%20Edwards/Sinners%20in%20the%20Hands,%20Edwards.htm. Cited as Edwards, Sinners.

[34] Piper, Supremacy, 88. Emphasis mine.

[35] “Memoirs,” Edwards, Works. I:cxc. Emphasis mine.

[36] Turnbull, 33-41.

[37] Baxter, 80.

[38] Hannah, 118-19.

[39] “A Treatise on Religious Affections,” Edwards, Works, I:244.

[40] “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” Yale, 4:387.

[41] “The True Excellency of a Gospel Minister,” Edwards, Works, II:958.

[42]Yale 4:388.

[43] “Pressing into the Kingdom,” Edwards, Works, I:659.

[44] Cited in J. A. Caiger, “Preaching—Puritan and Reformed,” [I have lost the reference note and will restore it as soon as I find it.].

[45] Edwards, Sinners, op.cit.

A Critical Analysis of the Tradition of Edwards as a Manuscript Preacher

Although the sermons and the writings of Jonathan Edwards have been given much consideration through the years, the preaching of Edwards has been largely ignored. While none doubt the persuasive power of the words he used, many have advanced caricatures of him as a boring manuscript preacher.

Indeed it is rare to find any account that does not advance this interpretation of Edwards’s preaching. Most textbooks on homiletics cite him as an example of one who preached powerfully although lamely dependent on his manuscript.[1] Popular authors, such as Peter Marshall, Jr., present the same picture of Edwards, “who delivered his sermons in a monotone, with his eyes never straying from the back wall of the church.”[2]

Many church historians and theologians render similar views of the preaching of Edwards. Alan Heimert, in his Religion and the American Mind, suggested:

He spoke in measured tones and just stared at the bell rope as though he would stare it off, and worked his effects, it was thought, through the sheer power of his doctrines and language.[3]

Edward Collins concurred noting that Edwards “did not use gestures, and a heavy dependence on his manuscript prevented any rapport with his congregation.”[4] Even John Gertsner, a prominent writer on the theology of Edwards, provided a similar assessment:

From the standpoint of delivery, he possibly was one of the most mediocre the Church has ever known. He had none of the grand eloquence of George Whitefield or that powerful or sonorous voice. Apparently there were no real gestures, just a solemn reading of the manuscript most of the time, much to the chagrin of his senior pastor, Solomon Stoddard.[5]

Likewise, Lewis Drummond, in his work on revival, concluded:

We would hardly have called him a dynamic preacher. He laboriously read every word from a manuscript. Not only that, his eyesight and writing were so poor he held the manuscript only inches from his nose, rarely looking at the congregation.[6]

That Edwards read his sermons painstakingly from a manuscript appears to be the consensus of historians and theologians alike.

Interestingly, a few current writers have begun to suggest the possibility that Edwards may not have always used a manuscript in preaching. John Smith, in his Jonathan Edwards: Puritan, Preacher, Philosopher, concluded that “Edwards, for the most part, read his sermons, although there are indications that he would have liked to speak extemporaneously.”[7] Even Wilson Kimnach, in his excellent introduction to Volume 10 in the Yale Edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, pondered the possibility that Edwards might not have been exclusively a manuscript preacher:

Given the preference of JE’s father and grandfather Stoddard for extempore or memoriter preaching, one must assume that JE made an initial effort to preach without relying upon his manuscript, at least for some months. There are in fact a number of formal or stylistic devices in the early sermons (discussed in the appropriate places) which might have functioned as mnemonic aids also. On the other hand, there is no record that JE ever preached without his manuscript.[8]

In spite of such indications, the only author to date who has been willing to confront the persistent idea of Edwards as a manuscript preacher is Iain Murray in his biography of Jonathan Edwards. However, Murray merely lists some facts in passing that bring this supposition into doubt.[9]

This article focuses on the examination of Edwards’s manuscripts[10] and other contemporary data to provide a more accurate picture of the preaching of Edwards. This process will include an examination of the historical situation in which Edwards preached, a discussion of eyewitness accounts, and an investigation of his views on preaching and his impact on the preaching of some who were tutored in his methods. Finally, it will consider the manuscript evidence that militates against the traditional view of Edwards’s preaching.

I. THE GREAT AWAKENING SETTING

If Jonathan Edwards preached laboriously from a manuscript as many have asserted, then he would definitely be the great exception to the preaching pattern of all the other awakening preachers. Indeed, this exception is often cited by writers of the First Great Awakening to emphasize that the revivals that occurred were not dependent, to any degree, upon the style of some of the preachers in that Awakening.

However, one must acknowledge that the Great Awakening was stimulated, at least in part, by a new approach in preaching.[11] Alan Heimert noted that the Great Awakening came as the result of new ideas in theology as well as some new approaches in preaching: “Not just the old divinity, but the old homiletics, had proven ‘stale and unsavory’ to American >palates.’”[12] Between the time of the ministry of John Cotton and that of Jonathan Edwards, a dramatic shift in preaching had occurred. By the third and fourth generation in New England, preaching had shifted to a “more logical style”[13] with an increasing number of ministers reading their sermons to their congregations.[14]

The most noticeable impact on preaching occurred with the arrival of George Whitefield from England. His preaching provided a stark contrast to that of most Congregational ministers, especially his preaching without notes:

Throughout his journeys, Whitefield urged ministers and aspiring ministers to “preach without notes,” and criticized recorded [written] sermons as a deficiency in faith: “I think the ministers preaching almost universally by note, is a mark that they have, in great measure, lost the old spirit of preaching. Though they are not to be condemned who use notes, yet it is a symptom of the decay of religion, when reading sermons becomes fashionable where extempore preaching did once almost universally prevail.”[15]

Harry S. Stout notes that while Whitefield’s statement may be an exaggeration, he “was correct in how many New England ministers” had come to read their sermons verbatim.[16]

Donald Weber’s studies led him to conclude that Edwards and other “New Light” preachers, “changed from linear narrative to fragmentary, disfluent modes—and all at virtually the same historical juncture.”[17] Certainly Edwards was impressed by the preaching of Whitefield and may have modified his preaching after Whitefield’s visit to his congregation.[18]

However, there is evidence that Edwards, like Whitefield and other awakening preachers, already preached in an extemporaneous style.[19] He was not the exception to the pattern of preaching in the Great Awakening, but, instead, he preached messages from his heart that had great impact on his listeners.

II. EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS

But what can be said about all the eyewitness accounts that verify that Edwards preached from a manuscript in a monotone? In reality, there are no such accounts of Edwards reading his sermons.[20] It appears that the idea of Edwards preaching with his manuscript held up close to his eyes originated in the writings of Serno E. Dwight over two generations later. In 1829, Dwight mentioned that “He wrote his sermons and in so fine and so illegible a hand that they could be read only by being brought near to the eye.”[21] From this statement, inference has been made to Edwards’s preaching method. However, Dwight only makes reference to the writing of sermons, not necessarily to Edwards’s preaching it.

One reference to Edwards’s preaching comes from a contemporary preacher, Thomas Prince. Prince described Edwards as

a preacher of a low and moderate voice, a natural way of delivery; and without any agitation of body, or anything else in the manner to excite attention; except his habitual and great solemnity, looking and speaking as in the presence of God, and with a weighty sense of the matter delivered.[22]

While Prince’s account tells much about Edwards’s manner of delivery, it says nothing about his use of a manuscript.

Most point to Gordon Clark’s reference to Edwards reading his sermon at Enfield, Connecticut. However, that account does not square with the manuscript evidence.[23] In examining the manuscripts at Yale, it becomes clear that Edwards delivered the sermon twice. It was first delivered to his own congregation in Northampton in June 1741 with little effect. When requested to speak at the area conference in Enfield, Connecticut, the following month (July 8, 1741), Edwards preached the same sermon with dramatically different results.[24] While tradition holds that he delivered this particular sermon by reading from his manuscript in a monotone voice, the manuscripts at Yale reveal that the discourse was not entirely written out, so that the tradition is hardly to be relied on.[25]

Actually, the documents at Yale contain both a full manuscript and an outline. Based upon an examination of the ink and the handwriting, Kimnach assessed that the manuscript preceded the outline. He concluded:

The thought arises that JE, under the influence of Whitefield, might have made an outline of his Northampton sermon for the Enfield performance. With the outline, his preaching would necessarily have been more “spontaneous.”[26]

He also noted that “certain discrepancies between the outline and the original sermon . . . suggest that Edwards may have made up the outline from memory.”[27] Clearly, at least the Enfield sermon does not fit the tradition of Edwards as a manuscript preacher.

Perhaps the account of the preaching of Edwards left by Samuel Hopkins provides the most accurate information. Hopkins was a contemporary of Edwards, who lived in his home and preached in his church.[28] In 1764, Hopkins published a biographical work on Edwards, “The Life and Character of the late Reverend, Learned, and Pious Mr. Jonathan Edwards, President of the College of New Jersey; Together with Extracts from his Private Writings and Diary.”[29] Hopkins even pastored a church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, during the time Edwards was in Stockbridge. His biographer noted that the distance was only “about one hour’s ride” away and that the two spent much time together.[30] Through that relationship, he had a number of occasions to hear Edwards preach.[31]

Hopkins suggested that “nearly twenty years after he first began to preach” (i.e., approximately 1742), Edwards stopped writing his sermons in full.[32] Although Murray provided no citation for this information, Hopkins may have deduced this from his examination of Edwards’s manuscripts which were, “by request of Mr. Edwards . . . placed in the hands of Mr. Hopkins.”[33] Regardless, Hopkins’s observations agree with the manuscripts presently in the collection at Yale.[34]

In all of Hopkins’s accounts of the preaching of Edwards, no reference is made to his reading from a manuscript in a monotone. He did note that

President Edwards, during the later years of his life, recommended the practice of preaching without notes altogether, but not without writing the sermons, which were to be delivered in the great degree memoriter.[35]

Hopkins himself struggled with this type of preaching, which he felt followed the pattern of his mentor, Edwards.[36] His journal reveals that he heard Edwards often and assessed his preaching to be anything but boring and lifeless. Consider the following excerpt:

Sunday, July 24, 1743. Heard Mr. Edwards preach all day. I have been very dull and senseless; much discouraged about preaching. Hearing Mr. Edwards makes me ashamed of myself.[37]

Obviously, Hopkins, who would certainly not be regarded as a monotone, manuscript preacher, often became discouraged as he compared his preaching with that of Edwards.

With regard to Edwards’s delivery, Hopkins makes some comments which may help to put the preaching of Edwards in perspective. Hopkins recorded:

He read most that he wrote: still he was not confined to them; and if some thoughts were suggested to him while he was preaching, which did not occur to him when writing, and appeared pertinent, he would deliver them with as great propriety and fluency, and often with greater pathos, and attended with a more sensibly good effect on his hearers than what he had written.[38]

While this clearly refutes the idea of Edwards as a manuscript preacher, it also reveals that Edwards did utilize notes in the pulpit. The manuscript evidence at Yale concurs with this assessment, especially with regard to the size of Edwards’s “palm notes” as shall be examined later.

III. MODELS PROVIDED BY FATHER AND GRANDFATHER

The two main influences upon the preaching of Edwards were his father, Timothy Edwards, and his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard.[39] Both provided extemporaneous models of preaching for young Jonathan. Timothy Dwight noted that Timothy Edwards “always preached extemporaneously, and, until he was upwards of seventy, without noting down the heads of the discourse.”[40] Kimnach suggested that Edwards’s grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, employed the same pattern of preaching, as did Timothy Edwards.[41] Both of these men provided models for the preaching of Jonathan Edwards.

In 1726, Jonathan Edwards came to Northampton to serve as the assistant to Stoddard. Just three years prior to his coming to that church, Solomon Stoddard preached his famous sermon, “The Defects of Preachers Reproved,” in which he soundly condemned the reading of sermons.[42] In that sermon, he noted that it was not the pattern of the prophets to read their prophecies. Then he summarized his view of such “reading preachers:”

The reading of sermons is a dull way of preaching. Sermons when read are not delivered with authority and in an affecting way. . . . When sermons are delivered without notes, the looks and the gesture of the minister, is a great means to command attention and stir up affection. Men are apt to be drowsy in hearing the word, and the liveliness of the preacher is a means to stir up the attention of the hearers, and beget suitable affection in them. Sermons that are read are not delivered with authority, they savor the sermons of the scribes, Matthew 7:29. Experience shows that sermons read are not so profitable as others.[43]

This did not mean, however, that ministers should preach without adequate preparation. Stoddard usually wrote out his entire sermon manuscript and committed it largely to memory before his delivery.[44] Additionally, he was not opposed to a preacher having some notes to aid his delivery.[45] He disapproved of ministers who had to “carry a quiver full of them” into the pulpit each Sunday.[46]

Scholars have little doubt that Stoddard provided a preaching pattern for young Edwards.[47] John Smith even suggested that Edwards may have been under some pressure from his grandfather “not to read his sermons, but to preach more freely.”[48] Even Kimnach stated, “one must assume that JE made an initial effort to preach without relying upon his manuscript, at least for some months.” Yet he concludes that this attempt was unsuccessful, and that Edwards quickly returned to his style of manuscript preaching.[49] However, manuscript evidence indicates that the opposite occurred. Beginning in 1741, Edwards ceased to write his sermons in full, writing only certain sections and leaving other sections to be “filled in” while speaking.[50] Kimnach noted that Edwards was only outlining his “application” sections as early as 1729.[51]

Such a pattern does not represent a shift back to manuscript reading, but an increasing tendency toward a more extemporaneous style. One must seriously question the tradition of Edwards as a “reading preacher” being called to Stoddard’s church so soon after Stoddard’s denunciation of manuscript preaching. Thus Iain Murray rightly inquired, “Is it likely that only three years later [following the “Defects” sermon] he would have approved of a colleague who could only read?”[52]

IV. EDWARDS’S VIEWS ON PREACHING

Another area that must be considered is Edwards’s own views about preaching. He taught that “God has ordained that his Word be opened, applied and set home upon men in preaching,” and that God desires “a particular and lively application of his Word.”[53] According the Murray, Edwards “believed that preaching is NOT the equivalent to reading a book.”[54]

Although his sermons provided deep, intellectual treatments of topics, he placed great emphasis on preaching affecting the heart.[55] Edwards himself stated:

Our people don’t so much need to have their heads stored as to have their hearts touched and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching that has the greatest tendency to do this.[56]

He also taught that the preacher should not be devoid of emotion in his presentation. In Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival, Edwards argued in favor of the preacher speaking to affect his hearers’ emotions:

I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as I possibly can, provided that they are affected with nothing but the truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with.[57]

In his Distinguishing Marks, he criticized ministers for speaking of dreadful things without emotions and gestures appropriate to those words. When the preacher does so, “his behavior and manner of speaking contradict” his words, and “shew that the preacher don’t think so; so that he defeats his purpose.”[58]

Another way to assess Edwards’s views on preaching would be to examine what he taught others about preaching. Stout noted that Edwards often invited students to his home for “post-graduate training.”[59] He suggested that Edwards directly influenced a generation of extemporaneous preachers:

Through his printed sermons and the school of prophets established in his household Edwards taught a generation of evangelical ministers how to articulate their extemporaneous sermons in glowing terms that warmed the hearts of their listeners.[60]

Two of the more prominent men tutored by Edwards were Joseph Bellamy and Samuel Hopkins. Both preached extemporaneously. Hopkins probably spent the greatest amount of time with Edwards. He came to live with him in 1742 and continued his education with him off and on until 1743.[61] Thereafter, he pastored in close proximity to Edwards and continued to spend much time with him.

Hopkins’s Works also provide a number of insights about the influence of Edwards on his preaching. He noted that:

President Edwards, during the later years of his life, recommended the practice of preaching without notes altogether, but not without writing of sermons, which were to be delivered in the great degree memoriter.[62]

Upon this recommendation, Hopkins almost exclusively preached extemporaneous sermons. In his Works, he summarized his life of preaching:

I have not been confined to my notes in preaching, except for a short time, when I first began; and have not generally written my sermons in full length, but only the heads of them, and some short hints to suggest ideas, which were to be mentioned under the general heads.

In passing on his insights about preaching, Hopkins suggested the following for young preachers:

I think it would be best, in general, to write all the sermon, and commit it to memory, with an allowance to deviate in some instances from what has been written, and to add to it what may be suggested to the mind in delivery. If this practice be diligently followed for a time, the preacher, it is expected, will be able not only to preach without notes, but his mind will be so furnished with the knowledge of divinity, that he will be able to preach without writing his sermons.[63]

This certainly appears to reflect something of the process through which Edwards himself passed: beginning by writing out his manuscripts in full, memorizing the greater portion of it, and eventually coming to write out mainly outlines of his thoughts to enhance his speaking extemporaneously.

V. MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE

Perhaps the most persuasive evidence against the traditional view of Edwards’s preaching comes from the manuscript evidence at Yale. Two facts lend credence to the idea that Edwards preached largely extemporaneously.

First, no explanation exists for the change in the size of note paper used by Edwards after arriving at Northampton other than a desire on the part of Edwards to appear more “free” in his delivery. When he came to Northampton in 1726, he changed the size of the paper on which he wrote his sermons from octavo to the much smaller duodecimo. Murray noted that “his sermon ‘booklet’ became about 3-7/8 inches by 4-1/8 inches, a size which could be ‘palmed,’ almost unseen, in his hand.” He suggested:

The obvious explanation for this is that he did not mean to parade his use of notes. Such an exercise would have been pointless had the people seen him reading word for word from an uplifted manuscript.[64]

Others agree, at least in part.

Kimnach suggested that he changed the size of his notes in part, to avoid “paper shuffling in the pulpit.”[65] He also noted that Edwards worked hard to make “the sermon as compact and efficient for pulpit use as he could.”[66] According to Winslow, “Tradition says that Jonathan Edwards placed the tiny sermon booklet in the open pulpit Bible, keeping his finger on his place.”[67] The only reason that accounts for Edwards cutting his “sermon booklets” to this new, smaller size is that he modified his pulpit notes to fit a freer delivery style of preaching after arriving in Northampton.

Second, and even more conclusive, is Edwards’s shift, around 1741, away from writing out his manuscripts in full to simply outlining the leading thoughts.[68] The Yale collection does include full manuscripts for some sermons after that period, but the majority of them are sermons preached on special occasions.[69] Some have suggested that this change in Edwards’s style occurred after Whitefield’s visit to his church in October 1740.[70]

Kimnach, based upon his examination of the manuscript evidence, observed a noticeable change in Edwards’s sermon preparation. He noted:

As the decade [of the 1740s] wears on, not only do the sermon booklets look more like bundles of waste paper and the outlines grow more and more like bare lists, but the very nature of the notation in the booklets changes. Whereas Edwards had always written in his booklets the words he expected to speak to his congregation, and even in the outline form preserved the decorum of the oration, he now began to write notes on sermons. Beside the brief notes for heads, or in place of a head, one is likely to encounter such statements as “Conclude with some consideration to enforce the whole” (Luke 12:35-36), and often there is no hint of what that consideration might be.[71]

One must not think, however, that this type of a pattern is anything “late” in Edwards’s career. Even Kimnach notes that Edwards is outlining at least the “conclusions of the Doctrine and Application divisions” as early as 1729.[72]

In spite of evidence to the contrary, Kimnach persists in his view of Edwards as a manuscript preacher. He attributed his outlining of sermons to his increasing “mastery of the pulpit” and the increasing demands on his time.[73] According to Kimnach, this should not be interpreted to mean that Edwards was in any way extemporaneous in his delivery. He concluded that descriptions of Edwards’s personality

gives little precedence for the kind of on-the-spot intellectual improvising that would be required to transform such lists into unified wholes with even a little of that old ideational richness.[74]

In other words, although the evidence might suggest a move to a more extemporaneous style, Kimnach still concluded that traditional reports about Edwards prohibits any such conclusion.

Kimnach presents at least three explanations for the manuscript evidence. First, he concluded that Edwards might have made these outlines in response to the “spontaneous” delivery that he had witnessed in Whitefield’s preaching.[75] However, Kimnach himself had noted that the manuscripts reveal that Edwards had begun to outline some parts of the conclusions and applications as early as 1729.[76] Second, Kimnach suggested that the outlines might have been “reductions” of his sermons for preaching more simply to the Indians at Stockbridge.[77] However, the outlines do not reveal any reduction of doctrinal substance to make the messages simple for the Indians.

Third, he advanced the idea that the outlines were designed by Edwards so that he could later insert other material he had gathered at the appropriate places.[78] He even suggested that the tradition of Edwards’s “pinning” himself might be mistaken. Instead, Kimnach pondered the possibility that Edwards pinned these notes into his outlines. However, no evidence exists on the manuscripts to support the idea of “pinning” notes into the outlines.

None of this provides an adequate explanation of the manuscript evidence. Additionally, it is not just that Edwards changes the written form of his notes; even his sermonic organization shows evidence of change during this period:

as he developed his sermons less and less, and gradually gave over to the outline, so he seems to have placed less and less emphasis on the old intricate relationships between the parts of the sermon. The major divisions—Text, Doctrine, Application–remain, even though the statement of doctrine tends to dissolve into a mere proposition or “three things I shall here discuss,” but the hierarchy of heads and subheads nearly vanishes, and the form becomes not an essay but a mere list of ideas on the subject. Significantly, Edwards tends to mark the “heads” of these outlines with large Roman numerals–much larger than the numerals of the written-out sermons–as if only the arbitrary march of numerals gave order to the sermon.[79]

Clearly the manuscripts of Edwards indicate a continual attempt on the part of Edwards to become more spontaneous in his delivery. The documents at Yale reveal that, especially during the time of the Great Awakening and his time at Stockbridge, he relied almost entirely upon outlines rather than manuscripts for his preaching.

VI. CONCLUSION

That Jonathan Edwards preached in a monotone from a manuscript held close to his eyes cannot be substantiated by the records which are extant. No clear eye-witness account exists that supports this tradition. Indeed, those who were closest to him and taught by him never mention his use of a manuscript in the pulpit.

The mere presence of complete manuscripts of Edwards’s sermons does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that he also preached from those manuscripts. Ralph Turnbull’s study of the preaching of Edwards brought him to such a conclusion:

The discipline of writing at the first did not mean that he always used a manuscript when in the pulpit. Most of the manuscripts left behind are in notes and outlines, so we can state that Edwards was no slave to any one method.[80]

The clear shift to outlines after 1741 also militates against the idea that he relied upon a manuscript. To hold to the traditional view of Edwards, some reasonable explanation must be provided for the outlines in the Yale collection.

While it might be possible that Edwards, the manuscript preacher, encouraged others to develop an extemporaneous style that was not his own, it appears unlikely. Instead, contemporary accounts from students such as Hopkins indicate that Edwards himself provided the model for their extemporaneous preaching.

It is even more unlikely that Edwards could have received the support of his grandfather if he had been one of those “reading preachers” about whom Stoddard preached and wrote. Further, no explanation exists for Edwards’s shift to smaller notes, called his “thumb notes” or “palm notes,” apart from the fact that he was consciously attempting to follow the pattern of his father and grandfather in presenting his messages with a degree of freedom. Everything in the Yale collection indicates that Edwards preached extemporaneously, although not completely without notes. His pulpit notes even include devices to help him emphasize various points, and his outlines often clearly indicate that he intended to speak completely extemporaneously at certain points.[81]

In light of this evidence, there appears to be no reason for continuing to hold to the idea of Edwards as a manuscript preacher. Like other preachers used mightily in the First Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards impacted lives, in part, because he delivered his sermons, not by reading them with his manuscript hiding his face, but as one speaking directly to the people urging them to act upon the message which came from a Sovereign God.

End Notes

1 One such example is Henry C. Brown, Jr., and H. Gordon Clinard, and Jesse J. Northcutt, Steps to the Sermon (Nashville: Broadman, 1963), 186.

2 Peter J. Marshall, Jr., and David B. Manuel, Jr., The Light and the Glory (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1977),

241.

3 Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 230.

4 Edward M. Collins, Jr., “The Rhetoric of Sensation Challenges the Rhetoric of the Intellect: An Eighteenth Century Controversy,” in Sermons in American History: Selected Issues in the American Pulpit, 1630-1967, ed. Dewitt Holland, (New York: Abingdon, 1969), 102.

5 John H. Gerstner, The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, (Powhatan, VA: Berean Publications, 1991), 1:480.

6 Lewis Drummond, The Awakening That Must Come (Nashville: Broadman, 1978), 13.

7 John E. Smith, Jonathan Edwards: Puritan, Preacher, Philosopher (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 139.

8 Wilson H. Kimnach, Sermons and Discourses, 1720-1723, vol. 10 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 282, note 3. Emphasis in the original. Hereafter cited as Yale 10.

9 Iain H. Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), 188-89.

10 For the purposes of this study, such manuscript evidence will be examined using the data compiled by Kimnach. Yale 10.

11 A number of authors have recently advanced this theory. See Marion D. Aldridge, “George Whitefield: The Necessary Interdependence of Preaching Style and Sermon Content to Effect Revival,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 23 (March 1980): 55-64; Donald Weber, Rhetoric and History in Revolutionary New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); and Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

12 Heimert, 160.

13 Samuel T. Logan, “The Hermeneutics of Jonathan Edwards,” Westminster Theological Seminary 43 (Fall 1980): 86-87.

14 Stout, 357-58, note 24.

13

[1]One such example is Henry C. Brown, Jr., and H. Gordon Clinard, and Jesse J. Northcutt, Steps to the Sermon (Nashville: Broadman, 1963), 186.

[2]Peter J. Marshall, Jr., and David B. Manuel, Jr., The Light and the Glory (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1977), 241.

[3]Alan Heimert, Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 230.

[4]Edward M. Collins, Jr., The Rhetoric of Sensation Challenges the Rhetoric of the Intellect: An Eighteenth Century Controversy, in Sermons in American History: Selected Issues in the American Pulpit, 1630-1967, ed. Dewitt Holland, (New York: Abingdon, 1969), 102.

[5]John H. Gerstner, The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, (Powhatan, VA: Berean Publications, 1991), 1:480.

[6]Lewis Drummond, The Awakening That Must Come (Nashville: Broadman, 1978), 13.

[7]John E. Smith, Jonathan Edwards: Puritan, Preacher, Philosopher (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 139.

[8]Wilson H. Kimnach, Sermons and Discourses, 1720-1723, vol. 10 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 282, note 3. Emphasis in the original. CIted as Yale 10.

[9]Iain H. Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987), 188-89.

[10]For the purposes of this study, such manuscript evidence will be examined using the data compiled by Kimnach. Yale 10.

[11]A number of authors have recently advanced this theory. See Marion D. Aldridge, George Whitefield: The Necessary Interdependence of Preaching Style and Sermon Content to Effect Revival, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 23 (March 1980): 55-64; Donald Weber, Rhetoric and History in Revolutionary New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); and Harry S. Stout, The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

[12]Heimert, 160.

[13]Samuel T. Logan, The Hermeneutics of Jonathan Edwards, Westminster Theological Seminary 43 (Fall 1980): 86-87.

[14]Stout, 357-58, note 24.

[15]Ibid., 192.

[16]Ibid.

[17]Weber, 11.

[18]Yale 10:122.

[19]Extemporaneous is used here and throughout to indicate a type of preaching that may utilize notes but generally provides for a free delivery.

[20]Murray, 189.

[21]Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 1:clxxxix. Emphasis in the original. CIted as Edwards, Works.

[22]C. C. Goen, The Great Awakening, vol. 4 of The Works of Jonathan Edwards , ed. John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 72. CIted as Yale 4.

[23]Ibid., 189.

[24]Ralph G. Turnbull, Jonathan Edwards: The Preacher (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1958), 100-01.

[25]Yale 10:144-45.

[26]Ibid., 145.

[27]Ibid., 146.

[28]Edwards A. Park, ed., The Works of Samuel Hopkins (Boston: Doctrinal Tract and Book Society, 1865), 13-50. CIted as Hopkins, Works.

[29]Ibid., 213.

[30]Ibid., 49.

[31]Ibid., 13-50.

[32]Murray, 190.

[33]Hopkins, Works, 1:215. There is also a description of Hopkinss efforts in attempting to edit those manuscripts. Ibid., 215-20.

[34]Yale 10:102.

[35]Hopkins, Works, 1:39.

[36]Ibid., 38-39.

[37]Ibid., 49.

[38]Murray, 190.

[39]Yale 10:10-11.

[40]Ibid., 11, note 9. Kimnach, however, notes that Timothy preached memoriter rather than extempore simply because some complete manuscripts of Timothy survive. Ibid.

[41]The outward form of his sermons is the same as that employed by Timothy Edwards. . . . Ibid., 12.

[42]That sermon was preached on May 19, 1723 and was printed on January 28, 1724. Ola Elizabeth Winslow, Jonathan Edwards: 1703-1758 (New York: Macmillian, 1940), 321, note 4.

[43]Solomon Stoddard, The Defects of Preachers Reproved in a Sermon Preached at Northampton, May 19, 1723 (New London, CT: n.p., 1724; reprint, Ames, IA: International Outreach, n.d.), 20-21. Emphasis in original.

[44]Keith J. Hardman, Seasons of Refreshing (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994), 44.

[45]Stoddard, 20.

[46]Winslow, 131.

[47]Yale 10:24.

[48]Smith, 139.

[49]Yale 10:282, note 3.

[50]Murray, 189.

[51]Yale 10:102.

[52]Murray, 188.

[53]Edwards, Works, 1:242.

[54]Murray, 188.

[55]John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 82.

[56]Yale 4:388.

[57]Ibid., 387.

[58]Ibid., 247-48.

[59]Stout, 228.

[60]Ibid., 231. Also see Teresa Toulouse, The Art of Prophesying: New England Sermons and the Shaping of Belief (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 62-65.

[61]Hopkins, Works, 1:13-35.

[62]Ibid., 39.

[63]Ibid.

[64]Murray, 189.

[65]Yale 10:101.

[66]Ibid.,7.

[67]Winslow, 131.

[68]Stout, 364, note 21. Stout also notes that Wilson H. Kimnach traced this shift of Edwards toward abbreviated sermon outlines in The Literary Techniques of Jonathan Edwards, (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1971), 136, 176-77.

[69]One example would be ordination sermons. Helen Petter Westra provides such an example in her Jonathan Edwards on Faithful and Successful Ministers, Early American Literature 23 (1988): 286. Kimnach stated: When Edwards had an extraordinary preaching occasion during the forties, such as an ordination sermon, a guest lecture, or a difficult case to put across at home, he seems to have returned to his earlier practice. . . . Yale 10:124.

[70]Yale 10:122; and Winslow, 130.

[71]Yale 10:123-24.

[72]Ibid., 102.

[73]Ibid.

[74]Ibid., 123.

[75]Ibid., 122.

[76]Ibid., 102.

[77]Ibid., 125-26.

[78]Ibid., 102.

[79]Ibid., 121.

[80]Turnbull, 99.

[81]See note 63.