The last two publications suggest the most sorrow- ful event of President Edwards's life. He w;is dis- missed from his Northampton pastorate on the 22d of June, 1750. As early as 1744 he had offended many, and among them some of the most influential families in his congregation, by certain stringent measures which he adopted in regard to alleged immoralities prevalent at Northampton. The whole parish was shaken bj' his resolute and uncompromising reproofs, and was predisposed to resist any subsequent innova- tion which he might make. His grandfather, Mr. Stoddard, had favored the principle that unconverted persons who are not inmioral have a right to partake of the Lord's Supper. The authoritative influence of Mr. Stoddard had induced not only the Northampton Church, but also many other churches, to adopt that principle. Mr. Edwards, after prolonged deliberation, opposed it. The entire community was aroused by his boldness in controverting the teachings of a man like Solomon Stoddard, "whose word was law." Af- ter a prolonged and earnest controvers}', he was eject- ed from the office which he had adorned for more than twentj^-three j'ears. He never saw occasion to change the opinions which were so obnoxious to his people ; and two years after his dismission he published a work entitled Misy-ejiresentatlon corrected and Truth vindica- ted in a Reply to Mr. Solomon Williams's Book on. Qual- ifications for Communion ; to which is added a Letter from Mr. Edwards to his late Flock at Northampton (1752). After his death, and after a disastrou.s con- troversy through the land, his prmciples prevailed among the evangelical churches.
At the present day, when the dismission of pastors is so frequent, we cannot easily imagine the mortifica- tion and injury which Edwards suff"ercd in conse- quence of his difficulties with his parish. He was in his forty-seventh j'ear, and had accumulated no prop- erty for the support of his large and expensive family. He was compelled to receive pecuniary aid from his friends in remote parts of this country and in Great
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Britain. His ■wife was a descendant from the earls of Kingston, and was a lady of rare accomplishments. The description which he wrote of Iier in her girlhood was pronounced by Dr. Chalmers to be one of the most beautiful compositions in the language. He was mar- ried to her on the 27th of Jul}', 1727, and at the time of liis dismission, his eldest son, afterwards judge Tim- othy Edwards, was about twelve years of age ; his second son, afterwards Dr. Jonathan Edwards, was about five j'ears of age ; and his youngest son, after- wards judge Pierpont Edwards, was an infant of two or three months; his third daughter, afterwards the mother of Aaron Burr, Avas in her eighteenth year ; and his fourth daughter, afterwards the mother of president Timothy Dwight, was in her sixteenth year. He had a family of three sons and seven daughters — another daughter, Jerusha, having died three years before his dismission. She was betrothed to David Brainerd, who had been a cherished inmate of her fa- ther's family.
In July, 1751, about a year after his dismission, Ed- wards was installed pastor of the small Congregational church in Stoclvbridge, Mass., and missionary of the Housatonic tribe of Indians at that place. He preach- ed extemporaneously to the Indians through an inter- preter. In this uncultivated wilderness he was sadly afflicted with the fever and ague, and other disorders incident to the new settlements. He published a characteristic sermon in 1752, entitled True Grace cHs- iinguished from the Experience of Devils. In 1754 he published the most celebrated of his works — his Essay on the Freedom of the Will. Of this essay there are conflicting interpretations. One school of interpreters contend that he believed in a literal inability of the soul to act otherwise than it does act ; another school contend that he did not believe in an inability which is nuiund and literal, but onlj' in one which is moral, figurative, "an inability improperly so called." One school contend that he believed liberty to consist in the mere power of doing what the soul has previoush' willed, of outwardly executing what the soul has an- tecedently chosen ; another school contend that he believed libertj' to consist in the power of electing either of two or more objects — such a power that men are not " at all hindered b}' any fatal necessity from doing, and even willing and choosing as they please, with full freedom ; j'ea, with the highest kind of lib- ert}' that ever was thought of, or that ever could pos- sibly enter into the heart of any man to conceive" (Letter to a Scotch theologian). One school regard Edwards as agreeing with those Calvinists wlio sup- pose that " man, in his state of innocency, had freedom and power to do that which is good and well-pleasing to God, but yet mutably so that he might foil from it," and that " man, by his fall into a state of sin, hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good ac- companying salvation ;" another school regard Ed- wards as denying tliis proposition in its literal, and aflirmiug it only in ita fgurative sense, and believing that since the Fall man has all the freedom or liberty which he ever had, or can be imagined to have. One class of critics suppose him to believe that motives are the efficient or the necessitating causes of volitions ; another class suppose him to believe that the volition is the result of motive as an occasion, rather than the necessary' effect of motive as a cause. Tlie latter class interpret his whole theoiy of the will in the light of the following remark of Edwards to the Scotch divine : '' On the contrary, I have largely declared that the connection between antecedent things and consequent ones, which takes place with regard to the acts of men's wills, wliich is called moral necessity, is called by the name oi necessity improperly, and that all such terms as must, cannot, impossible, unable, irresistible, unavoidable, invincible, etc., when applied here, are not applied in their proper signification, and are either used nonsensically and with perfect insignificance, or i