RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
New England Theology
lectic. So thorough-going and minute discussion of this theme had never yet been had. It made the greatest sensation in the literary world and remains to this day the main support of Edwards' literary fame as one of the greatest of Americans.
But Edwards' strictly theological work did not stop here. In his treatise upon Original Sin he advanced a step by laying down the principle that all sin is voluntary. In this book he becomes the investigator and innovator. However 3. Original defective his definition of the word vol- ^n *n untary might be, sin consisted in choosing and choosing wrongly. While retaining the doctrine of original sin, and thus of man's connection with Adam, he thought it necessary to explain it in such a way as to give room for this new principle, which he did by substituting mediate for immediate imputation, teaching that we must consent to Adam's sin by voluntarily sinning before his sin can be imputed to us. This idea went down to his successors, as well as the idea of connection with Adam by a " divine constitution," under which idea Edwards taught a certain identity of all men with Adam, spending some energy upon a discussion of personal identity and the possibility of embracing Adam and his descendants in such identity. This treatise is, then, no mere piece of reaction. Edwards learns as he writes. What he opposes are for the most part real errors. He says nothing about other principles of 'Taylor's (whose work he is reviewing) which were later to form a large part of the working materials of the school. And he has put the theology more markedly upon an ethical basis by making corruption of nature an ethical corruption, consisting principally in deprivation of the presence of the Holy Spirit — nothing physical, nothing merely mysterious. The greatest constructive work of Edwards' life, however, was done in a little treatise, commonly left unmentioned, the Nature of Virtue, in which he arrives at the principle that benevolence is the constitutive element of true virtue. The idea is not original with him, but is derived from Hutcheson and Cumberland. But Edwards rises at once upon a plane of rational intuition upon which his predecessors had no footing. Indeed, he does not so much prove his position as unfold it. And thus beginning with the idea of harmony, which is the ideal condition of the universe, he proceeds at once to bring the idea of virtue into connection with it; and when that connection is established, his work is done. Virtue, he teaches, is something beautiful, or some kind of beauty. It is a moral kind of beauty, one belonging to the disposition and will. Nor is it any " particular " beauty, or beauty in a limited sphere, but one which is still beautiful when viewed in the most comprehensive manner. Now, " beauty does not consist in discord and dissent, but in consent and agreement; and if every intelligent being is in some way related to being in general, and is a part of the universal system of existence, and so stands in connection with the whole, what can its general and true beauty be but its union and consent with the great whole? " That is substantially the whole argument. Virtue is beauty, and beauty is harmony. Virtue, then, is harmony,
or the choice of harmony. It is agreement to being, or consent to being. This being is general being, and hence virtue is love to being in general, or disinterested benevolence. A volition is virtuous when it is the exemplification of such benevolence; an act is virtuous when it rests upon the motive of love. Both Edwards and his school thought their conception to be identical with that of Jesus when he said that the whole law hung on the two commandments, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart; and thy neighbor as thyself. This theory is the central root from which grew most that was distinctive of New England theology, and may be said to be that theology in germ; and yet its importance was not perceived by its originator, nor did he make any recognizable application of it to the system.
Thus Edwards revivified the doctrine of the new birth, introduced the work upon the theory of the will which was to occupy so much of the strength of his successors, made one application of it in the way of an improvement in the doctrine of imputation, and propounded the theory of virtue. These were his contributions of material to the New England school; but his theological work was far wider than this. Through his personal contact with a number of young minds in their formative period he did much to instil his spirit, the spirit of unfettered, rational inquiry, into the next generation of ministers, and to form a " school." Among those who resorted to his house to study theology with him for a longer or a shorter time were especially two, who remained his intimate friends and advisers throughout his life, Joseph Bellamy and Samuel Hopkins (qq.v.; see also Hopkinsianism).
2. Edwards' Successors, Bellamy and Hopkins: Bellamy fully adopted Edwards' theory of virtue, and made extensive applications of it in his principal work, True Religion Delineated (Boston, 1750). This work defines religion as consisting in conformity to the law of God and compliance with the Gospel of Christ. The law is fulfilled by love. Under the Gospel, Bellamy considers the principal points of theology, and here the effects of Edwards' influence begin to appear. Ability is emphasized, and men are exhorted to immediate repentance, as a thing wholly within their powers. Their inability is recognized, but it is an inability arising from a want of a good disposition, and therefore culpable. " The more unable to love God we are," he says, " the more are we to blame." Under original sin he says that " our corruptions " are " free, spontaneous inclinations." Election is founded upon God's goodness. In the doctrine of the atonement, Bellamy made the transition for the school from the Calvinistic theory that the sufferings of Christ were a satisfaction to justice, rendered to God as the offended party, to the Grotian theory that they are a penal example, and that God in this matter is to be considered as a moral governor. He performed a very great service also in discussing the Wisdom of God in the Permission of Sin (1758), justifying it on the ground that evil is the necessary means of the greatest good. And, above all, he so preached the Gospel, under the influence of the new conceptions, as to stir men powerfully to spiritual activity, and to
New England Theology