Search WJE Online The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University 2. Two Exemplary Preachers Perhaps the two most important influences upon Edwards' preaching style were his father and his maternal grandfather, Timothy Edwards -- 11 -- and Solomon Stoddard, the former as a living exemplar of the preacher during his son's formative years, the latter as a master preacher to the young journeyman who shared his Northampton pulpit from 1726 to 1729. Edwards doubtless received his fundamental conception of the sermon form from his father, though Stoddard, a published critic of preaching, would certainly have suggested some master strokes to the preacher who was still developing his distinctive voice in the mid-1720s. Timothy Edwards was a powerful and successful preacher, by all accounts, although his extant sermons reveal him to have been a rather pedestrian, if intelligent and correct, writer. The form illustrated in his one published sermon and in the four manuscript sermons transcribed by Stoughton in Windsor Farmes, is a conservative form (at least, for the late seventeenth century), having the three basic divisions of Text, Doctrine, and Application, each developed through a succession of brief, numbered heads. In a sermon of moderate length on Isaiah 26:9, Timothy Edwards employs no fewer than twenty-three numbered heads in the Doctrine and forty-four in the Application; moreover, many of these heads (averaging less than one hundred words each) contain numbered subheads within them. One does not move far without a "2dly" or a "3dly." The argument is abstract and unencumbered by imagery or metaphor; it is heavily laden with Scripture citations; the language is so "plain" as to be almost unnoticeable; the tone is forthright and serious, and the most obvious source of vitality is the frequent explicit references to men and events in the town. On the whole, it is a Puritan's Puritan form, and what it lacks in imagination and beauty in the superstructure, it makes up -- 12 -- in the solidity of its foundation. The young Edwards could have done worse than sit beneath his father's pulpit if he wanted to learn the fundamentals of the traditional sermon form, for the classic Perkinsean virtues are embodied in the sermons preached
there, without adulteration through imaginative innovation. Solomon Stoddard was probably the greatest man Edwards had ever met in his youth, and family pieties would have enhanced the vision, so that his going up to Northampton to serve in the pulpit with Stoddard must have been one of those nearly traumatic experiences that force the final posture from rapidly maturing youth. Stoddard was one of the great preachers of the latter days of the Massachusetts theocracy, and it was largely because of his efforts in pulpit and ecclesiastical politics that the atmosphere of theocracy lingered a little longer in the Connecticut valley than in the East. "Pope Stoddard," as he was only half-irreverently called, preached in the grand manner. Of course, the outward form of his sermons is the same as that employed by Timothy Edwards, the only notable difference being a reduced number of heads and subheads, allowing for fuller development within each head. Still, in comparison with the sermons of Jonathan Edwards, those of Stoddard are heavily structured and formally conservative. Within the formal structure, however, Stoddard ranged freely with a stylistic posture of sublime confidence. He infused the "plain style" with a strong tincture of his own personality and, being gifted with a capacity for pungent, epigrammatic expression, he created, without relying extensively on the graces of imagery and metaphor, a colloquial idiom that is still vital. One of his favorite devices is the question-answer head, which he is apt to employ in any (or all) of the main divisions of the sermon. In Stoddard's hands, this conventional device, which could easily be the most dull and pedantic of strategies, becomes a potent rhetorical tool. He speaks with the magisterial abruptness of a professor before a group of admiring students, holding the spirit of inquiry within the confines of pedagogical drill. The very momentum of successive answers to the stated question carries the minds of the auditors from stage to stage of the argument, while the simple device of the rhetorical question is manipulated to yield an impressive forensic power. 3. Q. On what Terms doth God offer Deliverance from this Captivity? -- 13 -- A. 1. Not upon the Condition of their laying down the Price of their Deliverance 2. Nor upon Condition of their Recompencing God for it afterwards 3. But on Condition of accepting it as a free Gift through Christ
A substantial portion of the argument is so structured, not by logic but by the pattern of rhetoric; however, a series of assertions structured in such a question-answer pattern has some of the inevitability of logic. Very often, moreover, the conclusion or statement of thesis in a head is vigorously propounded in an aphoristic climax, corresponding in tone to the conclusion of a syllogistic demonstration: If they were thoroughly scared, they would be more earnest in their Endeavours; Senselessness begets Slightiness. The Pretense that they make for their Dullness, is, that they are afraid there is no Hope for them but the true Reason is not that they want Hope, but they want Fears. Such expressions are not soon forgotten. Moreover, Stoddard could, and did, utilize imagery and metaphors with real art when he was so moved: But if they were afraid of Hell, they would be afraid of Sin. When their Lusts were as Spurs to stir them up to Sin, this fear would be as a Bridle to curb them in. their hearts be as hard as a stone, as hard as a piece of the nether milstone, and they will be ready to laugh at the shaking of the Spear. Men need to be terrified and have the arrows of the Almighty in them that they may be Converted. Nor is his handling of rhetorical repetition unworthy of mention. They may have a large understanding of the Gospel, yet not be set at Liberty by it. Men may be affected with it, yet not be set at -- 14 -- Liberty by it. Men may be stirred up to reform their Lives, yet not be set at Liberty. There be but a few comparatively that are set at Liberty by it, therefore examine. On the whole, Solomon Stoddard was a formally orthodox, but unusually powerful and even pontifical preacher; he was a master of the controlled tone and went beyond clarity, precision, and sincerity without losing them on his way. In addition to being an excellent example of the late Puritan preacher himself, Stoddard was a critic of preaching and a theorist in the "art of prophecying." Thus, in 1724, he
published The Defects of Preachers Reproved, a sermon which elucidates the paradoxical doctrine, "There may be a great deal of good Preaching in a Country, and yet a great want of Good preaching." What we find in this sermon is an equation of good preaching with revival preaching, an insistence upon the minister's preaching from personal experience rather than from a mere theoretical understanding, and a fervent advocacy of "hellfire" preaching. When men don't Preach much about the danger of Damnation, there is want of good Preaching. Men need to be terrified and have the arrows of the Almighty in them that they may be Converted. Ministers should be Sons of Thunder. He urges preachers to deal "roundly" with their congregations and "rebuke sharply" those who need reproof. Finally, he defends the sermon as he preached it from the accusations of a new faction arising in the East: It may be argued, that it is harder to remember Rhetorical Sermons, than meer Rational Discourses; but it may be Answered, that it is far more Profitable to Preach in the Demonstration of the Spirit, than with the enticing Words of man's wisdom. "Rational Christianity" and the essay-sermon may have been flowing with the tides into Boston harbor at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but they would not progress to the Connecticut valley if Solomon Stoddard could help it. The old Puritan sermon retained -- 15 -- the outward form of logic, but in the hands of Stoddard and his predecessors it had become a finely tuned instrument of psychological manipulation, and Stoddard was not about to trade it for what he saw as a psychologically superficial and intellectually simplistic, though stylish, mode of discourse. For Stoddard, "rhetoric" was power. That Solomon Stoddard, through his pedagogical presence, his writings, and his example, generally made a tremendous impression on Edwards is beyond doubt. For without really deviating from the sermon form that Timothy Edwards employed, Stoddard discovered hidden rhetorical resources in the "plain style" by insisting upon the evaluation of rhetoric in psychological terms that were more comprehensive and
subtle than either the old Ramean logic or the new Reason. Certainly, Edwards grappled for most of his life with rhetorical and artistic issues not to mention the ecclesiastical ones that were prompted by Stoddard. Somewhat divergent in talents and personalities, Timothy Edwards and Solomon Stoddard fortuitously complemented one another as influences upon Edwards during the years of his taking up the arts of preaching. At one significant point there was a virtual confluence of their influences: Let us labour in a very particular, convincing and awakening manner to dispense the Word of God; so to speak as tends most to reach and pierce the Hearts and Consciences, and humble the Souls of them that hear us Thus, in All the Living Must Surely Die, Timothy Edwards advises ministers to preach to the end of conversion, just as Stoddard would have them preach. In urging this goal he aligns himself with a tradition that runs through the great preachers of the Connecticut valley Hooker, Stoddard, and Jonathan Edwards in so clear and continuous a stream that it would not seem inappropriate to speak of the Connecticut Valley School of preaching. For these preachers are distinct from most of the great Boston preachers, particularly those of the second and third generations, in that they continued to attach overwhelming importance to the experience of conversion. Indeed, the attention they gave to homiletical strategies that would promote this experience in their congregations was as keen as that of the early English Puritans to promote a more activist religion. -- 16 --