1.1. Puritanism and revivalism

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, religion in what was then British North America seemed ossified, lacking the original impetus that its earlier settlers had infused it with; particularly in the North-eastern colonies of New England (Congregationalists in Massachusetts and Connecticut) and in the middle colonies of New Jersey and Pennsylvania (Presbyterians),² where Puritanism had gained its strongest footing. Membership began to decline. The new Massachusetts Charter of 1691, which transformed the colony from a private and religiously oriented enterprise into a royal colony where franchise no longer depended on the religious profession, and a series of scandals (e.g. Salem in 1692) all eroded the prestige and credibility of Puritan institutions within the region (^{Brockway, 2003, pp. 9, 46, 201}; ^{McGrath, 2007, p. 155}; ^{Reichley, 1985, p. 61}).

Perhaps even more decisive to the substantial changes in the religious landscape that ensued, the continuous and growing influx of immigrants into the hinterland³ ―particularly of German Pietists in the Middle colonies of Pennsylvania and of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians coming from Northern Ireland (Ulster)―, coupled with the rapid modernization of social and economic life in the colonies (^{Brockway, 2003, p. 33}; ^{Kelleter, 2009, p. 163}), paved the road for the series of revivals that began in Northampton, Hampshire County in late 1734 “(what some historians termed the ‘Little Awakening of 1735’ [^{Gura, 2005, p. 71}) and years later spread to the rest of the colonies. Other factors that contributed to this growing anxiety in the prerevolutionary colonial population were the still present fear of invasion or attack from the wilderness (the French and Indian Wars [1754-1760]), epidemics that periodically ravaged cities and towns (e.g. diphtheria alone kills between the years 1735-1737 over 20,000 people in the colonies), and as it is sadly common nowadays, economic modernization for those in the lower echelons of colonial society did not translate into an improved economic situation; in fact, by 1745 the colonies’ standard of living reached its lowest point for that century (^{Ferguson, 1997, p. 50}). Therefore, one distinguishing and defining feature of prerevolutionary revivalism is its emphasis on crisis (^{Ferguson, 1997}).

Although it has always been a topic of contention among historians, especially since Jon Butler’s publication in 1982 of Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretative Fiction, we will side with those who prefer to consider them in hindsight as part of a single event and label them The (first) Great Awakening of the mid-1730s and early 1740s in colonial North America. But academic debates aside, massive religious gatherings (of up to 20,000 people at times) between 1735 and 1745 in New England reverted a downward trend in both assistance and church membership, and perhaps more consequential, in the role of religion in public life (^{McGrath, 2007, p. 57}). It also endowed American religion with its evangelical ethos (e.g. a penchant for extempore preaching), and among its detractors, it fostered the ‘proto-Unitarian tendencies’ that eventuated during the following century (^{Brockway, 2003, p. 18}).

The scope and impact of the revivals were greatly aided by ‘two literary circumstances’: (1) by the fact that the writings of famous revivalist preachers like Jonathan Edwards, Gilbert Tennent, or Samuel Davies were available to both popular and educated segments of the colonies, and in this respect, it is important to bear in mind that until 1765 religious publications in British North America outnumbered all other publications combined (^{Ferguson, 1997, p. 45, 53}); and, of still greater significance for this work, (2) that these publications in defence of revivalism generated a response in kind, that is, literary, among those sectors of colonial society who were decidedly against them; of which probably the most eminent cases were those of Ebenezer Gay, Jonathan Mayhew, and Charles Chauncy ―the last of these becoming thereafter Jonathan Edwards’ main theological and cultural rival.

As a clarifying note, way before the events just described, during the first decade of the eighteenth century, there was already a widening gap within Puritanism having to do with preaching style, notwithstanding the still prevailing doctrinal consensus among both Congregationalists and Presbyterians. Conservatives tended to favour a ‘scholarly and restrained’ approach, while others espoused a more emotional preaching style, one that more directly spoke to the emotions of its flock. Already too, a critical point of contention was a growing debate about the nature and spiritual reliability of ‘sudden conversion experiences’ which came to characterize the revivals a few years later (^{Brockway, 2003, p. 9}). Thus, the philosophical principles of the experience of conversion and the roles assigned in it to emotions (affections) and reason became one of the main moot points in the religious debates of the time, as evidenced by the theological exchanges on this issue between Edwards and Chauncy.

Among the promoters of this new outlook and practice within Puritanism, Jonathan Edwards figures second to none not only on account of having been among the first to advocate a more emotional and less doctrinal approach to Calvinism, but also for becoming the most prolific and sophisticated apologist for the movement. Following the footsteps of his grandfather Solomon Stoddard, who perceived that the legalistic and rigid Calvinism endorsed by the New England establishment would not satiate the spiritual needs of people in a frontier context, Edwards advocated a religious praxis undoubtedly aimed at stirring the emotions of his parish. This Pietist thrust was encapsulated in the famous phrase first used by the Hernhutters in Saxony but adopted by revivalists⁴ in America: a religion of the heart; a renewed appreciation of the affections (emotions) and their role in spiritual conversion (^{Kelleter, 2009, p. 169}; ^{McGrath, 2007, p. 147}; ^{Reichley, 1985, p. 69}).

An important consideration to bear in mind before continuing has to do with the nature of the Calvinism prevalent in the North American colonies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was not classical or orthodox Calvinism (that of the Reformation) of the kind one would associate for example with the Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536), but rather the one found in the creeds of the Westminster Confession (1646) and regarded by historians as federal or covenant theology (^{Brockway, 2003, pp. 50-51}). It was federal in the sense that God does not ‘deal with humanity on an individual basis, but only through his federal representatives, Adam and Christ’ (^{Brockway, 2003}); and it was covenant⁵ for the belief that divinity’s relationship with mankind has consisted in a series of contracts or compacts, of which the most important for our work is the so-called Covenant of Works between God and Adam ―abrogated by Adam’s disobedience and which render ‘works’ as meaningless for salvation, at least in the mind of theological determinists―, and the Covenant of Grace, brought about by Jesus’ coming and through His sacrifice on the cross ‘the promise of deliverance in the life to come’ (^{Brockway, 2003, p.185}).

It is also worth mentioning that contrary to popular opinion, Puritanism did not necessarily embody an ‘authoritarian ethos’ that insisted on regulating every aspect of daily life (^{Hall, 2002, p. 438}); nor that it was a rigid and ‘harshly imposed complex of beliefs that stifled all creativity and individual expression in its desire to enforce uniformity’, but that it tolerated a certain degree of freedom and discord ‘over the finer points of faith and practice’ (^{Chamberlain, 1992, p. 336}). Historical, geographical, social, and even structural (or ecclesiological) circumstances no doubt contributed to this doctrinal flexibility -in the absence of an ‘external order’ against which to react, theological self-definition became increasingly important-; the scattered nature, in a vast and poorly communicated region, of small congregations; the high literacy and disposition to debate theological issues among the population; and even the structure of Congregational churches, that ‘undermined by design the imposition of any hierarchical authority’, all contributed to this doctrinal flexibility (^{Chamberlain, 1992, pp.337, 339}).

But before going any further, we need to advance both a definition and a brief history of Puritanism. It would certainly be difficult and misleading to offer a clear-cut definition of what Puritanism was. Such an effort would likewise run the risk of granting an unwarranted consistency to a faction or party within the Church of England that was markedly heterogeneous, and that acquired its sense of identity mainly in its opposition to an Anglican Establishment, and its desire for further reform of the national church (^{McGrath, 2007}; ^{Winship, 2011}). As Michael Winship pithily remarked, ‘Puritanism was more a problem generated by the structure of the Church of England than it was a free-standing entity’ (p. 689). For these reasons any attempt to describe Puritanism in the American colonies forces upon us at least a brief historical digression to the beginnings of Protestantism in England.

The reasons that drove Henry VIII to a break-up with Rome are fairly well-known, and will not be taken up here; what is of concern for our purposes is to make it evident that the Reformation in England was, at least in its early stages, an entirely royal endeavour, viz., it was successively imposed from above by a series of monarchs on the English people ―beginning with Henry VIII, continued and reinforced during the brief reign of Edward VI, and consolidated (and stabilized) by Elizabeth after a short-lived and ineffectual, yet ferocious Catholic reaction during Mary Tudor’s reign (^{Gura, 2005, pp. 6-8}; ^{McGrath, 2007, pp. 107-126})-. But let us elaborate further on this.

It was only after Henry’s death in 1547, during Edward’s reign, that a conscious effort was made to align the reformation in England with the more Calvinist precepts of continental Europe,⁶ who had by then displaced Lutheranism as the chief driving force of Protestantism. Edward’s untimely death, and the subsequent Catholic Restoration, meant that such reformative initiatives, never entirely popular, were short-lived (^{McGrath, 2007, pp. 113-118}).

For her part, Elizabeth’s main concern was to bring stability to a kingdom that was beginning to be torn by religious disputes. Despite her protestant leanings, she sought not to incense those important traditionalist sectors of her realm (^{McGrath, 2007, pp. 118-123}). Those advocating for a more decisive reformation of the national church along Calvinistic lines were either offered small victories or, more commonly, promises of future fulfilment to their demands (^{McGrath, 2007, p. 125}).

Finally, when James VI of Scotland came to power, Puritans believed that at last, their time had come, and this since James had supported the reforms of John Knox in Scotland, thereby creating a ‘Reformed church along pure Genevan lines’ (^{McGrath, 2007, p. 123}). Politics, however, got in the way of their plans, and when it became clear that James was to favour the via media followed by his royal predecessors, many of them began to reconsider the prospect of emigrating (^{McGrath, 2007, pp. 123-126}). Some of them relocated to the main reformation centres of continental Europe like Geneva, Basel, Frankfurt, Strasbourg, or Amsterdam, as the Marian-exiles had temporarily done during the Catholic Restoration. Those Puritan pilgrim fathers that came to New England in the Mayflower at the beginning of the XVII C. for instance, were already in the third stage of their religious exodus ― originally from Nottinghamshire, they had first moved to Amsterdam, and afterward to Leiden, till some of them, unwilling to go back to England or remain as aliens among the Dutch, decided to travel to America and start anew (^{McGrath, 2007, p. 152}).

Out of the motley mesh of Puritan factions described before (^{McGrath, 2007}; ^{Winship, 2011}) ―and to which we must add that of the Baptists⁷― came the more than 4,000 individuals that, between 1627 and 1640, arrived on the shores of New England (^{McGrath, 2007}; ^{Winship, 2011}). Most of the newcomers were not, however, Presbyterians, but more radical Puritans with a democratic ethos when it came to their outlook on church government (^{McGrath, 2007}; ^{Winship, 2011}). Additionally, it appears that most Puritans of the time once settled in New England, abandoned a Presbyterian view of church polity for a more Congregational one instead (^{McGrath, 2007}; ^{Winship, 2011}). But let us hark back to New England and the antinomianism that characterized revivalism.

Central in the revivalists’ scheme was the concept of immediate grace, i.e., the idea (opposed to orthodox Calvinism) that the reception of divine grace by the convert occurred in a single, momentous, and identifiable occasion. With no need for intermediaries of any sort and after which the convert was a new creature; he had been born again due to the influx of grace rendered by the Holy Spirit (^{Kelleter, 2009, p. 166}). It was precisely this understanding of the operation of divine grace that seemed so troublesome to orthodox Puritans and could easily culminate, from their perspective, in enthusiasm and antinomianism (^{Robinson, 2011, p. 29}). Enthusiasm refers to the belief in unmediated personal communication with God, but also to the more general outbursts of mass emotion that characterized the revivals, while antinomianism to the charge, commonly hurled to groups such as the Quakers and other Anabaptists, of believing that God manifests ‘in impulses and impressions, [in] special revelations to individual persons’ (^{Brockway, 2003, p. 187}; ^{May, 1970, p. 207}); and, as previously mentioned, and particularly vexing to the patrician Puritans of the age, in their conviction that God does not operate through mediators like ministers or priests.

It was against this background of detractors and supporters of the awakenings, of Old Lights or Arminians (Old Sides for their Presbyterian allies in the Middle colonies) and New Lights (New Sides in New Jersey and Pennsylvania) or antinomians respectively, that the writings and sermons of Charles Chauncy, minister of Boston’s prominent First Church, gained increased prestige and became, along with Jonathan Mayhew of Boston’s West Church, the leader of the defenders of the New England Way: the Old Lights (^{Brockway, 2003, p. 10}; ^{Gura, 2005, p. 123}; ^{Robinson, 2011, p. 27}).

1.2. Arminianism, antinomianism & millennialism

In opposition to theological determinism or predestination that characterized orthodox Calvinism, Arminians, named after the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius (1560-1619), believed that human beings do have a role to play in the story of their eternal destinies. Through the exercise of free will, they can choose what is good and hence be among the elect. Therefore, for Arminians, Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross is atonement in a universal sense, not just for the elect as orthodox Puritans would claim. Also, in a more general sense, Arminianism became a libel to be pronounced against anyone espousing or exhibiting any type of liberal thought or behavior in religion (^{Gura, 2005}; ^{Oakes, 2016, p. 40}).

It is clear that from the mid-1720s onwards there was a rising tide of Arminianism in New England, particularly amongst the younger clergy, as evinced by what Robert Wilson called heresy trials directed against ministers with such theological proclivities (^{Oakes, 2016, pp. 41, 63}; Wilson, 2015, p. 63; cited in ^{Oakes, 2016}). In this respect, the creation of ecclesiastical councils aimed at investigating the unorthodoxy of younger, Harvard-educated ministers like Benjamin Kent or Ammi Ruhammah Cutter is noteworthy examples (^{Oakes, 2016, pp. 44, 63}). Yale had also seen its share of Arminian quarrelling amongst its ranks during the ‘Great Apostasy’ controversy of 1722 when most conspicuously its rector, Timothy Cutler, together with Samuel Johnson, and other colleagues, had defected to the Church of England (^{Oakes, 2016, p. 41}).

But probably the most consequential and outspoken Arminian of this younger generation of ministers was Jonathan Mayhew, who throughout his entire published work, starting with his ‘Seven Sermons’ of 1748, stated his anti-Calvinist credentials many years before Chauncy mustered the necessary courage to make his theological positions public. In this work, for instance, Mayhew gave a clear moralistic tone to his exegesis regarding the fulfilment of moral duty as the ‘‘summum bonum’ of true religion’, and accordingly highlighted the moral character of Jesus’ preaching in the Gospels (^{Oakes, 2016, pp. 51, 54}).

Other important representatives of this generation of ministers with Arminian sympathies included Robert Breck, Ebenezer Gay, Samuel Mather, and William Balch, who became the subject of one of the most notorious controversies of the time, as well as one of the first Congregationalist ministers to state his views publicly. In this respect, Balch was a forerunner for Mayhew or Chauncy, who gained far more notoriety as ‘pioneers of New England Arminianism’ (^{Oakes, 2016, pp. 41, 45-46}).

But Arminianism was not the only religious response in the face of Puritan theological determinism (i.e. Calvinistic predestinarianism). If Arminianism tended to be the stance of educated clergy (of Old Lights), revivalism came up with optimistic millennialism (^{Ferguson, 1997, pp. 51-52}). Joseph Bellamy, sharing the millennial leanings of his mentor Edwards, writes in one of the most widely read sermons of the time (The Millenium [1758]) about how Christ’s re-entrance into human history and His establishment of a thousand-year reign ‘will change the nature and meaning of history’ (^{Ferguson, 1997, p. 52}); and in so doing, it will also erase the dreaded prospect of eternal damnation as the outcome of divine predestination. It is not unwarranted as well to speculate about the role that this millennialist optimism might have played in the growing sense of national identity and the ensuing call to arms that separation from England entailed; for as Robert Ferguson remarks, millennialist optimism ‘pushes revivalism inexorably toward the notion of harmony and union in this world, and, for that purpose, toward the need for conviction and action by a united people’ (^{Ferguson, 1997}). Edwards, particularly in Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival [1743], is illustrative in this respect, but millennialist concerns were commonplace during the eighteenth century (^{Ferguson, 1997}).

Antinomianism and Arminianism, ‘the classical heresies of the Puritan tradition’, deserve further attention, especially in the dialectical relationship that they have with each other as latent tendencies inherent to Puritan orthodoxy (^{Chamberlain, 1992, pp. 340-341}). Among the divine attributes, Christianity has historically given preeminence to divine benevolence and omnipotence; and in their intention to dispose of the contradiction that seems to exist between them, theologians have emphasized or given relevance to one in detriment of the other. Orthodox Puritans for instance, and Reformed theology more generally, provide us with a picture of divinity that subordinates divine benevolence to divine omnipotence, and that claims to preserve the former by emphasizing ‘the original goodness of created nature’ (^{Chamberlain, 1992, p. 341}).

Now this precarious equilibrium is clear to see in the Puritan quarrels over the process of redemption. Accordingly, orthodox divines, in their attempt to preserve the divine sovereignty through the redemption process, held fast to concepts such as free grace and solfidianism and presented a corresponding image of human nature that ‘in its radical sinfulness is incapable of effecting its own salvation’ (^{Chamberlain, 1992}). The classical heresies in Puritanism just mentioned could thus be seen as exaggerations of tendencies inherent to Puritan doctrine, and hence defined accordingly: antinomianism, ‘out of a desire to glorify God and debase the creature’, unduly overestimates the role of divine grace in the salvation process to the extent that it makes us mere spectators in the drama of our redemption. Contrastingly, by empowering our capacity for achieving our salvation, Arminianism appears to lose sight of the divine initiative, with the result that ‘redemption becomes the product not of God’s good pleasure but [solely] of a human effort’ (^{Chamberlain, 1992, p. 432}).

1.3. Ethical concerns

To be sure, the issues that disturbed most Old Lights had to do with the behaviour displayed by the revivalists that tended to unsettle traditional church structure and order. As ^{Philip Gura (2005}) explains, the attack of Old Lights tended to revolve around three topics: (1) the conduct of itinerant preachers and lay exhorters, that is, people without formal training in pastoral duties and who embarked in preaching and exhorting;⁸ (2) the antinomian tendency observed in the converts of the awakenings, and this associated with the concomitant tendency to rash judgment as to the spiritual state of other people, particularly aimed at what they regarded as unconverted ministers (those having not experienced a spiritual rebirth); and (3) the excessive emotionalism of the awakened (p. 111).

But there were certainly other, more ethical objections raised by Old Lights against the behaviour displayed by revivalist preachers. Ava Chamberlain, drawing on the work of the political theorist Judith Shklar, argues that the post-awakening Arminian ascendancy in New England was driven, to a large extent, by a revulsion to cruelty; cruelty to be found not only in the uncharitable behaviour of these itinerant preachers but as well in some key aspects of Puritan doctrine like double predestination or total depravity (^{1992, p. 347}). Making use of Shklar’s concept of ‘ordinary vices’, she claims that the premodern moral world of Puritanism, with its emphasis on sin against God (and therein with pride as the chief transgression) tended to downplay more ‘ordinary vices’ (or sins) like cruelty, hypocrisy, treachery, snobbery, or misanthropy (Shklar, 1984, p. 2; cited in ^{Chamberlain, 1992}). Chamberlain claims that the appearance of cruelty and hypocrisy in revivalism ― cruelty that Chauncy saw for example, in the rhetoric of the revivalist preachers and their use of terror; and hypocrisy evinced not only in the censoriousness displayed by these itinerants against established ministers, but as well in the many he had believed to have been converted during the revivals, but that he saw going swiftly to their old ways― is central to explicating a ‘new sensitivity… [against] cruelty in orthodox Puritanism, [that] culminated some ten years later in an unabashed support for Arminianism by such prominent divines as Charles Chauncy, Jonathan Mayhew, and Ebenezer Gay’ (^{Chamberlain, 1992, p. 347}). Now one of the fortunate outcomes of the revivalists’ quarrels over ministerial preaching style and training was the creation of a series of educational institutions throughout the colonies during the middle and second half of the century. As expected, New Lights took the initiative by founding the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) in 1746. As a response, Anglicans established King’s College (afterward Columbia University) in New York in 1754. In 1764, Brown University commenced as a Baptist enterprise in Rhode Island. And in 1776, Dutch New Lights constituted Queen’s College, later Rutgers University in New Jersey (^{Ferguson, 1997, p. 57}).

Since, as we have explained, the concept of conversion (of being born again) through immediate grace was cardinal to the revivals, it is necessary to say a few more words about it, as well as the doctrinal or dogmatic context in which it operated: Puritanism and Evangelicalism. Theologically, the sources of Puritanism include, along with Calvin, the writings of the apostle Paul and those of Augustine (354-430) (^{Brockway, 2003, p. 180}). All of their soteriologies give an uppermost relevance to the concept of New Birth, and all three also are predestinarians,⁹i.e., they hold to the notion that God has decided or predestined all persons to ‘either damnation or redemption’ (^{Brockway, 2003}). In this scheme, the pious actions of human beings are of no consequence to the decrees of divinity. Redemption comes, if at all, through a free and largely unmerited gift of grace endowed by the Holy Ghost.

And having in mind the Anglo-American political tensions of the time, we have to mention other intellectual sources of Puritanism, such as its inherent aversion to centralized authority, its primitivism, ‘the legalism of covenant theology, and biblical exegesis as a regular cultural practice’ (^{Ferguson, 1997, p. 46}). Such sources, according to many, lend themselves easily to oppositional rhetoric, and do so, among other reasons, because a Puritan conversion experience ‘ritually exposes the sinful heart to public judgment’ as well as it ‘relates individual morality to communal prosperity in compulsive ways’ (^{Ferguson, 1997}). Under such an ideological framework, the prospect of identifying and resisting an ‘unworthy leadership’ becomes more tenable (^{Ferguson, 1997}).

As for evangelicalism, it is customary among historians to regard the awakenings as the crucial period when religion in that part of the world acquired its characteristic evangelical ethos, exemplified by the enormous gains in membership that sects like the Methodists and Baptists reaped during those years. And since sudden, dramatic conversions ―of the kind epitomized by Paul and his conversion on the road to Damascus, or of Augustine’s touching conversion scene that we encounter in his Confessions― constitute one, if not the most fundamental aspect of evangelical religion, we must mention here the stages of what an evangelical religious experience consists in: ‘conviction, conversion, and sanctification’ (^{Brockway, 2003, p. 65}). A process encountered in virtually all examples given by Edwards in his Faithfull Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls (1737), the work that catapulted him from provincial irrelevance to ‘the chief American spokesperson for transatlantic evangelism’ (^{Gura, 2005, pp. 79, 85}).

For his part, the Great Awakening had convinced Chauncy that New England theology required revision, for he believed that theology that insisted so severely in God’s rejection of human depravity and that moreover ‘hammered home the [high] probability of damnation’ for everyone, ‘lent itself by its very nature to abuse’ (^{Griffin, 1980, p. 110}). If social and ecclesiastical disorder were the assured outcomes of an emotional religious reaction to dour Calvinism, then the tenets themselves might need some revision (^{Griffin, 1980}). Thus, between the years 1745 and 1761 Chauncy embarked on the task of creating a new ‘body of divinity’ which he hoped would preclude the appearance of other would-be Edwards or Whitefields, whom he believed preyed on the fears and irrationality that he saw as the quid of New Light theology (^{Griffin, 1980, p. 110}). In this task, however, he did not entirely reject his Puritan heritage, as the influence of theologians like Richard Baxter or John Taylor evinces, but it is clear that, as ^{Norman Gibbs (1992)} remarked, Chauncy was also open to eighteenth-century optimism.

A theological optimism discernible not only in the deism that characterized most of the revolutionary leadership, or in the Arminianism of Old Light clergy just described, but also in the increasingly popular view described by Conrad Wright as Supernatural Rationalism ―‘the belief that intuition, experience, and reason will all prove to complement and confirm, rather than displace, the Christian revelation’ (^{May, 1970, p. 208})-. Again, Chauncy is illustrative in this respect as he repeatedly peddles for what he terms a religion of the understanding; as one where the emotions are to be regarded as lesser and as subordinate to the nobler operations of the intellect (^{Chauncy, 1743, pp. 2, 418, 419, 422}).

Before moving to our analysis of the intellectual and political climate of those years, it is worth mentioning here as well what became the most significant theological debate in British North America in those years: the debate about the doctrine of Original Sin. It was the work of the dissenting English theologian John Taylor (1694-1761) and his reinterpretation of the moral condition of the first couple ―one in which, unlike orthodox Puritan belief, they were not the beneficiaries of the preternatural gift of original righteousness,¹⁰ but would be more accurately described as in a condition of moral primitiveness― that precipitated the rebuttals of defenders of the ancient doctrine, chief among them Edwards (The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended [1758]) (^{Griffin, 1980, pp. 121-122}; ^{Oakes, 2016, pp. 62-63}; ^{Robinson, 2011, p. 28}). Symptomatic of the theological times, in a relatively short period time New England divines would pass from unanimous adherence to orthodoxy in this doctrine before 1750 to considerable modifications ‘by some of the most liberal thinkers’ (Smith, 1955, p. 1; cited in ^{Griffin, 1980}).