CrossLinks Topical Index - [J
"[Jonathan Edwards] came to believe that there was one principal cause of the reversal [of the Great Awakening], namely, the unwatchfulness of the friends of the Awakening who allowed genuine and pure religion to become so mixed with ‘wildfire’, and carnal ‘enthusiasm’, that the Spirit of God was grieved and advantage given to Satan." Ref-1302, p. 216 "At a time of revival, when Christians have a ‘strong and lively sense of divine things’, all their faculties are invigorated -- the mind is more intense, the ‘affections’ are heightened, and the imagination, also, may be more active. It is easy, in this condition, argued Edwards, to regard a strong impression made upon the imagination, and explainable by natural causes, as a direct leading of the Spirit." Ref-1302, p. 241 "‘In all great revivals, where the people are under strong excitement, there will be some things which the judicious must regret; and, no doubt, there were many such things in this great and extensive awakening; but it was a dangerous mistake to repudiate the whole work on account of some irregularities.’ [Archibald Alexander, The Log College, 1851]" Ref-1310, p. 178. "An event so remarkable and of such magnitude was soon the talk of New England. Many were skeptical, believing that Edwards had led his people into fanaticism. New England had always included a radical religious fringe, as the established clergy viewed it. They were familiar with various prophets, on both sides of the Atlantic, who stirred up the imagination, encouraged spiritual visions, claimed miracles, fostered strange behaviors, and taught sensational doctrines, such as that the millennium or the Age of the Spirit was at hand." Ref-1348, p. 161. "In Northampton and elsewhere in Hampshire County the suicide craze effectively brought the conversions to an end, although some awakenings continued well into the next year in Connecticut." Ref-1348, p. 168. "By the late 1730s Edwards was facing the disconcerting reality that just as Northampton was becoming internationally celebrated many of his parishioners were returning to their old ways of greed and constant infighting. He could not escape the evidence that he had overestimated the extent of genuine awakening." Ref-1348, p. 189. ". . . Whitefield's spectacular successes suggested that awakenings were more likely to be generated by itinerants or visiting preachers than under the strict guidance of local clergy. This weakening of the role of local pastoral authority would soon have more revolutionary implications." Ref-1348, p. 215. "Edwards rejoiced . . . especially in what he learned from Sarah, but he also soon became concerned about the effects on the less mature. Many, especially among those already converted, were following Sarah's example into higher states of religious intensity, staying long after meetings and being overcome with religious visions and delights. Some were in sorts of trances for up to twenty-four hours. Some were led to such heights that, in Edwards' later judgment, “Satan took the advantage.” " Ref-1348, p. 247. "In march 1742 Northampton was at another peak of revival fervor. When Edwards had returned from his preaching tour in February he encountered not only Sarah's wonderful ecstasies but also a town that under the preaching of Samuel Buell was nearly out of control. Working together with Buell for the next several weeks, Edwards tried at once to fuel the revival and quell its excesses. “A great deal of caution and pains” he wrote, “were found necessary to keep the people, many of them, from running wild.” Parishioners were attempting to outdo each other in enthusiasm, spreading the false impression that the more violent the emotions and the more vehement the expressions of zeal the greater the true piety. Edwards labored vigorously to make the point, as he would throughout the awakenings, that great excitements were not essential to true spirituality--even if they were often compatible with it." Ref-1348, p. 260. "Rather than restoring the dominant place of religion in the colony, the Great Awakening was undermining the already weakened public authority of the old standing clerical order. Not only were laypeople attacking clergy in the name of religion, but any semblance of unity among the congregational clergy was on the brink of collapse." Ref-1348, p. 268. "By 1742 Chauncy was deeply alarmed at the awakening's excesses. During the visits of Whitefield and even of Tennent there had been few extravagant bodily effects, visions, and trances. Now, especially as a result of the excitements stirred by the itinerants, such as Davenport, Wheelock, Buell, and Pomerory, such ecstasies were becoming standard, even expected. Judgments against allegedly unconverted persons were commonplace, and congregations were being urged to forsake their pastors. Not only itinerant clergy but now all sorts of laypeople were making unsubstantiated claims to impulses, leadings from the Lord, and visions. . . . The itinerants, Chauncey no observed, were increasingly preaching in the most extravagant ways, trying to frighten people and otherwise arouse passions. Using vulgar appeals to sentiment, they would generate mass hysteria that they encouraged people to regard as evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit. Scores or even hundreds of people would shriek, swoon, or fall into fits. “'Tis scarce imaginable” wrote Chauncy, “what excesses and extravagancies people were running into, and even encouraged in. . . . In the same house [of worship], and at the same time, some would be praying, some exhorting, some singing, some clapping their hands, some laughing some crying, some shrieking and roaring out.” . . . Anyone who darked criticize any of these improprieties would be dismissed as “an opposer of the Spirit, and a child of the Devil.”" Ref-1348, pp. 269-270. "By spring 1743 it was too late to restrain the New Light movement by counseling proper deference. . . . Too many chain reactions had been set in motion. More lay preachers were condemning clergy, fostering separatist groups in which spiritual excitements were normative. Some of the radical separatist congregations would become Baptist, others would be separatist congregational. . . . Eventually about one-third of the churches of Connecticut and one-fifth of those in Massachusetts suffered schism." Ref-1348, p. 277. "Edwards attributed the decline of the awakening to the corruptions introduced by these excesses. Some people were deluded by apparent raptures of joy and being bodily overcome, and they proved to have less the temperament of “humble, amiable, eminent Christians” than many who were not so overcome. . . . Genuine raptures would be accompanied not by a “noisy showy humility,” but by “deep humiliation, brokenness of heart, poverty of spirit, mourning for sin, solemnity of spirit, a trembling reverence towards God, tenderness of spirit, self-jealously and fear, and great engagedness of heart, after holiness of life, and a readiness to esteem others better than themselves.”" Ref-1348, p. 284. : revival - problems
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