the philosopher, born at Northampton, Massachusetts, on the 26th of May 1745, also takes an important place among his followers. He lived in Stockbridge in 1751–1755 and spoke the language of the Housatonic Indians with ease, for six months studied among the Oneidas, graduated at Princeton in 1765, studied theology at Bethlehem, Connecticut, under Joseph Bellamy, was licensed to preach in 1766, was a tutor at Princeton in 1766–1769, and was pastor of the White Haven Church, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1769–1795, being then dismissed for the nominal reason that the church could not support him, but actually because of his opposition to the Half-Way Covenant as well as to slavery and the slave trade. He preached at Colebrook, Connecticut, in 1796–1799 and then became president of Union College, Schenectady, New York, where he died on the 1st of August 1801. His studies of the Indian dialects were scholarly and valuable. He edited his father’s incomplete History of the Work of Redemption, wrote in answer to Stephen West, A Dissertation Concerning Liberty and Necessity (1797), which defended his father’s work on the Will by a rather strained interpretation, and in answer to Chauncy on universal salvation formulated what is known as the “Edwardean,” New England or Governmental theory of the atonement in The Necessity of the Atonement and its Consistency with Free Grace in Forgiveness (1785). His collected works were edited by his grandson Tryon Edwards in two volumes, with memoir (Andover, 1842). His place in the Edwardean theology is principally due to his defence against the Universalists of his father’s doctrine of the atonement, namely, that Christ’s death, being the equivalent of the eternal punishment of sinners, upheld the authority of the divine law, but did not pay any debt, and made the pardon of all men a possibility with God, but not a necessity.
Bibliography.—There have been various editions of Edwards’s works. His pupil, Samuel Hopkins, in 1765 published two volumes from manuscript containing eighteen sermons and a memoir; the younger Jonathan Edwards with Dr Erskine published an edition in 4 volumes (1744 sqq.), and Samuel Austin in 1808 edited an edition in 8 volumes. In 1829 Sereno E. Dwight, a great-grandson of Edwards, published the Life and Works in 10 volumes, the first volume containing the memoir, which is still the most complete and was the standard until the publication (Boston, 1889) of Jonathan Edwards, by A. V. G. Allen, who attempts to “distinguish what he (Edwards) meant to affirm from what he actually teaches.” In 1865 the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart edited from original manuscripts Selections from the Unpublished Writings of Jonathan Edwards of America (Edinburgh, 1865, printed for private circulation). This was the only part of a complete edition planned by Grosart that ever appeared. It contained the important Treatise on Grace, Annotations on the Bible, Directions for Judging of Persons’ Experiences, and Sermons, the last for the most part merely in outline. E. C. Smyth published from a copy Observations Concerning the Scripture Oeconomy of the Trinity and Covenant of Redemption (New York, 1880), a careful edition from the manuscript of the essay on the Flying Spider (in the Andover Review, January 1890) and “Some Early Writings of Jonathan Edwards,” with specimens from the manuscripts (in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, October, 1895). In 1900 on the death of Prof. Edwards A. Park, the entire collection of Edwards’s manuscripts loaned to him by Tryon Edwards was transferred to Yale University. Professor Park, like Mr Grosart before him, had been unable to accomplish the great task of editing this mass of manuscript. “A Study of the Manuscripts of Jonathan Edwards” was published by F. B. Dexter in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, series 2, vol. xv. (Boston, 1902), and in the same volume of the Proceedings appeared “A Study of the Shorthand Writings of Jonathan Edwards,” by W. P. Upham. The long sought for essay on the Trinity was edited (New York, 1903) with valuable introduction and appendices by G. P. Fisher under the title, An Unpublished Essay of Edwards’s on the Trinity. The only other edition of Edwards (in whole or in part) of any importance is Selected Sermons of Jonathan Edwards (New York, 1904), edited by H. N. Gardiner, with brief biographical sketch and annotations on seven sermons, one of which had not previously been published.
For estimates of Edwards consult: The Volume of the Edwards Family Meeting at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, September 6-7, A.D. 1870 (Boston, 1871); Jonathan Edwards, a Retrospect, Being the Addresses Delivered in Connecticut with the Unveiling of a Memorial in the First Church of Christ in Northampton, Massachusetts, on the One Hundred and Fiftieth Anniversary of his Dismissal from the Pastorate of that Church, edited by H. N. Gardiner (Boston, 1901); Exercises Commemorating the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of Jonathan Edwards, held at Andover Theological Seminary, October 4-5, 1903 (Andover, 1904); and among the addresses delivered at Stockbridge in October 1903, John De Witt, “Jonathan Edwards: A Study,” in the Princeton Theological Review (January, 1904). Also H. C. King, “Edwards as Philosopher and Theologian,” in Hartford Theological Seminary Record, vol. xiv. (1903), pp. 23-57; H. N. Gardiner, “The Early Idealism of Jonathan Edwards,” in the Philosophical Review, vol. ix. (1900), pp. 573-596; E. C. Smyth, American Journal of Theology, vol. i. (1897), pp. 960-964; Samuel P. Hayes, “An Historical Study of the Edwardean Revivals,” in American Journal of Psychology, vol. xiii. (1902), pp. 550 ff.; J. H. MacCracken, “Philosophical Idealism of Edwards” in Philosophical Review, vol. xi. (1902), pp. 26-42, suggesting that Edwards did not know Berkeley, but Collier, and the same author’s Jonathan Edwards’ Idealismus (Halle, 1899); F. J. E. Woodbridge, “Jonathan Edwards,” in Philosophical Review, vol. xiii. (1904), pp. 393-408; W. H. Squires, Jonathan Edwards und seine Willenslehre (Leipzig, 1901); Samuel Simpson, “Jonathan Edwards, A Historical Review,” in Hartford Seminary Record, vol. xiv. (1903), pp. 3-22; and The Edwardean, a Quarterly Devoted to the History of Thought in America (Clinton, New York, 1903–1904), edited by W. H. Squires, of which only four parts appeared, all devoted to Edwards and all written by Squires. (H. N. G.; R. We.)
EDWARDS, LEWIS (1809–1887), Welsh Nonconformist divine, was born in the parish of Llanbadarn Fawr, Cardiganshire, on the 27th of October 1809. He was educated at Aberystwyth and at Llangeitho, and then himself kept school in both these places. He had already begun to preach for the Calvinistic Methodists when, in December 1830, he went to London to take advantage of the newly-opened university. In 1832 he settled as minister at Laugharne in Carmarthenshire, and the following year went to Edinburgh, where a special resolution of the senate allowed him to graduate at the end of his third session. He was now better able to further his plans for providing a trained ministry for his church. Previously, the success of the Methodist preachers had been due mainly to their natural gifts. Edwards made his home at Bala, and there, in 1837, with David Charles, his brother-in-law, he opened a school, which ultimately became the denominational college for north Wales. He died on the 19th of July 1887.
Edwards may fairly be called one of the makers of modern Wales. Through his hands there passed generation after generation of preachers, who carried his influence to every corner of the principality. By fostering competitive meetings and by his writings, especially in Y Traethodydd (“The Essayist”), a quarterly magazine which he founded in 1845 and edited for ten years, he did much to inform and educate his countrymen on literary and theological subjects. A new college was built at Bala in 1867, for which he raised £10,000. His chief publication was a noteworthy book on The Doctrine of the Atonement, cast in the form of a dialogue between master and pupil; the treatment is forensic, and emphasis is laid on merit. It was due to him that the North and South Wales Calvinistic Methodist Associations united to form an annual General Assembly; he was its moderator in 1866 and again in 1876. He was successful in bringing the various churches of the Presbyterian order into closer touch with each other, and unwearying in his efforts to promote education for his countrymen.
See Bywyd a Llythyrau y Parch. (i.e. Life and Letters of the Rev.) Lewis Edwards, D.D., by his son T. C. Edwards.
EDWARDS, RICHARD (c. 1523–1566), English musician and playwright, was born in Somersetshire, became a scholar of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, in 1540, and took his M.A. degree in 1547. He was appointed in 1561 a gentleman of the chapel royal and master of the children, and entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1564, where at Christmas in that year he produced a play which was acted by his choir boys. On the 3rd of September 1566 his play, Palamon and Arcite, was performed before Queen Elizabeth in the Hall of Christ Church, Oxford. Another play, Damon and Pithias, tragic in subject but with scenes of vulgar farce, entered at Stationers’ Hall in 1567–8, appeared in 1571 and was reprinted in 1582; it may be found in Dodsley’s
were great, brilliant or versatile men. Among them were: his son Pierrepont (1750–1826), a brilliant but erratic member of the Connecticut bar, tolerant in religious matters and bitterly hated by stern Calvinists, a man whose personal morality resembled greatly that of Aaron Burr; his grandsons. William Edwards (1770–1851), an inventor of important leather rolling machinery; Aaron Burr the son of Esther Edwards; Timothy Dwight (1752–1817), son of Mary Edwards, and his brother Theodore Dwight, a Federalist politician, a member, the secretary and the historian of the Hartford Convention; his great-grandsons, Tryon Edwards (1809–1894) and Sereno Edwards Dwight, theologian, educationalist and author; and his great-great-grandsons, Theodore William Dwight, the jurist, and Timothy Dwight, second of that name to be president of Yale.
