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A List of Men and Their Quotes Who Admired Jonathan Edwards

Biographical Writings of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

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A list of men who admired Jonathan Edwards.

‘That good and sensible man…that great man’.
JOHN WESLEY, Works, vol.10, 1831, pp. 463 and 475

‘Mr. Edwards is a solid, excellent Christian…I think I have not seen his fellow in all New England’.
GEORGE WHITEFIELD Journals, October 17, 1740

‘The profoundest reasoner, and the greatest divine, in my opinion, that America ever produced’.
SAMUEL DAVIES in a Farewell Sermon at Hanover, Virginia, July 1, 1759, Sermons on Important Subjects, S. Davies, 1824, Vol.4, pp. 456-7

‘He was, in the estimation of the writer, one of the most holy, humble and heavenly minded men, that the world has seen, since the apostolic age’.
ASHBEL GREEN, President of the College of New Jersey, in Discourses Delivered in the College of New Jersey, 1822, p.317

‘The British Isles have produced no such writers on divinity in the eighteenth century as Dickinson and Edwards’.
JOHN ERSKINE, quoted in The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, 1871, p. 98

‘The greatest, wisest, humblest and holiest of uninspired men’.
A note in John Collett Ryland’s copy of Hopkins’ Life of Edwards, quoted in The Three Rylands, James Culross, 1897, p. 96 fn

‘Jonathan Edwards unites comprehensiveness of view, with minuteness of investigation, beyond any writer I am acquainted with. He was the greatest of the sons of men. He has none of the graces of writing, I admit: he was acquainted with no grace but divine.’
ROBERT HALL, Works, Vol. 1, 1866, p.175

‘We cannot take leave of Edwards, without testifying the whole extent of the reverence that we bear him. The American divine affords, perhaps, the most wondrous example in modern times, of one who stood richly gifted both in natural and spiritual discernment – and we know not what most to admire in him, whether the deep philosophy that issued from his pen, or the humble and child-like piety that issued from his pulpit…As the philosopher he could discern, and discern truly, between the sterling and the counterfeit in Christianity – still it was as the humble and devoted pastor that Christianity was made, or Christianity was multiplied, in his hands.’
THOMAS CHALMERS, Works, Vol.14, pp. 316-1 7

‘Never was there a happier combination of great power with great piety.’
THOMAS CHALMERS, quoted by G. D. Henderson in ‘Jonathan Edwards and Scotland’, The Evangelical Quarterly, January 1944

‘We have in our annals no clearer, more transparent, more impressive illustration of an entire consecration of genius and greatness to the promotion of the Christian faith.’
EGBERT C. SMYTH, The Congregationalist and Christian World, 3 October 1903, p.458

‘He was distinctly a great man. He did not merely express the thought of his time, or meet it simply in the spirit of his tradition. He stemmed it and moulded it…His time does not explain him.’
F. J. E. WOODBRIDGE, The Philosophical Review, xiii, 1904, p.405

‘Jonathan Edwards changed what I may call the centre of thought in American theological thinking…More than to any other man, to Edwards is due the importance which, in American Christianity, is attributed to the conscious experience of the penitent sinner, as he passes into the membership of the Invisible Church…The man we so often call our greatest American Divine…was indeed inexpressibly great in his intellectual endowment, in his theological achievement, in his continuing influence. He was greatest in his attribute of regnant, permeating, irradiating spirituality. It is at once a present beatitude and an omen of future good that, in these days of pride in wealth and all that wealth means, of pride in the fashion of this world which passeth away, we still in our heart of hearts reserve the highest honor for the great American who lived and moved and had his being in the Universe which is unseen and eternal.’
JOHN DE WITT, ‘Jonathan Edwards: A Study’ in Biblical and Theological Studies by Members of the Faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary, 1912, pp. 130 and 136

‘Jonathan Edwards, saint and metaphysician, revivalist and theologian, stands out as the one figure of real greatness in the intellectual life of colonial America.’
BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD, Studies in Theology, 1932, p.517

‘No man is more relevant to the present condition of Christianity than Jonathan Edwards…He was a mighty theologian and a great evangelist at the same time…He was pre-eminently the theologian of revival. If you want to know anything about true revival, Edwards is the man to consult. Revivals have often started as the result of people reading volumes such as these two volumes of Edwards’ Works.’
D. MARTYN LLOYD-JONES in The Puritan Experiment in the New World, The Westminster Conference Papers, 1976, p.103 ff.

Consider the following two works by Edwards that have been updated and republished for easy reading:

Ripe for Damnation: Sermons on the Book of Revelation – by Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). Are you hungry for more of Edwards’ sermons? On the book of Revelation? These new works are not found anywhere on A Puritan’s Mind, and there are new ones not found in his large 2 volume works. 4 deal with the plight of the wicked, and 2 deal with the bliss of saints in heaven. These sermons are powerful, practical, and biblical, glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ, and contain 2 never before published sermons.

Justification by Faith Alone – by Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758). In this classic work, Edwards covers the intricacies of how believers are made righteous only through Christ’s merits, and that this justifying righteousness is equally imputed to all elect believers. This is accomplished by the condition of faith as an instrument.

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