Observations Concerning the Scripture Economy of the Trinity and Covenant of Redemption

In 1851, the Rev. Dr. Bushnell called attention to a supposed manuscript of Jonathan Edwards. “I very much desired,” he remarked, “in my exposition of the Trinity, to present some illustrations from a manuscript dissertation of President Edwards on that subject. Only a few months ago I first heard of the existence of such a manuscript. It was described to me as ’ an a priori argument for the Trinity, the ’ contents of which would excite a good deal of surprise if communicated to the public. The privilege of access to the manuscript is declined to me, as I understand, on the ground of ‘the nature of the contents, As this manuscript has just now come into the possession of Dr. Dwight, of Portland, it is to be hoped that, unless some restrictions on the use of it have descended as a trust from the author, he will disburden himself as soon as may be of the very important responsibility, so faithfully exercised, for a whole century now past, by persons not more competent, certainly, than Jonathan Edwards, to guard the orthodoxy of this very distinguished name.”1

In the International Review for July, 1880, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes alludes apparently to the same manuscript in the following terms: “The writer is informed on unquestionable authority that there is, or was, in existence, a manuscript of Edwards, in which his views appear to have undergone a great change in the direction of Arianism, or of Sabellianism, which is an old-fashioned Unitarianism, or, at any rate, show a defection from his former standard of Orthodoxy, and which its custodians, thinking it best to be as wise as serpents in order that they might continue harmless as doves, have considered it their duty to withhold from the public. If any of our friends at Andover can inform us what are the facts about this manuscript, such information would be gratefully received by many inquirers, who would be rejoiced to know that so able and so good a man lived to be emancipated from the worse than heathen conceptions which had so long enchained his powerful but crippled understanding.”

The accomplished editor of the Hartford Courant was stirred by these intimations to publish an article on “The Injustice to Jonathan Edwards,” which has 1 Christ in Theology, p. vi.

been widely noticed, and has excited much inquiry. After referring to alleged editorial alterations of the text in the published works of Edwards, the writer continues: “But this matter is a light one compared to the existing suppression referred to by Dr. Holmes. If Jonathan Edwards changed his views in regard to these awful aspects of the future of mankind,... justice to him no less than to the cause of truth requires a publication of that change. Dr. Holmes makes inquiry for the reported suppressed manuscript of ’ our friends at Andover, It is time that this inquiry were made more pointedly.

“It has long been matter of private information that Professor Edwards A. Park, of Andover, had in his possession an unpublished manuscript of Edwards of considerable extent, perhaps two-thirds as long as his treatise on the Will. As few have ever seen this manuscript, its contents are only known by vague reports. Its importance may be exaggerated, although it is impossible to exaggerate the interest, one would say, of an unpublished work of Edwards. It is said that it contains a departure from his published views on the Trinity, and a modification of the view of original sin. One account of it says that the manuscript leans toward Sabellianism, and that it even approaches Pelagianism. In the recollection of some, the title of it is ‘Divine Charity, or ‘Love of God.’1... But it matters little what this manuscript contains.... Everything that Edwards wrote has a value either as literature or as doctrine. ... If the importance of the suppressed manuscript is exaggerated in regard to its reported relaxing of uncompromising doctrines, the only way to show this is to publish it. If it is what it is reported to be, its publication is demanded by common morality.”2

The reports embodied in these statements have met with a general denial of their correctness from the Rev. Tryon Edwards, D.D., and also from the editor of The Bihliotheca Sacra. The latter testifies: “The popular rumors regarding his [President Edwards’s] changes of theological opinion are many of them utterly false, many of them singularly exaggerated, and all unreliable. So far as his manuscripts have been examined by the present writer, the views of Edwards on the Trinity are no more inclined to Unitarianism than were the views of Augustine and his followers, of Thomas Aquinas and the Doctors of the Roman Church through

1 President Edwards’s work on “Charity,” or “Christian Love,” was published, with an Introduction by the Rev. Dr. Tryon Edwards, in 185 1, and* has passed through numerous editions. It has also been republished in England.

2 Hartford Courant, June 23. I quote from a reprint in the Boston Daily Advertiser, June 25.

the Middle Ages. The present writer, having heard the popular rumors, has been surprised at the fact that he has found so little which could have suggested, and so much refuting, the statement that Edwards ever wavered. in adopting any of the essential doctrines of Calvinism.“1 Dr. Edwards, in a note to The Congregationalist? adopts these statements respecting President Edwards’s adherence to Calvinism and Trinitarianism from “a pretty thorough examination of all the manuscripts” deposited with him as trustee and now in the hands of Professor Park. In a previous communication to the Boston Evening Transcript, Dr. Edwards also says:” Personally I know of no suppression of any opinions of Edwards, much less of any omission or change of expression that would modify, in the least, his well-known theological or doctrinal views. d

To these emphatic disclaimers I am able to add a more specific refutation by publishing the manuscript to which Dr. Bushnell referred, and which appears to have occasioned, through erroneous and exaggerated reports, the present misunderstanding respecting its author’s opinions.

It is not, as Dr. Bushnell supposed, an autograph,

1 The Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1880, p. 592.

2 The Congregationalism July 21, 1880.
8 Evening Transcript, July 8, 1880.

but a copy. It is, however, a very early and trustworthy one, having also a special value in the disappearance of the original, perhaps at the time this copy was made nearly a century ago.

I received it, about fifteen years since, from the late Rev. William T. Dwight, D.D., to whom it was bequeathed by his brother, Rev. Dr. Sereno E. Dwight, author of a well-known biography of President Edwards, and the latest editor of his collected works. The manuscript is in a chirography unlike that of any of the copyists known to have been employed in connection with Dr. Dwight’s edition; and the paper, also, is different. It appears to have belonged to a manuscript book prepared for publication. The first page is numbered 573, and begins with a paragraph printed on page 466 of the Miscellaneous Observations, published at Edinburgh in 1793. Then comes this direction,

1 Dr. Erskine, in a Preface to this work, states that “Dr. Edwards, of Newhaven, has not grudged the labour of transcribing this volume of miscellanies, which, if it prove acceptable, will be followed by more, as the Doctor’s health and leisure permit.” In an unpublished letter from Dr. Edwards, addressed to the Rev. Dr. John Erskine, Edinburgh, and dated New Haven, Feb. 8, 1787, there is an allusion to “packets of May 25 and March 8, 1785,” and the following statement: “In consequence of the communication by Mr. Hart of part of your letters to him, expressing your confidence that there would be little difficulty in getting published my father’s practical tracts, on April 7, 1786, I sent to Mr.

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