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7-1995 Calvinist Metaphysics to Republican Theory: Jonathan Edwards and James Dana on Freedom of the Will Allen C. Guelzo Gettysburg College

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Guelzo, Allen C. "Calvinist Metaphysics to Republican Theory: Jonathan Edwards and James Dana on Freedom of the Will." Journal of the History of Ideas (July 1995) 56(3): 399-418.

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Abstract The Reverend Mr. James Dana, the pastor of the First Church in Wallingford, Connecticut, had never before attempted to pick a quarrel with his old friend and ally, Ezra Stiles, the president of Yale College. But in the winter of 1782 what was happening at Yale passed all the bounds of propriety and friendship. "I have understood that Mr. Edwards's book on fatality was laid aside some years since at your university," Dana wrote (not stopping to add what he surely must have thought, and good riddance too); but now, "it gave me pain to hear lately" that the divinity professor, the epileptic Samuel Wales, "particularly recommends this book to the young gentlemen who are studying divinity under his direction." Have you forgotten, Dana irritably asked, what kind of damage Jonathan Edwards and his Careful and Strict Enquiry in the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will, which is supposed to be essential to Moral Agency, Vertue and Vice, Reward and Punishment had done since the book appeared in 1754? "I need not say to you, sir, that it has been the root of bitterness which has troubled us...like Achan in the camp of Israel, Hopkintonianism, Westianism, and Schism are grafted upon it." It promoted fatalism and mechanism, "and if mechanism doth not explode moral good and evil, I have not the slightest pretence to any mental discernment." Not only mechanism and fatalism, "Murrayism, Deism, and atheism" also sprang indiscriminately from the head of Edwards's book; Dana even blamed the sensational murder-suicide of William Beadle that summer on "the principles" of "Mr. Edwards's system." Suppress the book, Dana pleaded, "interpose your good influence, that so dangerous a book be not introduced into college again." [excerpt]

Keywords Jonathan Edwards, James Dana, moral agency, Freedom of the Will

Disciplines History | Intellectual History | United States History

This article is available at The uC pola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cwfac/7 FromCalvinist Metaphysics to RepublicanTheory: JonathanEdwards and JamesDana on Freedomof the Will

AllenC. Guelzo

The ReverendMr. JamesDana, the pastor of the First Churchin Wallingford,Connecticut, had neverbefore attempted to picka quarrelwith his old friendand ally,Ezra Stiles,the president of Yale College.But in the winterof 1782what was happeningat Yale passedall thebounds of propriety and friendship."I have understoodthat Mr. Edwards'sbook on fatalitywas laid aside someyears since at youruniversity," Dana wrote(not stopping to add whathe surelymust have thought,and good riddancetoo); butnow, "it gave me pain to hearlately" that the divinity professor, the epileptic Samuel Wales,"particularly recommends this book to theyoung gentlemen who are studyingdivinity under his direction."Have you forgotten,Dana irritably asked,what kind of damageJonathan Edwards and his Carefuland Strict Enquiryin theModern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will,which is supposedto be essentialto Moral Agency,Vertue and Vice,Reward and Punishmenthad done sincethe book appearedin 1754? "I need not say to you,sir, that it has been theroot of bitternesswhich has troubledus...like Achanin thecamp of Israel,Hopkintonianism, Westianism, and Schismare graftedupon it." It promotedfatalism and mechanism,"and if mechanism dothnot explode moral good andevil, I havenot the slightest pretence to any mentaldiscernment." Not onlymechanism and fatalism,"Murrayism, De- ism,and atheism"also sprangindiscriminately from the head of Edwards's book; Dana even blamedthe sensational murder-suicide of WilliamBeadle thatsummer on "theprinciples" of "Mr. Edwards'ssystem." Suppress the

The authorwishes to thankCharles L. Cohen, Bruce Kuklick,Michael Zuckerman, and themembers of thePhiladelphia Center for Early American Studies for their comments on an earlierversion of thisessay. 399 Copyright1995 by Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc.

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 400 AllenC. Guelzo book, Dana pleaded,"interpose your good influence,that so dangerousa book be notintroduced into college again."'" JonathanEdwards certainly had his critics,but the depthof Dana's animustowards Edwards, and especiallyEdwards's treatise on thewill, has fewparallels, then or now. By thetime he wrotehis letterto Stiles,Dana had alreadywritten a two-volumerebuttal of Freedom of the Will,which became the singlelongest piece of sustainedphilosophical invective in eighteenth- centuryAmerican literature; and he spentanother twenty-five years after his letterto Stilestrying to persuadeYale College and anyoneelse who would listenthat it was theideas packed into Freedom of the Will... .and not the ideas of Tom Paine or EthanAllen.. .which were leading New EnglandCalvinism downto road to obliteration.The balefulinfluence of Edwards's"book on fatality"existed on multiplelevels forDana, whichwas whatmade "this book" so unfitfor Yale undergraduates.Dana was convincedthat it led to intellectualdespair and loss of faith,that it disrupted town and church life by fosteringschism, and thatin thelargest context it wouldthreaten to capsize thefragile stability of New England'semerging republican order. This might havebeen, for Ezra Stiles,a greatdeal to imputeto a fairlyesoteric treatise on theage-old problem of freewill and determinism;but for Dana thefree will problemand politicalideas about freedomwere connecteddiscourses in whichthe wider the notion of freewill, the narrower the concept of republican libertywas likely to be. Thus, his apparentlyarcane debate over Edwards'sdeterministic metaphysics came to representa contestnot just overterms but over the life of themind and of societyand eventhe shape of therepublic itself. Dana's dreadof JonathanEdwards did not arise out of any personal antagonismbetween the two...Edwards,in fact,died in New Jerseysix monthsbefore Dana arrivedin Connecticutas an untriedHarvard graduate to becomethe Wallingford church's pastor. But Edwards'sNew Lightfollow- ersand admirersamong the clergy of theStanding Order in Connecticuthad crossedDana's patheven before he becamethe pastor of Wallingford; and in thefall of 1758, in themost sensational ecclesiastical rift in thehistory of ConnecticutCongregationalism, they had nearlymanaged to thwarthis call to the Wallingfordchurch. Wallingford had been a preserveof Old Light conservatismall throughthe Great Awakening and of Old Calvinistopposi- tionthereafter, due in largemeasure to theskillful management of the parish by the WallingfordFirst Church's first two ministers,Samuel Street(in- stalled1674) and SamuelWhittelsey (installed 1717).2 Unhappily,when the

I JamesDana to Ezra Stiles, 18 December 1782, in the Ezra Stiles Papers(microfilm reel 4), BeineckeRare Book and ManuscriptLibrary, Yale University. 2 RobertJ. Taylor, Colonial Connecticut:A History(New York, 1979), 121; GeraldE. Farrell,"Dana, Whittelsey,and Wallingford:Change in the EighteenthCentury" (unpub- lishedmanuscript, November 1987, ConnecticutHistorical Society), 3-6, 8-9; and James Dana, A CenturyDiscourse at the AnniversaryMeeting of the Freemenof the Town of WallingfordApril 9, 1770 (New Haven, 1770), 31. "Old Light"was thegeneral term used

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23-year-oldJames Dana arrivedin Wallingfordas Whittelsey'ssuccessor in 1758,he couldnot suppress the urge to measureWallingford against Harvard Yard and to treatWallingford people accordingly.A groupof suspicious WallingfordNew Lightsconfronted him shortly after the call was issuedand grilledhim about "his sentiments,with regard to originalsin, and thesaints perseverance,with regard to thepower of freewill, and fallingfrom grace," and how well he likedConnecticut's Saybrook Platform. Dana repliedsharply, "why we do not ask him how he lik'd John Bunyan'sPilgrim's Progress, or Esoph's Fables"?The New Lightswere not amused.In July,eighty members of the Wallingfordchurch petitioned the New Haven Association,declaring that they "are not willingto have Mr. JamesDana settledin the workof the ministryamongst us"; and on 10 October1758 the consociation of New HavenEast met at Wallingfordto hear the chargesagainst Dana.3 The chargesinvolved a mixtureof theological heresyand injuredfeelings: Dana was accusedof having"wholly Neglected the Doctrineof thenew Birthand the Safety[of] appearingin [the]Righ- teousnessof Christ"and of havingtaught "that true Religion is builtupon a Principleof Self Love." But it was plain thathis greatestoffense was intellectualsnobbery, having unwisely declared to the petitioners"that he valuednot if there were 150 signersagainst him for that a greatpart of them were SoftHeads & void of Understanding."4 Dana's theologicaloffense was less obvious.His crime,in theeyes of the New Lights,was not thathe actuallydisbelieved in "originalsin, and the saintsperseverance," but thathe claimedthat these matters were "myster- ies" whichhuman reason could only accept passively as brutefacts of divine revelationand which one shouldnot press harder than common sense and the

to identifyall anti-revivalistclergy and laityin New Englandduring the Second Awaken- ing; "Old Calvinist"became the termused to describethose Old Lightswho, afterthe Awakening,remained within the generalorbit of Calvinistorthodoxy and did not move over to unitarianismor deism. See Mark A. Noll, "EbenezerDevotion," Church History, 45 (1976), 297-307 and "Moses Mather(Old Calvinist)and the Evolutionof Edwards- eanism,"Church History, 49 (1980), 275-83, SidneyE. Mead, NathanielWilliam Taylor, 1786-1858: A ConnecticutLiberal (Chicago, 1942), 97-124, and HenryF. May, The En- lightenmentin America(New York, 1976), 60-61. 3 C. H. S. Davis, Historyof Wallingford,Conn. From Its Settlementin 1670 to the Present Time (Meriden, Conn., 1870), 164; Leonard Bacon, ThirteenHistorical Dis- courses,On theCompletion of TwoHundred Years, From the Beginning of theFirst Church in New Haven (New Haven, 1839), 267-68; "JamesDana," in Sibley'sHarvard Graduates, ed. CliffordK. Shipton(15 vols.; Boston, 1965), XIII, 306; The First Congregational Church,Wallingford, Conn. (Wallingford,1975), 27; and "To the ReverandSamuel Hall Moderatorof theConsociation in New Haven County,"and "We the subscribingmembers of the firstSociety," in New Haven East AssociationPapers Relatingto the Churchin Wallingford,1758-1832, Beinecke Library. ' "To theRev'd Consociationof New Haven Countyto be held at Wallingfordat the house of CharlesSperry" (10/27/1758) in New Haven East AssociationPapers Relating to the Churchin Wallingford,1758-1832, Beinecke Library.

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StandingOrder authorized.5 Dana neverdoubted that "all poweris of God, derivedfrom him, and subjectto him,"and so "he numbereththe hairsof ourheads, and disposeththe most contingent and casual events."6But he did notwant that conviction descending into fatalism, and he was convincedthat theradical Calvinism being preached up bythe New Lightscould only lead in thatdirection. Dana knew all too well thatover the previouseighty-odd years,Thomas Hobbes, Anthony Collins, and a flockof "Pr-acticalatheists" had takenthe Calvinistic doctrines of divinesovereignty and predestination and turnedthem neatly into system of hardmechanistic determinism, and he was certainthat following radical New LightCalvinism into a fixationwith the subjectwould lead people eventuallyto confusion,to depair,and to Hobbes. What was criticalto Dana was to assertthe divine ordinationof all events,but not in too muchdetail, and to proclaimdivine election as a fact, which,of course,unaided human reason cannotexpect to reconcilewith humanfreedom.7 Ultimately, what set Dana decisivelyoff from the Calvin- ismof theNew Lightswas notEnlightenment rationalism... .his position was based on theincapacity of reasoning,not its powers.. .nor an outrightdisbe- lief in divineelection but ratherhis convictionthat "liberty, necessity and prescienceare subjectsof whichwe have no adequateideas."8 If we haveno adequateideas of them,then they cannot be takenas self- evidentguides to determiningthe spiritualcondition of others,nor can the establishedchurch be detachedfrom the larger context of humansociety as a refugefor the elect come-outers."We must not judge the characterof professingChristian from detached parts, or fromany darknessoccasioned by externalcircumstances, or a mind overcloudedand impaired,"Dana urged;"every real Christian has grace,whether he himselfdiscerns it or not: Yea, whetherit is in actual exerciseor not." Theremay be "the habitof grace"without "temporary awakenings, or the externalsof religion."9 The churchwas not,in Dana's mind,merely a voluntarysociety of the self-consciouslyelect but a familialinstitution designed for nurtureand growth,without the thunderousinterventions of "temporaryawakenings." Baptism,then, and notthe sudden mysterious seizure of conversion,"is the only formof admissioninto the Christianchurch"; and the work of the churchis notto separatethe wheat from the chaff but to act as an organicpart

I Dana, "The difficultyof being saved," 12-13, in Sermon ManuscriptBook, Beinecke Library. 6 Dana, A CenturyDiscourse, 11, and "The Observationof the Lord's Day," in Sermonsto YoungPeople; PreachedA.D. 1803, 1804 (New Haven, 1806), 149 7 Dana, The Folly of Practical Atheism:A Discourse deliveredin the Chapel of Yale College,on Lord's-Day,November 23, 1794 (New Haven, 1794), 18. 8 Dana, The Duty of Christiansto speak as the Holy Ghost teacheth:A Sermon preachedApril 29, 1789 ... At His Installation(New Haven, 1789), 18-19. 9 Dana, "Adoption,"17, "The conversionof St. Paul proves the truthof Christian- ity,"48-49, and "Misconstructionof providentialallotments," 18, in SermonManuscript Book.

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions JonathanEdwards and JamesDana 403 of humansociety, as a church-in-society,fitting its membersfor gradual growthby "continuingin prayer,and in theuse of otherappointed means," and bringingthem as much as possible "in a preparatorywork of grace" throughthe morphology of thenotorious "half-way covenant" to fullChris- tianmaturity.10 For Dana, who had prudentlymarried into the Whittelsey clanupon his arrival in Wallingford,the Wallingford church was, in bothfact and metaphor,an embodimentof stablepatriarchal authority and one which JamesDana, who owed bothhis griefsand his joys to patriarchyin Wal- lingford,had no hesitationsdefending. "Christianity is a means of uniting, notof separating,the children of thesame commonFather."" The New Lightfaction in Wallingfordwas unimpressed.The doctrinal chargesagainst Dana werereferred by the dissidents to thelocal New Haven consociation,where the New Lightshad theupper hand. Rather than take its chanceswith a New Light-dominatedconsociation, the Wallingford church proceededto ordainDana withoutwaiting for the customary endorsement of theconsociation, calling in Old Lightstalwarts like Isaac Stilesand Samuel Whittelsey,Jr., to performthe laying-on of hands. The congregationjustified thisunilateral action by its ancientright as an independentcongregation to choose its own pastor,but the consociationwas not about to accept this argumentat facevalue. Dana and theWallingford First Church were accord- inglyfound "guilty of scandalouscontempt" by the consociationand ex- communicated,and togetherthey entered an ecclesiasticallimbo in which onlya handfulof Old Lightpastors and churcheswould dare to exchange pulpitsand memberswith them.'2 Dana remainedunder a cloud of New Lightsuspicion for over a decade, andthe longer he stayedout of fellowship with the Standing Order, the darker thesuspicions grew. At theworst Dana was rumoredto be "a Heretick"who was "unsoundas to theTrinity, Election, & univ. Salvation,"and even the best judgmentput forwardby otherOld Lightswas thatDana's defiant behaviorwas "contemptuous& disorderly& inconsistentwith his Charac- ter."Edwards's grandson, Timothy Dwight, mocked Dana as nothingmore

10 Dana, The Duty of Christiansto speak as the Holy Ghost teacheth,43; "The difficultyof being saved," 45, and "Hungeringand Thirstingfor righteousness,"17, in SermonManuscript Book. " Dana, "The Characteristicsof Christianity"(p. 64) in SermonManuscript Book. For thepurpose of discussingeighteenth-century Connecticut, I have treatedpatriarchy as a social orderin whichadult males controlpublic institutionsand the organizationof their families,and speak as theirfamily's voice in theircommunities...see Toby Ditz, Property and Kinship:Inheritance in Early Connecticut,1750-1820 (Princeton,1986), 119. 12 EdmundS. Morgan,The GentlePuritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1727-1795 (New Haven, 1962), 198-99;Public Recordsof theColony of Connecticut,ed. C. J.Hoadly (New York, 1968 [1880]), 344; Davis, Historyof Wallingford,196-97; Leonard Bacon, "Histori- cal DiscourseDelivered at Norwich,June 23, 1859," in Contributionsto theEcclesiastical Historyof Connecticut(New Haven, 1861), 55-56; see also BenjaminTrumbull, A Com- plete Historyof Connecticut,Civil and Ecclesiastical(2 vols.; New Haven, 1818), II, 480- 526.

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 404 AllenC. Guelzo than a "milkypreacher" and a "hackneycoachman of whores."13For a hundredyears afterwards the rumorslingered in the Connecticutchurches thatJames Dana held"nothing more than that which is commonlyknown as theArminian Doctrine" and had neverimpressed any of his parishionersthat "he was hearingthat upon whichthe immediateacceptance of whichhis soul's salvationwas depending."14 Thatall of his sufferingshad somethingto do withJonathan Edwards, Dana mighthave been reasonablybut only vaguely sure, but onlybecause Edwardswas one of theprincipal architects of theNew Light.He had read Edwards'sbooks in the 1750s,including Freedom of the Will,but shrugged themoff as too esotericin theirarguments to be muchworry. It was notuntil 1765, eightyears afterthe Wallingfordcontroversy had left Dana and Wallingfordoutside the StandingOrder, that Edwards's chief disciple, SamuelHopkins, published a sensationalInquiry Concerning the Promises of theGospel which blew thelid offConnecticut's uneasy post-Awakening quiet.In it Hopkinspushed New Lightultraism nearly as faras it could be pushed:sinners could notuse themeans of graceto repentbecause sinners (by analyticdefinition) are incapableof doinganything which pleases God; sinnerswho attemptto use themeans of graceare pretenderswho purposely preoccupythemselves with the "means"in orderto avoid doingwhat they mustdo immediately,which is repent;doing good to one's neighborapart fromregeneration is no betterthan cutting the neighbor'sthroat, since it proceedsfrom an unholymotive; everyone is obligedby theirnatural abili- tiesto obeythe law of God fully,but utterly disabled by theirmoral inability withoutdivine regeneration; and the churchis composedof the self-con- sciouslyregenerate and not half-way covenanters, whose willingness to obey God runs all the way up to a willingnessto be damned,if need be."5 Hopkins'sInquiry was one of theearly contributions to whatbecame known as theNew Divinity,the most radical version of the New Lightyet to appear in New England,and theversion most clearly destructive of thepatriarchal church.As JamesDana read Hopkins,the scales fellfrom his eyes; and he saw at oncethat the demonic intellectual power behind the New Divinity,and

1' Ezra Stiles,The LiteraryDiary of Ezra Stiles,D.D. (3 vols.; New York, 1901), III, 355-56; Noah Hobartto SolomonWilliams, 25 November1758, in MiscellaneousCollec- tions,Massachusetts Historical Society; Dwight, in KennethSilverman, Timothy Dwight (New York, 1969), 102. 14 Leonard Bacon, ThirteenHistorical Discourses, 276-77; see Conrad Wright,The Beginningsof Unitarianismin America(Boston, 1952), 283, who stillenlisted Dana as "an Arminianat the beginningof his ministry"another hundred years on. ' Hopkins,"An InquiryConcerning the Promisesof the Gospel" (1765), "The True State and Characterof the Unregenerate... being a Reply to Mr. Mill's Inquiry"(1767), and "The Cause, Natureand Means of Regeneration,"in Works(3 vols.; Boston, 1854), III, 199-200,309-10, 312, 561, 567; see also JosephConforti, "Samuel Hopkinsand the New Divinity:Theology, Ethics, and Social Reformin EighteenthCentury America," in Williamand Mary Quarterly,34 (1977), 572-89.

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions JonathanEdwards and JamesDana 405 in all histroubles in Wallingford,lay in JonathanEdwards and his marvelous treatiseon Freedomof the Will.16

JonathanEdwards knew about Hobbes, too, and he had been appalled, firstby the skill withwhich Hobbes took thatmost salientof Calvinist doctrines,divine predestination, and turnedit intoa soullessdeterminism, andsecond, by the unseemly speed with which his fellowCalvinists panicked and boltedfrom their ancestral creed to embracesome form of free-willism. Hobbesprovoked this panic by treating the action of willing as nothingmore thanthe last momentin a seriesof alternationsbetween fear and appetite. Hobbes thoughtof volitionas a one-stageprocess, in whichwilling was merelya name attachedto the last segmentin the processof appetite,and whichcould not be interruptedby a processof furtherdeliberation within the will,or theact of willing,itself. Consequently, the outcomes of all choices arenecessary ones because they cannot be otherthan what the last appetite is, and thewill couldbe spokenof as "free"not because it possessespower but simply because it possesses ability or opportunity.17What frightened Hobbes's EnglishProtestant readers was theway Hobbes hookedthis one- stageversion of volitionnot to divineprovidence but to humanappetite. In an intellectualclimate already made jitteryby mechanisticCartesianism, Hobbeshad produced a modelof human choice which was nothingmore than necessity,as fullydeterministic as any Calvinist or Augustiniandeterminism, andmade it work purely as a simple,natural mechanism responding (without thepower of creatingalternatives) to fearand appetite,pleasure and pain. And so a greatstampede ensued among English Protestants, who fled fromall formsof determinismand necessitylest theyplay intoHobbes's mechanistichands. They grasped instead for models of choicewhich would grantthe deliberation Hobbes had deniedto thewill and whichwould open up theprocess of volitioninto a two-stageprocess that allowed the will to dallyover the messages sent it by theappetites and if necessaryto suspend choosingentirely, for it was in thisway onlythat establishment Protestants like SamuelClarke could protect themselves from the frightening conclusion thathuman beings were merelybiological mechanisms responding to the necessarydictates of desire."8It was onlyby positingthis power of "suspension"that English Protestants believed they still had evidenceof thesuperi- orityof the human soul to therelentless clashing of mechanisticgears, and it was thisthat led New EnglandCalvinists to trimthe sails of theirCalvinism lestthey be mistakenfor the disciples of Hobbes.

16 JamesDana to Ezra Stiles, 1 May 1769, in Ezra Stiles Papers (microfilmreel 3). 17 Hobbes,"Supplement from Liberty and Necessity,"Hobbes: Selections,ed. F. J.E. Woodbridge(New York, 1930), 205-6. 18 R. F. Stalley,"The Will in Hume's Treatise,"Journal of theHistory of Philosophy, 24 (1986), 41-53; JohnH. Gay, "Matterand Freedomin the Thoughtof Samuel Clarke," JHI, 24 (1963), 85-106; JohnRedwood, Reason, Ridicule, and Religion: The Age of Enlightenmentin England,1660-1750 (Cambridge,Mass., 1976), 208ff.

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JonathanEdwards was moresuspicious of the free-willers than he was of Hobbes,and fromhis provincialperspective in theConnecticut river valley, he viewedthe incursionsof free-willismas nothingless thana treasonous "Arminianism"that stole God's divinehonor even as it stole his supreme determiningpower over all events.When at lastEdwards was freeto turnhis attentionfully to the problemin the 1750s, he was quite willingto turn Hobbes back on Hobbes and reappropriatea one-stage model of volitionto describehuman choice in a divinely-determineduniverse.19 Edwards had two majorarguments to putforward concerning freedom of the will. One ofthem was strictlypsychological, and it dealtwith the precise description of volition.In a mannerstrikingly reminiscent of Hobbes,Edwards described the will as "thatby which the mind chooses anything"...which is the same thing as sayingthat the will has no independentfunctions or powers of itsown but actsstrictly as thelast segment of the mind's inclination toward an object."It will not appear,"as the two-stagershad claimed,that "a man's choosing, likingbest or being best pleased with a thingare not the same with his willing thatthing"; and in a directcriticism of two-stagemodels of choice,Edwards insistedthat "a man never,in any instance,wills anythingcontrary to his desires,or desiresanything contrary to his will."20Just as Hobbes had seen "thelast appetite"as thecause of a choice,so Edwardsproposed "motives" as thecause of choice,with a "motive"in thiscase being"something that is extantin the view or apprehensionof the understanding,or perceiving faculty."To the extentthat a given motiveis perceivedas "the greatest apparentgood" among all othermotives, the will apprehendsthe object representedby the motive(Oust like Hobbes's "last appetite")without the interventionof any otherdeliberation. So close in factis the connection betweenthe motive and choicethat "it mustbe true,in some sense,that the will alwaysis as thegreatest apparent good is."21 This explainedvery neatly how God was able to determineall events withoutever violating human freedom. For ifthe will was createdsimply to followthe lead ofperception, then its true freedom lay precisely in following thoseleads, and God had onlyto presentthe proper motive to a perceiving individualof therequired "temper" (depraved, regenerated, or otherwise)in

1' Clyde S. Holbrook,The Ethicsof Jonathan Edwards: Morality and Aesthetics(Ann Arbor,Mich., 1973),28, 38; JE's manuscriptsindicate that he had some exposure,direct or indirect,to Hobbes as earlyas the 1720s...see "Miscellanies'f' " in HarveyG. Townsend (ed.), ThePhilosophy of Jonathan Edwards From His PrivateManuscripts (rept. Westport, Conn., 1972 [1955]), 193. 20 The Worksof JonathanEdwards: Freedom of the Will,ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, 1957), 137-40; see also James Hoopes, Consciousnessin New England: From Puritanismand Ideas to Psychoanalysisand Semiotic (Baltimore, 1989), 90-91, and NormanS. Fiering,Jonathan Edwards's Moral Thoughtand Its BritishContext (Chapel Hill, 1981), 292-98. 21 Freedomof the Will,142, 146-47.

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions JonathanEdwards and JamesDana 407 theproper circumstances for a perfectlypredictable and inevitableresult to ensuefreely. Far fromthis releasing Edwards from the suspicion of mechanism,however, it merelysuggested to suspiciousreaders that all human behaviorreally was necessaryafter all, withGod arrangingthe pieces to createan illusionof freedom.Anticipating this objection, Edwards insisted thatthere are various ways of defining necessity.22 There is naturalnecessity, whichis whatpeople usually think of whenthey think of necessity,as when "men are under... the forceof naturalcauses" such as "pain when their bodies are wounded"or when"men's bodies move downwards,when there is nothingto supportthem." In orderto be free fromnatural necessity, people muststruggle; and whentheir struggles are unsuccessful,we agree thatthey cannot be consideredto be free.What is more,we do nothold them morallyresponsible for the performance of actionsthat they were naturally unableto perform.However, there are morekinds of necessitythan those whicharise only from "natural causes," Edwards added; thereis also moral necessity,which springs from "moral causes, such as habitsand dispositions of theheart, and moralmotives and inducements."23In that case themoral necessitycreated by such a habit,if a good one, is neversomething to be complainedabout or groanedunder; in fact,having that kind of necessity governhuman conduct is exactlywhat makes us praisesome people as good, noble,or reliable,while being governed by evil habitsis just whatcauses us to condemnand criticizeothers. This leftEdwards free to drawtwo conclusions,one thatimmediately addressedthe conundrum created by Hobbesand another,less apparent,one whichwas reservedfor the nearer audience of New EnglandCalvinism. On the most obvious level Edwards's definitionof volitionand his skilful deploymentof the idea of motivesas divineagents allowed him to coopt Hobbes's one-stagedeterminism and turnit back intoan engineof Calvinis- tic apologetics,and in theprocess Edwards would demonstrate that the only realisticdefense for theism in theeighteenth-century was a full-blownmoral determinism.What was less obviouswas the otherconclusion which Ed- wardsdrew, which faced back toward the Old Lightsand their flight from the GreatAwakening into "Arminianism." If moralnecessity and naturalneces- sitydid indeedrepresent two entirely separate and distinguishablestrands of determinedconduct, then it was possibleto makea similarworking distinctionbetween natural and moral inability as well; and one had onlyto transfer thatdistinction out of the contextof eighteenth-centurymoral philosophy and deposit it in the contextof Edwards's writingson revival and the

22 Edwardsmade severaldistinctions within the term necessity, the most primary being a distinctionbetween "relative" necessity, where the necessaryresult comes fromthe coercivephysical relations of bodies, and "philosophical"necessity, which describesthe connectionswhich exist between terms. He subsumedhis discussionof naturaland moral necessityunder the headingof "philosophical"necessity (Freedom of the Will,151-52). 23 Freedomof the Will,157-60.

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Awakeningsand his debates with the Old Lightsin the 1740s for it to become clearthat Edwards had fashioneda leverwhich could topplethe entire Old Light-OldCalvinist edifice. For on thatlogic there is no needfor the gradual use ofthe means of grace to bringsomeone closer to salvation:natural ability makesthat available now. There is no use forhalf-way covenants, which only delay the sinner'sfree choice, or for the church-in-society,since every repentantsinner knows by directself-inspection the operation of theirown will and withwhom they ought to associate.When moral and naturalability coincide,the twice-born know where their real familyis to be found.24 All of thismight have been muchclearer in 1754 whenEdwards pub- lishedFreedom of the Will, had not the book itself been spun out to enormous lengthwith a hostof ancillarydebates over biblical exegesis and examina- tionsof the self-contradictionsof "Arninian" logic. It was not until1765, whenHopkins's Inquiry lifted the arguments on naturalability/moral inability out of Freedomof the Will and droppedthem heavily onto the Old Calvinists,that James Dana realizedthat Jonathan Edwards and Freedomof theWill was thereal enemy. By thespring of 1769he was able to informEzra Stilesthat he was "well nighfinished ... someremarks on themost elaborate metaphysicalproduction ever published in thiscountry," and in thefollow- ing yearhe publishedhis lengthyExamination of thelate Rev'd President Edwards's 'Enquiryon Freedom of Will.'25 Two years later,Edwards's successorin thechurch and mission at Stockbridge,Stephen West, published a replyto Dana's Examination,and thereuponDana began assembling materialfor another assault on Edwards(appealing, among other efforts, to AndrewEliot to confirmthe rumor Dana had heardthat "the english impres- sionof Mr. Edwardson thewill was promotedby thedeists in London;and thatthe rakes in Hollandhad procureda dutchtranslation of it").26In 1773 Dana unleashedan equallylengthy "Examination of theLate Rev'd Presi- dentEdwards 's Enquiryon Freedomof Will," continued,in whichhe largely ignoredWest and resumedhis argumentwith Edwards where he had leftoff threeyears before. Dana wastedno timein the firstExamination in markingout the chief problemwith Edwards: too ambitiousand too restlessan intellectto abide contentwith the simple antinomy of divine providence and free moral choice, Edwardshad plungedover his head into "elaborateand intricate"meta- physicalspeculations, and only Edwards's "strongpractical sense of reli-

24 On Edwards's immediatismsee "MiscellaneousRemarks," Edward Hickman (ed.), The Worksof JonathanEdwards (2 vols.; London, 1976 [1834]), II, 545, 563; see also NormanPettit, The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversionin PuritanNew England(New Haven, 1966), 209-12. 25 Dana to Ezra Stiles, 1 May 1769, in Ezra StilesPapers [microfilmreel 3], Beinecke Library. 26 Dana to Andrew Eliot, 9 July 1773, in Andrews-EliotPapers, Massachusetts HistoricalSociety.

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions JonathanEdwards and JamesDana 409 gion" had actuallykept him fromhaving "philosophised"himself into "scepticism."The principalpoint on whichDana soughtto demonstratethat follyin his firstExamination was theproblem of motives,since the whole structureof Edwards's psychologyof volitionhung on the functionshe attributedto motives.Dana did notpropose to question"whether the highest motivealways hath a causal influenceon thewill"...that much was simplya tautology. The realquestion was how anymotive came to be "highestin themind's view."27That, Dana was delightedto pointout, Edwards had neverreally explainedbeyond the simple suggestion that motives might derive their force sometimesfrom the inherentattractiveness of the motiveitself and sometimesfrom the inclinationsof the perceiverof the motive.But this,Dana declared,only raised more questionsthan it answered:if the power of a motivelies in themotive itself, then how can we escape the inferencethat God deliberatelytempts people whenhe places highlyattractive but highly immoralmotives in theirpath and thusreveals himself as theauthor of sin? "Willit now be said,that GOD is thecause ofthose ... actsof the will, which are so odiousin theirnature?" Dana asked:"On Mr. Edwards'sscheme this mustbe said." Or if motivesderive their force from the "temper"of the perceivingindividual, then isn't it reallytheir "temper" which places them at faultand not theirwills? "If an intrinsiccause, or originalbias and propensity,be thatnecessity by which the will is determined,what is thisbut beingdetermined by nature?"28The pointis thatboth interpretations of the powerof motivesare alike ridiculous;Edwards cannot really say forcertain whatmakes one motivegreater or betterthan another, and neither can anyone else. "And thusthe enquiry may be pursuedin infinitum(which shews, by theway, the futility, at least,of enteringon suchan enquiryas thatwhich is thesubject of Mr. Edwards'sbook)."29 The secondobject of Dana's attackin thefirst Examination had to be the natural/moralnecessity dichotomy; if Edwards's scheme of motivesex- plained how choices became necessary,the natural/moralnecessity di- chotomywas neededto explainhow necessary choices were compatible with moralresponsibility. For Dana explodingthis explanationwas simplya

27 Dana, An Examinationof thelate Rev'd PresidentEdwards's "Enquiryon Freedom of Will" (Boston, 1770), iii-iv, 1. Only fourrelatively brief commentaries have been writtenon Dana's criticismof Edwards,and all of themrespond to Dana as littlemore than a footnoteeither to Edwards (Paul Ramsey's introductionto Freedom of the Will and Claude M. Newlin,Philosophy and Religionin ColonialAmerica [New York, 1962], 161 ff) or to anti-Calvinism(Conrad Wright, The Beginningsof Unitarianismin America[Boston, 1955], 106ffand JosephHaroutunian, Piety VersusMoralism: The Passing of the New England Theology[New York, 1932], 229-36). 28 An Examination,46-49, 53-56, 75; thesame objectionwas raisedby ArthurMurphy in his reviewessay on Paul Ramsey'sYale editionof Freedomof the Will...see"Jonathan Edwardson Free Will and Moral Agency,"Philosophical Quarterly, 68 (1959), 200ff. 29 An Examination,6.

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 410 AllenC. Guelzo matterof insistingthat the natural/moral necessity dichotomy was a distinc- tionwithout a difference.As Dana complained,

WhatMr. Edwards intendedby a moralcause, we cannotsatisfy ourselves.Sometimes he appearsto reasonas if supposedthere was reallyno distinctionbetween a moraland natural cause, or none to be perceived;while more generally he seemsto supposea distinctionof greatimportance; which, however, he hathnot so clearlypointed out as outas wereto be wished.

The reasonwhy Dana saw no cleardistinction, and why Edwards was unable to makeone, was thatin practicalterms the kinds of causationand ability whichEdwards categorized as naturaland moralintermix themselves. Natu- ral necessity,which produces results which coerce us and whichwe struggle against,and moral necessity, in whichwe moveunthinkingly orunresistingly alongwith a motive,overlap and producebehaviors where it is difficultto distinguishcoercion from cooperation. "There is thejoint influenceof moral and naturalnecessity in moral events,"Dana wrote,"their influence is closely linked."30 The real questionin determiningfreedom and responsibility,according to Dana, was not whetherour choices are the productof naturalor moral necessity(or ability)but whether our choices could have been other than they were...whether, in otherwords, there always exists, under natural or moral necessity,not just the opportunityto choose what the will chooses but whether,at thevery moment of choosing,the possibility exists of selecting an alternativeto what we actuallychose. One may suggestthat a moral necessityis perfectlycompatible with freedom and responsibilitywhile a naturalnecessity is not (or thata naturalability always involvesone in responsibilityeven while laboringunder a moralinability), but thismeans nothingif no alternativesto necessityexist. "If no beingcan chuse or act otherwisethan he doth,we cannotconceive of a necessitymore absolute." If not, then all the talk about necessity,natural or moral,is really about mechanism."If therebe a realnecessity on themind in all itsacts, it is quite immaterialwhether this necessity, by whichthe mindis in everyinstance determined,be called naturalor moral."'31This made it clear, at least to JamesDana's unmitigatedsatisfaction, that both Edwards's scheme of mo- tivesand thenatural/moral necessity dichotomy could lead nowherebut to "atheismand licentiousness."Whether that meant that Edwards's book was really"copied fromMr. Hume,Hobbs, Spinoza,or any of the old heathen Philosophers,we do not say."32

30 Ibid., 43-44. 31 Ibid., 80-81. 32 Ibid., 84.

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Dana's firstExamination was long on criticismbut shorton positive alternatives.Fully as committedto a cautious"common sense" realismas Edwardswas to immaterialism,Dana foundfreedom and responsibilityby intuitionrather than by analysis."That we have internalliberty is apparent fromour moraldiscernment," Dana insisted,"Let a man look intohis own breast,and therehe cannotbut perceiveinward freedom.. .Inward Free- dom...For iffreedom be notin themind, it is nowhere."Consequently, Dana continued,Edwards's endless distinctions between necessities and abilities serveno real purpose."The simplestnotion of libertywe shall arguefor is this,that mankind have inwardmoral freedom ... withoutendeavoring to statethe exact measurein which it is possessed or withinwhat sphere exercisedby them."33 Thisled Dana to thepractical base of his loathingfor Edwards; for while Dana was carefulto "acknowledgethe fallenstate of our nature,and the impotencyderived from the fall" and all the otherproper loci of Calvinist doctrine,the only real questionwhich matteredfor Dana was "whether salvationis offeredto sinnerson practicableterms." Dana had been con- vincedboth by the New Lightswho had disruptedhis lifein Wallingfordand by the New Divinitywho wantedto abandon the "use of means" that Edwards'stheory of humanvolition rendered salvation nearly as impracti- cable as it could become."Is thereno impropriety,"Dana raged,"is there not a palpablecontradiction, in speakingof an offeron termsknown to be morallyimpossible?"34 It did not take long forthe Edwardseansto respondto Dana. Stephen West,who was wieldingthe flail of the New Divinitythrough the Berkshires, publishedhis Essay on Moral Agencyin 1772, chidingDana forblaming Edwardswithout ever offering an alternativemodel of volition of his own.As it was, Westinsisted, Dana had deliberatelymisread Edwards's definition of necessityas meaningraw compulsion.That "thereis a connectionbetween antecedentstates of mind,and voluntaryexertions, this impliethall the necessitywhich that great Author, upon whom the Ex ...... r is animadverting, everurgeth."35 What West fullyexpected that Dana was concealing,as his own idea of volition,was simplyanother two-stage model which permitted

33 Ibid., v, 88; Dana invokesat thispoint an argumentwhich had become customary withinthe discourse of eighteenth-centuryScottish Enlightenment philosophy; see Thomas Reid, Essays on the ActivePowers of the Mind, ed. Baruch Brody (Cambridge,Mass., 1969), 259, 283, and SelwynA. Grave,The Scottish Philosophy of CommonSense (Oxford, 1960), 206-7. 34 AnExamination, 105. 35 StephenWest, An Essay on Moral Agency(Salem, Mass., 1794) 34; definingwhat was meantby "connection,"however, became a questionof its own forthe New Divinity, who used "connection"(as Edwardsdid) in an occasionalistsense to denotethe divinely- guaranteedcorrespondence of two eventswhich do notrely on theircorrespondence for an actual cause-effectrelationship; and so forWest (56), "Habit and Tempermean nothing more than a certainfixt connection between our present exercises of will and future voluntaryexertions of thesame general natureand denominations."

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 412 AllenC. Guelzo deliberationand suspensionto occursomewhere between the choice of the intellectand theactual performance of an action.Whatever other messages Dana's intuitionsmight be givinghim about freedom, West was surethat the mind"is consciousof a powerof will, only in theexercises of volition." That mindsshould intuit a freedomto deliberateor suspendchoice in thewill was nonsense:"That the mind should be consciousof a powerof choice which is distinguishablefrom actual choosing,is no moreconceivable, than that we shouldbe consciousof a powerof thinkingand perceiving,without at the sametime feeling or exercisingany perception or thought."36 West's Essay was all the provocationDana needed,and the nextyear Dana hurriedinto printThe "Examinationof the Late Rev'd President Edwards's Enquiryon Freedomof Will," Continued.In it Dana frankly admittedhis fondnessfor a two-stagetheory of will: "The act of volitionor choiceis a differentthing from the pursuit or executionof whatis willedor chosen."37The idea thatthe will rushedout to apprehendwhatever the mind perceivedas thegreatest apparent good turnedhuman beings into automa- tons,pulled hither-and-thither by Edwards's ineluctable motives without any reflectionon otherpossible objects of choice, and to Dana this seemed refutedby everyturn of experience.To be sure,motives are whatlead us to choice,but they fall considerably far short of possessing the powers Edwards attributedto them."Is there,then, such a constantand unfailingconnection or co-incidencebetween volition and the greatestapparent good, as is pre- tended?"Dana thoughtnot: "The strongestmotive is notthe moral cause of volition,"and therefore"there is no necessarycoincidence between the one and theother." In fact"Perception and volitionare as differentas sightand taste";and the more acquainted one becomeswith human behavior, the more evidentit is that"moral agents many times sin immediatelyagainst present lightand conviction,while they have full in theirview the wiser choice."38 If this did not demonstratethe existenceof an intermediatestage of deliberationand suspensionin theprocess of volition,decisively separating motivesfrom action, then there was nothing"on Mr. Edwards'sscheme of liberty"to separateanimals and humans.39"To say,that such a creature,in case of a competitionof objects,cannot stop and considerwhich reason directsto and governhimself accordingly, is eitherto denyhim the power of reflection,or to supposehim given over to a reprobatemind." What alterna- tiveis therein thatcase to consideringGod, as thecreator of thosemotives, as "theproper efficient cause" of humanbehavior, including sinful behavior?Instead, Dana insistedthat "a moralagent either hath power to originate an actof suspension and so bringhimself into the view of new motives; or the

36 Ibid., 22. 37 The "Examinationof the Late Rev'd PresidentEdwards's Enquiryon Freedomof Will," Continued(New Haven, 1773), 28. 38 Ibid., 36, 40, 138. 39 Ibid.,30.

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions JonathanEdwards and JamesDana 413 suspendingact proceeds from a motiveextant in his mindat thesame instant withsome motiveto immediateelection or action."40 It was farbetter, Dana pleaded,to dropthe pretenses created by Edwards, along with the endless definitionsand distinctionsabout necessityand connection,and admitto whatcommon sense tells everyone. "If anytruth be plain,this is, thatman is free,"Dana wrote."Next to the consciousnessof ourown existenceis thatof ourmoral freedom."'41 For afterall of Edwards's logicalpinching and probingof freewill, "all theargumentation of his book reallyconcludes in this,that God is the cause of sin."42Common sense would also seem to dictatethat no alternativeto some formof freewill existedapart from making God the authorof sin. The follyof the answer demonstratedthe follyof the argument.God cannotbe the cause of sin, a "tyrannical,arbitrary prince, who aims only at his own grandeur,and the displayof his power."God is, as Dana had been tellingpeople all along, "theparent of the universe."43

Over time,Dana's obsessionwith Edwards and freewill producedtwo remarkablycontradictory results. As Hopkinsand theNew Divinitypushed theboundaries of Edwardseanradicalism further outwards (and droveNew England"fast into Deism and Universalism,"wrote one disgruntledOld Calvinist),the Standing Order came to look uponDana morekindly, at least bycontrast with Hopkins. In 1768 theNew Havenconsociation offered Dana and Wallingfordan olive branchin the formof a promisethat they would "freelyoverlook" the irregularitiessurrounding Dana's ordinationin 1758, andin the same year the University of Edinburgh bestowed a furtherlaurel of legitimacywith an honoraryD.D.4 By 1771 Dana was beinginvited to siton ecclesiasticalcouncils, and in 1775 he finallyjoined theconsociation which had barredhim as an outlawfor nearly twenty years. He ingratiatedhimself still furtherwith the StandingOrder by throwinghis allegiance to the Americanrevolutionaries in 1775,and in 1779 he delivereda sermonon the gloriesof republicanismto theConnecticut General Assembly.45 Finally, in 1789, Dana left Wallingfordto succeed his brother-in-law,Chauncey Whittelsey,as thepastor of theNew Haven FirstChurch, the premier Old Calvinistpulpit of Connecticut.James Dana had been rehabilitated.

40Ibid., 18. 41 Ibid., 98. 42 Ibid., 96, 127, 133. 43 Ibid.,70. 44 "At a Council of the ConsociatedElders and Churchesof the Countyof New Haven" and "To theRev. Dr. Dana, Pastor... in Wallingford"(7 November1775), in New Haven East Association Papers Relating to the Church in Wallingford,1758-1832, BeineckeLibrary; The First CongregationalChurch of Wallingford,Connecticut, 31. 45 A SermonPreached beforethe GeneralAssembly of the State of Connecticut,at Hartford,on theDay of theAnniversary Election, May 13, 1779 (Hartford,1779); Nathan 0. Hatch,The Sacred Cause of Liberty:Republican Thought and theMillenium in Revolu- tionaryNew England (New Haven, 1977), 159.

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The otherway in whichfreedom of thewill turnedup in Dana's lifein New Haven was in the constructionof his republicanism.The reputation Dana had earnedduring the Revolutionas a republicandivine was not undeserved,for like a surprisingnumber of Old Calvinists,Dana had no troubleassimilating free will, politics, and patriarchy. As earlyas 1774 Dana had predictedto AndrewEliot that"divine providence will interpose"in Americato ensurethe creationof "a firmconfederacy," based (as he told theConnecticut General Assembly in 1779) on "thenatural parity of mankind."46The sanctionDana invokedfor this "confederacy" was theHebrew patriarchs,"with JEHOVAH at the head." Their "confederaterepublic" offereda perfectrepublican pattern where "equality of conditionwas pro- vided for,and the meansof corruptionprevented," Dana preached,and so "forthis reason we givethe preference to a representativedemocracy. "147 But "equality"and "democracy"did notmean for Dana whatit meantfor others in the eighteenthcentury, that is, the legitimizedpursuit of self-interestor economicopportunism. Dana fearedthat "corruption" and "the spiritof party"were the real fruits of self-interestand onlyled to whathe condemned as "thesplendour and profusion,the great inequality, which have longbeen the curse of the Europeannations."48 He was particularlyfearful of the inequalitiesthat might emerge from unfettered participation in worldmar- kets:for Dana, republicanvirtue demanded a republicanagrarianism where "theprincipal riches of a stateconsist in thefruits of thefield," and though somemeasure of foreigncommerce was inevitable,"a freerepublic, as that ofthe United States" had no businesspursuing commerce on anyother basis thanstrict "reciprocal advantage."49 Unfortunately,nothing that Dana saw in the firstdecade of the new republicgave himmuch hope thathis warningswere being heeded. "With accessionto ourpopulation, commerce and wealth,and otherimprovements, have we notdeclined rather then improved in vitalpiety and good morals?" he askedin the year of the Louisiana Purchase.50 The principal evidence Dana foundfor this decline was thedecay of patriarchy."Family religion is in a mannerextinguished," Dana complained,and he was sure thatno "past periodhas endangeredthe faithand moralsof youthcomparably with the present."Post-Revolutionary New Englandheld fewer and feweropportuni-

4 Dana to AndrewEliot, 30 May 1774, in Andrews-EliotPapers, Massachusetts HistoricalSociety; Dana, A Sermon,...May 13 1779, 9. 47 A Sermon,...May 17, 1779, 17, 19; and The Intentof Capital Punishment:A Discoursedelivered in the Cityof New-HavenOctober 20 1796 (New Haven, 1796), 9. 48 "Civil Union" (pp. 62-63) in Sermon ManuscriptBook; Dana, "Frugality,"in Sermonsto YoungPeople, 267. 49 A Sermon,...May 17, 1779, 21, 24, 41; Dana, "Frugality,"in Sermonsto Young People, 267. 50 "Self-Dedication"and "Motives to a ConversationBecoming the Gospel," in Sermonsto YoungPeople, 128. 500.

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions JonathanEdwards and JamesDana 415 ties forthe increasinglyland-locked sons of New Englandfathers; and as landless sons headed westwardinto uncertainfutures, Dana could only protestthat true "sons wishnot to be dischargedfrom the obedience of their parents.At leastthose who do, have nota filialspirit.""5 The remedieswhich Dana proposedfor this crisis almost make the word republicanfail on the lips. For what Dana wantedas a safeguardfrom corruptionwas compulsion:shoring up state-fundedCongregationalism, religioussupervision of public education,sumptuary laws (since "bribery, corruptionand tyrannyprevail wherever luxury doth"), and "public ack- nowledgementof a SupremeBeing."52 The republicansociety of Dana's imaginingwas a coerciveone, in which"we have variousconnections with our fellow creatures,and differentrelations in society; are qualifiedin differentrespects and degreesto be helpfulto one another;are mutually dependent...."53 Liberal individualism could not have been moreforeign to Dana's notionof republicanpatriarchy: "we are not at libertyto use or neglectour talents,or to managethem as we please." Therefore,it worried Dana notat all thathis republicanismmight actually involve "some abridge- mentsof liberty."54The variousliberal or individualistreifications of repub- licanismon offerin the earlyrepublic held no attractionfor Dana, who thoughtthat the very logic of republicanismmeant the subordinationof the individualto the collective,the self to society,the childrento theparents, and thewill to themind. This tightlyregulated version of republicanismsits ratherstrangely beside Dana's metaphysicalfree-willism, and even thoughthe critics of the "republicansynthesis" have insistedthat the republicanideology of the earlynational era ofteninvolves the embrace and convergenceof contradic- toryelements, not nearlyenough effort has been put intodiscerning what philosophicalthreads may have been holdingthose elements together.55 In Dana's case, however,the thread that connects politics and metaphysicsmay lie surprisinglyclose at hand,that is, in whatDana's life-longargument with JonathanEdwards had taughthim about freedom of thewill. Dana believed

51 Dana, "Caution Against Bad Company," in Sermons to Young People, 230; "Adoption"(p. 9) in SermonManuscript Book. 52 Dana, A Sermon,...May 17, 1779, 25; "Public Worship" (p. 16) in Sermon ManuscriptBook. 53 Dana, The Characterand Reward of the good and faithfulServant: A Sermon occasioned by themuch lamented death of Charles Whittelsey(Boston, 1764), 18. 54 Dana, The AfricanSlave Trade: A Discourse deliveredin the cityof New-Haven, September9, 1790 (New Haven, 1791), 11. 55 See JamesT. Kloppenberg,"The Virtuesof Liberalism:Christianity, Republican- ism, and Ethics in Early AmericanPolitical Discourse," Journal of AmericanHistory, 74 (1987), 9-33, JeffreyC. Isaac, "Republicanismvs. Liberalism? A Reconsideration," Historyof Political Thought,9 (1988), 349-77, Drew R. McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economyin JeffersonianAmerica (Chapel Hill, 1980), 236-39, and Daniel T. Rodgers's surveyof the developmentof "republican"interpretations, "Republicanism: The Careerof a Concept,"Journal of American History, 79 (1992), 36.

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 416 AllenC. Guelzo thathuman volition was a two-stageprocess which permitted deliberation and suspensionand did notmove (as Edwardshad said) spontaneouslyand predictablyfrom perception to action,and thereforefrom a humanperspec- tive therewould always be, no matterwhat the motives,an absence of certaintyabout the outcomes of humanaction. "I do not admit,"Dana had told JohnPerkins in 1774, "thatthe mind always determines(if it doth generally)on whatappears best," and thatwas whyDana had foundit risky to allow people "to act accordingto theiracknowledged sense & feeling."56 The onlyguarantee of conduct,in thatcase, was theapplication of fatherly restraintand compulsionlest, "soured by childishcontroversy," people "act thepart of childrenwho quarrelon themost trivial occasions."57 ThusDana concentratedon theneed to exercisecontrol over both the self andrepublican society, for in a moraluniverse in whichthere is no immediate connectionbetween motives and actionsand in whichreason and deliberation can formtheir own conclusions,the merepresentation of "motives" can no longerbe reliedupon to ensureproper behavior. In contrastto the portraitof Dana and Edwardsoffered by JayFliegelman, it is Dana the "Arminian"who is obsessedwith the attenuationof patriarchy,while Ed- wards'sgreatest moment of trialcame as a resultof his rebellionagainst the patriarchaldomination of his Northamptonparish by his powerfulrelatives, the Williamses.58 Thisclearly sets Dana offfrom the liberal republicanism of TheFederal- ist Papers and the Constitution,since thephilosophers of the Constitution sharedlittle of Dana's faiththat the popular will couldbe guidedby reasonor deliberation,or rescued from irrationality and sentimentby theapplication of fatherlyauthority. But it also highlightsanother peculiar correlation, this timebetween the Edwardseansand The Federalist.While Dana held that willingwas rationaland deliberative(and thereforebest containedwithin some formof establishedor enlightenedheirarchy), both the Edwardseans andthe authors of TheFederalist saw humankindas governedentirely by the perceptionof thegreatest apparent good (whetherin theform of "motives" or "interest")and carriedalong on theirpaths by passion(whether sacred or secular)in theirresponse to thatperception rather than by self-restrained choices.Madison, for instance, was certainlyno Edwardsean,and theshape of his republicanismalso containsmany more irregularities than the schol- arlydebates of the 1980s on republicanismimagined. Observers then and now, however,have remarkedon the similaritiesof Madison's and Ed- wards'sdeterministic description of humanpsychology; and it is nothard to discoverradical Edwardseans who, like Nathaniel Niles in 1774,uttered what

56 Dana to [John]Perkins, 7 March 1774, AmericanAntiquarian Society.

57 TheHeavenly Mansions: A Sermonpreached May 14, 1795, in thecity of New Haven at theInterment of theReverend Ezra StilesD.D., LL.D. (New Haven, 1795), 17. 58 Fliegelman,Prodigals and Pilgrims:The AmericanRevolution Against Patriarchal Authority,1750-1800 (Cambridge,1982), 34-35, 169-70.

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions JonathanEdwards and JamesDana 417 couldhave been a theologicalcorollary to Madison'sdiscussion of factionin TheFederalist No. 10:

The saintwill neverbe requiredto do anythingirksome or disagree- able,because his heart will spontaneouslychoose to do, whateverhis sovereignwill choose to command.Thus while the laws of Christ will be theonly standard of thethoughts and exercisesof all, every one willbe a law to himself.They will needto do nothingmore than complywith their own inclination,in orderto a perfectcompliance withthe will of Christ; because the same mind will be in them,that is also in Christ.59

As William Breitenbachhas pointedout in his studyof New Divinity theoriesof "disinterestedbenevolence," the Edwardseanshelped push New Englanderstoward a newmentality of self-interestedness,competition, and a benevolentbut decidedly individualistic liberal brand of republicanism...the republicanism,in otherwords, of Madisonand notJames Dana.60 WhatDana's anxietyin his 1782 letterto Ezra Stilessuggests is that,in theincreasingly tangled theoretical thicket of the"republican synthesis" and its critics,one particuarlyimportant piece of theoverall republican picture has been overlooked.While the "republican synthesis" has been repeatedly criticizedfor its neglect of ideology,of economics,and evenof millenialism, noneof these criticisms has noticedthe absence of the clearest cognate of this discourseabout political liberty, and this is metaphysicalliberty and freedom of thewill. If Dana's fearsabout Edwards signal anything, it is thatthe two discoursesabout liberty...one a matterof politics,the othera matterof metaphysics...frequently became entangledin the new republic;what the structureof his republicanismsuggests, in turn,is thatthe ways in which eighteenth-centuryAmericans chose to speakabout the metaphysics of deter- minisminfluenced the way theychose to definethe politics of a republican society.Thus, one piece of Alan Heimert'sargument about religion and the Americanrevolution can findin Dana's quarrelwith Edwards an unexpected confirmation:Dana's Old Calvinistdefense of freewill, althoughit occurs withina republicancontext, does not lead to a moredemocratic defense of social orpolitical freedom, but to less freedom.6"By thesame token, defend- ers of theologicalor metaphysicaldeterminism like Edwardsand Hopkins

59Niles, Two Discourses on Liberty(Newburyport, Mass., 1774), 53-54. 6 Breitenbach,"Unregenerate Doings: Selflessnessand Selfishnessin New Divinity Theology,"American Quarterly, 34 (1983), 498-502; see also David W. Kling,A Field of Divine Wonders:The New Divinityand Village Revivals in NorthwesternConnecticut, 1792-1822 (UniversityPark, Penn., 1993), 44-45. 61 Heimert,Religion and the AmericanMind from the Great Awakeningto the Revolution(Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 457-60, 500-509.

This content downloaded from 138.234.153.138 on Mon, 9 Sep 2013 15:40:07 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 418 AllenC. Guelzo lead, as Dana had feared,to the subversionof hierarchy,or at least to the hierarchyof JamesDana.62 The distanceone travelsbetween The Federalist and JonathanEdwards seemsat firstso greatthat one scarcelythinks of themas similar,much less membersof a dialogueover both republicanism and free will with the likes of JamesDana. Butwithin a politydedicated to propositionsabout liberty, there has alwaysbeen a discerniblesymmetry between notions of "free"political choice and notionsabout "free"psychological or metaphysicalchoices, a symmetrythat extends to RobertOwen, Abraham Lincoln, and B. F. Skinner as muchas Dana, Madison,and Edwards.What has usuallyobscured that symmetryhas been,partly, the pragmatic penchant (beginning with William James's attemptto dismiss "free will" as a non-problemin 1907) for evadingthe question as a particularlybad exampleof metaphysicsor "hard" psychology(as in discoursesabout "nature" or "drives");and morelargely, theparadoxical shape of thatsymmetry in Americanthought, which repeat- edlycasts fatalists and Calvinistsin therole of emancipators,and castsfree- willersand Arminiansas anxiouscontrollers. In thatrespect Dana's com- mentarieson Edwardsand his sermonson republicanismare an illuminating moment,as muchfor questioning evasions of metaphysics as forunderstand- ing politics,psychology, and metaphysicstogether as parts of a single discourseon the possibilitiesof freedomin the eighteenthcentury.63 The modelsof human action which both Edwards and Dana sanctionedcontinued alternatelyto antagonizeand fascinate American religious thinkers for half-a- centuryafterwards, but theywere models which spoke to far more than narrowdogmatic concerns. For Americansin thenew republic,any descriptionof freedomwas a descriptionof thelarger political world they hoped to inhabitand theuniverse of meaningwhich gave themhope; in thatcontext, the comparativeintricacies of determinism,necessity, and fatalismonly waitedfor the opportunity of patientcontroversy to becomedescriptions of Americansthemselves, as moralindividuals, as families,and as a republic.

The CharlesWarren Center, Harvard University.

62 Gerald R. McDermott,One Holy and Happy Society: The Public Theologyof JonathanEdwards (UniversityPark, Penn., 1992), 157-72; see also JonPahl, "Jonathan Edwardsand the Aristocracyof Grace,"Fides et Historia,25 (1993), 62-72. 63 See JonPahl, Paradox Lost: Free Willand Political Libertyin AmericanCulture, 1630-1760 (Baltimore,1992), and fora shorterbut more provocativediscussion of this connectionin the nineteenthcentury, see David Brion Davis, "Reconsideringthe Coloni- zationMovement: Leonard Bacon and the Problemof Evil," IntellectualHistory Newslet- ter,14 (1992), 3-16.

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