Edwards, Jonathan:

$14,000 · Offered by William Reese Company

A CAREFUL AND STRICT ENQUIRY INTO THE MODERN PREVAILING NOTIONS OF THAT FREEDOM OF WILL, WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE ESSENTIAL TO MORAL AGENCY, VERTUE AND VICE, REWARD AND PUNISHMENT, PRAISE AND ... First edition of the first great philosophical work by an American and one of the most important texts produced in colonial America. Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) had risen to prominence as a revivalist preacher during the Great Awakening, but this book marks Edwards's mature theological thinking. The subject was one which had long occupied Edwards, namely, "the grand question of the freedom of the will." As early as 1747, Edwards had expressed a desire to publish a book on the subject, but a series of events intervened, delaying publication. First came the death of David Brainerd in 1747, followed shortly thereafter by the death of Brainerd's fiancé, Edwards's daughter Jerusha, events which led Edwards to publish his Life of Brainerd in 1749. Then came the communion controversy, resulting ultimately in Edwards's dismissal from his Northampton pulpit in 1750. In 1751, Edwards moved to Stockbridge to take up the post of missionary to the Housatonnuck Indians. At last, in 1752, Edwards was able to commit himself to writing his treatise on the will. The manuscript was finished in 1753 and ready for publication the following year. This was the only edition of the work published in Edwards's lifetime. Freedom of Will has been described by Faust and Johnson as Edwards's "most famous treatise

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