In A TREATISE CONCERNING THE RELIGIOUS AFFECTIONS Jonathan Edwards provides an incisive analysis of genuine Christian feelings. Drawn from his experiences during the Great Awakening, his insights are every bit as relevant to our own times as they were then. Religion is not a matter of mere emotionalism, but neither is it a matter of doctrines with no personal emotional investment. Some signs of Christianity conversion are unreliable, but there are twelve genuine marks of a Christian. Jonathan Edwards was a preacher and missionary in colonial America. The son of a minister, he attended Yale while still a teenager and went on to study theology. While he was pastoring a church in Northampton, the Great Awakening reached the town. Amid the fervor of religious revival, Edwards preached both encourage to true Christianity and to alert congregations to superficial imitations. A TREATISE CONCERNING THE RELIGIOUS AFFECTIONS is a systematic collection of his preaching at that time. Above all, he says, it is changed lives and characters that provide evidence of true Christianity.

From the Back Cover

How do we discern between true religion, and false? In this classic treatise on the nature of authentic faith, enormously influential American preacher and theologian JONATHAN EDWARDS (1703-1758) explores the difference between true and counterfeit religious experiences, and how deep and sincere emotion can accentuate a real connection to God.

This profound 1746 text examines both the genuine signs of an instance of God's interaction with the faithful--such as the potential "beautiful symmetry and proportion" of a revelation--as well as "signs" that offer no evidence: the "appearance of love" in a possible communication with God, for instance, is not enough to cement its divinity.

About the Author

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was a preacher, theologian, and missionary to Native Americans. Edwards "is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian, "and one of America's greatest intellectuals.” Edwards's theological work is very broad in scope, but he is often associated with his defense of Reformed theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage. Recent studies have emphasized how thoroughly Edwards grounded his life's work on conceptions of beauty, harmony, and ethical fittingness, and how central The Enlightenment was to his mindset. Edwards played a very critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening, and oversaw some of the first fires of revival in 1733–1735 at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts. Edwards delivered the sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", a classic of early American literature, during another wave of revival in 1741, following George Whitefield's tour of the Thirteen Colonies. Edwards is widely known for his many books: The End For Which God Created the World; The Life of David Brainerd, which served to inspire thousands of missionaries throughout the nineteenth century; and Religious Affections, which many Reformed Evangelicals read even today. Edwards died from a smallpox inoculation shortly after beginning the presidency at the College of New Jersey (later to be named Princeton University), and was the grandfather of Aaron Burr.