SOURCE: Porterfield, Amanda. “Bridal Passion and New England Puritanism.” In Feminine Spirituality in America: From Sarah Edwards to Martha Graham, pp. 19–50. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980.

[In the following excerpt, Porterfield examines the connection between femininity and Puritan spirituality by looking at Edwards's life in relation to her husband's theology.]

For New England Puritans, religious life was more than a conceptual enterprise; it was the personal experience of spiritual events that composed the glory of God. In this kind of religious life, moments of ecstasy were actually and acutely sensational, as were moments of despair. God could enjoy as well as criticize his fleshly creation and, correspondingly, human responsiveness could find expression in physical joy as well as in worldly denial. Although many Puritan devotions were as gloomy and tortured as hell, experiences of ecstasy characterize an essential, vitalizing element in the tradition of American Puritanism.

Ecstasy announced itself in no less virtuous and respected a person than Sarah Pierrepont Edwards, third-generation resident of Massachusetts, wife of New England's greatest divine, and matriarch of the celebrated Pierrepont-Edwards lineage. The religious experiences of Sarah Edwards, as interpreted through the psychology of her husband Jonathan, may be seen as illustrating the vitality of Puritan spirituality at the moment of its culmination and transformation in the religious enthusiasms of the Great Awakening.

Early in 1742, amidst the excitement of the Great Awakening, Sarah Edwards intensely experienced the grace of God, and in Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival (1742), Jonathan Edwards quoted from his wife's written account of her dramatic experience.¹ Engulfed in the beauty of Christ, Sarah Edwards felt “swallowed up with light and love.” In this “heavenly Elysium” she “swam in the rays of Christ's love, like a little mote swimming in the beams of the sun.” A “constant stream of sweet light” flowed between her heart and the heart of Christ. Her experience of swimming in the sun as it swallowed her was prolonged and recurrent; “More than once” she felt this grace “for five or six hours together, without any interruption.”² Her own “Narrative” records a moment “so intense … I could not forbear rising up and leaping with joy and exaltation.” Sarah Edwards did not swim metaphorically in the trope of divine light—she danced before her Lord. And as she was renowned for her “peculiar loveliness of expression,” one suspects that she showed off beautifully the grace she received.³

In Sarah Edwards' experience, as in her husband's theology, the nature of grace was the exercise of it or, in other words, grace, like God himself, was a “Divine and Supernatural Light.” The “constant stream of sweet light” running between Christ and Sarah Edwards illustrated her husband's theories of religious experience. As he described the activity of grace, the spirit of God communicated itself as a “vital principle” within the saint's soul, a communication that moved the saint to reemanate that holy vitality. This divine light did not shine on the saint's soul as on a dark body, but “exerts and communicates himself in his own proper nature”⁴—as if the principle of light were planted in the soul, so that the soul itself became a source of light. Sarah Edwards participated in the nature of God himself and, conversely, his nature shone in her beauty.

The movement of grace enjoyed itself in the display of the universe. To explain how the universe was in such harmonious motion, Jonathan Edwards argued that color was an expression of the simple moving principle of “mere light.” Mere light divides and recombines itself in “rays” of varying patterns. Edwards took the beautiful harmony of nature's colors—“the suitableness of green for the grass and plants, the blue of the skie, the white of the clouds, the colours of flowers”—to be light revealing and displaying itself in kaleidoscopic form. To paraphrase Edwards, those who experienced the movement of light itself could see God moving colorfully in nature. They could also see, and see themselves swimming in and swallowed by, the nature of God. Just as the fullness of white light contains and harmonizes all colors, so sheer light or “brightness” itself, “mankind have agreed,” represents “glory and extraordinary beauty.”⁵

The bright glory and extraordinary beauty of divine light “swallowed up” Sarah Edwards, instilling in her body and soul the very principle that sanctified her, enabling not only the streaming light of her intercourse with Christ, but also her powers of social expression. If we interpret the remarks of her admirers within the context of her husband's theology, her beauty was a display of color that revealed the movement of light itself. The supernatural simplicity of divine light infused her being and dwelt there as a vital principle of new nature. As an exemplar not only of faith but of God, Sarah Edwards could figure for others as a sacred text. “The works of God are but a kind of voice or language of God,” wrote Jonathan Edwards,⁶ and Sarah, like Scripture, communicated the Word itself. The beauty of her virtue embodied God.

By the canons of Puritan epistemology the words of a religious text or the “lovely tinctures of the morning and evening”⁷ do not themselves possess the spirit that determines them. Like the whole beauty of nature itself, Sarah Edwards' virtuosity lay in her capacity to point to divine authority. A model of God's love for others, the beauty of her comportment was nothing in and of itself. To be full of God for others required emptiness of self, and we shall return to the pains and dilemmas of this religious dynamic. But first it is important to set the experiences and beauty of Sarah Edwards within the context of a certain dimension of Puritan spirituality. Behind her experiences of grace and her power to represent the nature of God stood a century of New England experiences of Christ. The experiences and powers of Sarah Edwards illumine a theological tradition that encouraged sensational religious experiences and associated Christian virtue with the beauty of femininity. …

We return to the life of Sarah Edwards, and to the correspondence between her life and her husband's theology, for further discussion of the relation between Puritan spirituality and femininity. In the eyes of Jonathan Edwards, who reformulated the essentials of Puritan spirituality in the mid-eighteenth century, his wife's union with God illustrated the beauty of holiness. As a model for others of religious and domestic virtue, Sarah Edwards assumed the fortunes and dilemmas of public virtuosity. Throughout her life she stood as an authority at pointing out divine authority and in time of spiritual crisis she explored both the power and the painful contradictions of that role. Like Anne Bradstreet, her relation to her husband provided a model for her relation with God and her religious struggles focused on their competition for her dependence.

Sarah Edwards was a beautiful woman. Samuel Hopkins, a disciple of Jonathan Edwards who studied theology in the Edwards' home, described Mrs. Edwards as “more than ordinarily beautiful.” Her grandson Timothy Dwight, who also became a prominent theologian, ascribed her “peculiar loveliness of expression” to her inner virtues of “cheerfulness, and benevolence.” Dwight also admired her remarkable “intelligence”—in his estimation “the native powers of her mind were of a superior order.”

By the age of five Sarah Pierrepont had manifested an uncommon piety, “exhibit[ing] the life and power of religion, and that in a remarkable manner.”⁸ By the time she was thirteen, reports of her spirituality had attracted the notice of young Jonathan Edwards. He described a “young lady” so loved by God that he often “fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight,” promising her she will be “caught up into heaven.” Young Edwards wrote that “God loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always.” He noted, perhaps for his own benefit, how “conscientious” Sarah was to please God with her behavior: “you could not persuade her to do anything wrong or sinful, if you would give her all the world.”⁹

In her marriage to Jonathan Edwards, Sarah Pierrepont so capably fulfilled the responsibilities of a minister's wife that she “secure[d] the high and increasing approbation of all who knew her.” Hopkins praised her superior “diligence and discretion” at managing the worldly affairs of the Edwards' household; Sarah “took almost the whole direction of the temporal affairs of the family without doors and within.” Her prudent and cheerful management “was particularly suited to the disposition of her husband, who chose to have no care, if possible, of any worldly business.” In Hopkins' estimation, her studied restraint from criticizing her neighbors clearly revealed her virtue. He described how she managed gossip: when a person's “imperfections” were under consideration, she made it her practice to respond with what might “excuse” or commend them. And if she herself were negatively criticized, “she could bear injuries and reproach with great calmness.” Like a fountain of holiness, Sarah Edwards “was ready to pity and forgive those who appeared to be her enemies.”¹⁰

As wife of Northampton's imposingly tall and brilliantly learned minister, and as mother of eleven remarkably healthy children, Sarah Edwards occupied a special status in her community. Pious, intelligent, competent, and lovely to look at, she embodied the perfections of womanhood. She seems to have worked to appear virtuous before others. Jonathan Edwards' praise of her conscientiousness about pleasing God suggests how highly conscious she was of her virtues and piety. One can imagine that the young lady who stood steadfast against “anything wrong or sinful” exhibited a certain self-righteousness. Perhaps her well-rounded virtuosity was enough to provoke occasional resentment. If not, her studied efforts to divert gossip and the “great calmness” with which she bore criticism suggest that her artful equanimity may have provoked “those who appeared to be her enemies.”

Although Sarah Edwards' personal pride may have motivated some of her public humility, her apparent qualities corresponded to those that identified a saint. Or to put it closer to home, her reputation exhibited the virtues that defined her husband's psychology of religiousness. Just as Timothy Dwight attributed Sarah's “peculiar loveliness of expression” to inner graciousness, so Jonathan, for whom the beauty of holiness was at once palpable and wholly spiritual, may have perceived his wife's sensual attractiveness as an agreeable expression of her piety. In his personal spirituality and in his theology, Jonathan Edwards consistently identified deity with beauty. As a young man he was “much in reading” the Song of Solomon, especially those passages that described “the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ.” As his early religiousness developed he described his relish for holiness as a compelling sensation of “divine beauty.” “There was nothing in [holiness] but what was ravishingly lovely, … everything else was like mire and defilement.”¹¹ Just as God used Joanna Shepard to “let” Thomas “see His beauty in the land of the living,” so Jonathan Edwards found his wife's presence an illustration of divine comeliness.

Jonathan Edwards drew on Thomas Shepard's theology of beauty as he developed his own psychology of saintliness. Edwards used Shepard's Parable of the Ten Virgins as a major source in his Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746), in which he quoted from Shepard on more than seventy-five occasions.¹² As presented in the Affections, one sign which distinguished a saint was an apprehension of divine beauty: “a love to divine things for the beauty and sweetness of their moral excellency” defined “the first beginning and spring of all holy affections.” It was God's beauty that “renders all his other attributes glorious and lovely.”¹³ The saint, who perceived the beauty of God, embodied the beauty of God.

In The Nature of True Virtue (1755; published posthumously in 1765) Edwards identified true virtue as the union of self with “being in general.” To paraphrase Edwards, the beauty of being itself flowed through the truly virtuous person. By perceiving the harmony of creation, such a person saw his or her own place in the universal scheme and also saw the beauty in other lives. In this last major work Edwards described how lovers of being inevitably attract one another: “When any one under the influence of general benevolence, sees another being possessed of the like general benevolence, this attaches his heart to him, and draws forth greater love to him, than merely his having existence.” When the hearts of both are united to the beauty of the universe, each “heart is extended and united to” the other. Each “looks on” the other's “interest as its own.” “Pure love to others” was “a kind of enlargement of the mind, whereby it so extends itself as to take others into a man's self: and therefore it implies a disposition to feel, to desire, and to act as though others were one with ourselves.”¹⁴ Near the conclusion of his treatise, Edwards shows how the “natural affection” of sexual love is “of the same denomination” as religious affection. He describes how natural and religious affections may mingle with each other to make heterosexual union a preparation for and manifestation of true love. In “a virtuous love between the sexes … there may be the influence of virtue mingled with instinct; and virtue may … guide it to such ends as are agreeable to the great purposes of true virtue.”¹⁵

For Jonathan Edwards, as for earlier Puritans, religious love not only drew individuals to God, it drew couples together in love affairs that partook of the beauty of the universe. In such love affairs two become one in a union that mirrored and celebrated the nature of God. Jonathan Edwards' experience of marriage may speak through his abstractions. The deep mutual love between the Edwardses and the religious context of their “uncommon union” resound in Jonathan's deathbed message to Sarah:

It seems to me to be the will of God that I must shortly leave you; therefore give my kindest love to my dear wife, and tell her, that the uncommon union, which has so long subsisted between us, has been of such a nature, as I trust is spiritual, and therefore will continue forever: and I hope she shall be supported under so great a trial, and submit cheerfully to the will of God.¹⁶

The sincerity that permeates this passage combines sexuality with spirituality in a testimony to the beauty that grounded their love and made their parting bearable. By Jonathan Edwards' own principles, one could not describe experiences of pure love without having tested them. His marriage provided experience for his theories about the nature of God and the nature of religious experience.

Sarah Edwards' religious virtues served her husband's theology in public as well as in private ways. He used her narration of her ecstatic experience as the centerpiece in his argument that the Great Awakening was of divine origin. In Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival, Jonathan Edwards argued that the revivals were the work of God and neither the false products of vain imaginings nor the work of Satan. In this argument it was important to show that the enthusiasms of the Greak Awakening were—on the whole—true, joyful, and socially constructive. His wife's experience of swimming in the divine light that swallowed her illustrated how human passions¹⁷ could be tremendously moved and still exhibit the harmony of true holiness. True religion was the sensational experience of grace and grace was the blend of flight and balance.

In his account of his wife's ecstatic experience, Jonathan Edwards carefully followed descriptions of her jubilations with evidence that her experiences were not “enthusiasm, and the fruits of a distempered brain.” To illustrate the important point that religious fervor was not madness, he edited Sarah Edwards' own written account of the experience. And to show that her “enlightenment” ran counter to Satan's work, he interpreted her ecstatic experience within the context of her impressive history as a charitable Christian. He shaped his wife's story into a portrait of evangelical humility. A professing Christian for twenty-seven years, Sarah Edwards was neither “in the giddy age of youth” nor an “unexperienced Christian.” Nearly all her life she had been “growing in grace, and rising, by very sensible degrees, to higher love to God … and mastery over sin and temptation.” Her religiousness was stirred—not begun or deluded—during the Great Awakening.¹⁸

Edwards pointed out that his wife's humility increased after her experience of 1742. “Under smaller discoveries and feebler exercises of divine affection” she had manifested “a disposition to censure and condemn others.” But in her episode of heightened awareness, she encountered “a peculiar sensible aversion to a judging of others.” Criticizing others “appeared hateful, as not agreeing with that lamb-like humility, meekness, gentleness and charity, which the soul then, above other times, saw the beauty of, and felt a disposition to.” Sarah Edward's experience also gave her “a new sense and conviction” concerning “the importance of moral and social duties and how great a part of religion lay in them.”¹⁹ With his wife portrayed as a model of Christian piety, her aspiration to benevolence showed Jonathan Edwards' readers that sensitivity to religious experiences led to humble and responsible behavior.

In his edited version of his wife's experience Edwards not only balanced and polished her story, he also omitted the specifics of her spiritual and physical aggravations. Although distortion is perhaps too strong a word, he did choose not to describe the despair that initiated her religious episode or the details of the ecstatic behavior that frightened the Northampton townspeople. In particular, Jonathan Edwards omitted, in his rendering of the narrative, his own role in his wife's soul-searching and her analysis of the depression that prepared her for the experiences that followed. Sarah Edwards' own written account, however, describes how “on Tuesday night, Jan. 19, 1742, … I felt very uneasy and unhappy, at my being so low in grace.” She received “great quietness of spirit” during the night, but

the next morning I found a degree of uneasiness in my mind, at Mr. Edwards' suggesting, that he thought I had failed in some measure in point of prudence, in some conversation I had with Mr. Williams, of Hadley, the day before. I found, that it seemed to bereave me of the quietness and calm of my mind, in any respect not to have a good opinion of my husband. This I much disliked in myself, as arguing a want of a sufficient rest in God, and felt a disposition to fight against it, and look to God for his help, that I might have a more full and entire rest in him, independent of all other things.²⁰

Measuring her progress in religious purity and judging for herself its limitations, Sarah Edwards noted that more than three years earlier she “ma[d]e a new and most solemn dedication of herself to [God's] service and glory.” Since that time she had become resigned to life or death according to God's will and had succeeded in weaning herself from dependence on earthly concerns in all but two points of “disturbance”:

1st. My own good name and fair reputation among men, and especially the esteem and just treatment of the people of this town; 2ndly. And more especially, the esteem, and love, and kind treatment of my husband.²¹

Noting her imperfections in a spirit of objectivity, Sarah Edwards now hoped to overcome them and to shed her attachment to her “fair reputation among men” and to the “esteem, and love, and kind treatment” of her husband.

As Sarah Edwards told it, after bringing her imprudence to her attention, her husband left Northampton for two weeks of preaching in other parishes. Preaching in his absence was young and fiery Samuel Buell, who, in later years, admitted to “indecent heats” as a preacher during the Awakening.²² Sarah Edwards fought with her jealousy of Buell's success as the visiting minister until, in a state of religious awakening, her resentment disappeared. Now she accepted Buell's success, even if it were to extend “to the enlivening of every saint, and to the conversion of every sinner, in the town.” In this generous mood, “these feelings continued,” and she wrote that she “never felt the least rising of heart to the contrary, but my submission was even and uniform, without interruption or disturbance.”²³

Immediately after this release from anxiety about Buell's competition with her husband, Sarah Edwards experienced nine days of extraordinary emotion. Periods of peace were interspersed with many public faintings and spurts of “earnest” conversation. Then came a moment “so intense … I could not forbear rising up and leaping with joy and exhultation.” In her description of the neighbors' reactions to her behavior, Sarah disclosed that she had made a public—and alarming—spectacle of herself. Recalling the second Friday of Edwards' absence, she wrote:

Towards night being informed that Mrs. P—— had expressed her fears lest I should die before Mr. Edwards' return, and he should think the people had killed his wife; I told those who were present, that I chose to die in the way that was most agreeable to God's will, and that I should be willing to die in darkness and horror, if it was most for the glory of God.²⁴

From her elevated viewpoint Sarah may indeed have spied the resentment and hatred that eight years later secured the Edwards' dismissal and sought their humiliation. But in her exultation, she was above it all and, one suspects, enjoying herself immensely, even enjoying her “willing[ness] to die in darkness and horror, if it was most for the glory of God.” Exposing her worst fears, she maintained that, even if her community were “enemies … venting their malice and cruelty upon me,” her strength in God would make it “impossible” to “cherish any feelings towards them but … love, and pity, and ardent desires for their happiness.”²⁵

Whether Sarah was exercising prophetic insight or indulging her paranoia, for her the importance of the event lay in her realization that she was not obliged to meet other people's standards for a virtuous wife of a minister of God. Her only responsibility was to God. And her joyful obedience to God would now put her even beyond reach of her husband's criticism. She would still fulfill “with alacrity … every act and duty” of a virtuous wife, but now only God, not Jonathan, would measure her virtue. From her new perspective she saw her husband as a man like any other. She even speculated that should his “tenderness” change to “extreme cruelty,” her “happiness would remain undiminished and entire.”²⁶ Sarah's imagining that “extreme cruelty” lurked on the other side of her husband's “tenderness” suggests that, in her mind at least, Jonathan Edwards shared certain personality traits with God. In anticipating her indifference should Edwards turn cruel, she acknowledged that her happiness lay elsewhere and that her husband, after all, was only a man.

There is no need to argue that Sarah Edwards was a perfect—or perfectly humble—woman to feel sure that her experience of 1742 deepened her self-awareness and offered her a freedom and independence that was new, enjoyable, and worthy of celebration. Both before and after her experience Sarah had stood for others as a model of Christian and feminine virtue. The beauty, sweetness, and competence that characterized her social presence made it easy for her to assume that those qualities also characterized her relation with God. But in the self-evaluation that preceded her experience Sarah Edwards convicted herself of the desire and effort to compel the esteem of others. The fact that she analyzed her dilemma and experienced its dissolution shows that, at the very least, she worked out the problem—and experienced herself—at a deeper level. And it is of no little importance that she received this deepened awareness through an experience of embodied ecstasy. Whatever her solar experience “did for her,” however much her comportment was improved or her virtues purified, for nine days she participated in the immediate beauty of her world. To paraphrase Sarah Edwards herself, everything else should be viewed in that light.

Sarah and Jonathan Edwards were typical Puritans in their understanding of marriage as an analogy for the relation between the Christian and God. It is impossible to overstate the importance of analogy for Puritan thinking. The relation between the Christian and God was itself an analogy, an analogy of opposition. For example, Puritans testified to the power of God by opposite analogy, that is, by describing the weakness of humanity. For the analogy to hold, both parts were needed. Without power of his own, man depended for his life on the power of God. And to display his power, God created man as his servant. Similarly, spirit used flesh as God used nature: the body of the world pointed away from itself to its creator.

Notes

1. Sarah Edwards' first-person narrative is preserved in Sereno Edwards Dwight, “Memoirs of Jonathan Edwards,” The Works of Jonathan Edwards, A.M., ed. Dwight (2 vols.; London, 1840), I, civ-cxii. Jonathan Edwards' edited version of her narrative appears in Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England, which is reprinted in The Great Awakening: The Works of Jonathan Edwards, IV, ed. Clarence C. Goen (New Haven, 1972), 331-341.

2. Edwards, Some Thoughts, pp. 331-332.

3. Dwight, “Memoirs,” pp. cvii, lxxxi.

4. Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in Three Parts, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, II, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven, 200-205, and Jonathan Edwards, “A Divine and Supernatural Light” (1734), Jonathan Edwards: Basic Writings, ed. Ola E. Winslow (New York, 1966), p. 126.

5. Jonathan Edwards, Images and Shadows of Divine Things, ed. Perry Miller (New Haven, 1948), pp. 135-137 (“The Beauty of the World”).

6. Ibid., p. 61.

7. Ibid., p. 137.

8. Dwight, “Memoirs,” p. lxxxi.

9. Quoted in Goen, “Introduction,” The Great Awakening, p. 68.

10. Dwight, “Memoirs,” pp. lxxxii-lxxxviii.

11. Jonathan Edwards, “An Account of His Conversion, Experiences, and Religious Exercises, Given by Himself” (orig. pub. 1765), in Samuel Hopkins, “The Life and Character of the Late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards,” Jonathan Edwards: A Profile, ed. David Levin (New York, 1969), pp. 26-30.

12. J. A. Albro, The Lives of the Chief Fathers of New England: The Life of Thomas Shepard (Boston, 1870) pp. 318-319, quoted in John E. Smith, “Introduction” to Edwards, Religious Affections, pp. 53-57.

    In his short comparison of Shepard and Edwards, Smith argues that Shepard conceived of the affections and understanding as discontinuous faculties and taught that the former should be harnessed by the latter. Shepard's notion of the opposition of these faculties is perhaps not as sharp as Smith argues. Shepard's stress on the saint's apprehension of God's beauty suggests an experience in which sensibility is united with understanding.

13. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, pp. 253-257. In his “Freedom of the Will” (1754) (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. I, ed. Paul Ramsey [New Haven, 1957]), Edwards offered close proof that every act of will is compelled by the greater apparent beauty of its object. Once the reader grants Edwards' first statement that to will, to choose, and to prefer are synonyms, the logic of the treatise is invincible. If to will is to prefer, and we prefer what appears most agreeable, then “the will always is, as the greatest apparent good is.” In proportion to his or her own sensitivity to beauty the viewer will perceive the beauty of the objects of perception. The saint, who perceives what is truly beautiful, wills the will of God.

    In “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” the truly “enlightened” person “does not merely rationally believe that God is glorious, but he has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart.” The “actual and lively discovery of this beauty and excellency … is a kind of intuitive and immediate evidence.” Seeing the beauties of divine things “does not leave room to doubt of their being of God” (pp. 128-130).

14. Jonathan Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue, ed. William Frankena (Ann Arbor, 1960), pp. 10, 61.

15. Ibid., pp. 94-96. I am indebted to William A. Clebsch for calling this passage to my attention.

16. Quoted in Hopkins, “Life and Character of Edwards,” p. 80.

17. Edwards defined the affections as “the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul” (Religious Affections, p. 96).

18. Jonathan Edwards, Some Thoughts, pp. 334-341.

19. Ibid., pp. 335-336.

20. Dwight, “Memoirs,” p. civ.

21. Ibid.

22. Quoted in Elisabeth D. Dodds, Marriage to a Difficult Man: The “Uncommon Union” of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards (Philadelphia, 1971), p. 99.

23. Dwight, “Memoirs,” p. civ.

24. Ibid., pp. cvii-cviii.

25. Ibid., p. cviii.

26. Ibid., p. cix.