Jon and Ben

I think my favorite class so far this semester is American Literature: beginnings to romanticism with Dr. Lundin. (I'm also taking Christianity and Fantasy with Dr. Jacobs, Systematic Theology with Dr. Johnson, and Physical Geology with Dr. Greenberg. They're good too.) We've started off with the Puritans, and while their writing isn't exactly known for being scintillating, I've really found it very interesting. Dr. Lundin has been great about providing a historical framework, so I'm getting a better understanding of the men and women who, I think, in some sense are my cultural and intellectual forebears. Dr. Lundin, being a good Presbyterian, is sympathetic to the Puritans, without being blinded to their rather over-realized eschatology and the irony of the unintended consequences of their convictions and actions. It's fascinating to study these characters who have so influenced American thought and literature.

We started with some William Bradford and John Winthrop and then moved on to Mary Rowlandson, Cotton Mather, and Jonathan Edwards. It was a strange jolt to one day read Edwards' Personal Narrative, Letter to Rev. Dr. Benjamin Colman (on the Great Awakening) and Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and then turn to his deistic contemporary Ben Franklin.

Compare:

from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God:

Your wickedness makes you as it were heavy as lead, and to tend downwards with great weight and pressure towards hell; and if God should let you go, you would immediately sink and swiftly descend and plunge into the bottomless gulf, and your healthy constitution, and your own care and prudence, and best contrivance, and all your righteousness, would have no more influence to uphold you and keep you out of hell, than a spider's web would have to stop a fallen rock. Were it not for the sovereign pleasure of God, the earth would not bear you one moment. . .

with some quotes from Franklin's Autobiography (a bestseller back in the day, incidentally):

It was about this time that I conceiv'd the bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection. . . .But I soon found I had undertaken a Task of more Difficulty than I had imagined. . . And conceiving God to be the Fountain of Wisdom, I thought it right and necessary to solicit his Assistance for obtaining it.

And this Mode [of not immediately contradicting people], which I at first put on, with some violence to natural Inclination, became at length so easy and so habitual to me, that perhaps for these Fifty Years past no one has ever heard a dogmatical Expression escape me.

Imitate Jesus and Socrates.

Edwards didn't think much of Ben's righteousness. It's filthy rags.
But his autobiography is still pretty entertaining:

My Brother had in 1720 or 21, begun to print a Newspaper. . . I remember his being dissuaded by some of his Friends from the Undertaking, as not likely to succeed, one Newspaper being in their Judgment enough for America.

Hitherto I had stuck to my Resolution of not eating animal Food; and on this Occasion, I consider'd with my Master Tryon, the taking every Fish as a kind of unprovok'd Murder, since none of them had or ever could do us any Injury that might justify the Slaughter. All this seem'd very reasonable. But I had formerly been a great Lover of Fish, and when this came hot out of the Frying Pan, it smelt admirably well. I balanc'd some time between Principle and Inclination: till I recollected, that when the Fish were opened, I saw smaller Fish taken out of their Stomachs: Then, thought I, if you eat one another, I don't see why we mayn't eat you. So I din'd upon Cod very heartily and continu'd to eat with other People, returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetarian Diet. So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable Creature, since it enables one to find or make a Reason for everything one has a mind to do.

And there's more where that comes from if you can stomach the excessive Capitalization of every, single Noun.