The First Great American Philosophic Work
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 Blame.
Boston: Printed and sold by S[amuel] Kneeland, 1754.
Price: $14,000.00
About the item
First edition. [2],vi,[4],294,[14]pp. including list of subscribers. 1 vols. 4to. Contemporary calf, rebacked. Provenance: John Lew (signature on rear endpaper noting purchase from “Garret Lidecker, parson of a parish in New Jersey” and dated 1776. Evans 7182; Grolier American 11; Sabin 21930 (with incomplete collation); Streeter Catalogue 7:4164.
Item #366924
First edition of the first great philosophical work by an American, and one of the most important texts produced in colonial America. Edwards had risen to prominence as a revivalist preacher during the Great Awakening, but this book, called by Thomas Johnson "one of the few great books in English theology," marks Edwards' mature theological thinking. The Grolier 100 catalogue comments: "Edwards was a strict Calvinist fighting a losing battle against progressive forces... this book was a brilliant piece of special pleading which succeeded in bolstering for awhile longer the Calvinist doctrine of 'the total depravity and corruption of man's nature' which could be saved only through divine intervention."
The DAB says this book "revealed him as the first great philosophic intelligence in American history. The work shows his debt to Locke but also his profound originality, logical acumen, and critical discrimination...its purpose was to maintain the dogma of absolute divine sovereignty and unconditional predestination..."
