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New England Dogmatics. Maltby Geltson
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isbn 9781532637766
Автор произведения Maltby Geltson
Жанр Религия: прочее
Издательство Ingram
7. Inscribed on the first page of Gelston’s Systematic Collection, is a note which reads, “A copy by Maltby Gelston when studying divinity of the questions and answers of Dr. Edwards a son of President Edwards, when he gave instruction in theology in his study in New Haven to young men seeking the ministry—Mills B. Gelston, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1887.” Mills Bordwell Gelston was the seventh child of Maltby Gelston. He was born August 27, 1817 and died of a paralytic stoke February 28, 1903. Like his father, Mills Gelston was educated at Yale College and eventually became a Presbyterian minister to Ann Arbor, Michigan.
8. (Courtesy of Gloria Thorne) Gelston’s ledger (c.1832) records some interesting details about the social affairs of the town and his own interaction with its various members, one of which was the town’s ‘shoemaker,’ Willy Bertrum:
Tapping a pair of shoes .12 ½ (cents)
By mending shoe- .03
Making a pair of shoes- .50
Mending shoes & boots .16
Making small pair of shoes- .40
Making small pair of shoes- .30
Sole leather 4 pr. Shoes- .35
The ledger also records a variety of details of Gelston’s personal and church related interactions:
P[ai]d. David Northrop for recording 2 deeds @ .20c ea.
Thomas Hall for repair of windows at Meetinghouse $1.50,
drawing away old steeple .75
Delazon Hungerford — 3 days worth threshing - $1.50
Cloth for pantaloons — $2.16
To John Appleby, a bull — $9.00
Cyrus Hungerford — making pair boots & mending upper leather — $2.75
Eggs — 10 cents doz.
15 pounds nails @ 7 cents # = $1.05
Use of team for the day = .50c.
2 days chopping wood — $2
1 gal. cider = .25c
1 broom = .17c
knitting mittens = .25c
9. We are grateful to Gloria Thorne for supplying us with a transcribed copy of this document.
10. Thorne estimates that Gelston preached well over two thousand sermons during his ministerial tenure, more than nine hundred manuscripts of which remain catalogued and preserved at the Sherman Historical Society. The remaining sermon manuscripts, Thorne speculates, were either lost or offered to family or other ministers for keepsake.
11. We are grateful to Gloria Thorne for generously supplying us with a manuscript copy of this poem.
12. Bellamy undertook the private education over sixty men from the late 1750s almost until his death in 1790. For a comprehensive list of his ministerial students, see: Anderson, “Joseph Bellamy (1719–1790): The Man and his Work,” 356–450.
13. Hopkins, Life and Character of the Late Rev. Mr. Jonathan Edwards. For example, Samuel Hopkins records that directly upon his assuming the Presidency at New Jersey College (Princeton), Edwards assigned a list of ‘questions in divinity’ to the senior class. Accordingly, these questions were “to be answered before him [Edwards]; each [student] having opportunity to study and write what he thought proper upon them. When they came together to answer them, they found so much entertainment and profit by it, especially by the light and instruction Mr. Edwards communicated in what he said upon the questions, when they had delivered what they had to say, that they spoke of it with the greatest satisfaction and wonder,” 46–47.
14. Gambrell, Ministerial Education in Eighteenth-Century New England, ch. 6.
15. Bellamy’s injection of Calvinism into the vein of popular moral and legal discourse was endemic to the New England church and society alike. In the short period following its publication, True Religion Delineated had been purchased (in one particular case, sixty copies by the same individual!) and read by nearly everyone in New England. According to Harriet Beecher Stowe, Bellamy’s so-called, “Blue book,” contained a catalogue of subscribers listing “almost every good old Massachusetts or Connecticut family name.” Stowe continues, saying, “Its dissemination was regarded as an act of religious ministry, and there is not the slightest doubt that it was heedfully and earnestly read in every good family of New England; and its propositions were discussed everywhere and by everybody,” Stowe, Oldtown Folks, 373–75ff.
16. Valeri writes, “According to the regnant moral discourse, doctrine was subject to a test of moral verification, so Bellamy was compelled to demonstrate how Calvinism satisfied the canons of natural law—observable, uniform, and universal principles that . . . upheld the virtue of benevolence. Bellamy assumed that by deducing evangelical doctrine from this moral law, he could meet the objections of his detractors without capitulating to Arminian soteriology and anthropology. He subsequently developed the doctrinal and practical emphases of his Calvinism in terms of moral and legal obligation. He thought that he could affirm the superiority of Calvinist theology without following the Antinomian path away from social and moral obligations,” Law and Providence in Joseph Bellamy’s New England, 56–57. Tryon Edwards (1809–94) later described as proof of Bellamy’s “mental Samsonism” and his “almost unequalled power in the desk,” was the centralization of the doctrine of God’s moral government of all things within his theological system. Edwards, “Memoir,” lxiv, lx.
17. For more on the significance of Taylor, see Doug Sweeney’s excellent work: Taylor, New Haven Theology, and the Legacy of Jonathan Edwards.
18. There are at least three reasons for believing that Bellamy’s contribution to the Edwardsian intellectual tradition exceeded that of any other New Divinity thinker, including Edwards’ other principal disciple, Samuel Hopkins (1721–1803) and his codification of the so-called New Divinity theology in a System of Doctrines contained in Divine Revelation. First, all of Bellamy’s most influential New Divinity works (E.g., True Religion Delineated; The Great Evil of Sin, as it is Committed Against God; The Law, Our School-Master; The Wisdom of God in the Permission of Sin, Vindicated; A Blow at the Root of Antinomianism of the Present Age, predate Hopkins’ most significant works, of which there were few. From this it might not even be unreasonable to suppose that Hopkins’ System of Doctrines had something of a negligible effect upon the already established views of those who had previously studied at Bellamy’s so-called, “school of prophets.” Following from this is the second reason, namely that Bellamy’s “school of prophets” was responsible for the education of the most influential New Divinity leaders of the next