This book represents the history of the New England theology from 1750 to 1830, revealing a significant conflict of attitudes and ideals involved in the decline of orthodoxy and the rise of the modern spirit in religion. It follows the course of theological discussion from Jonathan Edwards to Nathaniel W. Taylor, in whom liberalism triumphed. It shows how and why historical Christianity became unpalatable and unreasonable to the cultured in New England, how a great spirit was lost with the passing of the Edwardean theology, and how a new Christianity appeared in the place of the old. The author gives some clues to the source and nature of the weaknesses in present-day religious thought and makes a timely contribution to the launching of that reconstruction in Protestant theology, which is, admittedly, very much needed.

This book represents the history of the New England theology from 1750 to 1830, revealing a significant conflict of attitudes and ideals involved in the decline of orthodoxy and the rise of the modern spirit in religion. It follows the course of theological discussion from Jonathan Edwards to Nathaniel W. Taylor, in whom liberalism triumphed. It shows how and why historical Christianity became unpalatable and unreasonable to the cultured in New England, how a great spirit was lost with the passing of the Edwardean theology, and how a new Christianity appeared in the place of the old. The author gives some clues to the source and nature of the weaknesses in present-day religious thought and makes a timely contribution to the launching of that reconstruction in Protestant theology, which is, admittedly, very much needed.

Jesus is the end of all religion. All the sacrifices of priests and people are rendered null and void by Jesus' one-time-for-all-time sacrifice for all people, everywhere, past, present, and future tense. Jesus' death and resurrection save us from our own religiosity.

Exploring the nature of pious reforms in such areas as liturgy, saint cults, pilgrimage, confraternities, hymns, and Bible translation during the "long nineteenth century."

The author traces a constellation of intimately related ideas - about the nature of parental authority and filial rights, of moral obligation of Scripture, of the growth of the mind and the nature of historical progress - from their most important English and continental expressions in a variety of literary and theological texts, to their transmission, reception and application in Revolutionary America and in the early national period of American culture.