Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/761

 1 700-76] The eighteenth century. Jonathan Edwards. 729 fits the case. It may be said, of course, that God is uncommonly kind to a particular neighbourhood ; but it is simpler to say that Calvin was mistaken about the extreme depravity of men. And this is the view which Americans, on the whole, have been disposed to take. Cotton Mather was by no means wholly a man of the past. Though his principles in religion and in politics were what he believed those of the New England Fathers to be, he found time, in his wonderfully busy life, for much scientific and other observation. His letters on various phases of natural history in America won him recognition from the Royal Society; and he supposed himself fully entitled to the dignity of F.R.S. Towards the end of his life he introduced at Boston the practice of inoculation for the small-pox, which is said not to have been attempted previously in the British dominions. A conventional seventeenth century scholar, he felt, nevertheless, the impulse of the newer learning which was to distinguish later centuries. To this he contributed certain unimportant facts. He never approached, however, a scientific generalisation; and his chief scientific achievement was that medical one in which he applied to practical use the result of his omnivorous reading. In this aspect he foreshadowed the America which was to follow him. Americans have observed well; they have made a great many useful and practical inventions ; but to this day pure science would be little poorer without them. So far as seventeenth century America expressed itself, its intellectual energy was concentrated in New England, and was chiefly devoted to Calvinistic theology. In the following century the state of things was different. New England, to be sure, still remained the centre of theological activity. It produced, in Jonathan Edwards, the man who may still be held the most eminent of American theologians. As one considers the unflinching logic of his Calvinism, however, there is an aspect of it more noteworthy than its courage and its technical excellence. This is its remoteness from actual experience. The earlier Puritans had accepted with all their hearts a creed which explained to their satisfaction the confusion and the wickedness of human life. Edwards, turning his eyes from all things of this world, and seeking, like the true Yankee that he was, for the truths which lie beyond the limits of human experience, devoted all his energy to reasoning out extreme conclusions involved in the faith which he had accepted from the Fathers. Unlike the eminent ministers of earlier days, he concerned himself hardly at all with public affairs. His career, accordingly, marks at once the tendency of American theology to depart from experience in its search for ideal truth, and the tendency of American life to separate the things of this world from those of the next. The elder divines were practical and often skilful politicians; the diplomatic achievement of Increase Mather, in securing the Provincial Charter of Massachusetts, was almost as remarkable as the later diplomatic career of Franklin. Edwards, on CH. XXIII.