Early Modern · 1746
A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections
Jonathan Edwards · 1703–1758
What it is
Written after the Great Awakening, when both the enthusiasts and their critics were claiming too much. Edwards sets out twelve signs distinguishing genuinely gracious affections from religious excitement, and refuses to make intensity itself the test.
Why it lasted
The most careful analysis of religious experience in English, and still the standard reference whenever a revival raises the question of how to tell true conversion from feeling.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below. The Library catalogues it; it does not host the text.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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