The estrangement between Edwards and his people began in 1744, in connection with a case of discipline in which a large number of the youth belonging to the leading families of the town were brought under suspicion of reading and circulating immoral books. During the excitement of the revival, the people willingly accepted his high demands. But now, in the reaction, flesh, and blood rebelled. Edwards, however, was not the man to accommodate the claims of religion, as he conceived those claims, to the weaknesses of human nature. It would not be strange if, under the circumstances, the people looked on their minister as something of a spiritual dictator, exercising a kind of spiritual tyranny. Still, this feeling, so far as it then existed, was not likely to have led to an open rupture, had it not been that four years later, on the occasion of an application—the first in those years—for membership in the church, Edwards sought to impose a new test of qualification. He required, namely, that the candidate for full communion should give evidence of being converted, and as such converted person, should make a public profession of godliness. This restriction ran counter to the principles and usage established by Mr. Stoddard, accepted by most of the neighboring churches, and hitherto followed by Edwards himself, according to which, not only might persons be admitted to church membership on the terms of the “Halfway Covenant,” but they might come to the Lord’s Supper, if they desired to do so, even without the assurance of conversion, the hope is that the rite might itself prove a converting ordinance. Edwards was now openly charged with seeking to lord it over the brethren, and the indignation was intense. He, on his part, was convinced of the correctness of his position and was prepared to maintain it at all costs. The unhappy controversy lasted for two years: Edwards was dignified, courteous, disposed to be conciliatory, yet insisting on the recognition of his rights, and showing throughout his great moral and intellectual superiority; the people prejudiced, obstinate, refusing even to consider his views or to allow him to set them forth in the pulpit, bent only on getting rid of him. Finally, on June 22, 1750, the Council, convened to advise on the matter, recommended, by a vote of 10 to 9, the minority protesting, that the pastoral relations should be dissolved. The concurrent sentiment of the church was expressed by the overwhelming vote of about 200 to 20 of the male members. The next Sunday but one Edwards preached his Farewell Sermon.
Edwards was now forty-six years of age, unfitted, as he
says, for any other business but study, and with a “numerous and family” to face the world with. The long controversy and the
circumstances attending the dismissal had had a depressing effect on his
spirits, and the outlook seemed to him gloomy in the extreme. But his trust was
in God, and his friends did not fail. From Scotland came the offer of assistance in
procuring him a charge there; his Northampton adherents desired him to remain
and form a separate church in the town. Early in December, he received a call
from the little church in Stockbridge, on the frontier, and about the same time
an invitation from the Commissioners in Boston of the “Society in London for
Propagating the Gospel in New England and the parts adjacent” to become their
missionary to the Indians, who then formed a large part of the Stockbridge
settlement. After acquainting himself by a residence of several months in
Stockbridge with the conditions of the work, and after receiving satisfactory
assurances, in a personal interview with the Governor, with regard to the
conduct of the Indian mission, he accepted both of these proposals. He had
scarcely done so when he received a call, with the promise of generous support,
from a church in Virginia.
