Going Mr. Stoddard's Way

ISCUSSION of the intellectual history of the Connecticut Valley before the Great Awakening has focused on two ministers: Northampton's Solomon Stoddard, whom Increase and Cotton Mather viewed as the virtual pontiff of that region, and Westfield's Edward Taylor, the belated metaphysical poet who, in sermons to his congregation, lengthy unpublished treatises, and private communications to Stoddard, challenged the progressive liberalization of requirements for church membership that the latter urged throughout his career.' Further, recent scholarship concludes that, for all Stoddard's influence in the valley, he had little success in persuading other clergymen to adopt his views on church discipline.2 But a lengthy, hitherto unnoticed manuscript by the Reverend William Williams, Stoddard's son-in-law and minister at Hatfield, Massachusetts, indicates that there was more intellectual ferment in the area than we have recognized and that, contrary to prevailing

Art · Law and economics · Political science · Sociology · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Mormonism, Religion, and History

• Fisher Ames and political judgment

  James M Farrell•Quarterly Journal of Speech•1990

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