Unregenerate Doings: Selflessness and Selfishness in New Divinity Theology

ELIJAH PARISH WAS PLAYING POLONIUS. THE CONGREGATIONAL MINISTER OF Byfield, Massachusetts, admonished his son to consider the "vast importance" of sound preaching when he chose his place of residence. For his part, the elder Parish solemnly declared, he "would rather sit under the most ordinary preacher, than attend a minister of wrong principles, possessing the most profound genius and the most powerful eloquence."' His fatherly advice seems unobjectionable enough. Yet Reverend Parish was a Hopkinsian, a proponent of the theological system set forth by Samuel Hopkins, the disciple of Jonathan Edwards. The Hopkinsian (or New Divinity) theologians, who flourished in New England during the second half of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century, were infamous for their belief that sinners could perform no acceptable duty, not even in such actions as praying or Bible reading. Why then should Parish concern himself about the quality of the preaching that people heard, when he and his fellow New Divinity ministers claimed that the unconverted did nothing but sin when they heard it? To their critics, the Hopkinsians' proposition seemed to encourage sinners to "neglect or abuse ... the prescribed means of grace."2 To Ezra Stiles, the "uncouth, venemous & blasphemous" idea implied that an "Unconverted Man had better be killing his father & mother than praying for convertlinig