Edwards' metaphysical investigations reinforced, rather than challenged, his
traditional Calvinist beliefs: ultimately, things are as they should be, by God's
providence; striving for worldly gain is sinful and striving for personal salvation
is futile; the aim of human existence is devotion and the mark of salvation is
obedience. In short, human beings depend absolutely upon God. For this New
England minister, these and other points of dogma derived logically from the
premise that there is one all-powerful, sovereign God. His sovereignty -- the
sense of it, the conviction of it -- is everything. This is the theme uniting
Edwards' life, his preaching, and his writing.

On the surface, Edwards' thought seems hardly different from any other
conservative minister's. To his contemporaries, his orthodoxy, his focus upon
orthodoxy's central doctrine, distinguished him from the beginning. When the
Boston clergy invited him to give the Public Lecture on July 8, 1731, his
sermon, God Glorified in Man's Dependence, won him immediate recognition
and his first publication. Its encyclopedic doctrine, "That there is an absolute
and universal dependence of the redeemed on God for all their good," Edwards laid
out clearly, plainly: man can do nothing to save himself, good works avail a
man nothing but are a glory to God alone, faith is a gift and not to be achieved
(GG 145). If a difference existed between Edwards and his contemporary
orthodox brethren, it was that his mind simply could not tolerate inconsistency.
He tested every idea and action by the doctrine of sovereignty. Every word he
spoke from the pulpit was ultimately connected to it. Every pastoral initiative
he took was motivated by it. So if we want to know why the great revivals in
the Connecticut Valley spread, initially at least, from a spark ignited in

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