Enjoying God Ministries

Those of you who have read Edwards are familiar with his style (or, in some cases, the lack thereof!). He had a long-standing love affair with the comma, splashing them pervasively throughout his writing. He used the colon and semi-colon in ways that would be inadmissible in an English prose class today. He was no less infatuated with subordinate clauses, often constructing an elaborate sentence with as many as seven or eight of them. It's not unusual for him to say in five sentences what could as easily be said in one. On quite a number of occasions I have made alterations in his use of punctuation as well as reducing sentence length, again, all for the sake of readability. You alone will be the judge of whether I succeeded.

Edwards also employed, as did virtually everyone in his day, certain abbreviations and grammatically incorrect words. For example, he typically uses "an" rather than "a" before a word beginning with "h". I've left these intact. I've also left unchanged his use of "'em" for "them", "'Tis" for "It is", and "no" when we would expect "not".

Perhaps his most annoying habit is the use of "don't" when grammatical precision would call for "doesn't". However, I have chosen not to change these for it would require a major reconstruction of the sentence in which it appears that would obscure rather than facilitate his meaning. Soon enough, as you read Edwards, you will become accustomed to this particular issue of his style.

There are also a few distinct words of which you need to be made aware. Edwards uses "wont" (don't mistake it for "won't") when he means something like "inclined" or "disposed to", and "actings" where we might prefer "actions". He will often use the word "discovery" when we would expect "revelation". Thus to have something "discovered" to you is to have it "revealed". Likewise, the plural "discoveries" is used instead of "revelations". As for spelling, "Saviour" was changed to "Savior" and "shew" to "show".

In only a few instances I have inserted a word, always bracketed, to fill out the flow of his argument. As noted, his excessive use of commas led me to eliminate many of them to conform to what most today are accustomed to reading. There are a number of places, on the other hand, where I inserted a comma in place of his use of semi-colon, or where I have replaced a colon with a period and then started a new sentence. Most of you, especially those unfamiliar with Edwards, won't even notice when this occurs.

I also made a decision, when quoting Edwards, not to include page numbers in the text from the many versions of the Affections that are available (all of which, by the way, I used alternately, depending on which provided the more helpful rendering). See note 1 in the Introduction to the Affections for a listing of them. This was done simply for ease of reading. Once again, the fewer the distractions, the better.

As for biblical texts cited, Edwards consistently used the King James Version, all of which I retained when citing him directly. In other instances the English Standard Version was used.

My treatment of his Personal Narrative followed many of the same principles, although only slight alteration was made in the original text of this short treatise. I did, however, eliminate certain portions that addressed issues of lesser importance. If you are wondering why I included the Narrative in a work that is primarily concerned with the Religious Affections, I encourage you to read the Introduction to Part Two of the book.

This, then, is my apologetic for Signs of the Spirit. Whether you agree with my editorial decisions or are offended by them, I hope you understand that I did it out of my immense respect for Edwards and my passion that his theological convictions be given a hearing in today's Christian world. We simply cannot afford to live in ignorance of the insights he brought to bear on the nature of spiritual experience. At least, I can't.