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wardrobe. She was accused of purchasing jewelry and extravagant dress material, thus revealing her vanity, a characteristic to be shunned by a minister’s wife. Sarah Pierpont Edwards would address issues of her reputation, her position as the minister’s wife, at the time of his imminent break from the church through her own conversion. As she wrote, and Edwards later retold her tale, she experienced moments of divine light that caused her to become a religious source in her own right. In his “Apostrophe to Sarah Pierpont,” Edwards defies the image of her as worldly and vain, suggesting instead that she values her profound relationship with God over such truck: “Therefore, if you present all the world before her, with the richest of its treasures, she disregards it and cares not for it, and is unmindful of any pain or affl iction.” When in December 1748 someone actually applied for full membership in the church but refused to offer the profession of faith that Edwards had made mandatory four years earlier, the minister found himself embroiled with congregation members. Edwards himself instigated the formal declaration of these tensions by calling a state of controversy between himself and the people. During the subsequent proceedings that lasted for nearly two years, Edwards held steadfast to his theological convictions and attempted to limit the congregation’s opposition to his religious beliefs rather than to larger issues of personal disfavor. In accordance with his desire to frame the debate over theological rather than personal issues, Edwards issued An Humble Inquiry into the Rules of the Word of God, Concerning the Qualifications Requisite to a Compleat Standing and Full Communion in the Visible Christian Church. As Griffin reports, “The people did not read his book” (13). Nor, he states, did they attend a series of five public lectures that Edwards held in the Connecticut Valley during March 1750 (13). Just three months later, on June 22, 1750, the council voted to remove Edwards as their pastor. Edwards recalled, “Nothing would quiet ’em till they could see the Town clear of Root & Branch, Name and Remnant.” Edwards’s dismissal did not end the controversies surrounding him, however, as his own kins-
man, Ephraim Williams, Jr., balked at the mention of Edwards’s taking over the mission at Stockbridge. In 1750, after his ousting from his ministerial duties at Northampton, he became a missionary at Stockbridge, serving the Housatonic Indians. Samuel Hopkins, Edwards’s friend, sponsored him for this position, and a formal invitation was issued in December 1750 (Griffi n 14). Critics wonder at Edwards’s choice in becoming the missionary preacher in Stockbridge over other offers extended to him in Canaan, Connecticut, and Lunenburg, Virginia (Griffi n 13). Edwards’s cousin, Ephraim Williams, Jr., objected when Edwards’s name was proposed as a possible successor to the recently deceased John Sergeant. Williams believed Edwards was unsocial, impolitic, and too old to learn the Indians’ language. Williams lamented what a shame it was that “a head so full of divinity should be so empty of politics.” Griffi n believes that the minister’s seven years in Stockbridge “was no bower of bliss” (14). In addition to an environment made hostile by his own kinsmen, the Williams family, the town suffered from inadequate schools and untrained schoolmasters. Further, the outbreak of war in 1754 made Edwards’s time there extremely difficult. As evidenced by manuscript sermons in excess of 200, Edwards preached regularly to his Indian pastorate. He employed an interpreter, John Wauwaumpequunaunt, to aid him in communicating with his Housatonic congregation. In response to criticisms from his own cousin, Solomon Williams, regarding his policy for church membership, Edwards wrote Misrepresentations Corrected, and Truth Vindicated. His years in Stockbridge were surprisingly prolific, as he also wrote The Freedom of the Will, Original Sin, The Nature of True Virtue, and The End for Which God Created the World. In part for these publications, as well as a family connection, Edwards was offered the presidency of the College of New Jersey (present-day Princeton University). At fi rst, Edwards demurred, for fear that the heavy teaching load at the college would hamper any time he had available for additional research and writing. In a letter to the board of