Anonymous
24 DEFENSIVE ARMS VINDICATED [1783]
A Moderate Whig [Stephen Case?]
25 A SERMON PREACHED ON A DAY OF THANKSGIVING [1784]
George Duffield
26 A SERMON ON OCCASION OF THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE NEW-HAMPSHIRE CONSTITUTION [1784]
Samuel McClintock
27 A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE A CONVENTION OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH [1784]
William Smith
28 THE DANGERS OF OUR NATIONAL PROSPERITY; AND THE WAY TO AVOID THEM [1785]
Samuel Wales
29 A SERMON ON A DAY APPOINTED FOR PUBLICK THANKSGIVING [1787]
Joseph Lathrop
30 THE DIGNITY OF MAN [1787]
Nathanael Emmons
31 THE PRINCIPLES OF CIVIL UNION AND HAPPINESS CONSIDERED AND RECOMMENDED [1787]
Elizur Goodrich
32 THE REPUBLIC OF THE ISRAELITES AN EXAMPLE TO THE AMERICAN STATES [1788]
Samuel Langdon
33 A CENTURY SERMON ON THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION [1788]
Elhanan Winchester
Volume 2
Chronology 1789–1794
34 A DISCOURSE ON THE LOVE OF OUR COUNTRY [1790]
Richard Price
35 THE AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE [1791]
James Dana
36 A SERMON DELIVERED AT THE ANNUAL ELECTION [1791]
Israel Evans
37 THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE INALIENABLE [1791]
John Leland
38 A SERMON FOR THE DAY OF GENERAL ELECTION [1792]
David Tappan
39 A SERMON PREACHED BEFORE THE ARTILLERY COMPANY [1793]
Peter Thacher
40 A SERMON ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF AMERICA [1793]
Samuel Miller
41 AN ORATION IN COMMEMORATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA [1793]
Enos Hitchcock
42 THE NECESSITY OF THE BELIEF OF CHRISTIANITY [1794]
Jonathan Edwards, Jr.
43 THE WONDERFUL WORKS OF GOD ARE TO BE REMEMBERED [1794]
David Osgood
44 THE REVOLUTION IN FRANCE [1794]
Noah Webster
Chronology 1795-1805
45 MANIFESTATIONS OF THE BENEFICENCE OF DIVINE PROVIDENCE TOWARDS AMERICA [1795]
Bishop James Madison
46 SERMON BEFORE THE GENERAL COURT OF NEW HAMPSHIRE AT THE ANNUAL ELECTION [1797]
Stephen Peabody
47 A DISCOURSE, DELIVERED AT THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH IN BOSTON [1798]
John Thayer
48 THE DUTY OF AMERICANS, AT THE PRESENT CRISIS [1798]
Timothy Dwight
49 A SERMON OCCASIONED BY THE DEATH OF WASHINGTON [1800]
Henry Holcombe
50 ON THE EVILS OF A WEAK GOVERNMENT [1800]
John Smalley
51 THE VOICE OF WARNING TO CHRISTIANS [1800]
John Mitchell Mason
52 A SOLEMN ADDRESS TO CHRISTIANS AND PATRIOTS [1800]
Tunis Wortman
53 OVERCOMING EVIL WITH GOOD [1801]
Stanley Grisworld
54 AN ORATION IN COMMEMORATION OF THE ANNIVERSARY OF AMERICAN INDEPENCENCE [1802]
William Emerson
55 A SERMON, ON THE SECOND COMING OF CHIRST [1805]
John Hargrove
Indexes
Inspiration for this collection of sermons came over a number of years as I did research on the American founders’ political philosophy. I discovered that the “pulpit of the American Revolution”—to borrow the title of John Wingate Thornton’s 1860 collection—was the source of exciting and uncommonly important material. What had passed for pamphlets in my reading of excerpted eighteenth-century American material often turned out to be published sermons. I began to realize that this material, showing the perspective of biblical faith concerning fundamental questions of human existence during our nation’s formative period, was extraordinarily abundant and extraordinarily little known.
The rule of this collection has been to reprint unannotated editions of complete sermons that would permit their authors to speak fully for themselves. The genre is the political sermon, broadly construed so as to include a few pieces never preached that are sermonic in sense and tone—that is, hortatory and relating politics to convictions about eternal verities. The chief criterion for selection of the various pieces was their intellectual interest. I was looking especially for political theory in American sermons preached and then published from the onset of the Great Awakening to the beginning of the Second Awakening and Thomas Jefferson’s second administration. An effort was made to diversify viewpoints denominationally, theologically, politically, geographically, and even nationally. Since only previously published materials have been selected—that is, nothing from manuscript sources has been included1 a limitation resided in the fact that the publication of sermons in America in the eighteenth century was a specialty, if not a monopoly, of New Englanders.
To permit the religious perspective concerning the rise of American nationhood to have representative expression is important because a steady attention to the pulpit from 1730 to 1805 unveils a distinctive rhetoric of political discourse: Preachers interpreted pragmatic events in terms of a political theology imbued with philosophical and revelatory learning. Their sermons also demonstrate the existence and effectiveness of a popular political culture that constantly assimilated the currently urgent political and constitutional issues to the profound insights of the Western spiritual and philosophical traditions. That culture’s political theorizing within the compass of ultimate historical and metaphysical concerns gave clear contours to secular events in the minds of Americans of this vital era.
Religion gave birth to America, Tocqueville observed long ago.2 On the eve of revolution, in his last-ditch attempt to stave off impending catastrophe, Edmund Burke reminded the House of Commons of the inseparable alliance between liberty and religion among Englishmen in America3 Mercy Otis Warren noted in her 1805 history of the American Revolution: “It must be acknowledged, that the religious