September 2021 Catalogue

97 B a u m a n R a r e B o o k s “The Most Important Text Edwards Wrote In The Stockbridge Years, And The One Often Used To Mark His Place In The History Of Ideas” 108. EDWARDS, Jonathan. A Careful and Strict Enquiry into theModern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will, which is Supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency, Vertue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame. Boston, 1754. Octavo, contemporary full paneled dark brown calf rebacked with original spine laid down, custom clamshell box. $9200. Rare first edition of the famous 18th-century American theologian’s treatise arguing for the centrality of freedom of will, in contemporary binding. Best known as the prominent Calvinist theologian from whose pulpit the first stirrings of the Great Awakening flowed, Jonathan Edwards was a “philosophizing divine… His theological treatises abound in philosophical reflections, all of which were intended to clarify and defend his theological positions” (Edwards 1:460). “The most important text Edwards wrote in the Stockbridge years, and the one often used to mark his place in the history of ideas, was A Careful and Strict Enquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of That Freedom of Will (1754). “Edwards rejected Hobbes’s materialism along with the utilitarianism of most free-will advocates: the only freedom worth having was choosing what was ‘excellent,’ and that was only divine. The best argument that determinism did not obviate blame—or praiseworthiness—was Jesus, whose obedience was inevitable but still praiseworthy” (ANB). Bookplate. Scattered light foxing to text, marginal paper flaw to page 235, contemporary binding with expert restoration to spine ends. An exceptional copy of an important work. “Of all the knowledge that we can ever obtain, the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of ourselves, are the most important.”