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Great book by Bryan F. Lebeau 'Jonathan Dickenson and the Formative Years of American Presbyterianism' gives additional information on the debate surrounding New Side - Old Side.
New Sider Alexander Craighead plays a central role in both the New Side- Old Side debate and in the push independence as we can read in Hanna's book about the renewal of the covenant in november 1743.
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Reverend Robert Finley:
'was born to James Finley and Ann Angrest, James was born 1737 in Glasgow, Scotland where he was trained as a yarn merchant and where he became acquainted with Rev John Witherspoon who was then a pastor in the town of Paisley about six miles from Glasgow. James immigrated to New Jersey in 1769. His paternal grandparents were James Finley from Paisley, and Ann McDonald.' His memoirs can be read here. These memoirs are an interesting look into the background of John Witherspoon before he left Scotland to become president of Princeton. Let's see if Jiames Finley is related to Samuel Finley. Which is indeed the case. These memoirs are a very interesing read, many details on the period that preceded John Witherspoon's arrival at Princeton.
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When Michael Finley arrived in Maryland around 1730 (border dispute between Penn and Lord Baltimore created a window of opportunity for poor settlers) little did he know his son Samuel Finley would become one of the architects of the American revolution. 200,000 Scotch-Irish migrated to the Americas between 1717 and 1775. They had been invited by Cotton Mather and other leaders to come over to secure the frontier. Without much cash, they moved to free lands on the frontier, becoming the typical western "squatters", the frontier guard of the colony, and what the historian Frederick Jackson Turner described as
"the cutting-edge of the frontier." Samuel Finley likely graduated from the Log College in Warminster, Bucks County Pennsylvania. This first Presbyterian Theological Seminary in ...
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Chris McGreal wrote yesterday that the government of Rwanda,
'led by the former rebel leader, Paul Kagame, who put a stop to the genocide, seeks to construct a new Rwanda where the ideology of hatred is buried with the corpses of its victims.' Timothy Longman says something else:
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The case against Boston Bomb suspects is prosecuted by the assistant US attorneys William Weinreb and Aloke Chakravarty from the Anti-Terrorism and National Security Unit of the US Attorney's Office for District of Massachusetts.
Last month David Voreacos portrayed Aloke Chakravarty as a guy who seeks dialogue. His colleagues, offcourse, had nothing but praise for Chakravarty. Kurt Schwartz, the Massachusetts undersecretary of homeland security and emergency management, claims, for example, 'Al(Aloke Chakravarty) is a talented guy, he's a committed guy'.
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Anthea McCall, Ridley faculty member in Melbourn, has done an amazing job explaining Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening to us. She focuses on Edwards' preaching style/method and content and the centrality of the Union with Christ in it. Two quotes, the first on his approach to preaching, which immediately reminds me of Samuel Davies sermons:
'Edwards'formulation of justification did not depend on the many set steps to salvation practiced by traditional Puritan Preparationists. Nor did it depend on any status or education or human virtue as was implicit or even explicit in the Enligtenment or Arminian gospel. Edwards' preaching on justification by faith alone opened the door wide and people came flooding through it to Christ. Wheeler argues that for Edwards, his gospel of equality, and ...
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Jonathan Belcher, who suggested the name 'Nassau Hall', was a Calvinist congregationalist:
'While it (Nassau Hall) was still under construction, the place came perilously close to being named Belcher Hall. In 1747, Jonathan Belcher, a devout Massachusetts Congregationalist, was chosen royal governor of New Jersey, and he immediately made a pet project of supporting the fledgling College of New Jersey, then located in Elizabeth. Belcher was shocked at the degraded spiritual condition of Harvard and Yale - where, he said, he had reason to believe that "Arminianism, Arianism and even Socinianism, in destruction of the doctrines of free grace are daily propagated" - and he saw ...
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Murray N. Rothbart writes in his book 'Conceived in Liberty':
'During this period (second half of 18th century), many of the New Light ministers, under pressure of establishment persecution in several colonies, began to move towards a libertarian position. Elisha Williams was a New Light. The Reverend Samuel Davies, leader of the Southern New Side Presbyterians, declared in 1751 that people had a "legal as well as natural right to follow their own judgment," and to gauge governmental authority against the great principles of natural justice. Davies' focus, of course, was on religious aspects of liberty. Princeton, the training ground of the New Lights, soon developed as a libertarian center.' In A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737), Jonathan Edwards, Princeton's first ...
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The life of Gilbert Tennent, the son of Log College (precursor of Princeton College) founder William Tennent, shows the ideological tensions among Presbyterians during the Great Awakening. It's not hard to grasp how the reunited Synod of New York & Philadelphia in 1758 was a major event in Presbyterian and American history. It resolved the tensions between the two factions.
It explains why Richard Stockton and Benjamin Rush, as Samuel Finley's messengers,wanted to have John Witherspoon as successor at Princeton in 1766. John Witherspoon was the ideal figure to maintain momentum created by the 1758 Synod.
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Sophie Rosenfeld is quoted concerning Thomas Paine's use of Scottish Common Sense Realism arguing:
'He used two ideas from Scottish Common Sense Realism: that ordinary people can indeed make sound judgments on major political issues, and that there exists a body of popular wisdom that is readily apparent to anyone' The Calvinist flavor of this statement is obvious. John Witherspoon's background gives even more information on the nature of this link. Varnum Lansing Collins writes in the introduction to the 1912 re-publishing of Witherspoon's lectures on Moral Philosophy:
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