Faith & Spirit Quote by Jonathan Edwards

Edwards slices hypocrisy into two temptations that look like opposites but share the same vanity: trusting in what you can display, or trusting in what you can feel. The first type is the familiar Puritan target, the churchgoer intoxicated by “outward morality and external religion,” mistaking respectable behavior for a changed soul. The second is sharper, aimed at the revival-era convert who believes intense inner experience is a spiritual promotion. “False discoveries and elevation” signals the emotional highs of the Great Awakening: sudden insights, dramatic awakenings, the sense of being specially enlightened. Edwards knows those peaks can become their own kind of costume.

The subtext is a warning to his own side. Revival religion prided itself on tearing down “works” and “men’s own righteousness” (a Protestant reflex against salvation-by-merit), yet Edwards suggests that reflex can curdle into spiritual snobbery. You can denounce moralism while secretly building a new ladder of self-importance: I’m not like those people who rely on decency; I’ve had real revelations. Hypocrisy, in this framing, isn’t just pretending to be good. It’s being sincerely wrong about the basis of your standing, whether you ground it in social virtue or in ecstatic certainty.

Rhetorically, the line works because it refuses the easy binary between “dead religion” and “living faith.” Edwards is policing a volatile moment when religion is becoming theatrical, publicly legible through tears, testimonies, and shock-of-conversion narratives. He’s insisting that both the polite moralist and the zealous enthusiast can be equally self-deceived, because both are tempted to treat grace as a personal possession rather than a humbling verdict.