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The great Princeton theology of the nineteenth century sought to conserve the faith of the Church by combining a commitment to sola scriptura with the tenets of Common Sense philosophy imported from Scotland. Seeking certainty for the foundations of the faith, they vacillated between evidentialism and fideism. In the end, the early Princeton theologians lost their nerve and retreated to an exclusive appeal to scripture to ground their quest for an adequate theology and even for an adequate epistemology of theology.

Chapter Six examines the presidency and influence of John Witherspoon at Princeton College. He brought to the school a firm commitment to civic duty and Scottish Common Sense Realism. Witherspoon was followed by his son-in-law, Samuel Stanhope Smith, who was successful in his early presidency, but then lost the trust of the College’s board of trustees and was forced to resign amid student unrest and declining enrollments.

A striking emphasis on God's justice and goodness and on the truly moral nature of divine government pervades Taylor's entire corpus. In his famous Concio ad Clerum, Taylor upheld a firm commitment to both predestination and general divine providence, which were understood together as the doctrine of the eternal divine decrees. For Taylor, his infralapsarian Calvinistic solution to the problem of theodicy becomes the foundation for his opposition to the high Calvinist's limited and forensic understanding of the atonement. Even though Taylor made use of Scottish Common Sense Realism to arrive at his conclusions, Sweeney argues that this philosophy neither set him apart from his Edwardsian peers nor placed him in league with Old Calvinism.

Because evangelicals have relied so heavily on Scottish Common Sense philosophy for understanding the world and encouraging people to moral action, contemporary evangelicals have encountered intellectual challenges to their worldview. Sentimental evangelicals like Max Lucado and Rick Warren, however, have sidestepped these challenges by turning to emotion as a source of authority. The sentimental understanding of the world allows evangelicals to claim their religion is true because it feels true. This anti-intellectualism and reliance on emotion are evident in the sacralization of the ordinary in evangelicalism. God favors the ordinary and the common. Because this is God’s concern, doctrinal differences and the elitism of intellectual approaches to faith should be avoided. Yet the reliance on emotion has allowed some evangelicals, like Rob Bell, to challenge traditional doctrines in the movement.

Instead of viewing the path to independence as only about Paine's Common Sense and Jefferson's Declaration, this chapter shows the importance of stories about loyalist unrest in North Carolina and threats of the British hiring thousands of German mercenary soldiers in the first half of 1776. Patriot political and communication leaders propagated stories of British hiring proxies--Indians, slaves, Hessians--to bind together the American colonies. These stories merged with and deepened Paine's arguments about independence and republican government to forward the movement for the colonies to become separate states. In fact, the confirmation of rumors that the crown had hired ten thousand German mercenaries was the final straw that produced debates and votes for independence in colonial assemblies. The list of twenty-seven grievances in the Declaration against the king climaxes with these accusations of hiring proxies, or rather "merciless savages," "domestic insurrectionists," and "foreign mercenaries." The concept of who was not part of the "we" in "we hold these truths to be self-evident" started with the founding itself.

Chapter forty-three recounts Hodge’s views on the inspiration and infallibility of Scripture. He believed in “plenary” not “partial” inspiration. Every word of the Bible was true, and it was the word that God intended to use to convey His meaning. The words of Scripture had fixed meanings that did not change over time or were not bound by culture. Hodge believed that the meaning of the Bible was readily accessible to everyone who approached the text carefully using their rational faculty. He thought that emotions arose as a response to what the rational mind interpreted the Scriptures to mean. One did not begin with emotion to study the Bible. One always began with reason.

This chapter considers political, psychological, and grammatical forms of connection and their implications for narrative analogies between self and nation developed in relation to the 1707 Union between England and Scotland, and the confederation of the United States in 1776. Reid's and Beattie's ‘refutations’ of Hume propagate the structural tension in his epistemological argument into the assumptions of Common Sense philosophy. Some implications for imaginative literature of tensions between coherent stories and fragmented form are explored in the example of William Duff's History of Rhedi and the work of Henry Mackenzie. Similar issues of style and self-consciousness about language use are discussed in relation to the prose of the American Founders.

The Epilogue examines Hodge’s theological legacy after his death. Hodge may be a largely forgotten figure, but his thinking has had a wide influence on American Protestantism over the past century. His thinking on the inspiration of Scripture, as well as his commitment to Augustinian Calvinism and Scottish Common Sense Realism has had a profound impact on American Fundamentalism and American Evangelicalism.

In August 1775, King George III declared all the colonies to be in rebellion. In October, as a head of the committee of three, Franklin met with General George Washington in Massachusetts to confer with the general about his most pressing needs. Washington received the support of Franklin and the others to impose severe discipline in the troops innocent of military regimen. Franklin inclined in the direction of complete separation, but his son, William, royal governor of New Jersey, moved in the opposite direction. In January 1776, Thomas Paine produced the most widely read tract of the American Revolution, Common Sense. After Franklin had succeeded in February 1778 in signing treaties of amity, commerce, and military alliance with France, he spent the remainder of his time in France living comfortably with servants. He was appointed to a Peace Commission in the early summer of 1781.

Chapter thirty-one analyzes Hodge’s most popular book, his devotional The Way of Life. Hodge took over the role of Professor of Theology from Archibald Alexander in 1840, and thereby became the lead professor at the Seminary. By 1845, he was co-teaching the core theology courses of the school with Alexander. His The Way of Life provides a unique window into the formative years of his systematic theological thinking and his commitment to personal holiness in the Christian life.

A standout example for the earliness of her periodical work, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu cut her journalistic teeth in secret with contributions to the Spectator and Flying-Post before launching her own venture, the Whiggish Nonsense of Commonsense (1737–8), intended to oppose the popular Opposition vehicle Common Sense (1737–9). Grundy offers a detailed exploration of Montagu’s periodical career, which is defined by her allegiances, often in tension, to her identity as a woman and as a member of the aristocracy—as well as a wish for literary fame that was at odds with both sides. Her male eidolon in Nonsense in particular is a study in contrasts: economically minded, politically suspicious, but also alert to gender issues and sympathetic to women in a way that the periodical culture set by titles such as the Spectator or Common Sense was not.

Chapter 3 examines competing academic ideas about how to interpret the Bible using scientific means. Mid-nineteenth-century philologists and geologists set the stage, and participation eventually made it clear that any broadly compelling interpretation must claim to be scientific. By the end of the century, approaches proliferated. Conservative Bible scholars like those at Princeton Seminary attempted to salvage Baconian inductive method and philosophical Common Sense Realism as the basis of scientific textual interpretation. Yet their efforts were eclipsed by those of new liberal theological scholars, many trained in Europe, who argued that historicism and higher criticism provided the only scientific method for interpreting the Bible.

In 1870 most Americans assumed their nation was “Christian,” and the dominant form of Christian was evangelical Protestant. Evangelicals were committed to soul-changing and Bible-based Christianity. They also hoped to continue to shape the nation, as in campaigns for social reform, Sabbatarianism, or prohibition of alcohol. Their outlooks also helped shape the schools and colleges. Common Sense Philosophy was still prominent. The recent advent of Darwinism helped precipitate an intellectual crisis. These issues were debated at the Evangelical Alliance meeting of 1873. In the debates over such issues, one can see the impending division of evangelical Protestantism into a progressive liberal faction and a more conservative faction that anticipated later fundamentalism.

Chapter twenty-three explores Charles Hodge’s Commentary on Romans, which established him as both a national and international biblical scholar of repute. Hodge sought to create a scholarly commentary which could also be of use to lay readers, and he wished to respond to the doctrinal errors he saw in the Romans commentaries recently published by Moses Stuart and Albert Barnes. Hodge’s work showed him to be strictly Confessional in his outlook and his method of biblical exegesis.

This chapter focuses on the so-called “Moderates,” who are considered the classic representatives of the “religious Enlightenment” in Scotland and who first emerged as a distinct party within the Presbyterian kirk in the 1750s. The Moderate Party had formed first in connection with a dispute in ecclesiastical politics, the question over the role of lay patronage in the appointment of ministers. Yet the Moderates also continued many of the strands of argument that had been prominent among the earlier generation of heterodox Presbyterians between about 1720 and 1750. Although they did not openly oppose the Westminster Confession, Moderates clearly did not believe that adherence to it was necessary for being a Christian, and they were concerned largely with practical virtue as the sign of a genuine believer. Also, similar to earlier heterodox Presbyterians, the Moderates were skeptical about natural religion, and thought that this virtue joined with piety was the outcome of a gradual “culture” that involved labor and effort on the part of the individual, but also required some form of direct divine support, through Scriptural revelation or grace.

The first section of Chapter 3 examines a period of transition in the early nineteenth century when Presbyterian commitment to Common Sense philosophy and induction was challenged by modern geology and philosophical idealism. By the early 1840s, a consensus had developed about the proper relationship between science and religion that utilized the insights of Joseph Butler, Thomas Chalmers, and James McCosh. When Presbyterians responded to Darwin and Mill they declared the indispensable link between philosophy and theology, and the supremacy of mind and conscience. The chapter concludes by considering the impact of John Tyndall’s notorious Belfast Address of 1874. Despite the controversy it caused, the issue quickly subsided and Irish Presbyterians felt able to adopt a variety of positions. Rather than a concern with biblical hermeneutics, it was the moral and metaphysical implications of evolutionary theory which were of main concern to Presbyterians.

Presbyterians were used to controversies. Since the early nineteenth century, conservative Presbyterians adopted Common Sense Philosophy as a basis for asserting that truth could be discovered by objective inquiry. Princeton Theological Seminary became the intellectual center for promoting that outlook. Charles Hodge presented a view of the Bible as containing “facts” to be discovered. His successor, B. B. Warfield, developed the view that the Bible was “inerrant.” Warfield believed Christianity could prevail through rational argument. Responding to the rise of liberal theology and biblical criticism in the Northern Presbyterian denomination, conservatives in 1910 succeeded in having its general assembly declare five doctrines concerning biblical inerrancy, the miracles and Christ’s nature, and atoning works as “essential to the faith.”

This chapter explores Protestant theological schools that educated pastors as reformers of church and the nation after religious disestablishment. This education built upon the liberal arts of the colleges, which taught the basic textual interpretation, rhetoric, and oratory. Rev. Timothy Dwight led the way in fashioning a new liberal arts in the college, which served as the foundation for advanced theological education. At Yale, he integrated the belles-lettres of European literature and rhetoric into the predominant American framework of Scottish Common Sense Realism. He also coupled these pedagogies with the voluntarist theology of Jonathan Edwards and the New Divinity, which bolstered Christian volunteerism and mission. With Dwight’s help, New England Congregationalists developed a graduate theological at Andover with a faculty in Scripture, theology, and homiletics (practical theology) who taught in the interdisciplinary, rhetorical framework of the liberal arts. Dr. Ebenezer Porter raised a generation of princes of the pulpit and college professors of rhetoric and oratory, and he wrote the first widely used manuals in elocution. Moses Stuart in Bible advanced German critical studies of Scripture for future pastoral work and for scholars in the field. The greatest alternative to Andover was the historic Calvinism of Princeton Theological Seminary, as interpreted through the empiricism of Scottish Common Sense. President Archibald Alexander, historian Samuel Miller, theologian Charles Hodge, and later homiletics professor James Wadell Alexander emphasized the text-critical and narrative interpretation of Scripture, and the emphasis on classic rhetoric and oratory in homiletics culminated the curriculum.