Andrew Croswell
In 1766, Andrew Croswell authored "Free Forgiveness of Spiritual Debts". It was printed by McAlpine on Boston's Marlborough Street. During that period of time many chaotic events resulted in the Colonial opposition to Great Britain. The rights of the colonists were slowly being changed and the restrictions by the parliament were becoming more and more intolerable. In 1764, the colonists were submissive, and were weakly pleading for self-indulgence. This small fire of anger was becoming more and more apparent as the rights were slowly withdrawn. On October 19, 1765 the Stamp Act depicted the colonists as having to give in to the view of Great Britain. This policy angered the colonists very much, and was another reason for the transition of the colonists' rights. When the Declaration Act was passed in March of 1766, many colonies were attempting to claim that they were separating from England. The Parliament denounced the attempt at independence and passed the law to show that the colonists were still in British rule. Again, the colonists were enraged and eventually resisted the British confines over the colonies. All of the preceding was leading up to the Revolutionary War and gives an overall view of the events and feel
I think that it is pretty clear why this text was written at this particular time. It was an ongoing trend that was started in the early to mid 1700's, with the communities' approval of Jonathan Edwards; to publicly advertise the word of Christ in published documents. He was so prominent and confident with his writings about the faith of the church, and was probably the first one to do so. Once he got the ball rolling, people just began to follow by continuing their writings about the word of God. One of the reasons I believe people feel as though these documents were such an influential factor in the shaping of 18th century religious life was the continuing knowledge people were gaining at that time. Perhaps one of the reasons the word was being spread to more people was due to the amount of people that were being able to actually read these texts. Through the further development of colleges and schools at that time, people were becoming more educated and were better "read." If people are more knowledgeable about something, they will be more inept to follow. Another reason I believe people would have been more likely to follow at the time was due to the events that were unfolding that were outside of religion. There were several events that were occurring within the governmental systems that might cause people to turn to the church. The events in history I was mentioning earlier might have cause people to be on edge and searching for something to keep them grounded. I feel that Croswell directed this document to the ministers in the church at that time. By directing this document to ministers, the word will begin to be spread that God will forgive anyone who sins. It was probably hard for ministers at that time to hear what Croswell was saying because it was something that was a relatively new concept at that time. In the previous puritan times, people were expected to live the life of the gospel and be extremely spiritual. If they didn't live as spiritual as the ministers would have like
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1363
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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