George Whitefield (1714-1770) : a critical edition of The marks of the new birth and A sermon on regeneration together with a descriptive calendar of his sermons

Abstract

George Whitefield, a widely known evangelist in the eighteenth century, preached thousands of sermons in his lifetime. At his death in 1770, he left behind approximately 110 published sermons. Seventy-five of these sermons were printed in The Works of George Whitefield, a six-volume edition of letters, journals, tracts, and sermons published in 1771 and 1772. While a few collections of his sermons were reprinted in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, there has been no edition of sermons using the principles of modern textual criticism. Moreover, no complete bibliography of his sermons exists. The aim of this dissertation has been to demonstrate the need for bibliographic and textual studies of his sermons. The descriptive calendar provides the scholar with a complete record of Whitefield's sermons published in English in Britain or in the American colonies in the eighteenth century. It consists of two parts: Individual Sermons and Sermon Collections. The record includes scripture texts and provides a cross-reference to collections. The descriptive calendar is an important step toward a descriptive bibliography of his sermons. The two sermons, The Marks of the New Birth and A Sermon on Regeneration, are edited using the techniques of modern textual criticism. These editions demonstrate the need for new editions because the collation of the first published text with Works and other texts shows that Whitefield revised some of these later editions in response to his critics. According to modern textual theory, these revisions are self-censorship and the original passages should be restored. Thus, this dissertation points to the need for a full-scale edition of his sermons and a full descriptive bibliography.