Timothy Dwight (May 14, 1752-January 11, 1817) was an American educator and author. He was the president of Yale, 1795-1817. He was the grandson of Princeton president Jonathan Edwards, who started the Great Awakening Revival, which helped unite the colonies prior to the Revolutionary War.
Timothy Dwight could read at age 4 and entered Yale at 13. He was a chaplain in the Continental Army until his father died, when, as the eldest of 13, he worked the family farm to pay off debts. He served in Massachusetts' first State Legislature.
Timothy Dwight was Yale's 4th president. In 22 years at Yale, Timothy Dwight created Departments of Chemistry, Geology, Law, Medicine, and founded Andover Theological Seminary. Dwight pioneered women's education, and was critical of slavery and encroachment on Indian lands. Timothy Dwight's grandson, also named Timothy Dwight, was president of Yale from 1886 to 1898.
Originally a Puritan college, Yale students became enamoured with France's deistic "cult of reason," which birthed the bloody French Revolution. Timothy Dwight answered students' questions on faith and by his death, January 11, 1817, Yale had grown from 110 to 313 students, with a third professing Christianity and 30 entering ministry. The revival which ensued at Yale's New Haven campus was part of the Second Great Awakening Revival.
On July 4, 1798, in New Haven, President Timothy Dwight delivered an address titled, The Duty of Americans, at the Present Crisis, Illustrated in a Discourse, in which stated:
<About the year 1728, Voltaire, so celebrated for his wit and brilliancy and not less distinguished for his hatred of Christianity and his abandonment of principle, formed a systematical design to destroy Christianity and to introduce in its stead a general diffusion of irreligion and atheism. For this purpose he associated with himself Frederick the II, king of Prussia, and Mess. D'Alembert and Diderot, the principal compilers of the Encyclopedie, all men of talents, atheists, and in the like manner abandoned.
The principle parts of this system were:
1. The compilation of the Encyclopedie: in which with great art and insidiousness the doctrines of natural as well as Christian theology were rendered absurd and ridiculous; and the mind of the reader was insensibly steeled against conviction and duty.
2. The overthrow of the religious orders in Catholic countries, a step essentially necessary to the destruction of the religion professed in those countries.
3. The establishment of a sect of philosophists to serve, it is presumed as a conclave, a rallying point, for all their followers.
4. The appropriation to themselves, and their disciples, of the places and honors of members of the French Academy, the most respectable literary society in France, and always considered as containing none but men of prime learning and talents. In this way they designed to hold out themselves and their friends as the only persons of great literary and intellectual distinction in that country, and to dictate all literary opinions to the nation.
5. The fabrication of books of all kinds against Christianity, especially such as excite doubt and generate contempt and derision. Of these they issued by themselves and their friends who early became numerous, an immense number; so printed as to be purchased for little or nothing, and so written as to catch the feelings, and steal upon the approbation, of every class of men.
6. The formation of a secret Academy, of which Voltaire was the standing president, and in which book were formed, altered, forged, imputed as posthumous to deceased writers of reputation, and sent abroad with the weight of their names. These were printed and circulated at the lowest price through all classes of men in an uninterrupted succession, and through every part of the kingdom....
While these measures were advancing the great design with a regular and rapid progress, Doctor Adam Weishaupt, professor of the canon law in the University of Ingolstadt, a city of Bavaria (in Germany), formed, about the year 1777, the order of Illuminati. This order is professedly a high order of Masons, originated by himself, and grafted on ancient Masonic institutions....
In societies of Illuminati, doctrines were taught which strike at the root of all human happiness and virtue; and every such doctrine was either expressly or implicitly involved in their system. The being of God was denied and ridiculed....The possession of property was pronounced robbery. Chastity and natural affection were declared to be nothing more than groundless prejudices. Adultery, assassination, poisoning, and other crimes of the like infernal nature, were taught as lawful and even as virtuous actions. To crown such a system of falsehood and horror, all means were declared to be lawful, provided the end was good....
The great and good ends proposed by the Illuminati as the ultimate objects of their union are the overthrow of religion, government, and human society, civil and domestic. These they pronounce to be so good that murder, butchery, and war, however extended and dreadful, are declared by them to be completely justifiable if necessary for these great purposes. With such an example in view, it will be in vain to hunt for ends, which can be evil.
Correspondent with this summary was the whole system. No villainy, no impiety, no cruelty can be named which was not vindicated; and no virtue which was not covered with contempt.
The means by which this society was enlarged and its doctrines spread were of every promising kind. With unremitted ardor and diligence the members insinuated themselves into every place of power and trust, and into every literary, political, and friendly society; engrossed as much as possible the education of youth, especially of distinction; became licensers of the press and directors of every literary journal; waylaid every foolish prince, every unprincipled civil officer, and every abandoned clergyman; entered boldly into the desk, and with unhallowed hands and satanic lips polluted the pages of God; enlisted in their service almost all the booksellers and of course the printers of Germany; inundated the country with books replete with infidelity, irreligion, immorality, and obscenity; prohibited the printing and prevented the sale of books of the contrary character; decried and ridiculed them when published in spite of their efforts; panegyrized and trumpeted those of themselves and their coadjutors; and in a word made more numerous, more diversified, and more strenuous exertions than an active imagination would have preconceived....
Where religion prevails, Illumination cannot make disciples, a French directory cannot govern, a nation cannot be made slaves, nor villains, nor atheists, nor beasts. To destroy us therefore, in this dreadful sense, our enemies must first destroy our Sabbath and seduce us from the house of God. Religion and liberty are the two great objects of defensive war. Conjoined, they united all the feelings and call forth all the energies of man....
Religion and liberty are the meat and the drink of the body politic.
Withdraw one of them and in languishes, consumes, and dies. If indifference to either, at any time, becomes the prevailing character of a people, one half of their motives to vigorous defense is lost, and the hopes of their enemies are proportionally increased. Here, eminently, they are inseparable.
Without religion we may possibly retain the freedom of savages, bears, and wolves, but not the freedom of New England. If our religion were gone, our state of society would perish with it and nothing would be left which would be worth defending.> 1752TD001 Timothy Dwight stated:
<Where there is no religion, there is no morality....With the loss of religion...the ultimate foundation of confidence is blown up; and the security of life, liberty and property are buried in ruins.> 1752TD002
<Perhaps no one who has persisted in his efforts to gain eternal life was ever finally deserted by the Spirit of grace.> 1752TD004
As quoted in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert's Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), Timothy Dwight stated:
<The Bible is a window in this prison-world, through which we may look into eternity.> 1752TD003
<It is impossible for the mind which is not totally destitute of piety, to behold the sublime, the awful, the amazing works of creation and providence - the heavens with their luminaries, the mountains, the ocean, the storm, the earthquake, the volcano, the circuit of the seasons, and the revolutions of empires - without marking in them all the mighty hand of God, and feeling strong emotions of reverence toward the Author of these stupendous works.> 1752TD103
<What must be the knowledge of Him, from whom all created minds have derived both their power of knowledge, and the innumerable objects of their knowledge! What must be the wisdom of Him, from whom all things derive their wisdom!> 1752TD104
In a 1777 sermon, Timothy Dwight explained:
<Nothing obstructs the deliverance of America but the crimes of its inhabitants...Independence and happiness [are] fixed upon the most lasting foundations, and that Kingdom of the Redeemer...[is] highly exalted and durably established on the ruins.> 1752TD005
In a sermon Yale President Timothy Dwight stated:
<God brought His little flock hither and placed it in this wilderness, for the great purpose of establishing permanently the church of Christ in these vast regions of idolatry and sin, and commencing here the glorious work of salvation. This great continent is soon to be filled with the praise of the Millennium. But here is the seed, from which this vast harvest is to spring.> 1752TD006
--
American Quotations by William J. Federer, 2024, All Rights Reserved, Permission granted to use with acknowledgement.
Endnotes:
1752TD001. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Timothy Dwight, July 4, 1798, as president of Yale College, in an address delivered at New Haven, titled, "The Duty of Americans, at the Present Crisis, Illustrated in a Discourse, Preached on the Fourth of July, 1798. (#Ital original). The Annals of America, 20 vols. (Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1968, 1977), Vol. 4, pp. 33-39. Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg's Heart 'N Home, Inc., 1991), 1.11. Peter Marshall and David Manuel, From Sea to Shining Sea (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1986).
1752TD002. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Timothy Dwight, Travels; in New England and New York (New Haven, 1821-1822), Vol. IV, pp. 403-404. Charles Roy Keller, The Second Great Awakening in Connecticut (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942), p. 36. Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Light and the Glory (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1977), p. 350.
1752TD003. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Timothy Dwight. Tryon Edwards, D.D., The New Dictionary of Thoughts-A Cyclopedia of Quotations (Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1852; revised and enlarged by C.H. Catrevas, Ralph Emerson Browns and Jonathan Edwards [descendent, along with Tryon, of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), president of Princeton], 1891; The Standard Book Company, 1955, 1963), p. 44. Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 29. 1752TD103. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Timothy Dwight. Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 273.
1752TD104. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Timothy Dwight. Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 275.
1752TD004. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Timothy Dwight. Stephen E. Berk, Calvinism Versus Democracy (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1974), p. 94. Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg's Heart'N Home, Inc., 1991), 5.14.
1752TD005. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Timothy Dwight, 1777, Sermon.
1752TD006. William J. Federer, American Quotations (2014). Timothy Dwight, 1813, from the original sermon given in Boston, (of the Kingdom of Satan.) Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Light and the Glory (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1977), p. 338.