Age Of Reason Analysis

The Transition
The Age of Reason in its entirety declares how man thinks he can control the world and God is not supreme over control. The three pieces of writing: “Sinners in the hands of an angry God”, “Speech to the Virginia Convention”, and “the Crisis” exemplify the transition from an age of faith to an age of reason. Each inspires powerful emotions like fighting, repenting, and sanding up in individual independent thought. Man began to slowly overlook the age of faith, which declares that an individual relies fully on God for absolute truth.
The age of faith and the age of reason were not a quick switch. Jonathan Edwards being the first piece of writing sets the stage for a mind transformation. People being to think about things instead

of trying to logically follow tradition to fit in. Patrick Henry and Thomas Pain’s writings follow up with a consistent battle cry for independence, and not just spiritually. All three are pushing and influencing the age of reason without noticing the title. We talk about this time period like the colonist decided to turn to an age of reason, which is true, but they didn’t call it this or see it this way as we do now.
“Sinners in the hands of an Angry God”, the sermon the Lord spoke through Jonathan Edward during this time period was spiritually influential.

As Edwards explains things like: “There is nothing between you and hell but the air: it is only the power and mere pleasure of God that holds you up” we see the emotional drive this had on the colonies. Normality would have proclaimed: “yes there is a heaven and a hell”, but would never exemplify the emotional realness of hell like Jonathan Edwards does. The reality of these emotional feelings drove the people to begin to think they could think outside of the “traditional box”. This speech was not the specific thing that sparked the changing of people’s minds back then, but it created a different mindset.
Now that the colonies minds are spinning, Patrick Henry stands and proclaims his “Speech in the Virginia Convention”. The attitude of Henry declares, not one of mild safety but one that recommends a wakeup call even if the call means to fight. “I consider it nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery,” says Henry. People are now beginning to think even more for themselves, create their own thoughts and ideas, and form their own opinions outwardly. This is the second wake up call and the people are beginning to logically arise from their deep sleep in the age of

faith.
The final document to take into consideration is “The Crisis”, by Thomas Pain. Pain has many of the same ideas that Henry has, but it is the next step in the pre-battle mental transformation for many of the colonist. First he covers the wake up call by saying things like: “Brittan with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared she has a right not only to tax, but “to bind us in all cases whatsoever”: and if being bound in that manner is not slavery, then there is no such thing as slavery upon earth.” Then Pain charges forth his fellow fighter by saying: “ the blood of his children with curse his cowardice who shrinks back at a time when a little might have saved the whole.” After hearing things like this the people began to believe they had a part and say in things.
Reason is personal logic. All three pieces of writing include logic, and how new logic came about. People were not deliberately turning away from God into this “age of reason”. It was a gradual mind change that took place that eventually encouraged that mankind might not need God. Which we all know is not true, but how often do we take things into our own hands? The colonists felt they had a large problem, but wanted to take it into their own hands as long as they were going to heaven and not the hell Edwards talked about. The age of faith to the age of reason was a gradual change that took place among colonial America.