Abstract

N the summer of I742 with the Great Awakening at its height, one opposer, who viewed the extreme New Light Andrew Croswell as a decided mad Man, complained bitterly of him and other itinerants: I heartily desire you may be permitted to sink into Obscurity and Contempt, without any the least Notice taken of any of you.' For the next forty years this spiteful hope proved a forlorn one; Croswell remained an irrepressible and conspicuous foe of the Standing Order. In the long run, however, the opposer could have taken heart: obscurity, if not contempt, would be Croswell's lot as he would little engage the attention of historians. This neglect is undeserved: Croswell was more persistent and visible, provoked more controversies, itinerated longer, and published more tracts than any other incendiary New Light, including James Davenport. In his writings one finds the fullest articulation of the theology and spirituality of the radical Awakening. Implacable and choleric, Croswell held to much of his prophetic faith into the 780s, even in the inhospitable environs of Boston. He embodied much of the bold vision and hard endurance of the extreme evangelicals. Such claims made for one who has received little scholarly attention may seem hyperbolic. After all, the consensus from Joseph Tracy through Edwin S. Gaustad to the latest accounts by Harry S. Stout, Peter S. Onuf, and David S. Lovejoy has been that Davenport is the exemplar of awakened enthusiasm and radicalism, that his theatric exhortations and torchlit processions, culminating in the bonfires of New London, were the most remarkable, zealous, or demented activities of the Awakening.2 On the whole, Davenport's position is not one to be disputed or usurped but

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