Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Who Are Lost and How They're Found: Redemption and Theodicy in Wheatley, Newton, and Cowper

Who Are Lost and How They're Found: Redemption and Theodicy in Wheatley, Newton, and Cowper jeffrey bilbro Spring Arbor University Who Are Lost and How They’re Found Redemption and Theodicy in Wheatley, Newton, and Cowper On February 19, 1788, the poet William Cowper wrote to his friend and minister John Newton, thanking him for his recently published o Th ughts  upon  the  African  Slave  Trade. And while Cowper commends Newton’s important contribution to the antislavery cause, he admits that this subject leads him to become “lost in mazes of speculation never to be unravell’d” regarding how divine justice could allow “millions of that un- happy race” to experience such misery and injustice: Is it to be esteem’d a sufficient vindication of divine justice, if these mis- erable creatures, tormented as they have been from generation to gen- eration, shall at last receive some relief, some abatement of their woes, shall not be treated absolutely as brutes for the future? The thousands of them who have already passed into an eternal state, hopeless of any thing better than they found in this life, what is to become of Them? Is it essential to the perfection of a plan concerted by infinite wisdom, that such wretches should exist at all, who from the beginning of their Being through all http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Early American Literature University of North Carolina Press

Who Are Lost and How They're Found: Redemption and Theodicy in Wheatley, Newton, and Cowper

Early American Literature , Volume 47 (3) – Oct 26, 2012

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-north-carolina-press/who-are-lost-and-how-they-apos-re-found-redemption-and-theodicy-in-IPrcCujddz

References

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 The University of North Carolina Press.
ISSN
1534-147X

Abstract

jeffrey bilbro Spring Arbor University Who Are Lost and How They’re Found Redemption and Theodicy in Wheatley, Newton, and Cowper On February 19, 1788, the poet William Cowper wrote to his friend and minister John Newton, thanking him for his recently published o Th ughts  upon  the  African  Slave  Trade. And while Cowper commends Newton’s important contribution to the antislavery cause, he admits that this subject leads him to become “lost in mazes of speculation never to be unravell’d” regarding how divine justice could allow “millions of that un- happy race” to experience such misery and injustice: Is it to be esteem’d a sufficient vindication of divine justice, if these mis- erable creatures, tormented as they have been from generation to gen- eration, shall at last receive some relief, some abatement of their woes, shall not be treated absolutely as brutes for the future? The thousands of them who have already passed into an eternal state, hopeless of any thing better than they found in this life, what is to become of Them? Is it essential to the perfection of a plan concerted by infinite wisdom, that such wretches should exist at all, who from the beginning of their Being through all

Journal

Early American LiteratureUniversity of North Carolina Press

Published: Oct 26, 2012

There are no references for this article.