The “Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns” was critical to the emergence of modernity as an idea in the eighteenth century, and evangelicalism appeared in the midst of this cultural debate over the authority of things past and things new. This chapter explores the question of the extent to which evangelicalism was “modern,” with special reference to John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards. Both participants and critics understood there to be something new about the evangelical experience in its intensity and immediacy, and its public presence. The modernity of evangelical devotion was evident above all, however, in its dynamic social forms, uniting small group experience within wider, transnational networks. It had precedents in radical congregationalism, Pietist small groups, and the transdenominational fellowship of Moravians, but these were merged in a new evangelical “connexionalism” under the modern conditions that produced the democratic public sphere. In this respect it shared many of the characteristics of a modern social movement.
XXIII. On the sources of the nitrogen of vegetation; with special reference to the question whether plants assimilate free or uncombined nitrogen
