Sweeney reconstructs the New England religious culture that shaped the life of Taylor, and that derived much of its theological substance from the two distinctive foci of Edwardsian New Divinity: its distinction between natural and moral ability, and its insistence on immediate repentance. With the establishment of the New Divinity “schools of the prophets,” men such as Joseph Bellamy, Charles Backus, and Nathanael Emmons influenced the next generation of Edwardsian preachers and leaders. The direct result of widespread Edwardsian preaching in New England was what could only be called an Edwardsian enculturation of Calvinist New England by the first third of the nineteenth century.