Edward Holyoke’s “The Testimony of the Prefident, Profeffors, Tutors and Hebrew Infructor of HARVARD COLLEGE in Cambridge” would seem to promise a text that opposes George Whitefield’s work from an academic perspective. Instead, Holyoke attempts to defend reason against the emotional; he avoids the emotional connotations that an impassioned defense of Harvard would imply and indeed focuses his argument against Whitefield’s “Enthufiafm” (4).
From the point of view of a theological institutional leader, Holyoke would have good reason to object to Whitefield's preacher’s appeal to divine inspiration as a valid mode of preaching, as it could not be taught. If there was no need for preachers to be highly trained, the spirit of theological instruction