Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was an American theologian and philosopher, often considered the most important religious thinker of colonial America. Born in Connecticut and educated at Yale, he became pastor at Northampton, Massachusetts, where his preaching helped spark the revivals of the 1730s and the Great Awakening; his sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God became famous. Dismissed by his congregation in 1750 after a dispute over communion, he worked as a missionary at Stockbridge and wrote Freedom of the Will and other treatises. He became president of the College of New Jersey, later Princeton, but died weeks later after a smallpox inoculation.