Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards was pastor of Northampton, Massachusetts, when in the winter of 1734–35 the town was seized by a concern for God that he said left scarcely a house untouched. His careful printed account, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, carried the news across the Atlantic and helped kindle the transatlantic Great Awakening.

When the revival brought both real conversions and real excesses, Edwards did what almost no one else could: he watched closely and wrote down how to tell the difference, in The Distinguishing Marks and then Religious Affections. Dismissed by his own congregation in 1750, he went to the frontier mission at Stockbridge and wrote the works that made him America's greatest theologian. He died of a smallpox inoculation weeks after becoming president of Princeton.