EDWARDS, Jonathan, the Younger [1745-1801] -- American theologian

Edwards, Jonathan, theologian, was born in Northampton, Mass., May 26, 1745; second son of the Rev. Jonathan (qv) and Sarah (Pierpont) Edwards; and grandson of the Rev. Timothy Edwards and of the Rev. James Pierpont. His youth was spent at Stockbridge, Mass., at that time an Indian settlement, and there he acquired a mastery of the dialect of the Housatonnuck Indians. His father desired that he should become a missionary among the aboriginal tribes and he began to study the dialect of the Oneidas with the Rev. Gideon Hawley (qv), stationed on the Susquehanna river, but the French and Indian war put an end to his project after six months' sojourn with the tribe. The removal of his father's family to Princeton, N.J., and the sudden death of his father, mother and sister, caused him to change his plans. Friends assisted him to prepare for college and he was graduated at the College of New Jersey in 1765. He then studied theology under the Rev. Dr. Bellamy at Bethlehem, Conn., and was licensed to preach by the association of Litchfield county in 1766. He returned, however, to Princeton, where he was tutor in the college, 1767-68, and in January, 1769, he became pastor at White Haven, Conn. Here he met the opposition of the advocates of the "half-way covenant," and also the reaction incident to the extravagant religious fervor brought about by the revival of 1740-42. The churches were at the same time also greatly divided and impoverished by reason of the war with the mother country, and his own congregation took advantage of all these causes to rid themselves of their minister. He was dismissed from his charge, May 19, 1795, and found a church at Colebrook, a retired country parish in Litchfield county, where he ministered to a small and not exacting congregation, 1796-99, meanwhile pursuing his theological and metaphysical researches. He was called from his retirement in 1799 to assume the presidency of Union college, Schenectady, N.Y., rendered vacant by the resignation of the first president, the Rev. Dr. John Blair Smith. He was eminently successful in his administration and won the friendship of his faculty, the students and the citizens of Schenectady. He received the degree of A.M. from the [p.401] College of New Jersey and from Yale in 1769, and in 1785 that of S.T.D. from the College of New Jersey. By an odd coincidence, on the first Sunday of the year of his death, 1801, he preached from the text, "This year thou shalt die," as his father had done. He prepared of the works of his father left unpublished, History of the Work of Redemption, two volumes of sermons and Miscellaneous Observations on Important Theological Subjects in two volumes. He published of his own writings, A Dissertation Concerning Liberty and Necessity, sermons on The Necessity of the Atonement and Its Consistency with Free Grace in Forgiveness (1785), and observations on the Language of the Muhhekeneew Indians. The Rev. Tryon Edwards, his grandson, edited with a memoir most of his published writings (2 vols., 1842). He died in Schenectady, N.Y., Aug. 1, 1801. [The Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans]