EDWARDS, JONATHAN, a celebrated American divine and metaphysician, was b. at Windsor, in the state of Conn., 5th Oct., 1703, entered Yale college in 1716, took his degree of B.A. in the following year, and in 1722 was licensed to preach the gospel. Towards the close of 1723, he was appointed tutor of Yale college, an office which he filled with distinguished success. In 1726, he accepted an invitation to become colleague to his maternal grandfather, Mr. Stoddard, in a church at Northampton, and was ordained in Feb., 1727. Here he labored with intense zeal for more than 23 years, at the end of which period lie was dismissed by his congregation.' The immediate cause of the rupture between him and his hearers, was his insisting that no "uncon verted " persons should be allowed to approach the Lord's table; but some years'before, Ire had alienated the regards of a large number of the influential members of the church by denouncing the reading and circulation of certain books which were immoral and injurious, and by attempting to make a public example of the offenders. E. was a powerful and impressive preacher, somber and even gloomy in his religious opinions and sentiments, but earnest, unaffected, and nobly conscientious. During the famous " revival " of 1740-41, he was much sought after as a preacher, and is in fact often regarded as the originator of that movement. Certain it is that as early as 1734, a local manifestation of religious enthusiasm had taken place in his own parish, of which he published an account, entitled A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, in the Conversion of many Hundred ;Souls in. Northampton. The quarrel -between E. and his congregation shows, however, that the " revival " had not exercised any very strong influence on the community in general, since only a few years elapsed between the ecstasies of devotion and the circulation of obscenity. After his dismissal in 1750, E. became a missionary among the Indians of Massachusetts. While residing at Stockbridge
in that state, he composed his famous treatises on the Freedom, of the Will and Original Sin. In 1757. he was chosen president of Princeton college, New Jersey, whither he proceeded in Jan., 1758, but was cut off by small-pox on the 22d of Mar. in the same year.—E. will always be considered a master in dogmatic theology. Calvinism had probably never so powerful a defender. According to the late Robert Hall, "lie ranks with the brightest luminaries of the Christian church, not excluding any country or any age since the apostolic." His great characteristics are depth and comprehensiveness of argument; and were it not that the age for such discussions as E. loved is gone by, few writings would be more worthy of patient study than those of this illustrious divine. Besides the works already mentioned, E. wrote a Treatise concerning Religious Affections; the History of Redemption; a Dissertation concerning the End for which God created the World; and a Dissertation concerning the True Nature of Christian Virtue. The last three were posthumously published. A complete edition of E.'s works was published by Dr. Timothy Dwight in 10 vols. (1809), and another at London in 1817. A third was published in 1840, containing an essay by Henry Rogers, and a memoir by Sereno E. EDWARDS, D.D. (born 1745, died 1801), the son of the preceding, was a person of similar character to his father, and, curiously enough, experienced similar vicissitudes of fortune. Both were tutors in the seminaries in which they were educated; were dismissed on account of their religious opinions; were settled again in retired situations; were elected to the presidentship of a college; and in a short time after they were inaugurated, died at nearly the same age. The younger Edwards was .also a writer of sermons and theological treatises.