Edwards, Jonathan

1703 – He was born on the 5th day of October this year at East Windsor, Connecticut (modern day South Windsor) who eked out his salary by tutoring boys for college.

1716 – He entered Yale College this year. In the following year, he became acquainted with John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which influenced him profoundly.

1720 – He graduated as valedictorian this year.

1722 – He was, for eight months, "stated supply" (a clergyman employed to supply a pulpit for a definite time, but not settled as a pastor) of a small Presbyterian Church in New York City.

1724 – For two year, he was one of the two tutors at Yale, earning for himself the name of a "pillar tutor", from his steadfast loyalty to the college and its orthodox teaching, at the time when Yale's rector (Cutler) and one of her tutors had gone over to the Episcopal Church.

1727 – He was ordained minister at Northampton and assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. In the same year, he married Sarah Pierpont. She was then aged seventeen and daughter of James Pierpont.

1731 – He preached in Boston the "Public Lecture" afterwards published under the title God Glorified, in Man's Dependence. This was his first public attack.

1733 – A religious revival began in Northampton, which gave Edwards an opportunity for studying the process of conversion in all its phases and varieties.

1734 – He published Discourses on Various Important Subjects, the five sermons that had proved most effective in the revival.

1735 – In the spring of this year, the movement began to subside and a reaction set in. However, the relapse was brief, and the Northampton revival, which had spread through the Connecticut valley and whose fame had reached England and Scotland.

1739 – By this year, the great awakening occurred distinctively under the leadership of Edwards.

1741 – He published in its defense The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God.

1742 – He was forced to write a second apology, Thoughts on the Revival in New England, his main argument being the great moral improvement of the country.

1743 – He preached at Northampton for a year with a series of sermons published under the title of Religious Affections in 1746.

1747 – He joined the movement started in Scotland called the "concert in prayer," and in the same year published An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer.

1749 – He published a memoir of David Brainerd who had lived with his family for several months.

1758 – He died of inoculation this year and was buried at Princeton Cemetery.
 

• "Nature is God's greatest evangelist."
• "Grace is but glory begun, and glory is but grace perfected."
• "Nothing sets a person so much out of the devil's reach as humility."
• "There is no leveler like Christianity, but it levels by lifting all who receive it to the lofty table-land of a true character and of undying hope both for this world and the next."
• "A man of a right spirit is not a man of narrow and private views, but is greatly interested and concerned for the good of the community to which he belongs, and particularly of the city or village in which he resides, and for the true welfare of the society of which he is a member."