Theologian; born in East Windsor, Conn., Oct. 5, 1703; graduated at Yale College in 1720, having begun to study Latin when he was six years of age. He is said to have reasoned out for himself his doctrine of free-will
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before he left college, at the age of seventeen.
He began preaching to a Presbyterian congregation before he was twenty years old, and became assistant to his grandfather,
Rev. Mr. Stoddard, minister at
Northampton, Mass., whom he succeeded as pastor.
He was dismissed in 1750, because he insisted upon a purer and higher standard of admission to the
communion-table.
Then he began his missionary work (1751) among the
Stockbridge Indians, and prepared his greatest work, on
The freedom, of the will, which was published in 1754.
He was inaugurated president of the College of New Jersey, in
Princeton, Feb. 16, 1758, and died of small-pox, March 22, 1758.
He married
Sarah Pierrepont, of New Haven, in 1727, and they became the grandparents of
Aaron Burr.
