Philosopher, theologian, preacher, historian, and scientist, Jonathan Edwards was the most prolific writer of the American colonial period and one of the most prolific authors in American history. John Dewey and William James are perhaps the only American philosophical contenders of note to surpass him in output. In terms of social and intellectual impact, no one except Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson equaled Edwards until the Civil War. The Puritanism he championed then fell into disfavor, being replaced by Unitarianism and New England Transcendentalism, and Edwards tended to be remembered as the harsh dogmatist who terrified his listeners with his fire-and-brimstone sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741) and was eventually rejected by his own congregation and sent into exile in the wilderness. In fact, he was a metaphysician and ethicist of some subtlety and originality, was conversant with the science and philosophy of his day...