Edwards is probably the most important theologian America has produced. He was famous in colonial America and Europe in his own time and is now the subject of renewed interest here. A leading figure in the eighteenth-century religious upheaval known as the Great Awakening, he erected a well-buttressed theological and philosophical system built of materials taken both from his Calvin istic heritage and contemporary thought. Modern readers will find ample evidence of gentleness of spirit in addition to great literary power in a man too often thought of solely as a preacher of hell-fire sermons.