Joseph Bellamy

1719-1790. Congregational clergyman, theologian, and educator. Born in Connecticut, he graduated from Yale in 1735, but took his theological training personally under Jonathan Edwards.* Ordained as pastor of Bethlehem, Connecticut, church in 1740, he traveled extensively throughout Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York, and preached almost daily during a two-year span. A Calvinist of the Edwardsean school, he taught a universal atonement based on divine moral government like that set forth by the Arminian Hugo Grotius,* and this despite the fact that his two most frequent opponents were Arminians and Antinomians. He is author of more than a dozen major works, the most important of which is his True Religion Delineated (1750).