Protestant theologian, born in Cheshire, Connecticut, USA. A farmer's son, he graduated from Yale (1735), studied theology with Jonathan Edwards, and preached in several churches before becoming pastor in Bethlehem, CT (1738), where he remained for the rest of his life. His influential True Religion Delineated (1750) was both a defence of Edwardian theology and a softening of it by making the possibility of atonement universal rather than limited to the elect.
Joseph Bellamy (20 February 1719 - 6 March 1790) was an American Congregationalist pastor and a leading preacher, author, educator and theologian in New England in the second half of the Eighteenth century.
Life
Born in Cheshire, Connecticut, he graduated from Yale in 1735 and studied theology for a time under Jonathan Edwards in Northampton, Massachusetts.
Of his 22 books, the best known was True Religion Delineated (1750), which won for him a high reputation as a theologian and was reprinted several times both in England and America.
This influence was due not only to his publications, but also to the school or classes for the training of clergymen which he conducted for many years at his home and from which went forth scores of preachers to every part of New England and the middle colonies.
In Western Connecticut, Old Light Congregationalism was more popular than New Light, and Bellamy faced opposition from many of his fellow ministers in the area.
Bellamy's system of divinity was in general similar to that of Edwards.
Estimations of Bellamy
The day Bellamy died, the Reverend Ezra Stiles, an Old Light minister and a longtime critic of Bellamy, gave this negative assessment of the man:
He was of a haughty domineering temper and till of late years uncensorious of his brethren in the ministry and others who opposed him ...According to an article in the Boston Evening Transcript in 1935, Bellamy contributed quite a lot to the town of Bethlehem:
Dr. Bellamy not only named the town, but he virtually founded it, guided it through its first early years, became its wealthiest resident, owned the biggest house in it, put the town on the map through his own reputation as a scholar and a divine [devoted to God], attracted many theological students to it who spent money on board and room, and left it at his death a well established and flourishing community. or Letters and Dialogues upon tile Nature of Love to God, Faith in Christ, and Assurance of a Title to Eternal Life (1759) The Nature and Glory of the Gospel (1762) A Blow at the Root of Antinomianism (1763) There is but One Covenant (1769) Four Dialogues on the Half-Way Covenant (1769) A Careful and Strict Examination of the External Covenant (1769).
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