The man who preached the funeral sermons for Solomon Stoddard, Increase Mather, Cotton Mather, Joseph Dudley, John Leverett, William Brattle, and Ebenezer Pemberton and who corresponded with Jonathan Edwards and obtained the English publication of Edwards's A Faithful Narrative occupies a modest place in American literary history. Seen primarily as a transitional figure, who in his nearly fifty-year career steered Boston from the Puritan isolationism of the late-seventeenth century into the more rationalistic spirit of the eighteenth, he has been recognized for his influence on sermonic style. In his own day, as pastor of the Brattle Street Church, fellow and overseer of Harvard College, missionary to the Indians, active participant in efforts to secure the charter to protect New England churches, and correspondent of Isaac Watts and numerous other English divines, Colman played a significant role in colonial history.

Born in Boston on 19 October 1673, the second son of...