During the critical years that link the religious eruptions of the Great Awakening to the political rumblings that ushered in the American Revolution, no figure played a more conspicuous role in the intellectual life of New England than the notorious Reverend Jonathan Mayhew. For nearly two decades he assaulted conservative, Calvinist Boston from the liberal redoubt of his West Church pulpit, preaching Arminianism in a style that joined uncompromising rationalism to intense piety. A staunch Congregationalist, he took up the banner of dissension bequeathed to him by his Puritan forebears and launched relentless attacks against the Church of England, sending shock waves through the Anglican establishment from its colonial mission to the cathedral at Canterbury. When the British government sought to tighten its control over the colonies, Mayhew married the emotional force of the Bible to the political authority of the social contract, justifying resistance to civil tyranny...