Jonathan Mitchel, among the most prominent of the second-generation Puritan ministers, is best known as the chief architect of the Half-Way Covenant. Born in Halifax, Yorkshire, to Matthew and Susan Butterfield Mitchel, wealthy Puritans who fled to America in August 1635, Mitchel entered Harvard in 1645 to be trained for the ministry, earned his A.B. in 1647, and in 1649 became one of the first fellows of Harvard. He preached a well-received sermon at Cambridge in August 1649, and, when Thomas Shepard died shortly after, Mitchel was unanimously chosen to succeed him as pastor to the Church of Cambridge, where he served for eighteen years. To honor Shepard, he edited Shepard's sermons on the parable of the ten virgins, adding his own preface and having the work printed in London in 1660. He was ordained on 21 August 1650, and on 19 November 1650, he married Shepard's young widow, Margaret Boradel. Although they had several children, only...