During the 1730s, Samuel Quincy, B.A., was not the most popular clergyman in Savannah, Georgia. His later tenure in New England, however, proved much more favorable to him. Indeed the list of subscribers to the 1750 Twenty Sermons is impressively long, including the Reverend Samuel Johnson of New York, who requested three copies, as well as others from all parts of the colonies. The learned good sense of Quincy's reasoned responses to the impact of the Great Awakening in the South may help to account for the popularity of these sermons, which are written in a rather fluid form, unlike the more rigid structure of the traditional Puritan sermon.

Little is known of Quincy's life before his arrival in Georgia some time in midsummer 1733. It is known, however, that he was educated in an English university and was ordained on 21 December 1732 by Doctor Waugh, Bishop of Carlisle. Quincy...