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SAMUEL DAVIES (1724–1761). Fourth president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), Delaware-born Samuel Davies was a Presbyterian and great pulpit orator whose published sermons remained popular for half a century after his death. Never physically robust, he nonetheless worked prodigiously in the Virginia back-country as a circuit-riding parson, regularly preaching in seven churches scattered over five counties. He settled in Hanover County, where dissenters were frowned upon, and soon became the leader in the campaign for civil and religious liberties in Virginia and North Carolina.

He accompanied the Great Awakening preacher Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764) to Great Britain in 1753, under commission of the Synod of New York, to raise funds for the College of New Jersey. He succeeded handsomely in this enterprise and also achieved fame in preaching some sixty sermons in England and Scotland, many of which were published and widely read. After Davies returned to America, the Presbytery of Hanover, the first in Virginia, was established largely by his efforts late in 1755. Jonathan Edwards the elder and Aaron Burr, Sr., sponsored Davies in all his endeavors, and upon the death of Burr, Davies was offered the college presidency in Princeton as his successor. He eventually accepted the offer in 1759, but died of pneumonia less than two years later. He still managed to achieve important reforms at the college by raising the standards for admission and graduation and by planning a new library.

This sermon was preached in Hanover County, Virginia, on May 9, 1756, at the beginning of the French and Indian War; it was published posthumously in London.