STILES, EZRA
(15 December 1727, North Haven, CT-12 May 1795, New Haven, CT). Education: B.A., Yale College, 1746; studied theology, New Haven, 1746-49; studied law, New Haven, 1750-53. Career: Tutor, Yale _College, 1749-55; lawyer, 1753-55; minister, Newport, RI, 1755-76; minister, Portsmouth, NH, 1777-78; president and professor of ecclesiastical history, Yale, 1778-95.
Ezra Stiles is credited alternately with being the most learned man in New England of his generation or the most learned cleric for his time in all of America. Either way of putting it avoids competition with Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin, arguably the only men with better claim to being the most learned Americans of their time.
In the range of his knowledge, Stiles exhibited the eagerness of many Congregationalists of his era to explore all possible avenues to knowledge about God, the world, and humanity. A careful student of the Bible, Stiles studied Hebrew, Arabic, Syrlac, and Annenian, as well as Latin and Greek. Between 1760 and 1791 he read the Bible from cover to cover eight times in family prayer. In addition, he attended Quaker, Episcopalian, Dutch Reformed, Roman Catholic, and Jewish services to understand those faiths better. Interested in science, he studied electricity and became a friend and correspondent of Benjamin Franklin*. As an amateur astronomer, he made an important observation of the transit of Venus in 1769.
While minister in Newport, Stiles upheld the doctrine of saving grace, but did not limit communion to the visible saints. He opposed any sort of coercion by consociations, arguing that religion thrives most under conditions of free exchange of ideas, not forced uniformity.
His liberal spirit was reflected in politics in his enthusiastic support for the Revolution and his support of a wide franchise and the separation of church and state. An early abolitionist, he freed his own single slave in 1778 and became president of an antislavery society in 1790.
Stiles assumed the presidency of Yale at a time when the college was suffering financially. He carried the college through hard times and built up its enrollment. His greatest influence on Yale and on Congregationalism was in his tolerant spirit-an attitude that would prove increasingly vital to denominational unity during the nineteenth century.
Bibliography
A: A Discourse on the Christian Union (Boston, 1761); The United States Elevated to Glory and Honor (New Haven, 1783); A History of Three of the Judges of King Charles I (Hartford, 1794).
B: AAP 1,470-79; DAB 18, 18-21; DARB, 432-34; NCAB 1, 167-68; SH 11,97; Abiel Holmes, The Life of Ezra Stiles (Boston, 1798); Franklin B. Dexter, ed., The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 3 vols. (New York, 1901); Franklin B. Dexter;· ed., Extracts from the Other Miscellanies of Ezra Stiles (New Haven, 1916); Isabel M. Calder, ed., Letters and Papers of Ezra Stiles (New Haven, 1933); Edmund S. Morgan, The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1777-1795 (New Haven, 1962).
Ezra Stiles is credited alternately with being the most learned man in New England of his generation or the most learned cleric for his time in all of America. Either way of putting it avoids competition with Thomas Jefferson or Benjamin Franklin, arguably the only men with better claim to being the most learned Americans of their time.
In the range of his knowledge, Stiles exhibited the eagerness of many Congregationalists of his era to explore all possible avenues to knowledge about God, the world, and humanity. A careful student of the Bible, Stiles studied Hebrew, Arabic, Syrlac, and Annenian, as well as Latin and Greek. Between 1760 and 1791 he read the Bible from cover to cover eight times in family prayer. In addition, he attended Quaker, Episcopalian, Dutch Reformed, Roman Catholic, and Jewish services to understand those faiths better. Interested in science, he studied electricity and became a friend and correspondent of Benjamin Franklin*. As an amateur astronomer, he made an important observation of the transit of Venus in 1769.
While minister in Newport, Stiles upheld the doctrine of saving grace, but did not limit communion to the visible saints. He opposed any sort of coercion by consociations, arguing that religion thrives most under conditions of free exchange of ideas, not forced uniformity.
His liberal spirit was reflected in politics in his enthusiastic support for the Revolution and his support of a wide franchise and the separation of church and state. An early abolitionist, he freed his own single slave in 1778 and became president of an antislavery society in 1790.
Stiles assumed the presidency of Yale at a time when the college was suffering financially. He carried the college through hard times and built up its enrollment. His greatest influence on Yale and on Congregationalism was in his tolerant spirit-an attitude that would prove increasingly vital to denominational unity during the nineteenth century.
Bibliography
A: A Discourse on the Christian Union (Boston, 1761); The United States Elevated to Glory and Honor (New Haven, 1783); A History of Three of the Judges of King Charles I (Hartford, 1794).
B: AAP 1,470-79; DAB 18, 18-21; DARB, 432-34; NCAB 1, 167-68; SH 11,97; Abiel Holmes, The Life of Ezra Stiles (Boston, 1798); Franklin B. Dexter, ed., The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, 3 vols. (New York, 1901); Franklin B. Dexter;· ed., Extracts from the Other Miscellanies of Ezra Stiles (New Haven, 1916); Isabel M. Calder, ed., Letters and Papers of Ezra Stiles (New Haven, 1933); Edmund S. Morgan, The Gentle Puritan: A Life of Ezra Stiles, 1777-1795 (New Haven, 1962).
