Joseph Sewall

Joseph Sewall (1688–1769) was a prominent New England Congregationalist minister and theologian whose pastoral leadership at the Old South Church in Boston made him a significant figure in early eighteenth-century American religious thought. His theological writings, including *The Rulers Must Be Just*, engaged with contemporary debates about civil authority, moral governance, and the relationship between ecclesiastical and secular power during a period of increasing colonial autonomy. Sewall's work exemplified the intellectual continuity between Puritan covenant theology and the emerging theological frameworks that would influence Revolutionary-era American political thought.