John Caldwell (dates unknown) was a Massachusetts minister who had immigrated to the colonies from Ireland. He was a forceful critic of the revivalism that was sweeping the colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, and he gave this sermon at a Londonderry, New Hampshire Presbyterian church in 1741. Caldwell took a strong moral stance against what he saw as the overly dramatic and emotional excesses of revivalist religion. In contrast to the morally upright image he projected as a religious leader, Caldwell was later accused of fraud and theft committed while he still lived in Ireland, and he escaped to England with his career in shambles.