Dr Nettleton was a leading figure in one of the most important half-centuries in American Church history. From the late 1790's to the early 1840's a succession of revivals transformed the spiritual prospects of the nation, and in these, in the words of the New York Evangelist^ ‘Nettleton served a glorious purpose. Few men, since the apostolic days, have been honoured with such signal success in preaching the word, and in the conversion of sinners'.
Converted at the age of 16, Nettleton was licensed for the ministry in 1811 after training at Yale, where President Dwight predicted,
‘He will make one of the most useful men this country has ever seen'. Intending to be an overseas missionary, he declined settlement in New England congregations, but such was the fruit of his early preaching that his colleagues were convinced that he was intended to be an itinerant evangelist among the churches, as Whitefield had been in the previous century. The author, Dr. Bennet Tyler, who knew Nettleton from 1812, asserts that from that date, he was ‘employed almost constantly in revivals for ten years'. After two years' silence on account of illness, Nettleton resumed his labours, including two years in Virginia and one in Britain. With increasing physical weakness the last decade of his life was spent mainly at East Windsor, Connecticut, where he aided the Theological Institute of Connecticut. As a counsellor to ministers his aid was constantly sought, particularly upon the subject of evangelism and revivals ‘on which he had an amount of experience and observation beyond any man living'.
Tyler's Life of Nettleton includes many remarkable descriptions of scenes of spiritual awakening. Its special importance, however, lies in its account of the nature and methods of Nettleton's evangelism, together with the vital information which it gives on the controversy over ‘new measures' inaugurated by C. G. Finney in the mid 1820's. These ‘measures', and notably the practice of calling hearers to make immediate public profession of commitment to Christ, Nettleton regarded as calamitous'; through their adoption, he believed, not a few who had experienced no change of nature would be encouraged to regard themselves as Christians. The Bible, he held, knew no method of producing Christians; the evangelist's true work is to preach the claims of God, the duties of sinners, and the necessity of possessing the distinguishing evidences of regeneration.