He was a trustee in the chartering of the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, later named Brown University.
[4] Edwards resigned as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Philadelphia in 1771 and retired to Pencader Hundred, near Newark, Delaware where he lived until his death in 1795.
In 1764, Edwards joined James Manning, Ezra Stiles, Isaac Backus, John Gano, Samuel Stillman, William Ellery, and former Royal Governors Stephen Hopkins and Samuel Ward and several others as an original trustee for the chartering of the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (the former name for Brown University), the first Baptist college in the original Thirteen Colonies and one of the Ivy League universities.
[7] During his year-and-a-half stay in the British Isles, Edwards secured funding from benefactors including Thomas Penn and Benjamin Franklin.
Nay, many of the Baptists themselves discouraged the design (prophesying evil to the churches in case it should take place) from an unhappy prejudice against learning."