Davies ministered in Hanover County from 1748 to 1759, followed by a term as the fourth President of Princeton University, then known as the College of New Jersey, from 1759 to 1761.
Commissioned as an evangelist to Virginia several months later, on February 17, 1747, the 23 year old traveled south to minister to religious dissenters against the Anglican Church.
[1][8] As one of the first non-Anglican ministers licensed to preach in Virginia (with the now-dead Francis Makemie), Davies advanced the cause of religious and civil liberty in his era.
Davies' strong religious convictions led him to value the "freeborn mind" and the inalienable "liberty of conscience" that the established Anglican Church in Virginia often failed to respect.
[6] By appealing to British law and notions of British liberty, Davies agitated in an agreeable and effective manner for greater religious tolerance and laid the groundwork for the ultimate separation of church and state in Virginia that was consummated after his departure by the Virginia Declaration of Rights in 1776 and the Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.
Unlike Baptist and Methodist evangelists, who based conversion solely on an outpouring of the spirit, Davies believed that no one, regardless of race or social status, can have true religion without both hearing and reading the Word of God.
[11] During a 1755 sermon Davies made the following statement to the slaves in attendance at the worship service: You know I have shewn a tender concern for your welfare, ever since I have been in the colony: and you may ask my own negroes whether I treat them kindly or no.
In 1753 the college's trustees persuaded Davies, famed for his work in Virginia, to make the dangerous voyage to Great Britain to raise money for the fledgling school.
Davies confided the sometimes harrowing journey to his diary, writing "To be instrumental of laying a foundation of extensive benefit to mankind, not only in the present but in future generations, is a most animating prospect."
Governor Dinwiddie declared Davies to be the colony's best recruiter, as he implored men to do their part "to secure the inestimable blessings of liberty.".
[7] In 1759, four years after Davies returned from his British fundraising tour, the College's trustees called on him again, this time asking him to become the school's fourth president.
[6] David Cowell, a Princeton trustee who had served as acting president of the college from 1757-1758, conducted the negotiations that led to Davies accepting the position.
Davies held Cowell in high regard, saying that he performed his duties with a great deal of "zeal, diligence and alacrity.
Davies, eerily, preached using Jeremiah 28:16 as his reference text, proclaiming that "it is not only possible--but highly probable, that death may meet some of us within the compass of this year.
"[6] Samuel Davies was one of the major contributors to the Great Awakening, a series of religious revivals which eventually caused America to break away from the Church of England.
"[3] A contemporary and friend, minister David Bostwick said that Davies' sermons were "adapted to pierce the conscience and affect the heart,"[18] while William Buell Sprague noted that "he spoke with a glowing zeal...and an eloquence more impressive and effective than had then ever graced the American pulpit.
"[3] Davies' sermons went through several editions in the United States and England, and for fifty years after his death they were among the most widely read in the English language.
[13] Davies followed the lines of Isaac Watts, and while his verses are considered "solid, but somewhat dry and heavy,"[19] several of his hymns maintained popularity in American hymnals into the twentieth century.