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33. A Century Sermon on the Glorious Revolution [1788]
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--33-A CENTURY SERMON ON THE GLORIOUS REVOLUTION Elhanan Winchester LONDON I 7 8 8 ELHANAN WINCHESTER (I75I-I797). A native of Brookline, Massachusetts , Winchester was at first a Baptist and later a Universalist clergyman at churches in Massachusetts and South Carolina, in Philadelphia and London. A remarkable personality possessed of a photographic memory, he became learned in biblical languages and interpretation. During his longest pastorate, at the Baptist Church in Philadelphia (I78o-87), he was friends with leading citizens, including Benjamin Rush and John Redman, and his brilliant preaching attracted large crowds. His acceptance of Universalism split the congregation, and he was driven out. He moved to London and remained there until I794· Again he was successful and moved in the circles of such luminaries as Thomas Belsham, Joseph Priestley, and John Wesley. Winchester's family life could be justly considered a darkly troubled one. He married four women, each of whom died within a year or two, and of his eight children seven were stillborn and the eighth lived only seventeen months. A fifth wife made violent attacks upon Winchester. He left her, and England, in I794, but she followed him to Connecticut, where they lived together again. He died of tuberculosis soon after, at the age of forty-five. Winchester was a prolific author and for two years in London edited The Philadelphian Magazine. The publications setting forth his theological views were widely read on both sides of the Atlantic. They include The Universal Restoration (I788); A Course of Lectures on the Prophecies That Remain to Be Fulfilled (3 vols., I789-90); The Process and Empire of Christ (I793), a long poem of 384 printed pages; and A Defence ofRevelation in Ten Letters to Thomas Paine (I796), a response to The Age ofReason. In I796 Winchester published, for use in American schools, A Plain Political Catechism, "wherein the great principles of liberty, and of the federal government, are laid down and explained by way of question and answer. Made level to the lowest capacities." The sermon reprinted here was preached in both Canterbury and London in November I788 (one hundred years after the landing in England of William of Orange) as a century sermon celebrating the Glorious Revolution and the securing of English liberty. In the important political passages of the sermon, Winchester takes the occasion to trace the genealogy of liberty in Britain and America, from the defeat of the Spanish Armada in I s88 to the stirring crescendo [3.238.62.124] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 14:43 GMT) ELHANAI'\ WINCllESTER reached in the framing of the Constitution of the United States in r 787. He stresses that the American Revolution was a war between the Americans and the British ministry, not the Hritish people themselves . He concludes with an apocalyptic sketch of the end of history, the Second Coming, and the dawn of the Millennium. ~Who is like unto thee, 0 Lord, amongst the gods? Who is like thee, glorious in Holiness, feaiful in Praises, doing Wonders? ~ Exodus xv. I I . his grand and noble song (the first we find in the sacred writings), celebrates a most astonishing event. The children of Israel went down into Egypt, and had there increased from about seventy persons, to near ........~..._~....,.....,three millions, in two hundred and fifteen years; and though Egypt was greatly indebted to the children of Jacob, especially to Joseph, yet the king and people of the land, forgetting those obligations, and greatly envying the increase of the tribes of Israel, cruelly oppressed them, by causing them to labour without reward; and not content with this tyranny, the cruel Pharaoh ordered their males to be cast into the river, to prevent their increase. In this time Moses was born and by the special providence of God was brought up in Pharaoh's court, till he was come to years; when he chose rather to suffer with his brethren, the children of Israel, than to enjoy the pleasures of the court, which the scriptures call the pleasures of sin. For avenging one of his brethren upon an Egyptian, who cruelly beat him, he was obliged to leave the country; and after dwelling forty years a stranger in Midian, God sent him as a special messenger, and leader, to bring forth Israel out of Egypt. He came invested with divine authority, and going to the king in the name of the Lord, demanded of him to let the people go, that they might serve God...