He lost two sons in the Revolution and was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration.
A delegate from New Jersey, he declared:
"Gentlemen,
New Jersey is ready to vote for independence...The country is not only
ripe for independence, but we are in danger of becoming rotten for the
want of it!"
He
served on 120 Congressional Committees and was a primary proponent of
the separation of powers, insisting checks be placed on the power of
government.
His name was John Witherspoon, and he died NOVEMBER 15, 1794.
Born in Scotland, he was a descendant of the Reformer John Knox.
John
Witherspoon was President of Princeton where he taught 9 of the 55
writers of the U.S. Constitution, including James Madison.
His
other Princeton students included a U.S. Vice-President, 3 Supreme
Court Justices, 10 Cabinet Members, 13 Governors, 21 Senators and 39
Congressmen and 114 ministers.
After his wife died in 1789, he headed up a committee in the New Jersey legislature to abolish slavery.
John Adams described John Witherspoon as
"A true son of liberty...but first, he was a son of the Cross."
The same day Congress declared a Day of Fasting, May 17, 1776, Rev. Witherspoon told his Princeton students:
"If your cause is just, if your principles are pure, and if your conduct is prudent,
you need not fear the multitude of opposing hosts.
He is the best friend to American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who sets himself with the greatest firmness to bear down profanity and immorality of every kind.
Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not to call him an enemy of his country..."
Get the book, America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations
John Witherspoon concluded:
"It
is in the man of piety and inward principle, that we may expect to find
the uncorrupted patriot, the useful citizen, and the invincible
soldier...
God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable
and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one, may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both."
When peace was made with Britain, John Witherspoon exhorted all in his "Thanksgiving Sermon" to live for:
"...the Glory of God, the public interest of religion and the good of others,
as civil liberty cannot be long preserved without virtue.
A Republic must either preserve its virtue or lose its liberty."
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John Witherspoon resisted "tyranny of conscience," citing:
"There is not a single instance in history, in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire....
If therefore we yield up our...property, we at the same time deliver the conscience into bondage...
Governments are to defend and secure rights of conscience."
In his "Pastoral Letter," Rev. Witherspoon explained:
"Universal profligacy makes a nation ripe for divine judgments and is the natural means of bringing them to ruin;
reformation of manners is of the utmost necessity in our present distress."
In regards to man's need for redemption, Rev. Witherspoon explained:
"The
corruption of our nature...is the foundation-stone of the doctrine of
redemption. Nothing can be more absolutely necessary to true religion,
than a clear conviction of the sinfulness of our nature and state..."
He continued:
"Men
of lax and corrupt principles take great delight in speaking to the
praise of human nature, and extolling its dignity, without
distinguishing what it was at its first creation from what it is in its
present fallen state...
The evil of sin appears from every page of...the history of the world...
Nothing is more plain from scripture...than that
man by nature is in fact incapable of recovery without the power of God specially interposed."
In his Lectures on Divinity, Rev. John Witherspoon stated:
"Religion is the grand concern of us all...
the salvation of our souls in the one thing needful."
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