Born in 1723 in Gifford, East Lothian, Scotland, John Knox Witherspoon was the eldest son of a clergyman, James Alexander Witherspoon. Following in his father’s footsteps, Witherspoon decided to pursue a career in theology, earning a Master of Arts at the University of Edinburgh, then a doctorate at St. Andrews University. His first posting as a Presbyterian minister was to Beith Eyrshire, where he met and married Elizabeth Montgomery.
Witherspoon was briefly imprisoned during the Jacobite uprising of 1745–46 (an attempt to return the Catholic Stuart dynasty to the throne of Great Britain), but as a strong Protestant, he was not sympathetic to the Jacobite cause, which was led by the Roman Catholic Highlander clans (whereas most lowlander Scots had long since converted to the Protestantism of John Knox).
Witherspoon developed an international reputation as a scholar and pastor and, in 1767, after the death of its fifth president, the board of governors of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) called him to be the school’s new president.
Witherspoon with his wife and five children sailed for America, arriving in August 1768. Finding the school’s library inadequate, Witherspoon donated some 300 of his own books. He worked to reform the college, increasing enrollment, and expanding the curriculum to include subjects such as French, Civil Government, and International Law. Witherspoon was active in fundraising, even persuading George Washington, who was an Anglican, to donate 50 gold guineas to the Presbyterian college. Under Witherspoon’s leadership, Princeton became a center for the debate and promotion of religious freedom in America.
Presbyterianism was popular in the mid-Atlantic colonies because of the Scots-Irish influx, and by 1776, Witherspoon had trained many Presbyterian ministers. He was a peacemaker among various factions of Presbyterians, and also befriended the president of Yale, Ezra Stiles, and thereby forged ties with the Congregationalists of New England, the birthplace of the movement for independence from England.
Witherspoon at first eschewed any interest in American politics, but after 1774, he became increasingly sympathetic to the cause of independence. To the assertion that America was not ripe for independence he retorted: “In my judgment, sir, we are not only ripe, but rotting.” In June, 1776, largely on the strength of his famous sermon, “The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men,” Witherspoon was elected to the Continental Congress, just in time to argue the question of independence. He was the only active clergyman (and the only college president) to sign the Declaration of Independence.
Witherspoon served in the Continental Congress throughout the Revolutionary War period, until 1782, and was a member of over a hundred legislative committees, including the Board of War and the Committee on Foreign Affairs. In the latter role, he took the lead in drawing up instructions for the American peace commissioners who negotiated the Treaty of Paris, which in 1783 formally ended the war. He later served in the New Jersey legislature and was a member of that state’s ratifying convention for the Constitution of 1787. In 1789 Witherspoon was the convening moderator of the First General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. Witherspoon died on November 15, 1794.
Witherspoon was one of the most influential academics in American history, in part because of his tenure at Princeton and the many students he influenced there. Nine of the fifty-five participants in the 1787 constitutional convention at Philadelphia were Princeton graduates, chief among them James Madison, the principal draftsman of the constitution. Madison had spent an extra year studying Hebrew and philosophy with Witherspoon after his graduation in 1771.
Witherspoon’s students would include a president and a vice-president of the United States, twenty-one senators, twenty-nine representatives, fifty-six state legislators, and thirty-three judges, three of whom were appointed justices of the Supreme Court. During the Revolution, his students were everywhere in positions of command in the American forces. (And, yes, the actress Reese Witherspoon claims to be a descendant of John Witherspoon.)
Witherspoon’s most famous sermon, The Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men, caused a sensation when it was first preached at Princeton and published in Philadelphia in June, 1776. It was obvious by then that we were effectively at war with Great Britain. The Dominion of Providence is not only an important historical document, it is still a very edifying and uplifting sermon, so I am reproducing some excerpts from it.
Witherspoon introduces the subject of Providence:
“The doctrine of divine providence is very full and complete in the sacred oracles. It extends not only to things which we may think of great moment, and therefore worthy of notice, but to things the most indifferent and inconsiderable; “Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing,” says our Lord, “and one of them falleth not to the ground without your heavenly Father”; nay, “the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” It extends not only to things beneficial and salutary, or to the direction and assistance of those who are the servants of the living God; but to things seemingly most hurtful and destructive, and to persons the most refractory and disobedient. He overrules all his creatures, and all their actions.”
In comment on Psalm 76, which apparently was written after the Lord had delivered a victory to Israel, Witherspoon said,
“I am sensible, my brethren, that the time and occasion of this psalm, may seem to be in one respect ill-suited to the interesting circumstances of this country at present. It was composed after the victory was obtained; whereas we are now but putting on the harness and entering upon an important contest, the length of which it is impossible to foresee, and the issue of which it will perhaps be thought presumption to foretell. But as the truth, with respect to God’s moral government, is the same and unchangeable . . . And I have chosen to insist upon it on this day of solemn humiliation, as it will probably help us to a clear and explicit view of what should be the chief subject of our prayers and endeavors, as well as the great object of our hope and trust, in our present situation.
“The truth, then, asserted in this text . . . is that all the disorderly passions of men, whether exposing the innocent to private injury, or whether they are the arrows of divine judgment in public calamity, shall, in the end, be to the praise of God: Or, to apply it more particularly to the present state of the American colonies, and the plague of war, the ambition of mistaken princes, the cunning and cruelty of oppressive and corrupt ministers, and even the inhumanity of brutal soldiers, however dreadful, shall finally promote the glory of God, and in the meantime, while the storm continues, his mercy and kindness shall appear in prescribing bounds to their rage and fury.”
Witherspoon points out that God often turns ill-intended actions to Good and to His own glory for the salvation of men’s souls:
“From the New Testament I will make choice of that memorable event on which the salvation of believers in every age rests as its foundation, the death and sufferings of the Son of God. This the great adversary and all his agents and instruments prosecuted with unrelenting rage. When they had blackened him with slander, when they scourged him with shame, when they had condemned him in judgment, and nailed him to the cross, how could they help esteeming their victory complete? But—oh, the unsearchable wisdom of God!—they were but perfecting the great design laid for the salvation of sinners. Our blessed Redeemer by his death finished his work, overcame principalities and powers, and made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in his cross.
“In all after ages, in conformity to this, the deepest laid contrivances of the prince of darkness, have turned out to the confusion of their author; and I know not, but considering his malice and pride, this perpetual disappointment, and the superiority of divine wisdom, may be one great source of his suffering and torment. The cross hath still been the banner of truth, under which it hath been carried through the world. Persecution has been but as the furnace to the gold, to purge it of its dross, to manifest its purity, and increase its luster. It was taken notice of very early, that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of Christianity; the more abundantly it was shed, the more plentifully did the harvest grow.
“It is proper here to observe, that at the time of the Reformation, when religion began to revive, nothing contributed more to facilitate its reception and increase its progress than the violence of its persecutors. Their cruelty and the patience of the sufferers naturally disposed men to examine and weigh the cause to which they adhered with so much constancy and resolution. At the same time also, when they were persecuted in one city, they fled to another, and carried the discoveries of popish fraud to every part of the world. It was by some of those who were persecuted in Germany, that the light of the Reformation was brought so early into Britain.
“The violent persecution which many eminent Christians met with in England from their brethren, who called themselves Protestants, drove them in great numbers to a distant part of the world, where the light of the gospel and true religion were unknown. Some of the American settlements, particularly those in New-England, were chiefly made by them; and as they carried the knowledge of Christ to the dark places of the earth, so they continue themselves in as great a degree of purity, of faith, and strictness of practice, or rather a greater, than is to be found in any protestant church now in the world. Does not the wrath of man in this instance praise God? Was not the accuser of the brethren, who stirs up their enemies, thus taken in his own craftiness, and his kingdom shaken by the very means which he employed to establish it?”
Witherspoon points out that as important as it is to protect our earthly rights from tyranny and oppression, it is far more important to protect our eternal destiny by hiding it in Christ:
“I would take the opportunity on this occasion, and from this subject, to press every hearer to a sincere concern for his own soul’s salvation. There are times when the mind may be expected to be more awake to divine truth, and the conscience more open to the arrows of conviction, than at others. A season of public judgment is of this kind . . . That curiosity and attention at least are raised in some degree is plain from the unusual throng of this assembly. Can you have a clearer view of the sinfulness of your nature, than when the rod of the oppressor is lifted up, and when you see men putting on the habit of the warrior, and collecting on every hand the weapons of hostility and instruments of death?
“I do not blame your ardor in preparing for the resolute defense of your temporal rights, but consider, I beseech you, the truly infinite importance of the salvation of your souls. Is it of much moment whether you and your children shall be rich or poor, at liberty or in bonds? Is it of much moment whether this beautiful country shall increase in fruitfulness from year to year, being cultivated by active industry, and possessed by independent freemen, or the scanty produce of the neglected fields shall be eaten up by hungry publicans, while the timid owner trembles at the tax gatherers approach? And is it of less moment my brethren, whether you shall be the heirs of glory or the heirs of hell? Is your state on earth for a few fleeting years of so much moment? And is it of less moment, what shall be your state through endless ages? Have you assembled together willingly to hear what shall be said on public affairs, and to join in imploring the blessing of God on the counsels and arms of the united colonies, and can you be unconcerned, what shall become of you forever, when all the monuments of human greatness shall be laid in ashes, for “the earth itself and all the works that are therein shall be burnt up”?
“Those of you who shall first fall in battle, have not many more warnings to receive. There are some few daring and hardened sinners who despise eternity itself, and set their Maker at defiance, but the far greater number by staving off their convictions to a more convenient season, have been taken unprepared, and thus eternally lost. I would therefore earnestly press the apostles exhortation, 2 Cor. vi. i, 2. “We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also, that ye receive not the grace of God in vain: For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succored thee: Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”
“Suffer me to beseech you, or rather to give you warning, not to rest satisfied with a form of godliness, denying the power thereof. There can be no true religion, till there be a discovery of your lost state by nature and practice, and an unfeigned acceptance of Christ Jesus, as he is offered in the gospel. Unhappy they who either despise his mercy, or are ashamed of his cross! Believe it, “there is no salvation in any other. There is no other name under heaven given amongst men by which we must be saved.”
“Unless you are united to him by a lively [living] faith—not the resentment of a haughty monarch—the sword of divine justice hangs over you, and the fulness of divine vengeance shall speedily overtake you. I do not speak this only to the heaven-daring profligate or groveling sensualist, but to every insensible secure sinner; to all those, however decent and orderly in their civil deportment, who live to themselves and have their part and portion in this life; in fine to all who are yet in a state of nature, for “except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The fear of man may make you hide your profanity: prudence and experience may make you abhor intemperance and riot; as you advance in life, one vice may supplant another and hold its place; but nothing less than the sovereign grace of God can produce a saving change of heart and temper, or fit you for his immediate presence.”
He strongly cautions, in light of the coming fierce contest, that the patriots should not boast about American arms, and should vigilantly avoid pride:
“While we give praise to God the supreme disposer of all events, for his interposition in our behalf, let us guard against the dangerous error of trusting in, or boasting of an arm of flesh. I could earnestly wish, that while our arms are crowned with success, we might content ourselves with a modest ascription of it to the power of the Highest. It has given me great uneasiness to read some ostentatious, vaunting expressions in our newspapers, though happily I think, much restrained of late. Let us not return to them again. If I am not mistaken, not only the holy scriptures in general, and the truths of the glorious gospel in particular, but the whole course of providence, seem intended to abase the pride of man, and lay the vainglorious in the dust. How many instances does history furnish us with, of those who after exulting over, and despising their enemies, were signally and shamefully defeated.”
He also implores his listeners not to neglect public “manners”, or what we today call morals. Over the course of the last couple of centuries, the word “manners” has been reduced to mean roughly “etiquette,” but in the mid-18th Century “manners” meant something much closer to “morals”:
“Suffer me to recommend to you an attention to the public interest of religion, or in other words, zeal for the glory of God and the good of others. I have already endeavored to exhort sinners to repentance; what I have here in view is to point out to you the concern which every good man ought to take in the national character and manners, and the means which he ought to use for promoting public virtue, and bearing down impiety and vice. This is a matter of the utmost moment, and which ought to be well understood, both in its nature and principles. Nothing is more certain than that a general profligacy and corruption of manners make a people ripe for destruction. A good form of government may hold the rotten materials together for some time, but beyond a certain pitch, even the best constitution will be ineffectual . . . On the other hand, when the manners of a nation are pure, when true religion and internal principles maintain their vigor, the attempts of the most powerful enemies to oppress them are commonly baffled and disappointed. This will be found equally certain, whether we consider the great principles of God’s moral government, or the operation and influence of natural causes.
“What follows from this? That 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 to God, I scruple not to call him an enemy to his country. Do not suppose, my brethren, that I mean to recommend a furious and angry zeal for the circumstantials of religion, or the contentions of one sect with another about their peculiar distinctions. I do not wish you to oppose anybody’s religion, but everybody’s wickedness. Perhaps there are few surer marks of the reality of religion, than when a man feels himself more joined in spirit to a true holy person of a different denomination, than to an irregular [nominal professor] of his own. It is therefore your duty in this important and critical season to exert yourselves, everyone in his proper sphere, to stem the tide of prevailing vice, to promote the knowledge of God, the reverence of his name and worship, and obedience to his laws.”
Witherspoon makes a subtle but important point, and one I’ve never heard before, namely, that often we omit talk of the Almighty God from our everyday conversation because we feel unworthy to invoke His name, and we wish to avoid hypocrisy. Witherspoon argues that this doesn’t really work, and it makes us more likely, not less likely, to be hypocrites:
“Many, from a real or pretended fear of the imputation of hypocrisy, banish from their conversation and carriage every appearance of respect and submission to the living God. What a weakness and meanness of spirit does it [uncover] for a man to be ashamed in the presence of his fellow sinners to profess that reverence to almighty God which he inwardly feels: The truth is, he makes himself truly liable to the accusation which he means to avoid. It is as genuine and perhaps a more culpable hypocrisy to appear to have less religion than you really have, than to appear to have more. This false shame is a more extensive evil than is commonly apprehended. We contribute constantly, though insensibly, to form each others’ character and manners [morals]; and therefore, the usefulness of a strictly holy and conscientious deportment is not confined to the possessor, but spreads its happy influence to all within its reach. I need scarcely add that in proportion as men are distinguished by understanding, literature, age, rank, office, wealth, or any other circumstance, their example will be useful on the one hand, or pernicious on the other.”
Almost nothing is left out of the sermon; there is even an appeal to soldiers to avoid the use of profanity so typically and egregiously heard in the military ranks, and for the officers to be models of restrained and godly speech. There is an appeal to industry, thrift, frugality, “temperance in meals, moderation and decency in dress, furniture and equipage,” etc. He concludes:
“And as peace with God and conformity to him adds to the sweetness of created comforts while we possess them, so in times of difficulty and trial, 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.”
Witherspoon made a very costly contribution to his adopted country’s freedom. His oldest son, James, who had graduated from Princeton in 1770, joined the Continental Army as an aide to General Francis Nash, and was killed at the Battle of Germantown on October 4, 1777.
Speaking of the Providence of God, it is clearly seen in the brilliance of our founders, including John Witherspoon.