the dominion of providence over the passions of men · witherspoon

John Witherspoon, president of Princeton and the only clergyman to sign the Declaration, preached this fast-day sermon in May 1776 to argue that God rules even through human passions and that the colonial cause was just. It is the most influential clerical defence of independence, joining Calvinist providence to the politics of resistance.

Read with the Virginia Declaration of Rights and Jefferson's Notes on the Debates in Congress (both 1776) in the Roots of American Order summer seminar, June 2026.