The only ordained clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence

The following is an excerpt from the sermon, “The Dominion of Divine Providence Over the Passions of Men,” preached by John Witherspoon at Princeton College on May, 17, 1776:

The power of divine providence appears with the most distinguished lustre, when small and inconsiderable circumstances, and sometimes, the weather and the seasons, have defeated the most formidable armaments, and frustrated the best concerted expeditions.

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 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?