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The Reverend Jacob Duche (1737-98) was a Rector of Christ Church in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the first chaplain to the Continental Congress. After graduating as valedictorian from the College of Philadelphia in 1757, where he had also been tutor of Greek and Latin, he studied briefly at Cambridge University before being ordained an Anglican clergyman by the Bishop of London and returning to the colonies. In 1759 he married Elizabeth Hopkinson, the sister of Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Duche first came to the attention of the First Continental Congress in September 1774 when he was summoned to Carpenters' Hall to lead the opening prayers. After reading the 35th Psalm he broke into an extemporaneous prayer which had a profound effect on the delegates. On 4 July 1776 when the Declaration of Independence was ratified Duche passed a resolution stating that the name of King George III would no longer be read in the prayers of the church, duly crossing out said prayers from his Book of Common Prayer and thus committing an act of treason against England, an extraordinarily dangerous act for a clergyman who had taken an oath of loyalty to the King. On 9 July Congress elected him its first official chaplain. When the British occupied Philadelphia in September 1777, Duche was arrested and detained but later released, emerging as a Loyalist and propagandist for the British and writing to George Washington urging him to lay down arms and negotiate peace. In a short time he had gone from hero of the Revolutionary cause to outcast in the new United States, and was convicted of high treason to the State of Pennsylvania and his estate confiscated. He fled to England where he was appointed chaplain to the Lambeth orphan asylum and soon made a reputation as an eloquent preacher. He was not able to return to America until 1792 after suffering a stroke, and died in Philadelphia in 1798. The discourses included in this, the first of two volumes, were originally preached in the united Churches of Christ Church and St. Peter, Philadelphia, and are reprinted from the second edition of 1780.

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