George de Benneville

George de Benneville (* July 26, 1703 in London, † March 19, 1793 ) was a physician and an early proponent of the North American universalism.

Life and work

Benneville was born in 1703 in London as the youngest of nine children of an aristocratic family Huguenot - French origin. His father Georges de Benneville was from Rouen originating in Normandy aristocrat at the court of William III. was busy. In his youth Benneville went to sea and began to critical with his Calvinistic origin deal. Back in London were denied him because of his rejection of the doctrine of predestination inclusion in the French Reformed Church. Later he traveled to Normandy, where he preached for two years at the camisards ( a subset of the French Huguenots ), before he was arrested and sentenced to death. Just because a pardon by the French King Louis XV. he could save his life. From France, he eventually traveled to Germany and the Netherlands, where he was 1723-1741 and occurred primarily as a preacher. Here he also met radical pietistic groups like the Tunker and the spiritualistic Schwenkfeldians. In Germany he met Johann Conrad Beissel on that later emigrated to Pennsylvania and there Ephrata Cloister founded 1723. Around the same time Benneville also began to study medicine. After the German mystic Johann Christoph Sauer had emigrated 1724 to Pennsylvania and called from there German Pietists in several letters to emigrate, also Benneville decided to emigrate to North America, where he Sauers Printers includes the pressure may become known as sour Bible Bible edition helped. Here Benneville also translated the eternal gospel of Paul win people ( George Klein - Nicolai ) into English. Later he moved to Pennsylvania African Oley Valley, where he was working as a doctor in 1745 and there married Esther Bertolet, with the got seven children together. During this time he was also in contact with the Moravians and the Schwarzenau Brethren and other Protestant groups and also repeatedly visited the Ephrata Cloister was founded by Beissel.

1757 the family moved to Bristol in Philadelphia, where he continued active as a physician. During the Battle of German Town in 1777 during the American Revolutionary War, he helped treat the injured. 1781 met Benneville the universalistic preacher Elhanan Winchester, with whom he in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Virginia was common 1781-1787 on a mission trip.

1793 died Benneville to the effects of a stroke. His wife Esther died two years later.