123

David McClure.

Debate society manuscript from Yale, and a manuscript sermon.

Connecticut, 1768-1769 and 1799
Debate volume: [42] manuscript pages, 7¾ x 6¼ inches, plus original wrappers, partially signed by McClure on wrappers; one leaf excised, minor dampstaining. Connecticut, 1768-1769 and undated.

Sermon volume:  [20] manuscript pages, 7¾ x 6½ inches, stitched, minor wear. East Windsor, CT, January 1799

  • Notes: David McClure or M'Clure (1748-1820) was a Rhode Island native who graduated from Yale in 1769. He served as a missionary in Ohio, then as a Congregationalist minister in North Hampton, NH and East Windsor, CT. 

    The first volume was kept as a member of a debating society. It contains more than 20 debate questions, and McClure's arguments for his assigned side. Most of these entries do not state where the debate was held. The first is for "Monday evening disputes after evening prayers held at Lebanon, 1768"--the central Connecticut town where McClure had previously attended school through 1765. At least 5 of the debates were held at Yale in December 1768 and January 1769. 

    The most interesting of these debate topics for the modern reader is the first held at Yale: "Question, whether the children of slaves can be legally enslaved." McClure argues in the affirmative based on scripture: "Sin of ye parent affects ye posterity. . . . Adam by his own personal act brought all his posterity into a slavery to sin." Three of the Yale debate questions are in Latin. Also debated elsewhere in the volume: "Whether the chief motive of Christ's coming into ye world was to do honour to God's law, or whether it was love to man?" "Whether it is lawful to eat blood?" "Whether lotteries are lawful?" 

    The second volume offered here is the manuscript of McClure's published sermon, here titled "Sermon for the New Year: Preparation for Death and Eternity," on Ecclesiastes 9:10, and noted in a later hand "Printed." It was published in 1799 as "The New-Year. A Sermon, Deliverd at East-Windsor, First Society, on the First Lord's Day, after the Commencement of the Year 1799" (a title inserted in smaller manuscript on the first page). It begins "Nothing is more certain than that man is born to die, yet there is no one important truth, less realized or less practically believed, by mankind." One long section, on pages [4-5], is crossed through and does not appear in the printed sermon.
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