George de Benneville (

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, 25 July 1703 –

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, 19 March 1793) was a physician and

Christian Universalist Christian universalism is a school of Christian theology focused around the doctrine of universal reconciliation – the view that all human beings will ultimately be saved and restored to a right relationship with God. "Christian universalism" ...

preacher.

Biography

He was born in

in 1703 to aristocratic

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

French parents in the court of Queen Anne. While serving as a

sailor A sailor, seaman, mariner, or seafarer is a person who works aboard a watercraft as part of its crew, and may work in any one of a number of different fields that are related to the operation and maintenance of a ship. The profession of the s ...

during his adolescent years, de Benneville traveled around the world and began to question his religion and compare it to other

world religions World religions is a category used in the study of religion to demarcate the five—and in some cases more—largest and most internationally widespread religious movements. Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are always includ ...

. He shed his Huguenot religion, developed his own ideas about

Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with roughly 2.38 billion followers representing one-third of the global pop ...

, and became a

preacher A preacher is a person who delivers sermons or homilies on religious topics to an assembly of people. Less common are preachers who preach on the street, or those whose message is not necessarily religious, but who preach components such as ...

while still in his teens. De Benneville had a mystical experience and later a

near death experience A near-death experience (NDE) is a profound personal experience associated with death or impending death which researchers claim share similar characteristics. When positive, such experiences may encompass a variety of sensations including detac ...

which he described in ''The Life and Trance of Dr. George De Benneville''. These experiences convinced him that Hell is for purification, not punishment, and that, ultimately, all will be united with God. He believed that

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

is absolutely good and in his love would never condemn any human to eternal

damnation Damnation (from Latin '':wikt:damnatio, damnatio'') is the concept of Divine judgment, divine punishment and torment in an afterlife for actions that were committed, or in some cases, not committed on Earth. In Ancient Egyptian religion, Anci ...

. He also preached that each human being has a dualistic nature; the outer, flesh-and-blood person is subject to the evils of the world and may choose to do good or to do wrong, while the inner, spiritlike person is crafted by God and is perfect, immaculate, and holy, and cannot be damned. Therefore, all human beings experience

salvation Salvation (from Latin: ''salvatio'', from ''salva'', 'safe, saved') is the state of being saved or protected from harm or a dire situation. In religion and theology, ''salvation'' generally refers to the deliverance of the soul from sin and its ...

. Religious authorities in several nations were disturbed by

evangelists Evangelists may refer to: * Evangelists (Christianity), Christians who specialize in evangelism * Four Evangelists, the authors of the four Gospel accounts in the New Testament * ''The Evangelists ''The Evangelists'' (''Evangheliştii'' in Roma ...

such as de Benneville, and he was

sentenced to death Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

more than once. He preached and practiced medicine in France and Germany. After completing medical training in Europe, de Benneville immigrated to the American colonies during the mid-eighteenth century with others seeking

religious tolerance Religious toleration may signify "no more than forbearance and the permission given by the adherents of a dominant religion for other religions to exist, even though the latter are looked on with disapproval as inferior, mistaken, or harmful". ...

. He settled in

and worked as a physician and

apothecary ''Apothecary'' () is a mostly archaic term for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses '' materia medica'' (medicine) to physicians, surgeons, and patients. The modern chemist (British English) or pharmacist (British and North Amer ...

Oley Oley may refer to: ;People * Barnabas Oley (1602–1686), English churchman and academic * Johann Christoph Oley (1738–1789), German organist and composer ;Places * Oley Valley, Pennsylvania * Oley Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania * Oley, Pe ...

Berks County Berks County (Pennsylvania German: ''Barricks Kaundi'') is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 428,849. The county seat is Reading. The Schuylkill River, a tributary of the Delaware River, ...

, using free time to continue his Universalist preaching. de Benneville socialized and traded herbal preparations with Native American groups in the area. His beliefs stressed that all people everywhere are loved by God, and cultures, races, and sexes have no bearing on the worth of a human being. His beliefs stated clearly that the physical body is merely one part of a person. George de Benneville died at home in Pennsylvania in 1793.

Notes

Selected References

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External links

* * * 1703 births 1793 deaths English Christian universalists Clergy of the Universalist Church of America 18th-century Christian universalists 18th-century American clergy {{Universalism-bio-stub