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THE

PROCESS AND EMPIRE

OF

CHRIST;

FROM HIS BIRTH

TO THE END OF

THE MEDIATORIAL KINGDOM;

A POEM,

IN TWELVE BOOKS.

BY ELHANAN WINCHESTER.

BRATTLEBORO'.

PRINTED BY WILLIAM FESSENDEN.

LENOX LIBRARY

NEW YORK

THROUGH the good hand of God upon me I have. at length completed this poem, which I beg leave to prefent to you. I first began to plan it out and write it on the 26th of February 1787, the day after I had preached a ferinon from Zech. xiv. 9. I found my heart to warmed with the glorious fubject, the kingdom. of Christ, on which I had been preaching, that I found an inclination to write upon it; and I immediately took up my pen, and wrote the plan of this poem as it now stands. I had finished three books, and written a confiderable part of the fourth, when we came to England, September 24, 1787.

About the beginning of the year 1788, I read the four first books to a few friends in the Chapel, Chapelcourt, Borough, and I return my fincere and hearty thanks to thofe who attended the reading, for the fupport and encouragement which they gave me on that occafion. About this time I planned out my Lectures on the Prophecies, which I began to deliver the beginning of February 1783 in the fame place. Since which they have been delivered a fecond time, and publifhed in four volumes octavo.

When I fiift began this poem, I was ready to imagine it to be the labor of fome years; but experience corrects our mistakes. I am now convinced that the whole of it might have been easily written in much less than a quarter of one year; and as a proof of what I fay, I can affure the Reader, that the whole of the ninth book was written in the leisure hours of fix days, between Monday morning and Saturday evening, in one week laft winter. I have however great reafon to blefs God, that in the midft of many labors and infirmities, and after many delays, he has enabled me to finish it; and hath preferved my life to fee it published. I return my thanks to the subscribers who have encour

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