Cornelius Winter (1742–1808) was an American Methodist preacher, an understudy of and assistant to George Whitefield, with whom he went to the American colony of Georgia as a catechist to Negro slaves, an educator who established two Dissenting academies for training Dissenting clergy,[1] and "a very influential pastor".
[2] Winter was born in Gray's Inn Lane, in the parish of St. Andrew, Holborn, on 9 October 1742.
In the latter part of his life, he became head porter of Gray's Inn, a job that paid sixty pounds per annum.
A water gilder "gilded metal surfaces by applying liquid amalgam, the mercury being afterwards removed by evaporation".
[8] Winter worked in his relatives work-shop and performed domestic services fourteen hours a day until he was twenty-one years old.
[10] As he wrote, Winter educated himself by studying Hebrew, Latin, and Greek grammar and by "reading good authors".
[16] A Dissenting preacher offered Winter an opportunity to preach occasionally at Cheshunt, in Hertfordshire.
[21] On the death of Whitefield 1770, the trustees of the Bethesda Orphanage sent Winter to receive ordination from the Bishop of London.
His home was a small house at Christian Malford where he lived a "semi-monastic" until the age of thirty-five in 1777.
There, Winter met the people, preached sermons, and was accepted as their pastor, officially beginning 2 February 1778.
[31] Winter increased the meager income from his congregation by establishing an Academy in 1783 and charging tuition.
[36] As part of the practical training, Winter had his students preach in area churches very early in their course.
[37] After a decade at Marlborough, chronic illness forced Winter to close his Academy and lose that income.
[38] The congregation of Christ Church nonconformist chapel at Painswick already knew Winter and his preaching.
[43] On the following Friday evening, lying in bed, Winter "stretched himself out, laid his arms at length upon his body, and indistinctly said,"Come Lord Jesus;" and died.
[46] Rowland Hill expressed his opinion of Winter, by affirming that "he would make the very worst devil of any man on earth".
[47] William Jay deemed John Newton and Cornelius Winter the two "most perfect instance[s] of the spirit and temper of Christianity that I ever knew".