19, married his first wife, Alice Rogers, in the fall of 1769. In that same year, he joined the Brookline New Lights Church and began his ministerial career preaching at the church. Winchester's ministerial career was fluid. It was not uncommon for him to fully embrace one theological principle only to abandon it, seemingly capriciously, and then embrace a completely contradictory set of theological tenets. His unsettled theological pursuits were resolved in 1778 when he read The Everlasting Gospel. Written under the pseudonym of Paul Siegvolck, Georg Klein-Nicolai published a German edition in 1705. Winchester credits reading an English edition in 1778 for his acceptance of the universal reconciliation of all souls with their Creator. He remained committed to universal reconciliation until his death in 1797. Winchester reflected many of the ideas in the Everlasting Gospel in his 1788 work Elhanan Winchester: Dialogues on Universal Restoration. He reasoned that errors in biblical scholarship incorrectly condemned souls to perpetual damnation. In particular, he noted the translation of the Hebrew words adon olam and the Greek word aion did not mean "eternal." The correct translation, he argued, was only a reference to a limited unit of time. Similarly, he argued that sin was finite, not infinite, and therefore could not incur the wrath of endless punishment. Underscoring the value Winchester placed in Klein-Nicolai's Everlasting Gospel, he published another edition in London in 1792. Early Ministerial Career Brookline Congregational Separate Church Winchester's preaching career at the Brookline Separate Church was short-lived when a maid of his father became pregnant and named Elhanan as the father. Only one primary historical account was found of this event in Isaac Backus's History of New England with Particular Attention to the Denomination Called Baptists. However, subsequent actions in Winchester's life appear to support Backus's observation. Canterbury Free Will Baptist Church 1771 Two years after he began preaching in his father's church, Winchester left Brookline in 1771 and undertook a 60-mile journey to Canterbury, Connecticut. There he visited the Free Will Baptist Church of Elder Ebenezer Lyon. Established in 1711, the Congregational church in Canterbury was not immune to the influences of the First Great Awakening revivalist movement. In 1745, a separate church of Canterbury was formed on New Light principles and renounced fellowship with the established churches in the Standing Order. Despite its renunciation, the taxation system still compelled the Separates to fund the operation of the