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A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation: In Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. To Which is Added, a Religious Correspondence, Between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster and Rev. Joseph Walton, Pastors of Congregational Churches in Portsmouth, N. H.Ballou, Hosea

Religion

A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation: In Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. To Which is Added, a Religious Correspondence, Between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster and Rev. Joseph Walton, Pastors of Congregational Churches in Portsmouth, N. H.

Name: A Series of Letters, in Defence of Divine Revelation: In Reply to Rev. Abner Kneeland's Serious Inquiry into the Authenticity of the Same. To Which is Added, a Religious Correspondence, Between the Rev. Hosea Ballou, and the Rev. Dr. Joseph Buckminster and Rev. Joseph Walton, Pastors of Congregational Churches in Portsmouth, N. H.
Author: Ballou, Hosea

Ballou, Hosea

Revelation; Universalism -- Doctrines

You inform me that as universal salvation is not true, "it can have no
effect in quickening into life or of sanctifying the soul, for it is
the spirit that quickeneth, and the truth, which sanctifies." If, dear
sir, you do not believe that the spirit of salvation quickeneth into
life, would it not have been proper to inform me what spirit does? And
I should have highly esteemed an illustration of the evidence which
you have, that the truth, _that mankind will remain eternally
unsanctified_, will sanctify the soul! I fully believe that as far as
any proposition is capable of being proved from the written word, or
of being demonstrated by logical reasoning from acknowledged facts,
the doctrine of the salvation of all men is capable of being proved
and substantially maintained. Does it require human ingenuity or
plausible and sophistic reasoning to make it appear from the
scriptures that Jesus Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for
every man; that he gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in
due time; that he is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world;
that it is the will of God that all men should be saved and come to
the knowledge of the truth; that he worketh all things after the
council of his own will?--Does it require this ingenuity, &c. to
substantiate from the written word that the promise to Abraham will be
fulfilled, and that all nations whom God hath made shall come and
worship before him and glorify his name; that Jesus will in the
fulness of time, reconcile all things unto himself, whether they be
things in heaven or things on earth, or things under the earth; that
he will gather together in one all things in Christ both which are in
heaven and which are on earth, even in him? If it be an acknowledged
fact that God will bless all the families of the earth in Christ, that
all nations which God hath made shall come and worship before him and
glorify his name, that Jesus gave himseif a ransom for all men to be
testified in due time, that he did by the grace of God taste death for
every man, that he will have all men to be saved and come to the
knowledge of the truth, that he hath made known the mystery of his
will according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself,
that in the dispensation of the fulness of times, he would gather
together in one, all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and
which are on earth, and that he worketh all things after the council
of his own will, then the doctrine of the salvation of all men is as
fully acknowledged as language can possibly express, or my error lies
in not understanding the force of words and sentences.

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