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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

Towards the conclusion of your epistle, you intimate that you wish not
to have me say at last, when my doctrine issues in my mourning, that
you had not warned me. Be assured, sir, if I may be so much at my own
disposal at the last day, that I will not say, you did not warn me;
but if my doctrine be false at last, and you are asked why you did not
prove from the written word to my understanding that I was in an
error, will you say in answer, that it would have been such a tax upon
time, that you could not afford it, that you could not or did not wish
to? As the passages which you quote on your last page are designed to
illustrate what I believe to be a fact, I forbear, at this time, an
illustration of them, in which, the impropriety of the common mode of
understanding them might be made to appear. Should you be disposed to
attempt to correct my ideas in this epistle, or my doctrine in
general, by turning to the great touchstone, the law and the
testimony, be as ample, sir, as your inclination and opportunity will
admit. Every argument shall be duly attended to with prayerful
solicitude to obtain conviction, if it can be found; and whatever
light I gain I will gratefully acknowledge, and wherein I do not agree
with you, I will give you my reasons.

Your most obliged friend and humble servant,

HOSEA BALLOU.

Rev. J. BUCKMINSTER.

P.S. If I have been so unfortunate, in the foregoing epistle make
choice of any words which indicate too much freedom, please to impute
it to a frankness which perhaps I sometimes indulge to a fault, and
not to any want of due respect. H.B.

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LETTER III
FROM THE REV. JOSEPH BUCKMINSTER TO THE REV. HOSEA BALLOU.

PORTSMOUTH, JAN. 10, 1810.

_Dear Sir_,--It was not my intention, in the letter which I sometime
since addressed to you, to enter into a discussion of the subject of
Universalism, much less, for reasons that were suggested, provoke a
dispute upon it. I therefore endeavoured so to express myself that no
reply should be necessary.

My object was to discharge what I thought a duty of friendship and
affection, rendered more necessary by my personal declarations to you
at my house, by stating to you with frankness and decision what I was
persuaded would be the final result of that sentiment which you have
embraced, and are advocating among us; and to fulfil a duty which I
owe to myself, and to Him who has set me here to be a watchman, that I
might use every proper precaution to appear before my Judge at last
with unstained garments, preclude an occasion for a crimination and
reproach, and give up my account with joy and not with grief.

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