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.
Ballou, Hosea
Revelation; Universalism -- Doctrines
I think, sir, your giving your hearers encouragement in your preaching
that Christ will save them all, whether they repent and believe the
gospel or no, is of a dangerous nature. Christ has said, "if ye
believe not that I am he ye shall die in your sins," John viii. 24.
Read, if you please, the proceeding context. The decrees of God, you
say, is my creed, and that I believe that God foreordained whatsoever
come to pass. I do not think I ever told you so. And so you think God
foreordained, according to my _creed_, death, for a damage to his
creatures. I have said death is punishment for sin, as I wrote, and I
can maintain it from scripture; death was introduced by sin; the
person that lives a life of sin and dies without regenerating grace,
which all true believers in Christ have, will be miserable, and be
"punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord
and the glory of his power." I believe every true believer is a true
penitent, is regenerated, is in Christ by a vital union is a "new
creature," and that those persons will be saved and none else,
according to the doctrine of Christ and his apostles. I believe that
God the Father worketh all things according to the council of his own
will; that his redeemed and saved people should be to his glory. You
say, in my writing to you, I said, "do you think Christ or his
apostles would preach universal salvation in one place of scripture
and contradict it in another? I believe they would not."--Here you
designedly, I think mistake; I do not believe that Christ or his
apostles ever did preach universal salvation, that is, that every son
and daughter of apostate Adam, would be saved. I believe that this
gospel of the kingdom is to be preached to every creature, and
"whosoever believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that
believeth not shall be damned." Do me justice, sir; do not animadvert
upon what I have just quoted, as if I think our Saviour is to be
understood as if every individual would have the privilege of hearing
the gospel. I conceive that the apostles' commission runs thus: "Go
into all the world and preach the gospel to every human or rational
creature."--What I meant by saying, do you think Christ would preach
universal salvation in one place, and in another contradict it, is,
that those texts which you suppose supports your doctrine, is not to
be understood as you apply them; for if they prove universal
salvation, as you would have them, then they will contradict many
texts which Christ and his apostles improved otherwise; therefore I
still assert, that the scriptures ought to be carefully examined,
conscientiously improved and applied. The faithful minister of Christ
will renounce the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in
craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by
manifestation of the _truth_, commending themselves to every man's
conscience in the sight of God. "For we are not as many which corrupt
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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