Organized Universalism in Boston dates from 1785.
His language has the purity of the desert, his morals are those of the city, his universalism is that of the man of the world.
He has won his way to universalism, not through the Pauline method, but through one of his own.
This universalism is not simply spiritual; the external element, presupposed in the Synoptists as that of the Jewish church within which Jesus' earthly life was spent, is here that of the now separate Christian community: He has other sheep not of this fold - them also He must bring, there will be one fold, one shepherd; and His seamless tunic, and Peter's net which, holding every kind of fish, is not rent, are symbols of this visible unity.
The universalism which marks the promise to the seed of the woman (Gen.
21) is too vague in itself, and is too isolated in its context to warrant the dogmatic teaching of universalism, although there are other passages which' seem to point towards the same goal.
But in the 5th century there were rejected as heretical (I) "the doctrine of universalism, and the possibility of the redemption of the devil; (2) the doctrine of the complete annihilation of evil; (3) the conception of the penalties of hell as tortures of conscience; (4) the spiritualizing version of the resurrection of the body; (5) the idea of the continued creation of new worlds" (A.
His Catholic Doctrine of the Atonement (1865) and Catholic Eschatology and Universalism (1876) are standard works.
Further, there are elements of Islam, like the usages of the hajj (or pilgrimage to the sacred places at Mecca), the dryness of its official doctrine and the limitations of its real character as indicated in the Wahhabi revival, which so impair its apparent universalism that Kuenen found himself obliged to withdraw it from the highest rank of religions.
The surviving church became involved in Socinianism and Universalism, but maintained a somewhat vigorous life and, through Wickenden and others, exerted considerable influence at Newport, in Connecticut, New York and elsewhere.
Is it not this early struggle between Jewish and Samaritan universalism, involving as it did a struggle of religion against magic, that is really symbolized under the wild traditions of the contest between Peter and Simon?'
He was a son of Maturin Ballou, a Baptist minister, was self-educated, early devoted himself to the ministry, became a convert to Universalism in 1789, and in 1794 became a pastor of a congregation at Dana, Massachusetts.
From the theology of John Murray, who like Ballou has been called "the father of American Universalism," he differed in that he divested Universalism of every trace of Calvinism and opposed legalism and trinitarian views.
He was associated with the elder Hosea Ballou in editing The Universalist Quarterly Review; edited an edition of Sismondi's History of the Crusades (1833); and wrote the Ancient History of Universalism, down to A.D.