Paul Dean

Paul Dean (1783-1860; some sources give his birth year as 1789) was a Universalist minister in Boston, serving the First Universalist Society from 1815 to 1822 and then the Bulfinch Street church until about 1840. A rival of Hosea Ballou, he led the Restorationist wing of the denomination, which held that a period of corrective punishment after death precedes the salvation of all, and he helped organize the Massachusetts Association of Universal Restorationists in 1831. His 1832 winter lecture series at Bulfinch Street defending final restoration was published as A Course of Lectures in Defence of the Final Restoration. He was also a prominent Freemason, serving as Grand Master of Masons in Massachusetts from 1838 to 1840.

The Restorationist manifesto. Paul Dean — John Murray's successor at Boston's First Universalist church and the leader of the Restorationist secession of 1831 — here defends the doctrine that punishment continues after death but ends in the restoration of all. This is the position Ballou's wing suppressed within the denomination but which quietly won the long game: by century's end most Universalists believed something much like it.

(Note: this summary was automatically generated and may be inaccurate.)