Ezra Stiles Ely

Ezra Stiles Ely (1786-1861) was an American Presbyterian minister. Born in Lebanon, Connecticut, and graduated from Yale in 1803, he worked as a hospital and almshouse chaplain in New York City before becoming pastor of the Pine Street Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, and he served the Presbyterian General Assembly as stated clerk (1825-36) and as moderator (1828). In the 1830s he backed the short-lived Marion College in Missouri, later returning to Philadelphia. An opponent of Universalism, he argued the case for endless punishment in a published discussion of whether the Bible teaches the final salvation of all people.

The most celebrated written debate in Universalist history. Ezra Stiles Ely, a leading Presbyterian of Philadelphia, and Abel C. Thomas, the young Universalist pastor there, exchanged letters on the conjoint question: is endless punishment taught in the Bible, or is the salvation of all? Conducted with unusual civility and real learning on both sides, the correspondence was reprinted for decades as the fairest single-volume presentation of both cases.

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