Jane Lead

Jane Lead (also spelled Leade, 1623/24-1704) was an English Christian mystic, born into a Norfolk gentry family, whose visionary writings drew on the thought of the German mystic Jakob Böhme. After her husband's death in 1670 she began recording visions of the divine Wisdom, or "Virgin Sophia," and she assumed leadership of a London Behmenist circle that in 1694 organized as the Philadelphian Society. Across some twenty published works she taught the universal restoration of all souls, holding that punishment after death is corrective rather than endless, which has made her an important forerunner of later Universalist thought. Her writings circulated widely on the Continent and influenced radical German Pietism and other esoteric Christian movements. She died in London in 1704.

Jane Lead, the visionary at the center of London's Philadelphian Society, here announces the everlasting gospel: the restitution of the whole lapsed creation through the ages to come. The tract's influence ran far beyond her circle — its German translation, published the same year, converted Johann Wilhelm and Johanna Eleonora Petersen, whose Mystērion Apokatastaseōs Pantōn (also in this collection) carried the doctrine into the great German Pietist controversy, from which it returned to England and America through Siegvolck's Everlasting Gospel. The scan is from the British Library's copy.

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