Georg Paul Siegvolck

Paul Siegvolck was the pseudonym of Georg Klein-Nicolai (1671-1734), a German Pietist writer of Friessdorf associated with the circle of Johann Wilhelm Petersen. His treatise known in English as The Everlasting Gospel, first printed in German in 1705, argued from scripture that hell's punishments are corrective and temporary and that all creatures will finally be restored. An English translation printed by Christopher Sower at Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1753 circulated widely in colonial America, and Elhanan Winchester reissued it in London in 1792, making it one of the most influential universalist texts of the eighteenth century.

The book that carried German pietist universalism to America. 'Paul Siegvolck' was the pseudonym of Georg Klein-Nicolai, whose treatise on the finally universal reach of redemption circulated among the radical pietists of the Rhineland; translated into English and printed at Germantown, Pennsylvania in 1753, it spread among the German Baptists and their neighbors decades before John Murray landed. Elhanan Winchester credited it with helping convince him of the universal restoration — making this modest volume a common ancestor of much American universalism.

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