A treatise on atonement

The single most influential book in American Universalist theology. Hosea Ballou, a self-taught Vermont preacher, argues that sin is finite and that the atonement was never a payment to appease an angry God: Christ's death reconciles humanity to God, not God to humanity. From this he concludes that endless punishment is both unscriptural and morally incoherent, and that God's unchanging love must finally restore every soul. First published in 1805, the book pushed the young denomination away from Calvinism and toward a distinctly liberal, unitarian theology; this copy is the Universalist Publishing House edition of 1882.

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