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.Brooks Holifi eld, whereas “Winchester gave it redemptive meaning.” 36A related but clearer-cut controversy erupted in the next generation when the more famous Hosea Ballou (1771–1852), pastor of Boston’s Second Universalist Church, began advocating an “ultra-Universalism” that denied hell punishment altogether.The hardships of this life, he concluded, were From Methodists to Mormons109suffi cient penance for fi nite human sins.This raised the ire of more traditional “restorationist” Universalists, who maintained that all sinners would be restored to unity with God after enduring some sort of penalty or purgation.Outright denial of future retribution, the traditionalists feared, would expose Universalism to the charge of abetting immorality.37Yet for all their disagreements, early Universalists held one vital characteristic in common: a populist biblicism.The movement’s largely rural and urban working-class constituents eagerly embraced Holy Writ as a plain-spoken word of comfort against the academic pretensions of New England’s Calvinist-turned-Unitarian elite.It is therefore not surprising that Paine’s attack on scripture in The Age of Reason so riled Elhanan Winchester.Here were two populists clashing head-on over whether the Bible could be trusted as a source of common sense.For Universalists, the problem was not the Bible itself but the cunning glosses put on it by Calvinistic predestinarians.Getting past these inherited interpretations, Universalists believed, normally required only a clear-headed reappraisal, although a few enthusiasts looked to more ecstatic methods of exegesis.A notable example was the itinerant preacher Caleb Rich (1750–1821).Like many of his coreligionists, Rich was reared in Massachusetts on strict Calvinism (in his case, of the Baptist variety) and endured signifi cant bouts of predestinarian melancholy.But instead of fi nding relief from reading alone, Rich was seized in 1778 by a series of trances and visions.In the most remarkable episode, a luminous personage appeared, carrying a Bible, and revealed to him the correct interpretation of the story of Abraham’s wife Sarah and the bondwoman Hagar, as retold by Paul (Gal.4:22–31).All the “formal” churches were wrong, the person explained, in assuming that the apostle had in mind eternal election and damnation in speaking of “two covenants.” The children of the bondwoman suffered only in this life.In the life to come, all people would enjoy unending happiness by virtue of their descent from Jesus Christ, the second Adam.The angelic being then instructed Rich to go out and proclaim this gospel.Evidently, he proved to be a persuasive evangelist, for he is credited with converting another onetime Baptist, the elder Hosea Ballou.38HOT-BLOODED METHODISTSThe Universalists put the Methodists on the defensive.Ever since John Wesley’s heart was strangely warmed, Methodists had been sensitive to the charge that their doctrine of prevenient grace, which gave all people the potential to be saved, amounted to Universalism.George Whitefi eld had accused Wesley of precisely that, prompting Wesley’s mother, Susanna, to 110Predestinationupbraid the Grand Itinerant for his “Great Mistake (I would hope it is not wilful).” 39 Indeed, the Methodists’ excessive zeal to distance themselvesfrom the stigma of heterodoxy contributed to mutual antipathy with their Universalist competitors.One Universalist in antebellum New York state, Nathaniel Stacy, recalled his encounter with a Methodist circuit rider, a Mr.Mitchell, who preached on 1 Peter 4:18 (“And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?”).Mitchell soon made it clear that Methodists were the only righteous ones and even many of them would have diffi culty getting into heaven.The unrighteous included persons propagating false doctrines “leading souls blindfold down to hell.”At this point in the harangue, recounted Stacy, Mitchell leaned forward“so as to almost thrust his fi nger in my face, and raising his voice almost to a scream, he exclaimed, ‘If the righteous are scarcely saved, where do you expect to appear’?” Stacy held his tongue but “smiled, disdainfully, in his face”:[Mitchell’s countenance] instantly reddened with passion—his eyes seemed to fl ash fi re! he leaped, it appeared to me, three feet from the fl oor, and smiting his fi st on the Bible, his eyes steadfastly fi xed on me, and mine on him with the same contemptuous smile—he exclaimed,with a voice like thunder, “I’ll tell you where you’ll appear—you’ll appear in hell, with the liquid streams of fi re and brimstone pouring down your throat, to all eternity!” 40Later, Stacy wrote of his run-in with another Methodist evangelist, “Mr.F.,”who prayed that the Lord would “deliver us from atheism, from deism, from Universalism, and every other hell-hatched ism that prevails in the land.” Mr.F.then turned his wrath to the Calvinists, but, as Stacy put it,“the poor fellow knew no more about Calvinism than he did about the man in the moon.He stamped, raved, and foamed a long time about ‘ ’lection’but fi nally contented himself by saying, ‘but I don’t believe that.’ ”41In Stacy’s eyes, Mr.F.was the most “ignorant block-head I ever heard attempt to address a congregation.” For their part, however, Methodists were incredulous that Universalists could believe (as Mr.F.put it) that“everybody’s ’lected.” Empirical evidence seemed to suggest that some people were irredeemably sinful.Were unrepentant “thieves, robbers, [and]whore-mongers” all going to heaven? Mr.F.asked.“[I]f everybody’s going to heaven, I don’t want to go there.” 42 More genteel Methodists were no less adamant than their backcountry brethren on Universalism’s deleterious infl uence.Wilbur Fisk, who graduated from Brown University in 1815 and became the fi rst president of Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1831, From Methodists to Mormons111criticized Huntington’s Calvinism Improved for leading many people down the slippery slope to an infi delity that feared “no hell—no devil—no angryGod.”43 Elsewhere, he derided the Universalists for treating time-honored theological traditions as no better than “impressions received in the nurseryfrom our old superstitious grandmothers.”44Yet as we saw in the last chapter, the original and chief opponents of the Methodists were not the Universalists but the Calvinists.By the fi rst decades of the nineteenth century, this battle was erupting on a wider front both in the revival tents and in print.The Methodist-as-recovering-Calvinist became a familiar fi gure, thanks to oft-reprinted texts such as the Experience and Gospel Labours of Benjamin Abbott (1732–1796), a New Jersey farmer turned itinerant preacher.Abbott was arguably more infl uential in death than in life: his memoir, posthumously published in 1801, went through at least a dozen antebellum editions
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