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The Pluralization of Scripture in Early American Protestantism: Competing Bible Translations and the Debate over Universal Salvation, ca. 1700–1780
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 September 2023
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This article addresses a pervasive historiographic assumption about the supremacy of the King James Bible in British North America by proposing that a process we call the “pluralization of Scriptures” forced colonial Protestants to square their belief in “the Bible” with the undeniable reality of many “bibles.” While the KJV remained dominant among anglophone Protestant populations, by the early eighteenth century some heirs of New England Puritanism were challenging its adequacy and pushing for improved translations of key passages, as members of the clerical intelligentsia became immersed in cutting-edge textual and historical scholarship. Also, during the eighteenth century, non-English cultures of biblicism with their own religious print markets formed in the middle colonies, most importantly among diasporic communities of German Protestants, who brought the Luther Bible to America, and diverse “heterodox” Bibles associated with radical Pietist groups. This essay contends that, well before the American Revolution, the advent of Higher Criticism in American seminaries, and the first wave of English-language Bible production in the early republic, Scripture had ceased to be a static, monolithic entity. A considerable number of alternative translations and commentary traditions in a variety of different languages came to co-exist and, at some points, also interact with each other. Moreover, we argue that competing translations, even of passages speaking to core Christian doctrines, were inextricably bound up with some of the most significant controversies among colonial Protestants, such as the debate over the doctrine of universal salvation, our main case study.
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References
Notes
1 Saur, Christopher, “Kurtzer Begriff. Von den Heiligen Schrifften und deren Uebersetzungen. Mit etlichen Anmerckungen,” in Biblia, Das ist: Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, Nach der Deutschen Uebersetzung D. Martin Luthers (Germantown: Saur, 1743)Google Scholar, no pagination.
2 Noll, Mark, In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492–1783 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 3Google Scholar.
3 For a general introduction to the history and historiography of biblical interpretation in colonial America, see Robert E. Brown, “The Bible in the Seventeenth Century” and Stievermann, Jan, “Biblical Interpretation in Eighteenth-Century America,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America, ed. C., Paul Gutjahr (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 79–95, 96–114Google Scholar. On the “Indian Bible,” see Fisher, Linford D., “America's First Bibles: Native Uses, Abuses, and Reuses of the Indian Bibles of 1663,” in The Bible in American Life, eds. Peter Thuesen, Philip Goff, and Arthur Farnsley (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 35–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Gutjahr, Paul, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777–1880 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Similarly, Charles L. Cohen asserts the more or less unchallenged “primacy of the KJV” in his “Religion, Print Culture, and the Bible before 1876,” in Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America, eds. Charles L. Cohen and Paul S. Boyer (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 7.
5 Perry, Seth, Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018)Google Scholar.
6 Thuesen, Peter, In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles Over Translating the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 42Google Scholar.
7 Gutjahr, An American Bible, xxiii.
8 It should be emphasized, however, that discussions over other, equally important, doctrines—notably that of the Trinity but also predestination—were likewise connected to debates over Bible translations.
9 Sheehan, Jonathan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 3–4, 16Google Scholar.
10 The precise definition and periodization of “Pietism” are still highly contested among scholars. In the most general terms, “classical” German Pietism can be understood as a Protestant renewal movement that flourished among German-speaking Lutheran and Reformed populations between the second half of the seventeenth and the late eighteenth century. However, the movement also exerted cultural influences that extended far beyond German lands to northern and eastern Europe and across the Atlantic Ocean to North America in this period. While groups associated with Pietism are characterized by a great deal of theological, regional, and demographic diversity, they shared the basic goal of completing the Reformation by renewing religious life through a deepened praxis pietatis and devotion to the Bible, morally reforming society, and by bringing as many people as possible to an authentic, inwardly held faith in Christ through revivals and missions. Pietists were generally animated by millennialist eschatologies (although of very different stripes) and they shared certain practices, such as conventicles and personal Bible studies. This article follows a basic distinction made by most scholars between “churchly” or “confessional” and “radical” Pietists.” While the former, like the Lutheran Pietists of Halle, were committed to reforming their churches from within (also by actively involving lay people), the latter believed that the confessional churches were beyond redemption and that true believers must separate themselves or come out of their Babylonian captivity. Yet these radical Pietists differed widely in their views of the true church and how it could be realized on earth. Some, like the Schwarzenau Brethren, sought to organize “come-outers” in a new institutional body based on more scriptural principles; others attempted to bind together committed Christians from different churches in interconfessional, “Philadelphian” networks; and yet others, like Christopher Saur, insisted on remaining independent spiritual seekers. On the definitional debates and for recent surveys of the relevant literature, see Shantz, Douglas H., An Introduction to German Pietism: Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of Modern Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013), 1–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shantz, Douglas H., “Introduction,” in A Companion to German Pietism, 1660–1800, ed. H., Douglas Shantz (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 1–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Breul, Wolfgang, “Pietismusforschung seit 1970,” Pietismus Handbuch, ed. Breul, Wolfgang and Hahn-Bruckart, Thomas (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2021), 26–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Thuesen, In Discordance with the Scriptures, 4.
12 On the history of English Bible translations in the early modern period, see the chapters in Part 1 of The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Early Modern England, c. 1530–1700, eds. Kevin Killeen, Helen Smith, and Rachel Willie (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).
13 On the discussion over the KJV in the seventeenth century, see Gordon Campbell, Bible: The Story of the King James Version, 1611–2011 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 108–28.
14 Isabell Rivers, “Biblical Aids, Editions, Translations, and Commentaries by Dissenters, Methodists, and Church of England Evangelicals in Eighteenth-Century England,” in The Bible in Early Transatlantic Pietism and Evangelicalism, eds. Ryan P. Hoselton, Jan Stievermann, Douglas A. Sweeney, and Michael A. G. Haykin (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022), 36–55.
15 Cotton Mather, Biblia Americana: America's First Bible Commentary. A Synoptic Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, eds. Reiner Smolinski and Jan Stievermann et al., 10 vols. (Tübingen/Grand Rapids, MI: Mohr Siebeck/Baker Academic, 2010–). Mather's Biblia is examined from diverse angels in Reiner Smolinski and Jan Stievermann, eds. Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana—America's First Bible Commentary: Essays in Reappraisal (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010). See also Jan Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity: Interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in Cotton Mather's Biblia Americana (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016).
16 Cotton Mather, A New Offer to the Lovers of Religion and Learning (Boston: 1714), 11.
17 Mather, Biblia Americana, vol. 10 (2022), ed. Jan Stievermann, 321. Mather cites Luther's translation. In his 1546 edition of the Deutsche Bibel, Luther had replaced his antiquated translation from 1522 “[die Weisheit ist] gelencke” with the phrase “lesst jr sagen” (WA DB 7:394–95).
18 Mather, Biblia Americana, vol. 4 (2014), ed. Harry Clark Maddux, 233–34, drawing on James Knight, Eight Sermons Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, In Defence of the Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit; at the Lecture Founded by the Honoured Lady Moyer (London: 1721), 234–35.
19 See Douglas A. Sweeney and David P. Barshinger, eds., Jonathan Edwards and Scripture: Biblical Exegesis in British North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).
20 The following draws on Douglas Shantz, “Bible Editions, Translations, and Commentaries in German Pietism,” in The Bible in Early Transatlantic Pietism and Evangelicalism, 17–36; Thomas Hahn-Bruckart, “Bibelausgaben,” in Pietismus Handbuch, ed. Breul and Hahn-Bruckart, 422–25; Beate Köster, “‘Mit tiefem Respekt, mit Furcht und Zittern’: Bibelübersetzungen im Pietismus,” Pietismus und Neuzeit 24 (1998): 95–115; Hans-Jürgen Schrader, “red=arten u[nd] worte behalten/die der Heil[ige] Geist gebrauchet”: Pietistische Bemühungen um die Bibelverdeutschung nach und neben Luther,” Pietismus und Neuzeit 40 (2014): 10–48; and Martin Brecht, “Die Bedeutung der Bibel im deutschen Pietismus,” in Geschichte des Pietismus, Band 4: Glaubenswelt und Lebenswelten, herausgegeben von Hartmut Lehmann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2004), 102–10.
21 For the book lists, see Hermann Wellenreuther, Heinrich Melchior Mühlenberg und die deutschen Lutheraner in Nordamerika, 1742–1787: Wissenstransfer und Wandel eines atlantischen zu einem amerikanischen Netzwerk (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2013), 535–74. On the German book market, see A. Gregg Roeber, “German and Dutch Books and Printing,” in A History of the Book in America: The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, eds. Hugh Armory and David D. Hall (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 298–313; Heinz G. F. Wilsdorf, Early German-American Imprints (New York: Lang, 1999); Karl Arndt, et al., The First Century of German Language Printing in the United States of America, 2 vols. (Göttingen: Niedersächs. Staats- u. Univ.-Bibliothek, 1989); Robert Cazden, A Social History of the German Book Trade in America to the Civil War (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1984).
22 Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible, 20.
23 The “Philadelphians” refers to a movement of early modern English and German Protestants, represented most prominently within radical separatist groups, who, among other things, believed the true church did not consist of any existing confession or denomination. Philadelphians sought to gather sincere believers from within different confessional churches in “trans-denominational fellowship,” anticipating the full realization of Christ's true church during the millennium. Peter Vogt, “Zinzendorf's ‘Philadelphian’ Ecumenism in Pennsylvania, 1742: An Example of Cross-Cultural Dynamics in Eighteenth Century Pietism,” Covenant Quarterly 62 (2004): 13, 13–27. For an overview of the German Philadelphian movement, see Hans Schneider, German Radical Pietism (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2007), 67–74. See note 45 for more information on the connections between the English and German Philadelphians.
24 The original German titles are Mystische und Profetische Bibel, Das ist Die gantze Heil. Schrifft, Altes und Neues Testaments, Aufs neue nach dem Grund verbessert, Sampt Erklärung Der fürnemsten Sinnbilder und Weissagungen, Sonderlich Des H. Lieds Salomons Und der Offenbarung J.C. (Marburg: Joh. Kürßner, 1712), and Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments: Nach dem Grund-Text aufs neue übersehen und übersetzet: Nebst Einiger Erklärung des buchstäblichen Sinnes . . . , 8 vols., (Berleburg: Haug, 1726–1742).
25 Douglas H. Shantz, “The Millennial Study Bible of Heinrich Horch,” in The Practical Calvinist: An Introduction to the Presbyterian and Reformed Heritage, ed. Peter Lillback (Fearn, Ross-shire: Christian Focus Publications, 2002), 398–400.
26 On the Berleburg Bible and its sources, see Martin Brecht, “Die Berleburger Bibel: Hinweise zu ihrem Verständnis,” Pietismus und Neuzeit 8 (1982), 162–200; and Martin Hoffmann, Theologie und Exegese der Berleburger Bibel (1726–1742) (Gütersloh: Verlag C. Bertelsmann, 1937), esp. 9–29.
27 See Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible, 73–84.
28 Cazden, A Social History of the German Book Trade, 4–5, 23.
29 Wilsdorf, Early German-American Imprints, 118–19; Stephen Longenecker, The Christopher Sauers: Courageous Printers Who Defended Religious Freedom in Early America (Elgin, IL: Brethren, 1981), 52.
30 Although the Berleburg Bible was never reprinted in America, as Kenneth A. Strand has pointed out, “it gained considerable popularity among the German Brethren, Mennonites, and various other ‘sectarians.’” Strand, “Some Significant Americana: The Saur German Bible,” Andrews University Studies 32, no. 1–2 (Spring/Summer 1994): 57–106, 59.
31 Jeff Bach, Voices of the Turtledoves: The Sacred World of Ephrata (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006), 25; Stephen O'Malley, Early German-American Evangelicalism: Pietist Sources on Discipleship and Sanctification (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 1995), 273, 271–99; E. G. Alderfer, The Ephrata Commune: An Early American Counterculture (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985), 25; Carter Lindberg, “Biblical Interpretation in Continental American Pietism,” in A History of Biblical Interpretation, eds. Alan Hauser and Duane Watson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 3:327; Marcus Meier, The Origins of the Schwarzenau Brethren (Philadelphia: Brethren Encyclopedia, 2008), 139.
32 In his foreword, Saur explained that he had chosen to keep with the Luther translation because of demand and familiarity and because the Halle edition offered many useful parallel references. Saur, Vorrede, unpaginated.
33 Wilsdorf, Early German-American Imprints, 52, 60. The 1763 and 1776 editions dropped the Appendix (“Kurtzer Begriff”).
34 Longenecker, The Christopher Sauers, 54; Strand, “Saur German Bibles,” 67.
35 In the advertisements of the Bible printed in his newspapers, Saur offered customers the option to purchase Bibles bound without these three apocryphal books and the appendix, but apparently few chose to do so. Julius Friedrich Sachse, The German Sectarians of Pennsylvania, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Printed for the Author, 1899–1900), 2:31–32.
36 Biblia, Das ist: Die Heilige Schrift, 206: “Welche aber Christum angehören, die creuzigen ihr fleisch samt den lüsten und begierden.”
37 Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, 6:608: “Die jenigen aber, welche Christi sind, die haben das Fleisch gecreutzet samt den Lüsten und Begirden.” Reitz minimally differs: “Die dann Christi sind, die haben das Fleisch gecreutziget samt den Lüsten und Begirden. ” See, Das Neue Testament Unsers Herren Jesu Christi Auffs neue aus dem Grund verteutschet (Offenbach: Launoy, 1703), 365. Saur, “Kurtzer Begriff,” unpaginated.
38 Biblia, Das ist: Die Heilige Schrift, 473. It is worth noting that the subsequent 1763 and 1776 editions of the Saur Bible, maybe in response to customer criticism, inverted the presentation of the two translations, so that Luther's text was placed first, with the Berleburg text immediately following and in smaller type.
39 Luther: “Aber Ich weiß, daß mein erlöser lebet: und er wird mich hernach aus der erden auferwecken. Und werde danach mit dieser meiner Haut umgeben werden, und werde in meinem Fleisch Gott sehen.” Berleburg: “Ja, ich weiß, daß mein Erlöser lebet; / und er wird der letzte über den staub sich aufmachen; / Und nachdem ich werde erwachen / so werden diese Dinge ableget seyn / und ich werde in meinem Fleische Gott schaun.” The Berleburg commentators also acknowledged the possibility of a starkly different translation for verse 26: “Und ob schon noch oder neben meiner Haut / die durch viel Geschwüre und Eyterbeulen aufs übelste zugerichtet / verzehret und verschrumpffen ist.” Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, 3:72.
40 This view is offered by two of the standard histories, Conrad Wright, The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America (Boston: Beacon, 1955) and David Robinson, The Unitarians and the Universalists (London: Greenwood, 1985). Ann Bressler acknowledges the “Arminian tendencies” of early figures like Winchester, especially with regard to universalist schemes of punishment for sin, but she places the emergence of full-blown Arminianism within the Universalism movement in the nineteenth century. Ann Lee Bressler, The Universalist Movement in America, 1770–1880 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 16.
41 An exception is E. Brooks Holifield's brief but insightful treatment of the origins of universalism in America, which acknowledges the central importance of exegetical debates for the early movement. See his Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 218–33.
42 The most extensive but now dated treatment of the German roots of American universalism is in Richard Eddy, Universalism in America. A History, 2 vols. (Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1884), 1:13–93. For theological studies that also give some attention to the German connection of early American universalism, see Michael McClymond, The Devil's Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 1:573–80, 1:605, 2:1069; John A. Buehren, Universalists and Unitarians in America: A People's History (Boston: Skinner House, 2011); Clinton Lee Scott, The Universalist Church in America: A Short History (Boston: Universalist Historical Society, 1957). McClymond asserts that “official historical narratives of the Universalist Church . . . have generally slighted the early development of universalism among German-speaking colonists in America” in favor of English-focused narratives. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, 1:573.
43 Bressler argues that universalism “seems to have appeared more or less independently among a number of eighteenth-century churches and sects, including . . . German pietist congregations.” The origins of English and German universalism, she asserts, should be portrayed as detached phenomena because “none of these groups made the doctrine central to their creed,” and thus “should not be considered part of the Universalist movement” in America. Bressler, The Universalist Movement in America, 14.
44 See, for instance, the sermon preached by Tillotson in 1694, reprinted in The Works of Dr John Tillotson (London: 1820), 3:84.
45 Jane Leade, John Pordage (1607–1681), and Thomas Bromley (1629–1691), under the aegis of The Philadelphian Society, forged connections with like-minded German thinkers such as Johann Wilhelm and Johanna Eleonora Petersen on the Continent. The doctrine of universal restoration formulated by Leade and the Petersens became a meaningful pillar of the mystical-Philadelphian tradition that would come to envelope radical German Pietism on both sides of the Atlantic. On the Petersen's connection to the English and German Pietist Philadelphians, see Schneider, German Radical Pietism, 67–74.
46 Biblia Americana, vol. 8, ed. Rick Kennedy and Harry Clark Maddux (Forthcoming). Mather draws on Hugo Grotius, Annotationes in Novum Testamentum (Paris, 1646), 2:18.
47 Biblia Americana, vol. 9 (2018), ed. Robert E. Brown, 150. Mather draws on John Locke, Paraphrase on the Epistles of St. Paul, ed. Arthur W. Wainright ([1705–1707] Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 2:579–80.
48 Biblia Americana, 9:458, 462, and 552.
49 Biblia Americana, 9:242. Mather again draws on Locke's Paraphrase on the Epistles of St. Paul, 1:215.
50 Nathan O. Hatch, “Sola Scriptura and Novus Ordo Seclorum,” The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural History, ed. Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 59–79, esp. 61–63.
51 See, for instance, William Law, An Humble, Earnest and Affectionate Address to the Clergy (London: 1761).
52 On the Petersens, see Markus Matthias, Johann Wilhelm und Johanna Eleonora Petersen: Eine Biographie bis zur Amtsenthebung Petersens im Jahre 1692 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1993); and Ruth Albrecht, Johanna Eleonora Petersen: Theologische Schriftstellerin des frühen Pietismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2005), esp. 233–300. Their universalism is treated by Kurt Lüthi, “Die Erörterung der Allversöhnungslehre durch das pietistische Ehepaar Johann Wilhelm und Johanna Eleonora Petersen,” Theologische Zeitschrift 12, no. 3 (1956): 362–77; and in Elisa Belucci, Johann Wilhelm and Johanna Eleonora Petersen’s Eschatology in Context (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2022), esp. 60–94 and 226–64.
53 Shantz, An Introduction to German Pietism, 223–27; O'Malley, Early German-American Evangelicalism, 275. On Petersen's connection to Siegvolck and the English and German Pietist Philadelphians, see Schneider, German Radical Pietism, 71, 67–74.
54 Arndt, The First Century of German Language Printing, 1:164, 1:169; Albert Dehner Bell, The Life and Times of Dr. George de Benneville, 1703–1793 (Boston: Dept. of Publications of the Universalist Church of America, 1953), 42–43.
55 See, for instance, Robinson, Unitarians and the Universalists, 246–47; John S. Oakes, Conservative Revolutionaries: Transformation and Tradition in the Religious and Political Thought of Charles Chauncy and Jonathan Mayhew (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2017), 99. Apparently, Winchester first encountered The Everlasting Gospel in 1778. Re-reading it sometime later together with James Stonehouse's Universal Restitution: A Scripture Doctrine (1761), according to Winchester's own testimony, greatly influenced his conversion to universalism.
56 Holifield, Theology in America, 221.
57 The fullest recent account (plus an English summary of Siegvolck) of that influence is offered by chapters 5 and 6 of Robin A. Parry (with Ilaria L. E. Ramelli), A Larger Hope? Volume 2: Universal Salvation from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2019).
58 Klein-Nicholai, Ewige Evangelium (1768), 111–15; Klein-Nicholai, The Everlasting Gospel, 96–121.
59 It could be that Klein-Nicolai and the Berleburg scholars relied on the same sources. But it seems more likely that Das Ewige Evangelium (1705) was itself an inspiration for the Berleburg commentators.
60 The Mystery Hid is in large parts focused on discussing the biblical evidence for universalism, including extended versions of all the issues discussed in Salvation for All Men. In his Benevolence of the Deity (1784) and the Five Dissertations (1785), Chauncy's focus is more on moral, theological, and philosophical arguments. For studies on the development of Chauncy's universalism, see Wright, The Beginnings of Unitarianism, 185–99; Edward M. Griffin, Old Brick: Charles Chauncy of Boston, 1705–1787 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), 171–76; Charles H. Lippy, Seasonable Revolutionary: The Mind of Charles Chauncy (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981), 110–12; Oakes, Conservative Revolutionaries, 90–109.
61 If Chauncy did not study The Everlasting Gospel or the Petersens directly, their arguments were accessible to him through Jeremiah White's The Restoration of All Things (1712), which Chauncy does acknowledge as one of his key interlocutors in Salvation for All Men. In his unpaginated preface, White points to Mystērion Apokatastaseōs Pantōn, “written in the High-German by the Learned Dr. Jo. W. Petersen, sometimes Superintendent of Luneburgh,” as one of his major sources, in which Petersen, “has strenuously defended this Point [of universalism], and collected and adopted into his Work the Writings of several others upon this Subject in lesser Tracts.”
62 Murray was much more influenced by a high-Calvinistic strand of English universalism represented, most importantly, by James Relly (1721/22–1778) in works such as Union, or A Treatise on the Consanguinity and Affinity between Christ and His Church (1759). While Murray made successful preaching tours in America and founded the first universalist church, in the long run, as McClymond has observed, “the origins of American universalism lay in German-American Böhmism,” and we may add, Pietistim, “rather than in the well-known and better-documented ‘high Calvinist’ universalism” of Murray. McClymond, The Devil's Redemption, 1:564.
63 Biblia, Das ist: Die Heilige Schrift, 225: “Welcher will, daß allen menschen geholfen werde, und zur erkentniß der wahrheit kommen.”
64 See Reitz, Das Neue Testament, 399; Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, 6:748.
65 See also Klein-Nicholai, Das Ewige Evangelium, 9–10; Klein-Nicholai, The Everlasting Gospel, 10.
66 Chauncy, Salvation for All Men, 4. Compare Chauncy, The Mystery Hid, 21, 163–70.
67 Chauncy, Salvation for All Men, 8. Compare Chauncy, The Mystery Hid, 227.
68 Elhanan Winchester, The Universal Restoration, Exhibited In Four Dialogues Between A Minister And His Friend, Comprehending The substance of several real Conversations which the Author had with various Persons, both in America and Europe, On That Interesting Subject, Chiefly Designed Fully to state, and fairly to answer the most common Objections that are brought against it from The Scriptures, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: T. Dobson, 1792), 106; see also Elhanan Winchester, An Attempt to Collect the Scripture Passages in Favor of the Universal Restoration (Providence, RI: B. Wheeler, 1786), 11.
69 Biblia, Das ist: Die Heilige Schrift, 130: “bis auf die zeit, da herwiedergebracht werde alles, was Gott geredet hat durch den Mund aller seiner heiligen Propheten.”
70 Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, 6:21–22: “bis zu den Zeiten der Wiederherstellung aller Dinge, von welchen Gott geredet hat durch den Mund aller seiner heiligen Propheten.” Compare Reitz, Das Neue Testament, 22.
71 Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, 6:22.
72 Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, 6:312. For Klein-Nicholai's almost identical reading of Rom. 11:32, see Das Ewige Evangelium, 23, and The Everlasting Gospel, 21.
73 Klein-Nicholai, The Everlasting Gospel (1792), 10. Winchester slightly altered Siegvolck's language here—further highlighting the significance of different translations—by inserting the words “time” and “age” where Siegvolck had “World” in both cases. The quote, as it appeared in the 1753 English translation, read: “If it be not done in the present World, as indeed it is not but to the smallest Number of the corrupt Creatures, it must necessarily once be done in the World to come.” Klein-Nicholai, The Everlasting Gospel (1753), 9.
74 Biblia, Das ist: Die Heilige Schrift, 207: “Daß es gepredigt [ausgeführt] würde, da die zeit erfüllet war, auf daß alle dinge zusammen (unter ein haupt) verfasset würden in Christo, beyde das im himmel und auf erden ist, durch ihn selbst.”
75 Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, 6:618: “Um in der Haushaltung der Fülle der Zeiten aller Dinge wieder unter einem Haupt zusammenzufassen in Christo, beydes die in dem Himmel und die auf Erden sind.” Compare Reitz, Das Neue Testament, 367, and Horch, Mystische und Profetische Bibel, unpaginated at Eph. 1:8–10.
76 Winchester, The Universal Restoration, 165. See also Klein-Nicholai, Das Ewige Evangelium, 114–15; Klein-Nicholai, The Everlasting Gospel, 109–10.
77 Chauncy, The Salvation of All Men, 12–13. Compare The Mystery Hid, 39, 123–26, 142–63.
78 Compare, for instance, the Berleburg gloss on 1 Cor. 15:22ff.: The first-born are those “who are of Christ and worthy to inherit that world and partake in the first resurrection . . . before the onset of thousand years after the destruction of Antichrist (2 Thess. 2:8), when Christ will erect a glorious kingdom on earth with his faithful.” After the end of the millennium all evil will have been blotted out and the souls of all men, as part of the fully “restored creation” will go over into “the eternity of eternities” with God. Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, 6:460.
79 Chauncy, The Mystery Hid, 10–11, 369–406, passim. For Winchester's millennialism, see esp. his A Course of Lectures, on the Prophecies that Remain to be Fulfilled, 2 vols. (Norwich, CT: 1794–1795) and Two Lectures on the Prophecies (Norwich, CT: 1789).
80 Klein-Nicholai, The Everlasting Gospel (1753), 45–46; compare Klein-Nicholai, Das Ewige Evangelium, 49.
81 Klein-Nicholai, Das Ewige Evangelium, 49–57; Klein-Nicholai, The Everlasting Gospel, 45–54.
82 Klein-Nicholai, The Everlasting Gospel, 47. See also Winchester, The Universal Restoration, vii; Klein-Nicholai, Das Ewige Evangelium, 52.
83 Winchester, An Attempt to Collect the Scripture Passages, 37.
84 Winchester, The Universal Restoration, 19.
85 Klein-Nicholai, The Everlasting Gospel, 52; Klein-Nicholai, Das Ewige Evangelium, 57.
86 Die Heilige Schrift Altes und Neues Testaments, 5:279 and 6:732.
87 Chauncy, Salvation for All Men, 19. Compare also Chauncy, The Mystery Hid, 259–328.
88 John Clarke also responded with A Letter to Doctor Mather (Boston: 1782).
89 Mather, Samuel, All men will not be saved forever: or, An attempt to prove, that this is a Scriptural doctrine (Boston: 1782), 12Google Scholar.
90 Mather, All men will not be saved forever, 14.
91 Mather, All men will not be saved forever, 16.
92 Mather, All men will not be saved forever, 20–21.
93 Mather, All men will not be saved forever, 21.
94 Mather, All men will not be saved forever, 19.