First edition of Ballou’s Treatise on Atonement available for download

It’s been years since I’ve read in full Hosea Ballou’s influential masterwork, the Treatise on Atonement, from the last print edition (UUA, 1986) which itself was reproduced from a mid-nineteenth century edition.

But this was the revision of the mature Ballou, and I’ve been meaning to read the more direct and homspun theology of the thirty-four year old man who wrote the first edition, published in 1805.

For some years, I have owned an original 1811 “surreptitious” or “pirate” edition, which has the same text, but it’s hard to cuddle up to a book that’s two centuries old.

Fortunately, I’m more than happy to read a book on a screen, and Google Books has a copy of the 1805 original available for download.

Which I have. Go and do likewise.

By Scott Wells

Scott Wells, 46, is a Universalist Christian minister doing Universalist theology and church administration hacks in Washington, D.C.

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