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.