Not by the sects known as Universalists and Unitarians, small in numbers, though in the character of their adherents the greatest of the Christian sects, must we estimate the importance of the work of Ballou and Channing and other Liberal ministers. The influence of their teachings has permeated every Christian sect, and quickened every humane conscience. In the minds of all intelligent Christians, largely as the result of their labors, this heartless demon and this cruel dogma are dead. In their creeds they still survive. They are ashamed of the dogma; they abhor it. They should abhor its author, and banish both.
“What! I should call on that Infinite Love that has served us so well?
Infinite cruelty rather, that made everlasting hell,
Made us, foreknew us, foredoom’d us, and does what he will with his own;
Better our dead brute mother who never has heard us groan.”
531
Is it possible to fall from grace?
Peter: “If after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning” ([2 Peter ii, 20]).