A Larger Hope?, Volume 2: Universal Salvation from the Reformation to the Nineteenth Century

by Ilaria Ramelli

“Whether God Is the Cause of Evil,” 103.

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Christ serves as a firstfruit and a pledge of what God will one day do for the whole.

For those who balk at the idea of their enemies being saved in the end, Winstanley comments, It is much for the glory of God for him to redeeme, not part onely, but all mankinde from death, which his own hands made, it is his revealed will so to do, therefore let it be your joy that the will of your Father is, and shall be fulfilled; and do not thinke the Saints are made unhappy, and God dishonored, if he heale them that were lost, and that did not enter into the City, in the beginning of the great day of judgment, for as he is honored in saving you of the Citie that were lost: so he will be honored in redeeming these that lye under the power of the second death.

the first place: That eternal minde therefore making all things out of a Principle of infinite love, and for the good and happiness of the things themselves, and seeing what he had made and how he had made them, and what was likely to be the lot of some of them from the necessary unperfectness of their Natures, if their future ill hap was likely to be more sharp and dolorous than all the good they should enjoy from him till that calamity befell them grateful and pleasant, his great compassion certainly would have persuaded him quickly to annihilate them; or rather his Wisdom would have judg’d it more decorous never to have made them.

God will make everything beautiful in his time.

Each person which hath his part in this Ransom, hath its proper time for its discovery to him.