even such great painters as Michelangelo, Bouts, Signorelli, and Blake, as a large number of their sometimes horrifically descriptive paintings testify.5 The near uniformity of belief in an everlasting hell began to crumble in the seventeenth century, when notable preachers Peter Sterry and Jeremiah White argued in favor of universal salvation for sinners and saints alike,6 a belief that came to be known as “universalism”. This teaching gathered momentum in the nineteenth century, when it was adopted