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Allenites

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Allendorf, Johann Ludwig Conrad

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the followers of Henry Allen, born at Newport, R. I., June 14,1748, a man of natural capacity but undisciplined mind, who, about the year 1774, journeyed through most parts of the province of Nova Scotia, and, by his popular talents, made many converts. He also published several treatises and sermons, in which he maintains that the souls of all the human race are emanations, or rather parts, of the one Great Spirit, but that originally they had individually the powers of moral agents — that they were all present with our first parents in the garden of Eden, and were actually in the first transgression. He supposes that our first parents in innocency were pure spirits; that the material world was not then made; but, in consequence of the fall, mankind being cut off from God, that they might not sink into immediate destruction, the world was produced, and they were clothed with hard bodies; and that all the human race will in their turns, by natural generation, be invested with such bodies, and in them enjoy a state of probation. He maintains that the body of our Savior was never raised from the grave, and that none of the bodies of men ever will be; but when the original number of souls have had their course on earth they will all receive their reward or punishment in their original unembodied state. He held baptism, the Lord's Supper, and ordination, to be matters of indifference. Allen died in 1784, after which his party greatly declined. Adams's Dict. of Religions; Gregoire, Hist. des Sectes, v. 110 sq.