THE most notable advocates of the theory of conditional immortality
on the Continent in the nineteenth century were French and Swiss
divines. In Germany universalism was more prevalent, despite the
anathematizing of it in the seventeenth article of the Augsburg
Confession. This universalism was particularly characteristic of
those who had been influenced by idealist philosophy or radical
pietism. ¹ There were, however, a number of German conditionalists,
of whom Richard Rothe (1799-1869) was probably the chief. Their
conditionalism was not the ontological conditionalism that was
prevalent in England, but a soteriological conditionalism, a faith that
all men could be saved on condition that they 'converted themselves'. ²

Emmanuel Pétavel-Olliff ( 1836-1910) was the leading con-
ditionalist on the continent. He was the son of a Swiss pastor,
A.-F. Pétavel, who had been brought into contact with Edward
White through helping his father with his correspondence, particu-
larly in connection with a group interested in the future of the Jews
and the second coming of Christ, to which both White and the elder
Pétavel belonged. White's sister, Ellen, was married to M. Ranyard,
a close friend of the Pétavels, and this provided a further contact. ³
In 1863 Emmanuel Pétavel became minister of the Swiss Church in
London, where he remained until 1866, staying at first with the
Ranyards, and later at Brixton, after his marriage to Susanna Ollif
whom he had first met at an Evangelical Alliance meeting in Geneva
in 1861. ⁴ When he returned to Switzerland he settled at Neuchitel.

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