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Cecils 


EAELY    SOUEOES 


OF 


ENGLISH     UNITARIAN 
CHRISTIANITY 


BY 

GASTON    BONET-MAURY,    D.D. 

PROFESSOR    OF    ECCLESIASTICAL     HISTORY    IN    THE    FACULTY    OF 
PROTESTANT   THEOLOGY    IN    THE    UNIVERSITY   OF    FRANCE. 


REVISED  BY  THE  AUTHOR 

AND   TRANSLATED    BY 

EDWARD  POTTER  HALL. 

WITH    A    PREFACE    BY 

JAMES    MARTINEAU,   LL.D.,   D.D. 


BRITISH   &   FOREIGN    UNITARIAN   ASSOCIATION, 

37,  Norfolk  Street,  Strand,  London. 


Note. — The  British  and  Foreign  Unitarian  Association,  in  accord- 
ance with  its  First  Rule,  gives  publicity  to  woi-ks  calculated  "to  promote 
Unitarian  Christianity  by  the  diffusion  of  Biblical,  theological,  and 
literary  knowledge,  on  topics  connected  with  it,"  but  does  not  hold 
itself  responsible  for  every  statement,  opinion,  or  expression  of  the 
writers. 

*^*  For  the  notes  in  brackets  in  this  work  the  author  is  not  respon- 
sible. They  have  been  contributed,  with  the  Index,  at  the  request  of  the 
Committee  of  the  Association,  by  Alex.  Gordon,  M.A. 


CONTENTS. 


■    ^  PAGE 

Preface  to  the  English  Translation,  by  Dr.  Martineau      v 
I  N'lRODUCTION I 

Chapter  I. 

Is  Unitarian  Christianity  of  English  origin? — Its  relation  to  Wiclif 
and  the  Lollards ;  |o  Reginald  Pecock ;  to  the  Nonconformists. — 
The  Anglican  Church  23 

Chapter  II. 

Was  Unitarian  Christianity  imported  into  England  from  the  Low 
Countries? — Its  relation  to  Erasmus  and  the  Anabaptists  38 

Chapter  III. 
Is  Unitarian  Christianity  of  Alsatian  or  of  Swiss  origin  ? — Capito. — 
Hooper  and  Puritanism. — Cranmer  and  the  Strangers'  Church...     52 

Chapter  IV. 

Is  Unitarian  Christianity  of  Italian  or  Spanish  origin  ? — Antitrinita- 
rian  tendencies  of  the  Italian  Reformation. — Influence  of  Juan 
de  Valdes  and  Michael  Servetus 67 

Chapter  V. 

The  Italian  Reformed  Churches  in  Switzerland. — Antitrinitarian 
Controversies. — Relations  with  England  87 

Chapter  VI. 
The  Strangers'  Church  in  London. — Birth  of  the  Unitarian  idea  ...   115 

Chapter  VII. 

Bernardino  Ochino,  his  religious  development,  and  his  influence  on 
English  theology. — Corranus  137 


IV 


CONTENTS. 


l^ 


Chapter  VIII.                                    PAr.E 
Acontius,  his  philosophical  and  religious  ideas,  and  his  influence  on 
English  theology    1 6 1 

Chapter  IX. 

C  Socinianism ;  its  two  authors,  Lelio  and  Fausto  Sozzini ;  stages  of 

their  doctrine,  and  its  introduction  into  England 178 

Chapter  X. 
Influence  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  genius  on  the  development  of  English 
Unitarian  Christianity:  Bidle  and  Firmin. — Relations  with  the 
Latitudinarians,  the  Quakers,  the  New-Arians. — Milton,  Locke 
and  Newton I99 

Conclusion 217 


Appendix. 

— Extract  from  the  Confession  of  John  Theol)ald,  1528     231 

— Extract  from  Erasmus'  Preface,  1523,  to  Works  of  St.  Hilary  232 
— Letters  Patent    of  Edward  VI.,    constituting   the    Strangers' 

Church  in  London,  1 550  236 

— Extract  from  Letter  of  the  Geneva  Ministers  to  the  Ministers 

of  East  Friesland,  1566 243 

— Extract  from  Orisons  Ministers'  Questions  on  the  Trinity,  1561  244 
— Confession  of  Faith  imposed  on  Italian  Church,  Geneva,  1558  245 

— Organisation  of  the  Strangers' Church,  London,  1550     249 

— Letter  from  Microen  to  Bullinger  respecting  the  first  Unitarians 

of  London,  1551     251 

— Formula  of  Retractation  presented  to  Adriaans  van  Hamstede 

by  the  Bishop  of  London,  1562  257 

— Extract  from  Ochino's  De  Pw-gatorio,  1556 261 

— Letter  of  Pierre  La  Ramee  to  Acontius,  1 565 264 

— The  inadequacy  of  the  Apostles'  Creed  as  a  common  Confes- 
sion among  Protestants,  according  to  Acontius,  1565  266 

— Letters  of  Lelio  Sozini  to  Johann  Wolff,  1554 — 1555 269 

— Extract  from  the  Racovian  Catechism,  1609    270 

— ^John  Milton  on  the  Unity  of  God,  1674  272 


PEEFACE  TO  THE  ENGLISH  TEANSLATION. 


The  merits  of  this  volume,  as  an  example  of  special  his- 
torical study,  are  so  conspicuous,  that  it  might  well  dispense 
with  all  external  commendation  :  and  from  mine,  I  am  well 
aware,  no  other  advantage  can  be  gained  than  such  support 
as  an  old  man's  friendship  and  esteem  may  be  supposed  to 
afford  to  a  young  author's  modesty.  The  investigation  to 
which  the  following  pages  are  devoted  interests  me  the  more, 
because  it  takes  me  up  far  less  as  the  critic  than  as  the 
learner,  and  leaves  me  grateful  for  new  knowledge  and  for 
many  a  charming  or  impressive  picture  from  the  drama  of 
the  past.  The  author's  problem, — to  find  the  source  of 
Unitarian  Christianity  in  this  country, — has  naturally  led 
him  away  from  the  main  roads  of  the  revolt  from  Rome, 
which  ended  in  the  Anglican,  the  Lutheran,  and  the  Re- 
formed Churches,  and  thrown  him  into  the  eccentric  by- 
paths of  the  Reformation,  where  the  freer  minds  are  sure 
to  be  found,  and  coherent  thought  is  yet  in  the  making. 
Whether  or  not  he  alights  there  on  the  true  solution  of  his 
problem,  I  will  not  venture  to  pronounce  ;  but  as  he  ques- 
tions group  after  group,  and  elicits  their  curious  enthusiasms, 
and  follows  them  in  their  flight  from  danger,  to  Emden,  to 
London,  to  Chiavenna,  to  Basel,  to  Poland,  he  lays  bare  the 
very  spirit  of  the  times  in  its  ferment  of  belief  and  struggle 
of  character. 


VI  PREFACE   TO 

To  discover  the  origin  of  Christian  Unitarianism  in 
England  we  may  proceed  in  either  of  two  opposite  direc- 
tions ;  from  the  present  formed  results  backwards,  step  by 
step,  through  the  influences  which  have  shaped  them,  as  far 
as  we  can  see  our  way ;  or  from  the  earliest  traces  of  anti- 
trinitarian  opinion  that  could  move  forward  into  these 
results.  The  latter  is  the  method  pursued  by  Professor 
Bonet-Maury,  and  is  indeed  rendered  inevitable  at  last  by 
the  disappearance  of  clear  historical  continuity  at  the  upper 
end.  It  involves  the  inquirer,  and  still  more  the  reader,  in 
a  danger  against  which  it  is  difficult  to  guard  the  imagination. 
As  he  searches  through  the  dark  places  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  the  gleam  which  he  wants  turns  up  at  more  points 
than  one,  and  visits  him  with  rival  possibilities  of  derivation  ; 
and  by  the  need  of  selection,  the  problem  is  apt  to  assume 
in  his  mind  an  alternative  form  :  "  Is  this  doctrine,  in  its 
beginning,  indigenous  or  foreign? — if  foreign,  from  the  Latin 
races  or  the  Germanic? — if  the  former,  from  Spain  or  Italy? 
— if  the  latter,  from  Saxony  or  Holland  ? — if  from  Holland, 
from  the  Anabaptists  of  Delft,  or  the  scholar  of  Rotterdam?"' 
Thus  a  host  of  hypotheses  springs  up,  some  of  which  may  no 
doubt  be  put  out  of  court  by  sufficient  evidence  of  fact,  but 
none  of  which  can  be  taken  as  intrinsically  excluding  any 
other ;  and  yet  the  advocate  of  each  is  apt,  in  the  eagerness 
of  discussion,  to  believe  himself  possessed  of  the  sole  key  to 
the  problem.  Unitarian  theology  is  not  so  artificial  a  phe- 
nomenon that  we  are  obliged  to  refer  it,  like  the  enunciation 
of  Kepler's  laws  or  the  spectrum  analysis,  to  a  single  dis- 
coverer. On  the  contrary,  as  a  simple  reversion  from  some- 
thing far  more  artificial  than  itself,  it  may  well  be  expected, 
in  an  age  which  breaks  up  the  stagnation  of  thought,  to  arise 


THE   ENGLISH   TRANSLATION.  vil 

simultaneously  as  a  function  of  many  movements  and  in  the 
experience  of  many  minds.  Nothing  therefore  precludes  us 
from  accepting  for  it,  in  its  modern  re-appearance,  several 
concurrent  beginnings,  instead  of  a  single  line  of  filiation 
from  a  preferred  historical  source. 

The  study  of  comparative  mythology  at  one  time  consisted 
of  little  else  than  a  fancied  detection  of  identity,  under  the 
disguise  of  different  names  and  symbols,  between  the  gods 
of  separated  tribes,  and  the  skilful  use  of  this  identity  in 
evidence  of  a  certain  order  of  interdependence  in  the  devel- 
opment and  relations  of  these  tribes.  It  is  now  well  under- 
stood that  the  similarities  insisted  on  imply  no  process  of 
borrowing,  that  the  growth  of  a  mythology  is  a  natural  and 
traceable  process  in  the  mental  history  and  crystalizing 
language  of  mankind,  and  can  hardly  fail,  under  the  play  of 
common  psychological  laws,  to  create  resembling  forms  in 
races  externally  distinct.  By  its  theory  of  the  Mythos, 
philosophical  philology  has  not  only  found  a  meaning  for 
what  appeared  to  be  mere  childish  dreams,  but  restrained 
the  aberrations  of  speculative  history.  No  important  belief 
can  any  longer  have  its  story  told  from  the  outside.  How- 
ever modified  by  surrounding  conditions,  and  geographically 
conveyed  to  new  regions,  it  has  its  root  and  aliment  in  the 
inward  nature,  as  the  expression  of  some  want,  the  asser- 
tion of  some  affection  which  time  and  place  will  not  wear 
out. 

The  dissolution  of  a  mythology  is  no  less  natural  a  process 
than  its  growth,  and  is  indeed  secured  the  moment  we  have 
discovered  how  it  has  grown.  No  one  who  sees  in  Zeus, 
Osiris  and  Isis,  the  personification  of  certain  natural  phe- 
nomena, or  in  Heracles,  Romulus,  and  the  Hebrew  Messiah, 


Vlll  PREFACE   TO 

the  ideal  genius  of  a  race,  can  any  longer  pay  them  the  homage 
expected  at  their  temples  or  held  due  to  their  names.  In 
the  same  way  the  objective  reality  of  Trinitarian  worship 
inevitably  vanishes  for  one  who  knows  the  successive  incre- 
ments by  which  its  organism  of  doctrine  has  formed  itself: 
to  see  its  construction  is  to  feel  its  dissolution.  And  even 
without  this  power  of  outwardly  following  a  belief  through 
its  embryonic  stages,  the  mere  reflective  sense  of  its  internal 
incongruity  or  its  contradiction  to  the  better  known,  prac- 
tically cancels  its  Divine  pretensions,  and  concentrates  the 
soul's  religion  on  what  remains  when  it  retires.  But  what  is 
this  natural  residue  of  faith,  when  the  enigma  of  tripersonality 
brings  thought  into  confusion  and  the  affections  into  conflict? 
Its  object  is  simply  the  Unipersonal  God,  the  beginning  and 
the  end  of  every  perfection,  the  centre  and  the  infinitude  of 
all  good.  To  be  precipitated  upon  this  faith,  nothing  more 
is  needed  than  for  a  religious  mind  to  find  itself,  from  some 
cause  or  other,  on  uneasy  terms  with  a  doctrine  which  has 
various  ways  of  offending  the  awakened  reason  and  con- 
science. It  ought  not  to  surprise  us  therefore  if,  on  the 
weakening  of  ecclesiastical  pressure  or  the  increased  tension 
of  spiritual  independence,  Unitarian  theology  repeatedly 
appears  upon  the  scene,  and  enters  it  from  several  sides. 
In  seeking  for  it  everywhere,  within  the  area  of  the  Refor- 
mation, and  in  discriminating  its  different  types,  Professor 
Bonet-Maury  works  strictly  within  the  limits  of  his  inquiry. 
He  deals  in  each  case  with  what  was,  or  at  least  might  be, 
a  vera  causa  of  the  phenomenon  which  he  proposes  to 
explain.  He  collects  his  resources  before  he  allots  to  them 
their  work  ;  assembling  them,  for  the  most  part,  at  the 
"  Foreigners'  Church"  in  Austin  Friars,  where  the  seeds  of 


THE   ENGLISH   TRANSLATION.  ix 

many  a  heresy  found,  it  would  seem,  if  not  a  kindly  soil,  at 
least  some  stony  ground  for  a  brief  flowering  season. 

Among  the  several  possible  tributaries  to  English  Uni- 
tarianism  which  were  co-present  there  about  the  middle  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  some  one  influence  must  have  taken 
the  initiative.  Was  it  the  speculation  of  Servetus  ?  or  the 
personal  weight  of  Lselius  Sozini  ?  or  the  spiritual  catholicity 
of  Ochino?  or  the  devotion  of  the  "  Family  of  Love"?  or 
the  heroic  piety  of  the  Smithfield  martyr,  George  van  Parris? 
On  reviewing  the  whole  evidence.  Professor  Bonet-Maury 
assigns  the  first  place  to  the  Spanish  and  Italian  writers  and 
refugees ;  and  it  is  impossible  to  regret  an  opinion  to  which 
we  owe  his  deeply  interesting  sketches  of  Servetus,  of  Valdes, 
of  Altieri,  of  Ochino.  But  of  these  reformers,  however  ani- 
mated by  evangelical  freedom  of  spirit,  Servetus  alone 
departed  from  the  orthodox  Christology ;  and  the  charac- 
teristics of  their  thought  are  so  alien  from  the  genius  of  the 
known  Unitarianism  in  the  17th  and  i8th  centuries,  that 
any  prior  school  which  they  might  cause  in  the  i6th  would 
sit  apart  and  fail  to  give  us  the  requisite  historical  continuity. 
There  are  two  ways  in  which  a  rank  more  than  human  has 
been  provided  for  the  person  of  Christ  by  those  who  could 
not  admit  his  equality  with  the  Father.  Either  he  was  a 
higher  pre-existent  nature  sunk  into  manhood  by  incarnate 
birth ;  or  he  was  simply  human  to  begin  with,  and  through 
spiritual  endowment  and  holy  obedience  exalted  to  Divine 
functions  and  near  communion  with  the  Indivisible  God. 
The  former  conception,  starting  from  the  supernatural  nati- 
vity and  following  it  into  the  ministry  of  humiliation  and 
sacrifice,  has  marked  every  form  of  Arianism.  The  latter, 
beginning,  like  Mark's  Gospel,  with  the  simply  human  pro- 


X  PREFACE   TO 

phet  of  Galilee,  and  then  finding  him,  like  Paul,  reserved, 
immortal  in  the  heavens,  for  judicial  offices  proper  only  to 
omniscient  power,  is  the  Socinian  characteristic.  Many 
English  Unitarians  have  held,  in  conformity  with  the  former, 
that  Christ  was  made  man ;  but  few,  so  far  as  I  am  aware, 
that  he  was  made  God.  Even  those  who  retained  the  escha- 
tology  of  a  general  resurrection  and  judgment  have  tried 
to  bring  these  stupendous  processes  within  the  resources 
of  an  inspired  humanity.  If  among  the  South  European 
refugees  in  London  this  type  of  heresy  had  its  votaries,  it 
seems  to  have  remained  an  exotic,  and  not  to  have  repro- 
duced itself  in  English  thought. 

The  estimate  which  disciples  make  of  the  person  of  their 
Master  is  determined  by  their  preconception  of  the  work  he 
has  to  do.  Whatever  that  requires  him  to  be,  they  cannot 
doubt  that  he  really  is.  There  are  two  aspects  under  which 
that  work  has  presented  itself  to  their  minds — as  Redemption 
and  as  Revelation — the  former,  a  transaction,  altering  the 
real  relations  of  persons  and  the  very  nature  of  things ;  the 
latter,  a  superhuman  enlargement  of  knowledge  and  showing 
of  things  as  they  are,  without  further  change  in  them  than 
may  arise  from  clearer  apprehension.  To  effect  the  former, 
—to  abolish  a  primeval  curse  and  neutralize  the  power  of 
Sin  and  Death,  to  render  pardon  accessible  and  holiness 
possible,  and  re-open  the  closed  gates  of  eternal  life, — is 
to  revolutionize  the  universe,  and  may  well  be  deemed 
beyond  the  reach  of  any  nature  less  than  God.  Certainly  it 
is  an  infinite  overmatch  for  a  personality  like  ours,  however 
filled  to  its  utmost  capacities  by  heavenly  aids.  But  to  be 
the  organ  of  Revelation, —  to  have  the  incubus  of  spiritual 
doubt  removed  and  the  sad  enigmas  of  life  resolved, — to  be 


THE   ENGLISH   TRANSLATION.  XI 

inwardly  told  what  we  have  longed  to  know,  and  see  the 
mists  disperse  from  the  future  we  could  never  pierce, — this 
is  but  the  flow  of  light  upon  the  faculties  we  have,  and  needs 
no  more  than  the  open  reason  and  purified  conscience  of 
a  true  Son  of  Man.  Accordingly  it  is  not  among  those 
reformers  who  approach  Christianity  from  the  Augustinian 
side, — not  with  Luther  or  the  Swiss  leaders,  not  with  Fare), 
not  even  with  Valdes  and  Ochino, — that  we  meet  with  dis- 
affection towards  the  received  Christology ;  they  leave  un- 
touched the  Divine  Drama  of  Salvation,  and  take  nothing 
from  its  objective  conditions  or  the  portentous  meaning  of 
its  Calvary  ;  but  only  snatch  its  benefits  from  sacerdotal 
grasp  and  distribution,  and  set  them  free  for  appropriation 
by  personal  faith,  and  for  the  emergence  of  a  new  life  of  the 
Spirit.  This  is  the  form  of  evangelic  thought  congenial  to 
passionate  and  turbulent  natures  that  need  a  foreign  rescue 
from  their  own  inward  tyrannies.  But  there  are  quieter 
spirits,  less  storniy  in  their  impulses  and  of  more  steadfast 
will,  whose  chief  need  for  higher  life  is,  to  know  more  of 
higher  things  ;  whose  love  is  ready  for  any  Divine  Perfection 
that  may  be  opened  to  their  sight ;  and  who  will  enter  at 
once  upon  any  sanctifying  trust  or  glorious  hope  from  which 
the  clouds  may  clear  away.  These  it  is  that  ask  from 
Christianity  nothing  but  Revelatmi ;  who  require  therefore 
in  its  Author  only  the  power  to  reveal, — that  is,  insight, 
however  given,  into  the  spiritual  truth  they  miss.  If  they 
feel  that,  for  this  end,  the  incarnate  appearance  of  God  in 
person  would  be  an  incredible  over-provision,  they  will  natu- 
rally be  the  first  to  rest  contented  with  the  Humanity  of 
Christ,  as  an  adequate  medium  of  light  from  heaven.  If 
Luther  represents   the  former   class,   Erasmus  belongs  by 


Xll  PREFACE   TO 

nature  and  by  habit  to  the  latter ;  and  certainly  he  was,  if 
not  Unitarian  himself,  at  least  a  very  early  cause  of  Unita- 
rianism  in  others.  Among  scholars,  his  text  of  the  New- 
Testament,  in  a  far  wider  circle  his  exegetical  Annotations, 
diffused  anti-trinitarian  modes  of  thought.  If  ever  the  Dutch 
and  English  Anabaptists,  who  disowned  for  the  most  part 
the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  departed  so  far  from  their  rigid 
Scripturalism  as  to  cite  a  human  authority  in  their  defence, 
it  was  under  his  writings  that  they  sheltered  their  heresy.^ 
His  influence,  moreover,  entered  as  a  factor  into  the  Armi- 
nianism  of  Holland,  and  through  this,  as  well  as  directly, 
into  the  Socinianism  of  Poland,  and  thence  again  into  the 
Latitudinarianism  of  England ;  which,  in  the  writings  of 
Hales,  Chillingworth  and  Locke,  is  theologically  indistin- 
guishable from  Unitarian  Christianity.  In  this  line  of 
descent,  the  phenomena  appear  to  be  continuous  by  natural 
heredity ;  whilst  the  South  European  examples  of  anti-trini- 
tarian doctrine  are  sporadic,  and  do  not  seem  to  supply 
the  true  root  of  the  English  school. 

But  there  is  one  unorthodox  influence  so  powerful  and 
so  extensively  diffused  as  almost  to  supersede  inquiry  into 
the  personal  pedigree  of  English  Unitarianism— I  mean,  the 
English  Bible.  It  is  difficult  for  us  to  realize  the  startling 
effect  of  throwing  open  to  Europe  in  its  vernacular  tongues 
a  Sacred  Literature  vehemently  contrasted,  in  matter,  in 
form,  in  spirit,  with  the  ecclesiastical  stereotype  of  Chris- 
tianity. For  their  impressions  of  the  Saviour's  life  and 
person,  the  multitude  had  been  dependent  on  pictures  in 


^  See  the  curious  Dialogue  between  the  Inquisitor  of  Bruges  and  an 
Anabaptist,  in  Ch.  II. 


THE   ENGLISH   TRANSLATION.  Xlll 

the  churches,  which  taught  whatever  the  artist  fancied ;  and 
they  knew  as  much  about  cherubs  and  angels  and  legendary 
saints,  and  things  in  heaven  and  things  in  hell,  as  about  the 
Galilean  lake  and  hills,  and  the  gracious  figure  and  real 
incidents  that  have  consecrated  them  for  ever.     The  cele- 
bration of  the  Mass,  the  repetitions  counted  by  the  Rosary, 
the  resort  to  the  Confessional,  the  submission  to  penance, 
the  purchase  of  indulgences,  the  recital  of  the  Creeds,  the 
exercise  of  Mariolatry,  set  up  in  their  imagination  a  vast 
mythology  as  the  faith  of  Christendom.     The  Trinity  is  in 
every  prayer ;   the  prayers  go  through  the  day ;   and  the 
church-days  go  through  the  year ;   and  at  every  turn,  of 
nature  or  of  grace,  the  Priest  steps  in  to  find  it  ill  or  make  it 
good.     Suppose  a  worshipper,  with  mind  thus  pre-occupied, 
to  find,  chained  to  a  public  desk  within  his  church,  one  of 
the  new  Bibles  in  his  own  language,  and  to  be  so  arrested 
by  it  as  to  forget  what  he  came  for,  and  stay  with  it  while 
others  pass  on  to  the  choir.    As  he  reads,  are  the  thoughts  and 
images  which  the  page  throws  upon  his  mind  in  tune  with  the 
familiar  offices  which  he  faintly  overhears  ?    Does  his  atten- 
tion rest  upon  the  suppliant  cries  of  Psalmist  or  Prophet  or 
Apostle  or  of  the  Man  of  Sorrows  himself^They  are  silent 
of  the  "  Holy,  Blessed,  and  Glorious  Trinity,  three  Persons 
and  One  God,"  wherein  every  church  prayer  finds  its  crown. 
Does  he  alight  on  the  Pauline  Unipersonal  profession  of 
theistic  faith,  "  To  us  there  is  One  God,  the  Father'" — Does 
then  the  Apostle's  "One  God"  comprise  no  "Son,"  and  no 
"  Holy  Ghost"?   Does  he  read  the  story  of  the  Last  Supper, 
or  the  Apostolic  instructions  for  its  celebration  at  Corinth — 
Is  this  a  Sacrament?     Where  is  the  Priest?     Where,  the 
Miracle?  Where,  the  sacerdotal  monopoly  of  the  cup?  Where, 


XIV  PREFACE   TO 

the  "Unbloody  Sacrifice"?  It  is  the  same  all  through.  A 
mind  surrendered,  with  the  freshness  and  freedom  which  true 
piety  gives,  to  the  broad  characteristics  of  the  Scriptures,  could 
not  but  suffer  estrangement  from  the  very  essence  of  the  eccle- 
siastical theory; — first,  no  doubt,  escaping  from  its  degrading 
imposture  of  priestly  mediation,  into  immediate  spiritual  rela- 
tions with  heaven  ;  but,  ere  long,  irresistibly  impressed  by  the 
purely  monotheistic  character  of  the  Biblical  Theology,  and 
the  genuine  humanism  of  the  Christology.  The  evangelical 
spirit  that  sprung  from  the  re-opened  "Word  of  God"  was, 
in  all  its  operations,  a  new  birth  of  Religion  into  simplicity ; 
throwing  off,  to  begin  with,  the  incubus  of  church  "  works," 
and  delivering  the  individual  soul  to  the  life  of  inward  faith 
and  love ;  and  then,  in  due  time,  reducing  that  inward  faith 
itself  to  simpler  terms,  without  the  tangled  threads  which  no 
thought  could  smooth  into  a  consistent  tissue.  Starting  from 
Luther's  first-translated  Pauline  Epistles,  it  snatched  Redemp- 
tion from  the  Altar  and  made  it  over  to  the  Conscience. 
Concentrated  next  upon  the  Gospels,  it  identified  itself  with 
the  Religion  of  Christ,  and  found  the  Revelation  only  the 
perfecting  of  Reason.  It  was  the  mission  of  Wiclif  and  the 
"  Reformers  before  the  Reformation"  as  well  as  at  its  outset, 
to  carry  the  emancipation  through  the  first  stage ;  of  Crell 
and  Biddle,  of  the  Arminians  and  Latitudinarians,  of  Price 
and  Priestley,  of  Channing,  the  Coquerels  and  Parker,  to 
suffer  no  pause  short  of  the  second. 

Throughout  this  movement  till  very  near  its  end,  both 
impulse  and  direction  have  been  due  to  the  Scriptures,  used 
as  the  charter  of  spiritual  rights.  By  resort  to  this  test  every- 
thing has  been  accomplished.  Fathers,  Councils,  Tradition, 
Donation  of  Constantine,  Primacy  of  Peter,  have  been  put 


THE   ENGLISH   TRANSLATION.  xv 

to  flight  by  rigorous  loyalty  to  the  "pure  Word  of  Holy 
Writ,"— the   "Naked  Gospel,"  the   "Oracles  of  God,"  as 
understood  by  the  individual   disciple's   reason   and  con- 
science.   The  earlier  Unitarians,  notwithstanding  their  repute 
of  rationalism,  drew  their  doctrine  out  of  the  Scriptures, 
much  to  their  own  surprise,  and  did  not  import  it  into  them. 
Biddle,  for  instance,  declares  that  "  he  experienced  his  first 
doubts  respecting  the  Trinity  in  reading  the  Bible,  before 
he  had  ever  seen  a  Socinian  book."    And  how  great  a  thirst 
was  appeased  by  the  opening  of  the  long-sealed  fountain  of 
living  waters  may  be  judged  from  this—  that  the  first  enthu- 
siasm of  the  evangelic  spirit,   in  both  its  forms,  was  for 
diffusing  the  Bible  in  the  language  of  each  land  :   till  that 
was  done,  there  was  neither  Redemption  for  the  soul,  nor 
Revelation  of  the  truth.     Nor  was  this  estimate  mistaken. 
The  reforming  energy  became  intense  and  persistent  pre- 
cisely in  those  countries  which  early  possessed  a  widely 
distributed  version  of  the  Scriptures  in  the  spoken  tongue, 
in  Germany,  Holland,  Britain,  and  even  France.     Spain,  on 
the  other  hand,  though  furnished  with  its  translation  about 
the  middle  of  the  i6th  century,  stood,  like  Italy,  in  such 
relations  to  Rome,  that  it  was  not  publicly  accessible.     If 
the  religious  revolution  failed  in  Southern  Europe,  it  was  not 
because  the  genius  of  the  Latin  races  gave  it  no  response, 
but  (inter  alia)  because  the  new  life,  after  its  first  pulsations 
had  been  suppressed,  was  without  the  permanent  aliment 
which  alone  could  again  and  again  revive  it  and  carry  on  its 
growth. 

This  general  cause  of  modified  doctrine,  the  vernacular 
Bible,  is  of  course  everywhere  pre-supposed  by  the  accom- 
plished author  of  the  following  Treatise,  and  neither  supple- 


XVI     PREFACE   TO   THE   ENGLISH   TRANSLATION. 

ments  nor  replaces  any  source  to  which  he  is  disposed  to 
trace  the  Unitarian  Christianity  of  England.  I  dwell  upon 
it  only  as  a  caution  to  the  reader  against  excessive  historical 
simplification — i.e.  against  insisting  upon  some  single  origin 
for  an  assemblage  of  facts  whose  unity  may  be  not  that  of 
external  concatenation,  but  that  of  internal  agreement.  Lay 
but  the  Christian  records  before  a  mind  devout  and  clear, 
and  leave  them  alone  with  each  other,  and  is  it  wonderful  if 
the  Christianity  of  a  Channing  should  emerge  ?  And  if  this 
may  happen  in  one  place,  so  may  it  in  a  hundred ;  and  the 
great  river  of  faith  which  flows  before  us  as  a  single  stream, 
may  be  the  blending  of  many  rills  descending  from  separated 
heights,  and  knowing  nothing  of  each  other  till  they  mingle. 
With  these  few  words,  suggested  by  Professor  Bonet- 
Maury's  rich  and  instructive  pages,  I  take  my  leave  of  him 
for  the  present,  in  the  hope  of  ere  long  meeting  him  again, 
and  the  entire  confidence  that,  when  he  speaks  again,  it  will 
be  to  no  small  audience,  English  and  American,  rendered  at 
once  grateful  and  expectant  by  his  first  work. 

James  Martineau. 


SOURCES   OF 

ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 


INTRODUCTION. 

It  is  an  opinion  much  in  favour  with  historians  that  Pro- 
testantism is  uncongenial  to  the  Latin  races.  Nations  of 
the  Teutonic  stock,  it  is  affirmed,  being  by  temperament  ^^ 
incHned  to  reflection,  have  accepted  Protestantism ;  while 
the  Southern  populations,  requiring  a  religion  which  speaks 
to  eye  and  imagination  as  well,  would  of  necessity  reject  it 
in  the  sixteenth  century.^  A  mere  glance  over  the  period  of 
the  spread  of  the  Reformation  (1512 — 1564)  will  convince 
us  of  the  falsity  of  this  conclusion. 

Let  us  leave  out  of  account  France,  a  country  of  mixed 
race,  where  it  is  scarcely  contested  any  longer  that  the 
Reformation  took  deep  root,  especially  in  the  South,  as  is 
proved  by  the  existence  of  the  Albigenses  and  the  Waldenses. 
Let  us  take  Spain  and  Italy.     The  twenty  volumes  of  the 

^  Such  seems  to  be  the  opinion  of  M.  Taine,  in  his  Histoire  de 
la  Litteratiire  Anglaise  (vol.  ii.  288,  289),  where  he  contrasts  the 
serious  and  moral  races  of  the  North  with  the  frivolous  and  irreligious 
peoples  of  the  South.  "The  Reformation,"  says  he,  "is  a  Renascence 
appropi-iate  to  the  genius  of  the  Germanic  nations."  Cf.  the  contrary 
opinion  of  E.  Renan,  in  his  Lecture  on  "Judaism  considered  as  a  Race 
and  a  Religion,"  Revue  Po/itique  d  Litteraire,  3  Feb.  18S3. 

B 


2  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

collection  of  Spanish  Reformers,^  and  the  sale  in  Italy  of 
forty  thousand  copies  of  the  Bcuefizio  di  Gesii  Crista,^  are 
evidences  of  the  enthusiastic  reception  won  by  the  gospel, 
when  offered  to  the  Christian  public  in  those  very  countries 
which  certain  writers  beyond  the  Rhine  would  fain  represent 
as  effete,  and  unamenable  to  all  moral  and  religious  progress. 
Yet  more,  the  long  and  still  inexhaustive  list  of  martyrs  for 
the  gospel  in  Italy  and  Spain  proves  that  the  populations  of 
those  countries  had  strongly  felt  the  influence  of  the  Reform 
movement ;  so  much  so,  that  the  Inquisition  was  obliged  to 
have  recourse  to  a  veritable  reign  of  terror  and  atrocious 
severities  to  avoid  being  vanquished. 

Moreover,  the  Reformation  had  its  precursors  in  those 
countries  also.  In  Spain,  the  Waldenses  or  Lconistas^  (men 
of  Lyons),  and  the  Alumbrados  (enlightened),  had  reinstated 
evangelical  worship  ;  in  Italy,  the  principles  of  the  Arnoldists 
and  of  the  Abbot  Joachim,  and.  the  austere  and  prophetic 
voice  of  Savonarola,  still  found  an  echo  in  believing  souls. 
In  these  two  countries  the  labours  of  the  writers  of  the 
Renascence,  especially  those  of  Pico  della  Mirandola  and 
Erasmus,  had  caused  an  awakening  of  philosophic  thought 
which  was  sure,  sooner  or  later,  to  issue  in  a  re-casting  of 
dogma.  Everything  leads  to  the  belief  that  if  the  secular 
arm  had  not  supported  the  Roman  Church  by  physical  force, 
the  latter  would  never  have  attained  its  end  of  re-consolidat- 
ing its  power,  which  had  been  so  signally  shaken.  That 
power  was,  in  fact,  undermined  by  the  writings  of  Valdes, 
Servetus,  Ochino,  and  the  Sozzini. 

^  Los  Reforniistas  Aiitiguos  EspaTwlcs.  Edited  by  Usoz  i  Rio  and 
Benjamin  Wiifen.     20  vols.  8vo.     London,  i860  ff. 

^  Lichtenberger's  Encyclopedic,  art.  Italic  (Long).  The  Bcuefizio  di 
Gcsii  Cnsto,  of  which  only  two  or  three  copies  escaped  the  flames  of  the 
Inquisition,  has  been  reprinted  by  Dr.  Babington,  Cambridge,  1855. 

■*  [Leonistas  =  Lyonists,  i.  e.  poor  men  of  Lyons,  from  Leona,  the 
Spanish  name  of  the  city. — Trans.] 


INTRODUCTION.  3 

Had  they  come  victorious  out  of  the  period  of  agitations 
and  conflicts,  the  Spanish  and  Italian  Protestants  would  have 
provided  themselves  with  an  ecclesiastical  organization  and  a 
form  of  worship  suitable  to  their  national  genius  and  satisfying 
all  their  religious  needs,  just  as  we  see  them  doing  nowadays 
under  the  re'gime  of  a  legal  toleration.  This  is  no  gratuitous 
assumption.  AVhat  we  shall  have  to  say  hereafter  concerning 
the  churches  of  the  Spanish  and  Italian  exiles  in  various 
countries  of  Europe  will  complete  the  proof  of  our  thesis, 
namely,  that  the  Latin  races  were  neither  less  desirous  nor 
less  capable  of  a  religious  reformation  than  the  nations  of 
the  North  ;  and  that  they  have  been  kept  within  the  pale  of 
the  Roman  Church  far  less  by  attachment  to  theatrical  forms 
of  worship  than  by  the  terror  of  the  Inquisition,  and  by  the 
constraint  of  the  civil  power  allied  with  the  Holy  See.  The 
fact  is  that,  after  the  failure  of  the  three  professedly  reform- 
ing Councils,  Constanz,  Basel  and  Pisa,  a  failure  due  in  great 
part  to  the  unconciliatory  conduct  of  the  Popes,  all  the  nations 
of  Western  Europe  were  disgusted  with  the  moral  abuses  and 
fiscal  exactions  of  the  Roman  Church,  and  were  ready  to 
shake  off  in  concert  the  yoke  of  the  "  modern  Babylon."  To 
save  her  supremacy  in  the  South,  Catholic  Rome  had  to 
adopt  the  old  device  of  Pagan  Rome,  Divide  et  impera.  Like 
fire,  she  played  a  self-consuming  part,  and,  at  the  cost  of 
great  pecuniary  sacrifices,  purchased  the  co-operation  of  the 
French  and  Italian  princes  in  her  work  of  exterminating 
heresy. 

The  Prote-stants  early  opposed  the  principle  of  union  amid 
diversity  to  the  Catholic  tenet  of  absolute  unity.  Protest 
against  the  abuses  and  errois  of  the  Church  of  Rome  was 
universal  in  Europe;  but  it  assumed  various  forms,  according 
to  the  character  and  composition  of  the  races  which  divided 
the  West.  One  may  even  refer  the  varieties  of  Protestantism 
to  three  principal  types :  the  Saxo-Scandinavian  type,  repre- 
sented by  Luther,  Melanchthon,  Bucer,  Bugenhagen,  and 

B  2 


4  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

Cranmer;  the  Franco-Helvetic  type,  which  appears  in  Calvin 
and  Zwingli ;  and  the  Hispano-Italian  type,  impersonated  in 
Servetus,  Ochino,  and  the  Sozzini. 

With  the  Lutherans,  the  protest  was  dictated  by  the 
requirements  of  the  heart  and  conscience  much  more  than 
by  the  claims  of  reason.  It  was  in  the  name  of  conscience, 
outraged  by  the  abuse  which  was  being  made  of  indulgences, 
that  Luther  affixed  his  theses  to  the  Wittenberg  Schloss- 
kirche  ;  but  he  still  retained  the  cultus  of  the  Virgin  and  the 
Saints.  So  also  the  English  divines,  when  once  they  had 
secured  pre-eminence  to  the  principles  of  Paul  and  of 
Augustine  in  the  dogmata  of  grace  and  redemption,  accepted 
all  the  Catholic,  dogmata,  whatever  they  were,  which  did  not 
injure  the  arteries  of  religious  life.^ 

The  Hispano-Italian  school  proceeds,  on  the  contrary, 
from  reason  and  from  legal  ideas,  rather  than  from  moral 
and  mystical  feeling.  It  combats  the  errors  and  abuses  of 
the  Roman  Church  by  appealing  to  a  legal  text.  It  adopts, 
as  its  test  of  dogma,  conformity  with  Holy  Scripture,  con- 
sidered as  the  inspired  code  of  moral  and  religious  law,  and 
interpreted  by  sound  reason.  All  doctrine  which  is  not 
expressly  authorised  by  the  word  of  God,  ought  to  be  eli- 
minated, even  though  resting  on  the  tradition  of  many 
centuries,  the  teaching  of  the  Fathers,  and  the  canons  of 
CEcumenical  Councils. 

Between  these  two  types,  which  may  be  called  the  Lutheran 
and  the  Socinian,  we  find  a  third,  the  Zvvinglio-Calvinian, 
which  shares  some  of  the  characteristics  of  each.  Holding 
with  the  first  that  mystical  tendency  which  can  respect  the 
merest  doctrinal  quibbles  about  the  Lord's  Supper  and  the 
two  natures  in  Jesus  Christ,  it  nevertheless  has,  in  common 
with  the  second,  that  dialectical  vigour  and  that  juridical 


®  J.  H.  Scholten,  De  Leer  der  Hei~vorinde  Kerk  in  hare  Gi 
sclcn      2  vols.  8vo.      Leiden,  1862, 


INTRODUCTION.  5 

power  which  produced  the  Institutio  C/in'stia/ia;  Rdi'giouis 
and  the  Ordinances  of  Geneva. 

M.  Re'ville  has  judiciously  remarked  that,  in  the  countries 
of  the  centre  and  the  north  of  Europe,  conscience  had  more 
to  do  with  the  Reformation  than  science,  while  in  Italy  and 
Spain  reason  took  precedence  of  the  moral  and  religious 
sentiment.  Now  it  was  precisely  in  the  south  that  the  Anti- 
trinitarian  tendency  was  most  pronounced. *" 

This  Antitrinitarian  tendency  was  indeed  the  logical  result 
of  the  two  ideas  which  were  the  motive  forces  of  the  Refor- 
mation, one  being  that  the  Christian  Church  and  its  dogmata 
had  been  radically  corrupted  by  the  Roman  Catholic  system, 
and  that  they  must  be  purified  by  reduction  to  the  apostolic 
norm ;  the  other,  that  Christian  doctrine,  to  be  of  practical 
service,  must  be  capable  of  coinciding  with  man's  actual 
conscience,  instead  of  remaining  in  the  condition  of  abstract 
and  transcendental  formula.  Such  is  the  common  opinion 
of  all  the  extreme  parties  of  the  Reformation ;  they  main- 
tained that  the  religion  of  Jesus  had  suffered  fundamental 
changes  in  its  sacraments  and  its  dogmata  immediately  after 
the  disappearance  of  the  first  generation  of  Christians,  and 
that  everything  not  authorised  by  the  Bible  and  the  testi- 
mony of  the  apostles  ought  to  be  abolished.  The  Ana- 
baptists, on  the  strength  of  this  principle,  condemned  infant 
baptism,  the  images  of  the  Saints,  and  even  that  of  Christ, 
and  the  special  function  of  the  clergy.  They  even  went  so 
far  as  to  attempt  a  restoration  of  the  Communism  which 
prevailed  in  the  Church  of  Jerusalem.  The  principle  which 
the  Anabaptists  applied  in  the  region  of  discipline  and 
liturgy,    the   Antitrinitarians   carried    into    the   domain   of 


^  Albert  Reville,  Hist,  du  Dogme  dc  la  Diviriite  de  Jesus  Christ,  1869. 
pp.  132,  142.  [See  English  translation  by  Miss  Swaine,  pp.  174,  1S6. 
London,  1878.] 


6  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

dogmaJ  These  two  tendencies  set  out  from  a  common  point 
of  view,  namely,  the  necessity  for  a  radical  reform  of  the 
Christian  system,  paying  no  heed  to  tradition  or  existing 
institutions.  This  is  why,  at  first,  they  were  so  often  con- 
founded with  one  another. 

The  mere  reading  of  the  tides  of  the  works  of  the  first 
Unitarians,  e.g.  Martin  Cellarius,  Campanus  and  Servetus, 
is  sufficient  to  convince  us  that  they  were  thoroughly  in 
earnest  in  taking  in  hand  a  radical  regeneration  of  the 
Church.  In  1527,  Cellarius  published  his  book  De  Opcribus 
Dei ;  Servetus  in  1553  gave  to  his  great  work  the  title 
Christiauismi  Restitutio ;  Campanus  had  already  chosen  for 
one  of  his  works  the  significant  title,  Contra  totnm  post 
Apostolos  mundum  (1531?);  for  another,  that  of  Gottiic/ier 
und  heiliger  Schrifft^  vor  vielen  yaren  verdunkelt,  inid  durch 
nnheilsame  Leer  und  Lerer  (atis  Gottes  Zulasstmg)  verfinstert^ 
Restitution  und  Besserimg.  (Restitution  and  Renovation  of 
Divine  and  Holy  Writ,  many  years  obscured,  and,  by  sufferance 
of  God,  darkened  through  unsalutary  doctrine  and  teachers, 
1532,)  Not  meeting  in  the  Bible  with  the  terms  "Trinity," 
"homoousia"  (consubstantiality),  "eternal  generation  of  the 
Son,"  "  procession  of  the  Holy  Spirit,"  they  thence  con- 
cluded that  all  these  dogmata  were  of  human  invention,  and 
consequently  hurtful  to  Christian  faith.  The  notion  of  a 
complete  purification  of  Catholic  doctrine,  distinguished 
from  the  outset  the  Unitarian  radicals  from  the  orthodox 
Trinitarians,  who  professed  to  conserve  all  that  did  not 
directly  relate  to  the  doctrine  of  Redemption.  This  clearly 
appears  in  a  letter  addressed,  on  14  Sept.  1564,  by  Prince 
Mikolaj  (Nicholas)  Radziwill^  to  Calvin,  whom  he  did  not 

''  F.  Trechsel,  Die  Protcsta>itischen  Antitrinitariervor  F.  Sociii.,  vol.  i. 
8,  g.     Heidelberg,  1844. 

^  This  prince,  brother-in-law  to  Sigismund  Augustus,  King  of  Poland, 
and  Palatine  of  Wilna,  was  one  of  the  promoters  of  the  Reformation  in 


INTRODUCTION.  7 

know  to  be  already  dead  (24  May) :  "  Ex  his  et  similibus 
doctrinis  inferre  et  concludere  conantur  [Antitrinitarii],  totam 
doctrinam  in  Papatu,  etiam  de  hoc  fidei  nostrse  fundamento, 
fuisse  corruptam  ;  nihilque  intactum  reUquisse  Antichristum, 
quod  tetris  et  horrendis  ille  abominationibus  non  con- 
taminaret,  non  poUueret,  non  profanaret.  Trinitarii  contra 
concedunt  quidem  reUqua  omnia  pessumdata  fuisse  in 
Papatu  ;  hsec  vero  de  primario  fidei  nostra;  fundamento, 
singulari  Dei  beneficio,  iUibata  et  inviolata  permansisse."^ 

Alarmed  at  these  extreme  consequences,  and  fearing  the 
loss  of  the  support  of  the  Princes  if  the  very  basis  of  the 
Church  were  upset,  the  Reformers  appealed  to  the  secular 
arm  to  repress  the  extravagances  of  the  Anabaptists  and 
Antitrinitarians.  Hatzer  at  Constanz,  Servetus  at  Geneva, 
Georg  van  Parris  in  London,  were  the  first  victims  of  this 
policy  of  repression. 

The  appeal  to  the  secular  arm  was,  as  Trechsel  acknow- 
ledges, an  inconsistency  on  the  part  of  the  Reformers.  ^"^  I 
will  add  that  the  retention  of  the  so-called  Athanasian  Creed, 
pure  and  simple,  as  the  basis  of  the  Protestant  theodicy,  was 

Poland.  He  was  the  protector  of  Lismanini,  Biandrata,  and  Stancaro, 
which  did  not,  however,  prevent  his  keeping  up  a  friendly  correspondence 
with  Calvin.  Calvini  Opera,  ed.  Baum,  Cunitz  and  Reuss,  vol.  xv. 
2113,  2227,  2366 — 2371;  vol.  xvii.  2876,  3019;  vol.  xviii.  3232,  3238, 
3443;  vol.  xix.  3562,  3565;  vol.  xx.  4125.  The  letter  quoted  above  is 
found  in  the  archives  of  the  Church  of  Zurich,  Simler'' sclie  Samndung, 
vol.  ii.  fol.  no. 

^  ["  From  these  and  kindred  doctrines  [the  Antitrinitarians]  do  their 
best  to  draw  the  inference  and  conclusion  that  the  whole  body  of  doc- 
trine, even  as  regards  the  foundation  of  our  faith,  was  corrupted  under 
the  Papacy;  and  that  Antichrist  left  nothing  untouched  by  the  contami- 
nations, pollutions  and  profanations  of  its  foul  and  horrible  abominations. 
The  Trinitarians,  on  the  other  hand,  while  admitting  that  everything 
else  was  altered  for  the  worse  under  the  Papacy,  nevertheless  contend 
that  this  primary  article  and  foundation  of  our  faith  was,  by  the  singular 
providence  of  God,  preserved  unimpaired  and  inviolate."] 

^''  Trechsel,  ut  sup.,  vol.  i.  11. 


8  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

another.  As  this  Creed  served  as  target  for  all  the  Anti- 
trinitarian  batteries,  it  is  right  for  us  to  reproduce  here,  /;/ 
exte/iso,  that  portion  of  it  which  relates  to  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity. 

Quicumque  Vidt. 

"  Whosoever  will  be  saved :  before  all  things  it  is  necessary 
that  he  hold  the  Catholic  Faith. 

"  Which  Faith  except  every  one  do  keep  whole  and  undefiled  : 
without  doubt  he  shall  perish  everlastingly. 

"And  the  Catholic  Faith  is  this:  That  we  worship  one  God 
in  Trinity,  and  Trinity  in  Unity ; 

"  Neither  confounding  the  Persons  :  nor  dividing  the  Sub- 
stance. 

"  For  there  is  one  Person  of  the  Father,  another  of  the  Son : 
and  another  of  the  Holy  Ghost. 

"But  the  Godhead  of  the  Father,  of  the  Son,  and  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  is  all  one :  the  glory  equal,  the  majesty  co-eternal. 

"  Such  as  the  Father  is,  such  is  the  Son :  and  such  is  the  Holy 
Ghost. 

"  The  Father  uncreate,  the  Son  uncreate :  and  the  Holy  Ghost 
uncreate. 

"  The  Father  incomprehensible  (iniinensus)^  the  Son  incom- 
prehensible :  and  the  Holy  Ghost  incomprehensible. 

"The  Father  eternal,  the  Son  eternal:  and  the  Holy  Ghost 
eternal. 

"  And  yet  they  are  not  three  eternals :  but  one  eternal. 

"As  also  there  are  not  three  incomprehensibles,  nor  three 
uncreated :  but  one  uncreated,  and  one  incomprehensible. 

"  So  likewise  the  Father  is  Almighty,  the  Son  Almighty :  and 
the  Holy  Ghost  Almighty. 

"And  yet  they  are  not  three  Almighties:  but  one  Almighty. 

"  So  the  Father  is  God,  the  Son  is  God:  and  the  Holy  Ghost 
is  God. 

"And  yet  they  are  not  three  Gods:  but  one  God. 

"  So  likewise  the  Father  is  Lord,  the  Son  Lord :  and  the  Holy 
Ghost  Lord. 

"And  yet  not  three  Lords:  but  one  Lcrd. 


INTRODUCTION.  9 

"  For  like  as  we  are  compelled  by  the  Christian  verity :  to 
acknowledge  every  Person  by  himself  to  be  God  and  Lord ; 

"  So  are  we  forbidden  by  the  Catholic  Religion  :  to  say,  There 
be  three  Gods,  or  three  Lords. 

"  The  Father  is  made  of  none :  neither  created,  nor  begotten. 

"  The  Son  is  of  the  Father  alone  :  not  made,  nor  created,  but 
begotten. 

"  The  Holy  Ghost  is  of  the  Father  and  of  the  Son :  neither 
made,  nor  created,  nor  begotten,  but  proceeding. 

"  So  there  is  one  Father,  not  three  Fathers  ;  one  Son,  not  three 
Sons:  one  Holy  Ghost,  not  three  Holy  Ghosts. 

"And  in  this  Trinity  none  is  afore,  or  after  other:  none  is 
greater,  or  less  than  another ; 

"  But  the  whole  three  Persons  are  co-eternal  together :  and 
co-equal. 

"  So  that  in  all  things,  as  is  aforesaid :  the  Unity  in  Trinity, 
and  the  Trinity  in  Unity  is  to  be  worshipped. 

"  He  therefore  that  will  be  saved  :  must  thus  think  of  the 
Trinity." 

This  confession  of  faith,  attributed  to  Athanasitis,  but  which 
did  not  bear  his  name'  at  the  outset,  and  was  originally 
drafted  in  Gaul,  towards  the  middle  of  the  eighth  century, 
jarred  so  harshly  with  the  whole  system  of  biblical  theology, 
that  the  Reformers  would  willingly  have  abandoned  it,  had 
they  not  seen  in  it  an  effective  bulwark  against  the  attacks 
of  what  they  called  the  fanatical,  or  as  we  should  now  say, 
the  radical  party  in  Protestantism,  namely,  the  iVnabaptists 
and  Antitrinitarians.  Luther,  in  his  Sermon  for  Trinity 
Sunday,  and  Melanchthon,  in  his  correspondence,  make 
some  significant  admissions  on  this  subject. 

The  importance  they  attached  to  individual  opinion,  led 
them  to  qualify  the  Athanasian  formula  in  an  Arian  sense  ; 
so  that  it  has  been  justly  said  that  they  themselves  brought 
on  the  decline  of  the  Trinitarian  dogma.  In  fact,  from  their 
point  of  view,  man  could  neither  be  saved  by  the  efficacy  of 
sacraments,  nor  in  virtue  of  a  passive  adhesion  to  revealed 


10  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

dogma.  To  have  saving  power,  it  was  indispensable  that 
Christian  truth  should  enter  a  man's  own  soul,  and  should, 
so  to  speak,  become  incarnate  in  his  conscience.  In  other 
words,  it  was  incumbent  upon  the  initiators  of  the  Reforma- 
tion to  do  away  with  every  mediator,  divine  or  human,  save 
one,  and  so  to  place  man  in  direct  relations  with  God.  But 
if  God  be  the  complex  and  unintelligible  Being  who  is  offered 
to  us  in  the  Symbolum  Qjiimniqiie,  and  Jesus  Christ  a  hypos- 
tasis (constituent  personality)  of  that  Being,  it  may  well  be 
asked  how  the  faith  and  love  of  the  sinner  could  fasten  upon 
such  a  Deity.  What  confidence,  what  sympathy,  what  per- 
sonal affection  can  be  inspired  by  a  Being  who  is  neither 
Single  nor  Three  ?  Accordingly  the  Reformers  insisted  upon 
the  human  character  of  Christ. 

And  it  is  this  which  justifies  the  remark  of  F.  C.  Baur, 
paradoxical  as  it  may  almost  appear,  that  "  Melanchthon, 
Servetus,  and  Fausto  Sozzini,  notwithstanding  their  diver- 
gent tendencies,  resembled  each  other  in  the  attitude  which 
they  assumed  towards  the  traditional  dogma  of  the  Trinity.  "-^^ 
Only,  what  in  Melanchthon  is  simple  indifference,  becomes 
positive  criticism  in  Servetus,  and  reaches  the  stage  of  nega- 
tive and  radical  criticism  in  the  Fratres  Poloni.  We  have 
here  a  veritable  process  of  decomposition  of  the  Trinity ; 
and  it  is  worth  while  to  enter  into  details,  in  order  to  explain 
the  share  which  the  most  orthodox  Reformers  took  in  the 
work. 

In  the  first  place  we  are  struck  with  the  circumstance  that 
Melanchthon,  both  in  the  original  draft  and  in  the  primary 
edition  (152 1)  of  his  Loci  Commimes,  the  first  systematic 
exhibition  of  Protestant  dogma,  accords  to  the  Trinity  no 
further,  treatment  than  this  short  rubric  in  the  list  of  topics  : 
"  Deus,  Unus,  Trinus"    Was  this  an  inadvertence  ?    Assur- 

^^  Baur,  Die  Christlichc  Lehrc  dcr  Drcieinigkcit,  vol.  ii.  33,  note. 


INTRODUCTION.  1 1 

edly  not.  As  he  deals  in  a  similar  way  with  other  dogmata 
of  like  nature,  e.g.  the  Creation  and  the  Incarnation, 
Melanchthon  makes  it  evident  that,  to  his  mind,  all  these 
dogmata  on  which  the  schoolmen  had  so  perseveringly 
exercised  the  subtleties  of  their  dialectic,  were  but  mysteries, 
no  doubt  worthy  of  respect,  but  which  we  ought  not  to 
scrutinise  too  closely  for  fear  of  obscuring  the  evidence  for 
the  Redemption.  "Did  Paul,"  says  he,  "in  that  compendium 
of  Christian  doctrine  which  he  addressed  to  the  Romans, 
take  to  philosophising  on  the  mysteries  of  the  Trinity,  the 
modus  of  the  Incarnation,  or  on  active  and  passive  creation  ? 
No,  he  occupies  himself  with  Law,  Sin  and  Grace,  funda- 
mental topics,  on  which  alone  the  knowledge  of  Christ 
depends."^-  Such  a  passage  savours  of  a  reminiscence  of 
this  practical  maxim  from  the  De  Imitatione :  "What  doth 
it  profit  thee  to  reason  profoundly  concerning  the  Trinity, 


^"  "Proinde,  non  est  cur  multum  operse  ponamits  in  locis  illis  supre- 
mis :  de  Deo,  de  Unitate,  de  Trinitate  Dei,  de  mysterio  Creationis,  de 
modo  Incarnationis.  Quseso  te,  quid  adsecuti  sunt  jam  tot  soeculis 
scholastici  theologistre,  cum  in  his  locis  versarentur  ?  ....  Paulus,  in 
epistola  quam  Romanis  dicavit,  cum  doctrinae  Christianas  compendium 
conscriberet,  num  de  mysteriis  Trinitatis,  de  modo  Incarnationis,  de 
Creatione  activa  et  Creatione  passiva  philosophabatur?  At,  quid  agit? 
Certe  de  lege,  peccato,  gratia,  quibus  locis  solis  Christi  cognitio  pendet." 
Melanchthon,  Loci  Commtmes  rerum  tJieologicarmn  sen  Hypotyposes 
TheologiccE,  in  0pp.  edit.  Bretschneider,  vol.  xxi.  84,  85.  ["Accord- 
ingly, we  are  not  called  upon  to  expend  much  labour  upon  those 
supreme  topics,  viz.  concerning  God,  his  Unity,  his  Trinity,  the  mys- 
tery of  Creation,  the  modus  of  the  Incarnation.  I  ask  what  has  been 
gained  by  the  scholastic  theologians,  though  they  have  been  employed 
upon  these  topics  for  so  many  centuries?  ....  When  Paul,  in  the 
Epistle  which  he  addressed  to  the  Romans,  wrote  a  compend  of  the 
Christian  doctrine,  did  he  philosophise  about  the  mysteries  of  the  Trinity, 
the  modus  of  the  Incarnation,  Creation  active  and  Creation  passive? 
No.  But  of  what  does  he  actually  treat  ?  Assuredly  of  law,  sin,  grace, 
topics  on  which  alone  the  knowledge  of  Christ  depends."] 


12  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

if  thou  be  void  of  humility,  and  thereby  displeasing  to  the 
Trinity?  "^^ 

True  it  is  that  afterwards,  influenced  by  the  overflow  of 
extreme  opinions,  Melanchthon  felt  himself  forced  as  a 
matter  of  duty  into  reaction  against  the  Antitrinitarians. 
Thus,  from  the  time  of  the  lirst  edition  of  the  Augsburg 
Confession  (1530),  he  condemned  the  doctrine  of  the  new- 
fangled {neoterici)  as  well  as  of  the  ancient  disciples  of 
Paul  of  Samosata ;  and,  later,  in  a  letter  addressed  to  the 
Venetian  Senate  (1539),  he  utters  an  energetic  warning 
against  the  ideas  of  Michael  Servetus,  and  undertakes  a  new 
proof  of  the  Trinitarian  dogma. 

Yet,  in  his  earlier  correspondence,  it  is  easy  to  see  that 
he  approached  these  questions  with  misgiving  rather  than 
with  zest.  For  example,  he  writes  (1533)  to  Camerarius  : 
"  Concerning  the  Trinity,  you  know  that  I  have  always 
feared  lest  these  controversies  should  some  day  break  out. 
Good  heavens  !  what  tragedies  will  these  questions  excite, 
when  put  to  those  who  come  after  us  :  Is  the  Word  a  hypos- 
tasis? Is  the  Spirit  a  hypostasis?  For  my  part,"  he  con- 
cludes, "  I  rely  on  those  express  declarations  of  the  Scripture 
which  command  us  to  invoke  Christ,  for  this  is  to  assign 
to  him  the  honours  of  Divinity,  and  it  is  a  practice  full  of 
comfort."^'* 

Luther,  with  his  practical  good  sense,  could  not  fail  to 
share  the  gentle  Melanchthon's  antipathy  to  these  irritating 


13  De  Imit.  J.  C.  lib.  i.  cap.  i. 

14  "  Hfpi  rfjc  TptaiJoc  scis  me  semper  veritum  esse,  fore  ut  hsec  ali- 
quando  erumperent.  Bone  Deus  !  quales  tragoedias  excitabit  hrec 
qusestio  ad  posteros,  ei  eoriv  vnoaTaaiQ  6  Aoyoq;  u  sarlv  vnoaTnatg  to 
nvsvi^a ;  Ego  me  refero  ad  illas  Scripturae  voces,  quas  jubent  invocare 
Christum,  quod  est  ei  honorem  divinitatis  tribuere,  et  plenum  consola- 
tionis  est."  Melanchthon  to  Joachim  Kammermeister,  9  Feb.  1533. — 
Bretschneider,  vol.  ii.  629,  630.     Cf.  vol.  iii.  745. 


INTRODUCTION.  1 3 

problems.  In  two  curious  Sermons,  preached  on  Trinity 
Sunday,  the  Wittenberg  doctor,  while  adhering  to  the  doc- 
trine of  the  three-fold  personality  of  God,  confesses  that 
there  is  here  an  unfathomable  mystery  ;  and,  as  regards  its 
dogmatic  expression,  we  must  be  content  with  Scripture 
terms,  for  God  alone  knows  His  own  nature,  or  how  it  is 
right  to  speak  on  this  matter.  As  for  the  personality  of  the 
Holy  Spirit,  Luther  had  no  clear  conception  of  it.^^  In  his 
reply  to  Latomus,  Luther  went  so  far  as  to  declare  that  the 
word  homooiisios  was  nowhere  to  be  found  in  the  Scriptures, 
that  it  was  a  hateful  word  to  him,  and  that  it  would  be  much 
better  to  invoke  the  Deity  under  the  name  of  God  than 
under  that  of  Trinity.^"  What  confirms  our  suspicions  is 
that,  in  his  translation  of  the  Bible,  Luther  omits,  as  being 


^^  "  Man  diesen  Namen,  Dreifaltigkeit,  nirgend  findet  in  der  Schrift, 
sondem  die  Menschen  haben  ihn  erdacht.  .  .  .  Darum  .  .  .  viel  besser 
sprache  man,  Gott,  denn  die  Dreifaltigkeit.  Diess  Wort  bedeutet  aber, 
dass  Gott  dreifaltig  ist  in  den  Personen."  "  Er  [der  heilige  Geist]  ist  das 
damit  der  Vater  durch  Christum  und  in  Christo  Alles  wirkt  und  lebendig 
macht."  Luther's  IVerke,  Erlangen  edit.,  vol.  xii.  378,  xxii.  20.  Cf. 
Maurice  Schwalb,  Luther,  ses  Opinions  religicuses  et  morales  dans  la 
Preiniere  Periode  de  la  Reformation.  Strassburg,  1866.  ["This  name 
Trinity  is  nowhere  found  in  Scripture,  but  is  the  invention  of  men.  .  .  . 
Therefore  ...  it  were  much  better  to  say  '  God'  than  'Trinity.'  This 
word  signifies,  however,  that  God  is  tri-personal."  "  He  (the  Holy  Ghost) 
is  that  whereby  the  Father  worketh  and  quickeneth  all  things,  through 
Christ  and  in  Christ."] 

^^  Paulus  prrecipit .  .  .  ut  vitares  prophanas  vocum  novitates .  .  .  et  sacris 
vocum  antiquitatibus  inha'reres. . . .  Nee  est  quod  mihi  'homoousion'  illud 
objectes,  adversus  Arrianos  receptum.  Non  fuit  receptum  a  multis,  iisque 
praeclarissimis,  quod  et  Hieronymus  optavit  aboleri.  . . .  Nee  Hilarius  hie 
aliud  habuit  quod  responderet,  quam  quod  idem  per  id  vocabuli  signifi- 
caretur,  quod  res  esset ;  et  tota  Scriptura  haberet  id,  quod  in  prassenti 
non  datur.  . . .  Quod  si  odit  anima  mea  vocem  '  homoousion'  et  nolim  ea 
uti,  non  ero  hcereticus. . . .  Scripturse  enim  synceritas  custodienda  est,  nee 
prassumat  homo  suo  ore  eloqui,  aut  clarius,  aut  syncerius,  quam  Deus 
elocutus  est  ore  suo." — M.  Littheri  Opera  Omnia,  ed.  Amsdorf,  Jena, 


14  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

an  interpolation,  the  passage  on  the  Trinity  in  the  First 
Epistle  of  John,  chap.  v.  ver.  7  ;  and  in  the  Litany  he  gets 
rid  of  the  invocation,  '''  Sancta  Trinitas^  tinits  Deus :  miserere 
nobis."  These  two  suppressions,  it  must  be  acknowledged, 
were  altogether  in  favour  of  the  Antitrinitarians.^'' 

If,  from  the  German,  we  now  pass  to  the  French  branch 
of  the  Reformation,  we  shall  observe  the  same  indifference 
at  the  outset  in  regard  to  the  Trinity.  This  coldness,  then, 
towards  the  dogma  of  a  tri-personal  God  is  no  isolated  fact, 

vol.  ii".  1560,  p.  407;  Epistola  M.  L. ;  Rationis  Latomiana,  pro  incen- 
d'uiriis Lovaniensis  Schola  Sophistis  redditce,  Lutherana  Confutaiio.  ["  Paul 
exhorts  ...  to  avoid  profane  novelties  of  words,  .  .  .  and  cleave  to  the 
ancient  sacred  forms  of  speech.  .  .  .  Nor  may  you  bring  up  against  me 
that  word  homoousios,  received  in  opposition  to  the  Arians.  Received  it 
was  not,  by  many,  and  those  of  the  first  mark  ;  and  even  Jerome  wished 
it  well  away.  .  .  .  Nor  had  Hilary  any  defence  to  make  for  it,  except  that 
what  was  denoted  by  this  vocable  answered  to  the  fact ;  and  that  the 
whole  run  of  Scripture  had  the  idea,  which  is  not  expressly  set  forth.  .  .  . 
But  if  my  soul  hateth  the  word  ko??iootisws,  and  I  be  unwilling  to  use  it,  I 
shall  not  therefore  be  a  heretic.  .  .  .  For  we  must  guard  the  soundness  of 
the  Scripture;  and  let  not  man  presume  to  speak  more  clearly  or  more 
soundly  than  God  hath  spoken  with  His  own  mouth."] 

^'^    Catholic  Litany  of  the  Holy  Virgin. 
Kyrie  eleison !  Christe  eleison ! 
Christe  audi  nos !  Christe  exaudi  nos ! 
Pater  de  coelis  Deus  :  miserere  nobis ! 
Fill  redemptor  mundi  Deus  :  miserere  nobis  ! 
Spiritus  Sancte  Deus  :  miserere  nobis  ! 
Sancta  Trinitas,  unus  Deus  :  miserere  nobis  ! 
Sancta  Maria,  ora  pro  nobis ! 

Litany,  corrected  by  Luther. 
Kyrie :  Eleison. 
Christe:  Eleison. 
Pater  de  coelis  Deus : 
Fill  redemptor  mundi  Deus  : 
Spiritus  sancte  Deus: 
Miserere  nobis ! 
Luther's  IVcrke,  edit.  De  Wette,  vol.  Ivi.  362. 


INTRODUCTION.  1 5 

it  is  a  phenomenon  naturally  arising  from  the  two-fold 
principle  of  the  Reformation,  the  authority  of  Scripture  and 
justification  by  faith.  Let  us  now  open  Farel's  So7nmaire  et 
brieve  Declaration  d\iucuns  licnx  fort  necessaires  a  ung  chacim 
Chretien  (Brief  Summary  of  topics  very  needful  for  every 
Christian),  that  excellent  manual  of  evangelical  doctrine, 
which,  by  its  conciseness  of  form  and  freshness  of  expression, 
contributed  so  much  to  make  the  Reformation  popular  in 
the  French-speaking  countries.  In  vain  we  look  in  it  for 
the  topics  of  the  Trinity,  the  personality  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
or  even  the  divinity  of  Jesus.  Christ  is  thus  defined  :  "true 
Son  of  God,  the  arm,  power,  word,  and  wisdom  of  the 
Father,  whom,  as  man,  God  has  chosen  as  His  holy  temi)le 
and  tabernacle,  wherein  dwelleth  all  the  Godhead^  not 
figuratively,  but  bodily  and  in  truth."  And,  as  if  to  justify 
his  omissions,  Farel  says  expressly:  "All  that  has  not  clear 
and  firm  foundation  in  the  Scripture  is  to  be  rejected  in 
dealing  with  salvation  and  the  nature  of  God,  which  are 
spiritual  and  heavenly  things." ^^ 

Accused,  on  this  account,  of  leaguing  with  the  Anabaptists 
and  Servetans,  Farel  felt  bound  to  add  an  explicit  adhesion 
to  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  in  his  edition  of  1552,  pub- 
lished at  Geneva  during  the  year  before  the  trial  of  Michael 
Servetus.^'-* 

Finally,  not  even  Calvin,  that  implacable  adversary  of 

^*  Edition  of  1532,  reprinted  by  J.  G.  Fick,  with  Preface  by  Professor 
Baum.     Geneva,  1867. 

^^  On  23  Aug,  1534,  Joliann  Zwick,  pastor  at  Constanz,  wrote  to  Vadian, 
of  Claude  Aliodi  (of  Savoy),  who  a  short  time  before  had  been  pastor  at 
Neuchatel:  ^^Collega>?i  se  habere  testatur  qui  paria  secum  opinatur,  Farel- 
liim  scilicet,  si  modo  non  est  falsus  in  ilium."  ["  He  affirms  that  he  has  a 
colleague  whose  opinions  are  on  a  par  with  his  own,  Farel  to  wit,  if  he 
be  not  a  false  witness  against  him."]  Now,  that  Claude  (of  Savoy)  had 
made  in  the  church  of  Constanz  profession  of  Antitrinitarianism,  see 
Herminjard,  Correspondance  des  Re/ormateurs,  iii.  173,  174,  n.  2  and  7. 


l6  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Michael  Servetus  and  Gentile,  could  keep  free  of  the  move- 
ment directed  against  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity.-*^  This  is 
seen  even  in  his  writings  against  Servetus,  and  in  his  letters 
to  the  Polish  Brethren  against  Stancaro,  "^  in  which  he 
acknowledges  that  the  terms  Triiiitas  and  homoousia  savour 


^^  See  his  Disputation  with  Caroli,  first  Doctor  of  the  Sorbonne,  then 
pastor  at  Lausanne,  who  charged  Calvin  with  Arianism.  " '  Facessant,' 
[aiebat  CaroH]  '  novae  Confessiones,  ac  tribus  symbolis  potius  subscriba- 
mus.'  Ad  hasc  Calvinus,  ''  Nos  in  Dei  uniics  Jideni  jurasse,'  respondit, 
'  non  Athattasii,  cujiis  symbohim  nulla  unquani  legitima  Ecclesia  appro- 
bassety  Herminjard,  ut  sup.,  iv.  185,  Letter  of  Feb.  1537.  ["'Away 
with  new  Confessions,'  said  Caroli,  '  and  let  us  rather  subscribe  to  the 
three  Creeds.'  Calvin  replied,  '  We  have  pledged  ourselves  to  faith  in  the 
One  God,  not  to  faith  in  Athanasius,  whose  Creed  has  never  received 
the  approbation  of  any  rightful  Church.' "] 

'^  Calvini  Opera,  ed.  Baum,  Cunitz  and  Reuss,  vol.  ix.  332 — 35S. 
(Cf  Letter  from  Prince  Radziwill  to  Calvin,  on  the  Trinity,  6  July,  1564, 
XX.  4125.) 

1.  Respoiisiitn  ad  Fratres  Polonos,  qiioinodo  mediator  sit  Chrisius,  eontra 
Stancarum  (1560). 

2.  Ministrortim  Eeclesitt  Gcnevensis  Responsio,  ad  lYobiles  Polonos,  et 
Francisciim  Stancarum  (March,  1561). 

3.  Brevis  Admonitio  (1563)- 

4.  Epistola  Joannis  Calvini,  qua  fidem  Admonitionis  nuper  edittv 
apud  Polonos  confirmat  (1563).  In  this  he  says  :  "  Tenenda  quoque  est 
loquendi  ratio  Scripturje  trita,  dum  Christus,  quatenus  mediator  est,  infe- 
rior Patre  statuitur.  .  .  .  Utile  .  .  .  supersedere  a  formulis  loquendi  ...  a 
Scripturse  usu  remotis.  .  .  .  Precatio  vulgo  trita :  '  Sancta  Trinitas  unus 
Deus :  miserere  nostri,'  mihi  non  placet,  ac  omnino  barbariem  sapit. 
Nolim  igitur  vos  de  rebus  supervacuis  litigare,  modo  illibatum  nianeat 
quod  dixi  de  tribus  in  una  essentia  personis. "  ["  Moreover,  we  must 
adhere  to  the  usual  phraseology  of  Scripture,  by  which  Christ,  as  mediator, 
is  made  inferior  to  the  Father.  ...  It  is  well  ...  to  set  aside  foiins  of 
speech  .  .  .  diverging  from  Scriptural  usage.  .  .  .  The  hackneyed  prayer 
in  common  use,  '  Holy  Trinity  one  God :  have  mercy  on  us,'  does  not 
commend  itself  to  me,  and  altogether  savours  of  barbarism.  Therefore 
I  would  not  have  you  stickle  for  things  of  no  consequence,  provided 
you  keep  unimpaired  the  doctrine  I  have  laid  down  respecting  the  three 
Persons  in  one  Essence."] 

Cf  supra,  p.  14,  the  Litany  of  the  Virgin,  as  corrected  by  Luther. 


INTRODUCTION.  1 7 

of  the  barbarism  of  the  Schools.  This  is  especially  evident 
in  his  Harmony  based  on  the  Gospel  according  to  St. 
Matthew,  and  in  his  Commentaries  on  the  Fourth  Gospel. 
Of  all  the  passages  quoted  by  orthodoxy  in  favour  of  the 
Trinity,  Calvin  does  not  admit  a  single  one  in  the  sense 
attached  to  it  by  the  CathoUcs.  And,  in  his  exegesis  of  the 
passages,  John  v.  19,  x.  30,  xvii.  21.  he  explicitly  distin- 
guishes Jesus  Christ,  as  the  Son,  from  the  eternal  Logos,  a 
hypostasis  of  the  Divinity,  by  insisting  that  Christ  speaks 
here  in  his  human  nature.  In  respect  of  his  divine  nature, 
he  declares  Christ  to  be  inferior  to  God  the  Father." 

Hence,  by  a  logical  consequence,  Calvin,  in  his  catechisms 
and  prayers,  never  addresses  either  the  Son  or  the  Holy 
Spirit,  but  God  alone,-^  in  which  he  shows  himself  more 
consistent  than  Fausto  Sozzini,  who  admits  the  invocation 
of  Jesus  Christ  as  God. 

This  brief  review  of  the  teachings  of  the  Reformers  respect- 
ing the  Trinity  suffices  to  prove  that  the  Antitrinitarian 
movement  was  in  reality  the  logical  development  of  the  Pro- 
testant principle,  and  that,  when  they  unreservedly  adopted 
the  Athanasian  Creed,  they  fell  into  an  inconsistency.-* 

^^  Scholten,  ut  sup.,  vol.  ii.  231,  233. 

^^  [Note  also  that  Calvin  particularly  resented  the  term  Trinitarian, 
first  applied  to  its  present  use  by  Servetus,  and  made  it  a  count  in  his 
indictment  that  Servetus  had  called  believers  in  a  tripersonal  God 
Trinitaires.  ] 

-*  Hulderich  Zwingli  expresses  himself  in  a  Sabellian  sense.  About 
1525,  he  states  his  doctrine  in  these  terms  :  "Nos  enim  sic  Deum  agnoscen- 
dum .  . .  docemus,  ut  sive  Patrem  eum  nomines,  sive  Filium,  sive  Spiritum 
Sanctum,  perpetuo  tamen  eum  intelHgas,  qui  solus  bonus,  Justus  .  .  .  est. 
Contra,  cum  Filio  omnia  tribuimus,  ei  tribuimus  qui  id  est  quod  Pater, 
quod  Spiritus  Sanctus;  cujus  regnum  est,  cujus  potentia,  eodem  jure  quo 
Patris  et  Spiritus  Sancti :  ipse  enim  hoc  ipsum  est  quod  Pater,  quod 
Spiritus  Sanctus,  servato  nihilominus  notionum,  ut  vocant,  discrimine." 
De  Vera  et  Falsa  Religione.  ["  For  we  teach  that  God  .is  in  such  wise  to 
be  acknowledged  .  .  .  that  whether  you  call  him  Father,  or  Son,  or  Holy 

C 


1 8  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

By  degrees,  a  separation  was  realised  between  the  radical 
parties  of  the  Reformation.  The  Antitrinitarians,  repulsed 
by  all  the  churches,  Calvinist,  Zwinglian  or  Lutheran,  as  a 
new  sort  of  Arians,  who  insulted  the  divinity  of  Christ, 
and  even  as  Atheists,  who  demoUshed  the  edifice  of  Reve- 
lation, learned  the  necessity  of  declining  all  corporate  union 
with  Anabaptists  and  Pantheists.  It  is  the  merit  of  Fausto 
Sozzini  and  his  co-workers  that  they  reached  the  conception 
of  a  theological  system  of  which  the  Divine  Unity  and  the 
life  eternal  were  the  fundamental  positions,  and  founded  a 
church  with  intelligible  sacraments  and  a  rational  form  of 
worship.  Hence  it  is  with  justice  that  the  name  of  this 
Reformer  has  been  attached  to  the  form  of  Unitarian  Chris- 
tianity which  we  have  just  defined.  We  must,  however, 
beware  of  believing,  on  the  testimony  of  his  virulent  oppo- 
nents that  Fausto  Sozzini  impugned  the  divine  majesty  of 
Christ.  If,  relying  on  certain  texts  of  Scripture,  he  refused 
to  attribute  to  Jesus  participation  in  the  Divine  essence,  on 
the  other  hand  he  proclaimed  him  to  be  God,  in  virtue  of 
his  office  of  Redeemer  and  his  immaculate  sanctity.  In  his 
eyes,  the  supreme  end  of  the  Christian  religion  was  to  secure 
man's  admission  to  eternal  life ;  and  it  was  to  this  end  that 
Jesus  died  and  rose  again.-^  And  in  this,  Sozzini's  ideas 
much  resemble  the  Scriptural  view  adopted  by  Melanchthon 
in  his  letter  to  Camerarius.     The  obligatory  adoration  of 


Spirit,  you  are  still  to  understand  that  Being  who  alone  is  good  and 
just.  .  .  .  And,  vice  versa,  when  we  attribute  all  to  the  Son,  it  is  to  that 
Being  who  is  identical  with  the  Father  and  the  Holy  Spirit,  whose 
kingdom  and  power  belong  to  him  by  the  same  right  by  which  they 
belong  to  the  Father  and  to  the  Holy  Spirit:  for  he  is  the  self-same 
Being  as  the  Father  and  the  Holy  Spirit ;  the  three  conceptions  are 
notwithstanding  to  be  kept  distinct."]     Zwinglii  Oj>p.  iii.  179,  180. 

■■'S  Cf.  F.  Socini  Opera,  2  vols,  folio,  in  the  Bihliothcca  Fratruiii  Polo- 
norum,  Irenopolis  (Amsterdam),  "post  annum  Domini  1656,"  i.e.  1665 
(Sand). 


INTRODUCTION.  1 9 

Christ  even  became  the  cause  of  serious  conflict  among  the 
Transylvanian  brethren,  Ferencz  (Francis)  David  openly  re- 
fusing divine  honours  to  Jesus  ;  a  course  which  was  followed 
in  Poland  by  the  Arians,  and  in  Lithuania  by  Szymon  Budny. 

As  for  the  Holy  Spirit,  in  the  Socinian  system  it  was  but 
an  alter  ego  of  the  ascended  Christ,  without  distinct  person- 
ality ;  a  moral  influence  of  the  grace  of  God,  to  achieve  the 
work  of  sanctification.  Such  is,  with  some  modifications, 
the  official  doctrine  which  still  binds  the  Unitarian  churches 
of  Transylvania ;  a  doctrine  which  may  be  accused  of  a  cold 
Deism  and  of  a  purely  juridical  conception  of  justification, 
but  which  cannot  be  denied  the  merits  of  a  penetrating 
criticism,  and  great  logical  and  moral  strength.  If  the 
Socinians  have  distanced  Christ  from  God,  they  have,  on  the 
other  hand,  brought  him  nearer  to  man,  by  representing  him 
as  being  like  unto  us  in  all  things,  sin  excepted  ;  and  thus 
they  are  truly,  whatever  may  be  said  to  the  contrary,  legiti- 
mate sons  of  that  Reformation  of  which  the  capital  aim  was 
to  place  the  sinner  in  immediate  relations  with  his  Saviour. 

It  was  reserved  for  the  English  to  complete  the  work 
begun  by  the  Polish  brethren,  and  to  free  the  Unitarian 
system  from  the  inconsistencies  which  Fausto  Sozzini  had 
permitted  to  remain  in  it.  The  Anglo-Saxon  race  brought 
to  the  examination  of  this  theological  problem  those  superior 
qualities  which  have  made  it  at  the  present  date  the  advanced 
guard  of  civilisation  in  the  world— great  critical  sagacity, 
rare  straightforwardness  of  mind,  and  an  inflexible  morality. 

Reverting  with  Calvin  to  the  old  apostolical  tradition,  the 
later  English  Unitarians  have  reserved  to  God  alone  the 
tribute  of  their  addresses  in  prayer.  But  instead  of  con- 
ceiving Him  as  a  cold  and  abstract  causality,  governing  the 
moral  as  well  as  the  physical  world  by  inexorable  law,  they 
have  grasped  the  conception  of  God  as  Ruler  of  consciences 
and  Father  of  spirits  ;  the  unipersonal  and  life-giving  Spirit, 
whose  essential  attribute  is  love,  and  who  desires  the  happi- 

C  2 


20  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

ness  of  every  soul,  made  in  His  image.  Christ,  in  their  eyes, 
is  the  supreme  revealer  of  the  truths  essential  to  salvation, 
and  the  living  word  of  God ;  by  nature,  Son  of  man,  in  his 
goodness  and  perfect  holiness  he  has  a  right  to  the  title,  Son 
of  God ;  but  he  never  claimed  the  worship  reserved  to  the 
Father,  who  is  the  only  true  God.  As  for  man,  he  is  truly 
free  and  responsible  before  God ;  not  a  slave  of  sin,  inca- 
pable of  doing  any  good.  Endowed  with  an  immortal  soul 
of  divine  extraction,  he  communicates  with  God  through  the 
Holy  Spirit ;  and  in  another  life  he  will  be  treated  in 
accordance  with  his  moral  efforts,  not  according  to  his 
dogmatic  opinions.  Finally,  the  Bible  is  the  treasure  which 
contains  the  revelations  of  God  in  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments ;  but  this  revelation  is  not  all,  and  the  Bible  must  be 
supplemented  by  the  revelations  of  God  in  nature,  in  history, 
and  in  conscience. 

Such  are  the  principal  elements  of  the  Unitarian  Chris- 
tianity held  in  the  seventeenth  century  by  Bidle,  Milton  and 
Locke:  by  Newton,  Priestley  and  Lindsey-*^  in  the  eighteenth 
century;  and  in  the  nineteenth  by  Channing,  Martineau  and 
Parker. 

Everybody  now  knows  that  it  is  with  good  reason  that 
Locke  and  Newton  are  classed  as  Unitarians.  Still  more 
certain  is  it  that  the  immortal  author  of  Paradise  Lost  held 
ideas  that  were  clearly  Antitrinitarian.'-^"  In  our  own  century 
two  distinguished  American  thinkers  have  shed  the  brighest 
lustre  on  the  Unitarian  Christianity  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race  :  Channing,  by  his  admirable  simplicity  of  heart  and 
his  intelligent  sympathy  with  the  sons  of  toil,  and  Theodore 


-"  A.  Reville,  itt  stip.,  p.  154.  Cf.  Dr.  Martineau,  Three  Stages  of 
Unitarian  Theoloi^y ;  W.  Gaskell,  Strong  Points  of  Unitarian  Chris- 
tianity.    London:  British  and  Foreign  Unitarian  Association,  1869-70. 

-''  R.  Wallace,  Antitrinitarian  Biography,  art.  Milton.  3  vols.  Svo. 
London,  1850. 


INTRODUCTION.  21 

Parker,  by  his  noble  vindication  of  freedom  for  the  slave 
and  his  nobility  of  character,  have  given  to  Unitarianism 
that  which  it  lacked  in  its  Socinian  stage,  as  regards  the  life 
of  the  heart  and  knowledge  of  the  soul's  needs.  It  may  be 
said  that  in  Channing  Unitarian  Christianity  attained  the 
apogee  of  its  development,  and  manifested  all  the  power  of 
its  social  and  emancipating  activity.  The  Christianity  of 
Channing  appears  tons  a  synthesis  of  revelation  and  reason, 
brought  within  the  comprehension  of  all.-^ 

If  we  have  made  sure  our  ground  so  far,  the  question 
which  now  faces  us  is  the  following :  Unitarian  Christianity 
being  the  boldest  expression  of  Protestantism,  the  extreme 
term  of  the  development  of  the  scriptural  and  rational  prin- 
ciples of  the  Reformation,  how  comes  it  that  it  has  attained 
its  fullest  development  among  a  people  so  conservative  and 
so  wedded  to  established  forms  as  the  English  ?  What  are 
the  causes,  external  or  internal,  which  have  produced  in 
such  a  country  the  opposite  extremes  of  Protestantism — on 
the  one  hand  Unitarianism,  and  on  the  other  Ritualism  ? 
How  has  the  same  soil  given  birth  to  a  John  Bidle  and  a 
Dr.  Pusey?  Several  solutions  present  themselves  at  once 
to  the  mind.  It  might  be  possible,  for  example,  to  view 
Unitarianism  as  a  direct  graft  of  Polish  Socinianism  on  the 
venerable  trunk  of  the  Anglican  Church.  Some,  on  the 
contrary,  insist  that  it  is  an  importation  of  Dutch  Anabap- 
tism  ;  and  this  belief  has  obtained  credence  with  one  of  the 
most  serious  historians  of  Socinianism. -^  Finally,  others 
have  thought  that,  like  Puritanism,  Unitarianism  has  only 
been  an  attempt  to  acclimatise  in  England  the  ideas  of  cer- 


-^  Laboulaye,  Preface  to  the  French  translation  of  Channing's  Works 
(CEuvrcs  de  Chaniiing:  Paris,  1854).  V^QW'A.n,  Etudes  Religieuses  {QYi'iSi- 
ning). 

-^  Pere  Louis  Anastase  Guichard,  Hisioire  du  Socmiaiiisinc :  Paris, 
1723,  4to  (anonymous). 


22  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

tain  Swiss  Reformers.  As  generally  happens  in  the  case  of 
such  opposite  solutions,  there  is  a  certain  amount  of  truth 
in  each  of  these  views,  although  not  one  of  them  seems  to 
us  entirely  adequate.  However  this  may  be,  there  is  a  pre- 
liminary problem  to  be  solved.  We  must  first  ascertain 
whether  English  Unitarian  Christianity  is  or  is  not  of  purely 
English  origin.  It  is  with  the  consideration  of  this  question 
that  our  investigations  will  begin. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Was  Unitarian  Christianity  of  English  origin?— Its  relation  to  Wiclif 
and  the  Lollards  ;  to  Reginald  Pecock ;  to  the  Nonconformists. — The 
Anglican  Church. 

The  essential  principles  of  Unitarian  Christianity  may  be 
reduced  to  the  following  two.  First  stands  the  principle 
that  God  is  a  simple,  individual  substance,  whose  leading 
attribute  is  love.  ^A''hence  it  follows  that  Jesus  Christ  could 
not  be  a  hypostasis  (constituent  personality)  of  the  Godhead, 
but  is  man  created  in  God's  image,  and  realising  in  perfec- 
tion the  spiritual  ideal  of  which  the  first  Adam  fell  short. 
Or,  in  other  words,  God  is  unipersonal ;  and  Jesus  Christ 
the  unique  Mediator  between  God  and  man.  The  second 
principle  is,  that  the  revelation  contained  in  the  Holy 
Scriptures  harmonises  with  the  testimony  of  conscience  and 
reason  ;  and  consequently  that  the  sole  rightful  authority  in 
matters  of  faith  is  the  Bible,  checked  by  free  criticism.^ 

This  being  the  definition  with  which  we  start,  let  us 
try  to  discover  whether  Unitarianism  may  not  have  had  its 
original  roots  in  the  religious  soil  of  England.  It  would  be 
useless  to  go  further  back  than  Wiclif.  Before  his  time,  the 
Anglican  Church  was  the  most  catholic,  the  most  orthodox, 
the  most  ultramontane  in  Europe.^      Everybody  knows  at 

^  Laboulaye,  ut  sup.,  9  ff. 

"^  G.  Lechler,  J.  von  Wiclif  uiid  die  VorgeschicJite  der  Reformation, 
vol.  i.  213  :  Leipz.  1873.  [A  portion  of  this  work,  under  the  title,  John 
Wiclif  and  his  English  Precursors,  has  been  translated  by  Peter  Lorimer, 
D. D,  (London:  Kegan  Paul  and  Co.,  1881).     See  pp.  17,  18,  51     53.] 


24  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

what  price  John  Lackland  redeemed  his  crown  ;  but  no  one 
will  ever  know  what  Peter's  pence  cost  the  English,  in  the 
three  centuries  during  which  they  were  obliged  to  pay  that 
tribute  to  the  Holy  See.  After  the  annihilation  of  the  sect 
of  the  Culdees,  the  last  relic  of  Eastern  Christianity,  the 
Roman  Church  reigned  absolute  mistress  over  the  churches 
of  Great  Britain ;  and,  thanks  to  their  insular  position,  had 
been  able  to  keep  them  from  the  infiltration  of  any  conti- 
nental heresies.  The  Waldenses  appear  never  to  have  had 
any  disciples  here. 

John  Wiclif  (b.  circ.  1324,  d.  1384)  is  the  first  heretic  of 
modern  times  in  England.  Was  he  unorthodox  as  regards 
the  doctrines  of  the  Trinity,  and  of  the  divinity  of  Jesus 
Christ  ?  Not  so.  A  mere  glance  at  his  chief  work,  the 
Trtalogus,^  shows  us  that  Wiclif  adopted  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  as  it  had  been  elaborated  by  Tertullian,  Athanasius 
and  Augustine,  and  brought  to  its  complete  development 
in  the  Symbolum  Qidaunque.  Although  Holy  Scripture  was 
in  his  eyes  "  Goddis  lawe,"  that  is  to  say  the  normal  and 
sufficient  authority  in  matters  of  faith,  the  Gospel  Doctor 
{Doctor  EvangeHciis)  does  not  appear  to  have  dreamed  of 
seeking  there  the  grounds  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity. 
He  prefers  to  study  it  from  a  sj)eculative  point  of  view. 
Borrowing  from  St.  Augustine  his  Platonic  ideas,  Wiclif  sees, 
in  the  Father,  the  power  which  God  has  of  knowing  Himself 
and  the  world  ;  in  the  Son,  the  actual  consciousness  which 
God  necessarily  possesses  of  Himself;  and  in  the  Holy 
Spirit,  the  consequent  return  of  God  to  rest  upon  Himself  in 
divine  repose.''     From  the  point  of  view  of  the  ReaHst  school 


3  Jeremy  Collier,  Ecd.  Hist,  of  Gr.  Brit.  (edit.  Barham,  1840),  iii.  143. 

■*  See  F.  C.  Baur,  nt  sup.,  ii.  901.  Cf.  Wiclif,  Trialogus,  lib.  i.  cap.  6. 
"  Certum  est  quod  [Deus]  habet  potentiam  ad  se  et  ad  alia  cognoscendum, 
et  ilia  potentia  dicitur  Deus  Pater.  Et  quantum  potest  se  ipsum  cognos- 
cere,  tantum  se  ipsum  necessario  cognoscit,  et  ilia  notitia  dicitur  Deus 
Filius.     Et  sicut  non  potest  esse  quod  sic  posset  se  ipsum  cognoscere, 


CHAPTER   I.  25 

to  which  he  belonged,  the  Rector  of  Lutterworth  sees  in 
all  these  ideas  real  and  living  objects.  He  especially  clings 
to  the  conception  of  God  the  Son  as  the  Logos,  that  is  to 
say,  at  once  the  Consciousness  and  the  Reason,  whereby 
God  enters  into  relations  with  the  world.  To  him,  this 
Logos  is  the  true  Mediator.  It  will  be  seen  that,  in  this 
system,  the  humanity  of  Christ  completely  disappears  ;  the 
human  mask  drops  off,  the  God  abides  in  his  redeeming 
but  absolutely  transcendent  majesty.  We  are  a  long  way 
from  the  fundamental  principle  of  Unitarianism. 

Nevertheless,  on  a  closer  scrutiny  it  will  be  seen  that 
Wiclif  opens  the  way  for  the  later  theology  by  his  theory  of 
the  sources  of  knowledge.     In  the  main,  Wiclif  puts  Scrip-    1 
ture  in  the  place  of  the  second  of  the  two  sources  allowed   r 
by  the  scholastic  doctors,  which  were,  reason  {ratio)  and  the    ) 
tradition  of  the  Church  {auctorifas).     The  Bible  is   in  his 
eyes  the  Magna  Charta  of  the  Church,  in  the  same  way  as 
the  Charter  of  12 15  is  the  safeguard  of  the  English  State. 
As  regards  exegesis,  it  is  the  Holy  Spirit,  not  the  tradition 
of  the  Fathers  or  the  voice  of  the  Pope,  that  reveals  to  us 
the  meaning  of  the  inspired  word.     Further,  the  divine  law 
revealed  in  the  Bible  did  not  come  to  abolish,  but  to  fulfil, 
the   natural   law  written   in   the  consciousness  of  mankind 
by  the  same  God.     Far  from  being  impotent  or  contrary  to 
Revelation,  this  "natural  hght"  is  its  best  auxiliary.     This 


nisi  cognoscat  actualiter  quantum  potest ;  sic  non  potest  esse,  quod  sic 
actualiter  se  cognoscat,  nisi  in  seipso  finaliter  quietetur ;  et  ilia  quietatio 
est  Spiritus  Sanctus."  ["  Certain  is  it  that  [God]  hath  a  potency  whereby 
He  may  know  Himself  and  other  matters;  and  that  potency  is  called 
God  the  Father.  And  as  He  can  know  Himself,  so  doth  He  of  necessity 
know  Himself,  and  that  knowing  is  called  God  the  Son.  And  like  as  it 
cannot  be  that  He  could  thus  know  Himself,  without  that  He  do  actually 
know  Himself,  as  He  can ;  so  can  it  not  be  that  thus  He  actually  doth 
know  Himself,  without  that  in  Himself  He  finally  do  take  rest;  and 
that  taking  of  rest  is  the  Holy  Spirit."] 


26  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

it  was  that  enlightened  the  pagan  philosophers  before  the 
advent  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  by  its  aid  Plato  was  able  to  dis- 
cover that  the  Godhead  is  three-fold  and  at  the  same  time 
one.  Yet  faith  alone,  aided  by  divine  grace  and  illumina- 
tion, can  attain  a  meritorious,  that  is  to  say,  a  saving,  know- 
ledge of  the  mystery  of  the  Trinity. ^  Thus  Wiclif  is  really 
a  rationalist  as  regards  his  method ;  and  if  he  retained  the 
Trinitarian  dogma,  it  was  because  he  did  not  take  the  trouble 
of  checking  it  by  a  more  thorough  criticism  of  the  Gospels. 
He  admits  the  essential  harmony  of  Reason  and  Revelation, 
and  thereby  he  is  truly  one  of  the  forerunners  of  the  "rea- 
sonable" Christianity  of  Locke  and  Channing. 

Had  not  Wiclif  himself  a  glimpse  of  better  days  when  he 
penned  these  prophetic  words  :  "  I  look  forward  to  the  time 
when  some  brethren  whom  God  shall  condescend  to  teach 
will  be  thoroughly  converted  to  the  primitive  religion  of 
Christ ;  and  that  such  persons,  after  they  have  gained  their 
liberty  from  Antichrist,  will  return  freely  to  the  original  doc- 
trine of  Jesus ;  and  then  they  will  edify  the  Church,  as  did 
Paul"?« 

It  is  only  given  to  superior  minds  to  reconcile  the  anti- 
nomies of  religious  thought.  After  Wiclif,  divorce  was  pro- 
claimed between  the  two  great  witnesses  of  divine  truth. 
The  Lollards,  heirs  of  the  piety  but  not  of  the  science  of 
the  Gospel  Doctor,  exaggerated  the  principle  of  Scriptural 
authority,  while  Reginald  Pecock,  their  antagonist,  goes  so 
far  as  to  make  reason  the  guiding  principle  in  matters  of 
faith.  The  Lollards,  who  at  the  outset  counted  in  their 
ranks  several  distinguished  representatives  of  the  English 
clergy  and  of  the  University  of  Oxford — -Nicholas  Hereford, 

^  G.  Lechler,  ut  sup.,  cap.  viii.  sec.  iii.  262  ff. :  The  Source  ofChnstian 
Truth. 

^  See  title-page  to  A  Historical  Sketch  of  the  Rise  and  Progress  of  the 
Lhtitarian  Christian  Doctrine  in  Modern  Times,  with  Preface  by  Robert 
Spears.     London,  1877. 


CHAPTER    I.  27 

John  Purvey,  John  Ashton  and  William  Thorpe — became, 
after  the  lapse  of  a  generation,  a  religious  society  of  laymen — 
"  Bible-men,"  as  they  were  often  called.  We  must  not,  then, 
expect  on  their  part  much  theological  culture;  what  they 
demanded,  above  anything  else,  was  the  reformation  of  the 
institutions  and  the  priesthood  of  the  Church,  on  the  footing 
and  by  the  agency  of  Biblical  preaching.  Everything  that 
was  not  founded  on  the  written  Word  was  bad  and  must  be 
abolished.  Thus  they  inveighed  against  plurality  of  livings  ; 
against  the  absenteeism  and  the  dumbness  of  the  bishops, 
whose  preaching  was  done  by  ignorant  monks;  against  the 
mendicant  orders,  and  against  tithes.  They  pleaded  against 
warfare,  and  indeed  against  the  taking  of  human  life  in  any 
form.  Their  boldest  step  was  to  call  in  question  the  miracle 
of  the  Mass.  They  demanded  communion  in  both  kinds, 
and  the  abolition  of  auricular  confession.  They  rejected 
prayers  for  the  dead.  The  remaining  dogmata  and  sacra- 
ments they,  like  Wiclif,  retained  in  their  integrity. '' 

Reginald  Pecock,  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph  and  afterwards  of 
Chichester  (b.  1398,  d.  about  1460),  is  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  figures  of  the  fifteenth  century.  He  exhibits  the 
curious  spectacle  of  a  representative  of  the  Catholic  hierarchy 
who,  while  desirous  of  defending  it  against  the  attacks  of 
the  Lollards,  himself  fell  into  heresy,  and  was  mercilessly 
deprived  by  his  Metropolitan.  Nothing  was  wanting  to  make 
him  a  martyr  for  the  truth,  except  a  firmer  resolution  and 
the  courage  to  face  the  tortures  of  the  stake.  Yet  it  is  not 
by  us  that  his  retractation  shall  be  set  down  as  a  crime.  It 
is  not  given  to  all  men  to  become  martyrs  to  their  convic- 
tions. By  the  side  of  a  John  Hus  and  a  Jerome  of  Prag, 
there  is  room  for  a  Galileo.  Pecock  was  pre-eminently  a 
man  of  sincere  and  generous  spirit,  of  clear  and  moderate 
mind.     He  was  perhaps  the  only  man  of  his  century  who 

^  G.  Lechler,  tit  sup.,  vol.  i.  213. 


28  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

thought,  with  John  Hus,  that  it  is  far  better  to  persuade  a 
heretic  than  to  burn  him  ;  and  that  God  alone,  who  reads 
the  inmost  recesses  of  the  soul,  has  the  right  to  pass  sentence 
of  damnation.  Accordingly,  being  persuaded  that  the  Lol- 
lards went  too  far  in  their  criticisms  of  ecclesiastical  insti- 
tutions and  the  priesthood,  he  devoted  all  the  powers  of  his 
mind  to  bring  them  back  again  within  the  fold  of  the  Esta- 
blished Church.  In  London,  where  for  thirteen  years  he 
was  Master  of  Whittington  College  (the  College  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  and  St.  Mary,  founded  by  Sir  Richard  Whittington) 
and  Rector  of  St.  Michael  Royal,  he  entered  into  relations 
with  those  who  were  still  called  "knowen  men"^  (that  is  to 
say,  those  whom  God  has  predestined  to  salvation,  and  who 
have  come  to  know  it  by  the  understanding  of  His  Word). 
Having  become  later  on  Bishop  of  St.  Asaph,  and  ultimately 
of  Chichester,  he  published  in  succession  three  books  ad- 
dressed to  the  Lollards  :  The  Repressing  of  over  viuch  Witing 
the  Clergie  (1449  Latin,  1456  English),  the  Book  of  Faith 
(1450  Latin,  1456  English),  and  the  Donat. 

In  these  several  works,  Pecock  endeavours  to  demonstrate 
the  falsity  of  the  Lollard  principle,  "  There  is  nothing  true 
outside  of  the  Scripture."  He  reminds  them  that,  shortly 
before  the  coming  of  Jesus  Christ,  the  light  of  truth,  aug- 
mented by  philosophy,  had  enlightened  the  pagans,  in  so 
much  that  the  greater  part  of  them  had  become  emancipated 
from  the  worship  of  idols ;  and  he  specifies  several  institu- 
tions of  the  Church,  such  as  baptism  and  the  apostolate, 
which  had  been  founded  long  before  the  sacred  collection 
was  formed.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Bishop  of  Chichester 
frankly  acknowledges  the  errors  of  tradition,  and  the  abuses 


^  Pecock's  Repressor,  Part  i.  cap.  11,  p.  53.  Cf.  Foxe,  Actes  and 
Motiuments,  vol.  iv.  221.  [Cf.  i  Cor.  xi.  19:  "It  bihoueth  eresies  to  be 
that  thei  that  ben  preued  ben  openli  knowen  in  ghou"  (Wiclif  s  trans- 
lation).    Cf.  also  "the  Men,"  in  the  Highlands  of  Scotland  to-day.] 


CHAPTER   I.  29 

to  which  certain  institutions,  such  as  monachism,  had  given 
rise.^ 

In  the  last  resort,  Pecock  declares  that  Christians  are 
only  bound  by  the  canons  of  the  Church  in  so  far  as  they  are 
conformable  to  common  sense.  Thus  he  proclaims  reason 
as  the  highest  source  of  knowledge.  This  was  too  much  for 
the  hierarchy  of  the  fifteenth  century.  The  restoration  of 
the  Lollards  to  the  Church  appeared  to  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  too  dearly  bought  at  the  sacrifice  of  infallibility 
and  tradition.  The  unfortunate  Bishop  of  Chichester,  after 
a  career  of  a  half  century  devoted  to  the  search  for  truth  and 
peace,  was  condemned  to  a  humiliating  retractation,  which 
he  had  to  make  (4th  Dec.  1457)  at  St.  Paul's  Cross,  the  very 
place  where  he  had  preached  his  first  sermon  in  1447.  He 
was  shut  up  in  Thorney  Abbey  for  the  remainder  of  his  days, 
and  did  not  long  survive  this  double  punishment. 

Throughout  this  controversy  between  Pecock  and  the 
Lollards,  the  Trinity  was  not  called  in  question,  so  far  as  we 
know.  The  matters  at  stake  were  the  two  contrasted  prin- 
ciples of  Reason  and  Scripture.  Each  of  these  principles 
possessed  a  strong  vitality  ;  and  they  survived  the  conflict, 
while  the  infallibility  of  the  Church,  denied  by  them  both, 
was  seriously  shaken.  Reginald  Pecock  was  the  father  of 
English  Rationalism,  which  broke  out  in  the  seventeenth 
century  with  Herbert  of  Cherbury  ;  while  the  scriptural  prin- 
ciple of  the  Lollards,  pushed  as  far  as  it  would  go,  was  sure 
to  give  birth  to  the  Anabaptist  and  Antitrinitarian  tendencies 
of  the  sixteenth  century. 

Following  the  movement  of  the  Lollards,  we  are  brought 
to  the  threshold  of  that  great  religious  revolution  which 
marked  the  sixteenth  century,  and  which  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  in  England  could  not  escape.  Historians  of  the 
two   rival   confessions   have  been  very  unjust  toward  the 

^  G.  Lechler,  ut  snj>.,  vol.  ii.  369—415. 


30  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Anglican  Reformation.  Catholics  are  resolved  to  see  nothing 
in  it  but  the  caprices  of  the  royal  Bluebeard ;  and  Protes- 
tants affect  to  treat  it  as  a  bastard  daughter  of  Catholicism. 
A  few,  however,  as  recently  Professor  Nippold,  of  Berne, 
have  set  themselves  to  do  away  with  this  prejudice,  and  to 
extol  the  eminent  services  rendered  by  this  Church  to  the 
interests  of  religious  life  in  England.  "The  Nonconformists," 
he  observes,  "gathered  into  their  barns  the  best  of  the  har- 
vest prepared  by  the  sowers  of  the  Episcopal  Church." ^^ 

In  our  opinion,  too,  the  violent  and  arbitrary  acts  of 
Henry  VIII.  represent  only  the  preliminary  process  which 
emancipated  the  Church  of  England  from  the  crushing 
supremacy  of  the  Holy  See,  and  rendered  possible  a  real 
reformation  of  religious  and  of  ecclesiastical  life.  These 
acts,  however,  would  not  have  been  possible,  even  to  an 
all-powerful  despot,  had  they  not  been  sustained  by  the 
opinion  of  the  majority  in  the  Commons.  It  is  too  fre- 
quently forgotten  that,  since  the  reign  of  Edward  III.  (1327 
— 1377),  the  English  Crown  had  struggled  for  the  indepen- 
dence of  the  civil  power,  and  for  the  abolition  of  the  fiscal 
spoliation  practised  by  the  Holy  See.^^  Wiclif  had  been 
the  adviser  of  the  Crown  in  this  legal  resistance,  and  one  of 
the  negociators  at  the  Convention  of  Bruges.  Since  then 
there  had  been  alternations  of  resistance  and  weakness  in 
the  English  attitude  towards  the  Court  of  Rome ;  but  the 
policy  of  emancipation  from  clerical  thraldom  was  always 
popular  in  England,  and  this  it  was  which  gave  Henry  VIII. 
liberty  to  act  so  vigorously. 

The  aristocratic  and  hierarchical  tendency  of  a  reform 
effected  by  the  upper  stratum  is  represented  in  the  English 


1"  F.  Nippold,   Handbuch  der  neiiestcn  Kirchcngeschichtc,   3rd   edit, 
vol.  i.  71  :  Elberfeld,  1880. 

"  See  Montagu  Burrows,  Wiclif  s Placcin  History,  pp.  42  ff.:  London, 
1882. 


CHAPTER    I.  31 

Reformation  by  Thomas  Cromwell,  Keeper  of  the  Privy  Seal, 
the  minion  of  Henry  VI 1 1.,  and  pre-eminently  by  Cranmer, 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  Cranmer  was  a  thorough  poli- 
tician, a  typical  English  Tory,  conservative,  but  too  intelli- 
gent not  to  carry  out  indispensable  reforms  just  in  time. 
His  principle  was,  to  take  steps  with  a  sagacious  slowness. 
He  began  by  signing  and  obtaining  the  Convocation's 
acceptance  of  certain  "  Articles  devised  by  the  Kinges 
Highnes  Majestic,  to  stablyshe  Christen  quietnes  and  unitie 
among  us,  and  to  avoyde  contentious  opinions"  (1536). 
These  Articles  of  Reformation  stipulated  that  the  books 
contained  in  the  complete  canon  of  the  Bible,  with  the  three 
Creeds,  namely,  the  Apostles',  the  Nicene  and  the  Atha- 
nasian,  all  interpreted  according  to  the  sense  of  "  the  holy 
approved  Doctors  of  the  Church,"  were  to  be  made  the 
foundation  of  the  Christian  faith.  Cranmer's  idea  was  to 
accomplish  the  reformation  of  dogma  and  ritual  slowly  and 
prudently,  in  order  not  to  provoke  violent  reactions.  This 
did  not  commend  itself  to  the  partisans  of  reform  in  the 
popular  sense,  who,  without  taking  into  account  the  worldly 
interests  of  those  in  place  and  power,  would  have  put  down 
at  one  stroke  Catholic  institutions  and  Catholic  rites,  as  the 
sources  of  many  an  abuse.  These  partisans,  recruited  largely 
from  the  ranks  of  the  Lollards,  though  deprived  of  the  ser- 
vices of  the  travelling  preachers  of  earlier  days,  had  still 
itinerant  readers,  who  went  from  place  to  place  holding 
secret  assemblies,  in  which  were  read  the  English  Bible,  and 
other  popular  writings  of  Wiclif,  especially  the  Wicket.  Gene- 
rally they  had  large  portions  of  the  Scriptures  by  heart,  and 
went  among  themselves  by  those  same  titles  of  Bible-men, 
or  "knowen  men,"i"'^  which  we  have  already  met  with  in  the 
writings  of  Pecock  a  century  and  a  half  before. 

Between  these  two  tendencies,  which  F.  Guizot  was  the 


G.  Lechler,  lit  sup.,  vol.  ii.  456  ff. 


32  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

first  to  denote  with  precision  in  his  History  of  the  English 
Revolution}'^  and  -which  we  will  designate  as  Reformation 
and  Revolution,  the  struggle  soon  broke  out.  Henry  VIII., 
declared  by  statute  "  the  only  supreme  head  on  earth  of  the 
Church  of  England"  (1532),  and  being  already  Defender  of 
the  Catholic  Faith,  abused  the  royal  prerogative  to  pass  the 
Six  Articles  of  1539,  which  re-established  the  dogma  of  the 
Real  Presence,  communion  in  one  kind,  the  celibacy  of  the 
clergy,  vows,  private  masses,  and  auricular  confession.  These 
Articles,  and  the  severities  with  which  the  king  chastised  the 
Nonconformists,  excited  general  protest.  The  Act  could 
not  survive  its  author,  and  was  withdrawn  on  the  accession 
of  the  pious  Edward  VI. 

It  is  from  this  too  short  reign  (1547  — 1553)  that  the 
birth  of  the  Anglican  Church  really  dates.  A  third  element 
arose  to  co-operate  in  its  formation,  the  influence  of  the 
Lutheran  Reformation,  exerted  in  part  by  the  books  of 
Luther,  in  part  by  the  letters  of  Melanchthon  (Schwartzerde) 
and  Osiander  (Hosmann),  lastly  in  part  by  the  presence  of 
the  numerous  refugees  who  sought  in  Great  Britain  an  asylum 
from  the  persecution  which  raged  on  the  continent.  The 
influence  of  the  writings  of  the  Doctor  of  Wittenberg  is  in- 
contestable. It  transpires  in  the  very  violence  of  the  refuta- 
tions of  Henry  VIII.  Still  the  theologians  of  Great  Britain 
could  never  accept  the  doctrine  of  a  servum  arbitrium  (com- 
pulsory choice)  and  a  radical  powerlessness  of  the  human 
will ;  hence  they  felt  themselves  more  drawn  towaids  the 
synergistic  principle  of  Melanchthon  (consent  of  the  will). 
Cranmer  even  invited  Melanchthon  to  visit  England.  This 
step  was  no  more  successful  than  the  like  invitation  of 
Francis  I.  had  been,  and  it  was  more  especially  with  Osiander 
of  Nlirnberg  that  Cranmer  kept  up  a  correspondence. 

It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the  Augustinian  cloister  in 

13  Guizot,  Hist,  de  la  Rcvol.  cfAiiglderre  (introductory  Discows). 


CHAPTER   I.  33 

London  was  the  spot  which  became  the  point  of  contact 
for  these  two  last-named  tendencies.  There  it  was  that  the 
descendants  of  the  Lollards,  the  Bible-men,  met  the  followers 
of  the  rule  of  St.  Augustine,  who  had  embraced  the  doc- 
trines of  their  illustrious  brother  of  Erfurt.  This  rapid  dis- 
semination of  the  writmgs  of  Luther  among  the  principal 
Augustinian  convents  in  Europe  was  truly  providential.  The 
fraternal  bond,  in  this  instance,  served  the  cause  of  liberty. 
In  Antwerp,  in  Turin,  and  in  London,  the  Austin  friars  were 
the  agents  in  causing  the  first  sparks  of  evangelical  truth  to 
flash  from  amid  the  darkness  of  the  reigning  scholasticism. 
A  curious  document  shows  us  two  of  these  Bible-readers 
going  under  cover  "  to  Frear  Barons,  then  being  at  the  Freers 
Augustines  in  London,  to  buy  a  New  Testament  in  Englishe" 
as  newly  printed,  and  showing  him  some  old  manuscripts  of 
the  Gospels,  and  "certayne  Epistles  of  Peter  and  Poule  in 
Englishe."  They  spoke  with  him  about  the  religious  pro- 
gress of  their  parish  priest  at  Steeple  Bumpstead  (Essex),  and 
carried  back  for  him  a  letter  of  exhortation  from  the  Augustine 
monk.^* 

From  1547,  Bucer  (Kuhhorn)  and  Fagius  (Buchlein), 
Ochino  (Tomassini)  aijd  Vermigli,  came  into  close  relations 
with  Ridley  and  Latimer,  the  representatives  of  the  spirit  of 
Wiclif  These  picked  theologians  of  the  continent,  welcomed 
by  Archbishop  Cranmer,  and  placed  in  the  principal  chairs 
of  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Universities,  helped  to  make  the 
Anglican  Church  the  most  cosmopolitan  and,  in  certain 
respects,  the  most  synthetic  body  that  one  can  conceive. 
The  first  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  published  in  1549  and  in- 
cluding the  new  Liturgy  of  1548,  the  Reformatio  legtim  eccle- 
siasticarum  of  1553,  and  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  of  1563,  are 
the  products  of  this  conjoint  elaboration.  Let  us  see  if  we 
can  find  any  traces  of  Unitarianism  in  them. 

^■*  Strype,  Ecdes.  Memorials,  vol.  i.  part  2,  app.  No.  17.  See  Appen- 
dix I. 


34  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

We  open  the  Prayer  Book  of  1549,  and  here,  "at  Morning 
Prayer,"  we  find  the  following  rubric  :  .  "  In  the  feasts  of 
Christmas,  the  Epiphany,  Easter,  Ascension,  Pentecost,  and 
upon  Trinity  Sunday,  shall  be  sung  or  said,  immediately 
2S.\.Qx  Beiiedictiis,  this  confession  of  our  Christian  faith."  Then 
follows  the  Quicumque  vult}^  A  i^w  pages  further  on  we 
read  the  following  Litany  : 

"  O  God  the  Father  of  heaven  :  have  mercy  on  us,  &c. 
O  God  the  Son,  Redeemer  of  the  world,  &c. 
O  God  the  Holy  Ghost,  proceeding  from  the  Father  and  the 

Son,  &c. 
O  holy,  blessed,  and  glorious  Trinity,  three  Persons  and  one 

God,  have  mercy  upon  us,"  &c. 

Thus  it  is  clear  that  the  English  reformers  retained,  in  their 
vernacular  rendering,  that  invocation  of  the  Holy  Trinity 
which  Luther  had  deemed  it  right  to  suppress.  Further- 
more, they  inscribed  at  the  head  of  the  list  of  the  Thirty- 
nine  Articles,  passed  by  the  Convocation  in  1563,  these 
words  : 

"  I. — Of  Faith  in  the  Holy  TriJiity. 

"  There  is  but  one  living  and  true  God,  everlasting,  without 
body,  parts,  or  passions;  of  infinite  power,  wisdom,  and  good- 
ness ;  the  Maker  and  Preserver  of  all  things  both  visible  and 
invisible.  And  in  unity  of  this  Godhead  there  be  three  Persons, 
of  one  substance,  power,  and  eternity ;  the  Father,  the  Son,  and 
the  Holy  Ghost." '« 

Such  to  this  day  is  the  official  doctrine  of  the  Anglican 
Church,  a  doctrine  Calvinian  and  Trinitarian.  This  Church, 
of  which  it  has  been  said  that  it  is  Catholic  in  its  hierarchy, 
Calvinistic  in  its  doctrine,  and  Zwinglian  in  its  Eucharistic 

''  [It  was,  however,  retained  only  on  the  above  days.  On  ordinary 
occasions  the  Apostles'  Creed  was  now  for  the  first  time  substituted  for 
it.] 

■"'  See  Book  of  Common  Prayer  (Articles  of  Religion).  [Cf.  Hardwick, 
History  of  the  Articles,  Appendix  iii. :  London,  185 1.] 


CHAPTER   I.  35 

liturgy,^'''  was  definitively  established,  and  became  the  national 
Church  of  England,  under  the  glorious  reign  of  Elizabeth. 

Compromises  in  religion  are,  in  their  very  nature,  even 
more  ephemeral  than  compromises  in  politics,  because  the 
religious  conscience  is  more  exacting  than  political  convic- 
tion even  the  most  decided.  For  a  time  they  may  satisfy 
the  needs  of  the  multitude ;  but,  to  the  honour  of  human 
nature,  there  ever  remains  a  certain  number  of  consciences 
who  tamper  not  with  their  convictions,  and  maintain  them 
in  spite  and  in  face  of  all  persecutions.  It  was  the  glory 
of  the  Anglican  Church  that,  at  a  crisis  in  the  reign  of  Eli- 
zabeth, it  identified  itself  with  the  cause  of  national  inde- 
pendence, in  face  of  the  menacing  claims  of  Sisto  V.  and 
Philip  II.  The  secret  of  its  decadence  is  that  it  completely 
satisfies  none  of  the  tendencies  of  the  Christian  conscience, 
roused  by  the  thunder-clap  of  Wittenberg.  The  remnants 
of  Catholicism  which  it  has  retained  provoked  the  Puritan 
revolt,  its  sacramental  element  was  rejected  by  the  Anabap- 
tists and  the  Quakers,  and  finally  its  scholastic  Christology 
gave  rise  to  the  protest  of  the  Unitarians. 

In  subsequent  chapters  we  shall  study  in  detail  Anabap- 
tism  and  Puritanism,  in  their  relation  to  Unitarian  ideas. 

We  may,  however,  be  permitted  at  once  to  explain  the 
genesis  of  these  contrasted  sects.  Anabaptism  and  Quaker- 
ism, though  they  sprang  up  in  England  at  the  distance  of  a 
century  from  each  other,  exhibit  great  affinities  both  of  prin- 
ciple and  of  character.  Both  proceed  from  a  violent  reaction, 
in  the  name  of  Scripture  and  the  Holy  Spirit,  against  for- 
malism in  worship.  Both  aimed  at  a  radical  reform  of  such 
ecclesiastical  rites,  and  even  of  such  social  institutions  as 
appeared  to  them  opposed  to  the  true  idea  of  the  Church, 
such  as  military  service,  episcopacy,  oaths,  &c.    George  Fox, 

^^  [It  was  Lord  Chatham,  on  the  other  hand,  who  said  :  "  We  have  a 
Calvinistic  Creed,  a  Popish  liturgy,  and  an  Arminian  clergy."] 

D  2 


36  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

in  this  regard,  is  the  worthy  counterpart  of  Menno  Simons. 
On  the  other  hand,  they  differ  in  the  origin  and  tendency 
of  their  doctrines.  The  Anabaptists  have  all  preserved, 
more  or  less,  a  reflex  of  the  speculative  mysticism  of  Ger- 
many, the  country  of  their  origin ;  while  the  Quakers,  in 
spite  of  their  pretensions  to  a  mystical  illumination,  have 
never  lost  the  practical  character  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race. 

However,  in  the  sphere  of  theodicy,  the  Quakers  share 
the  principle,  common  to  all  mystics,  that  the  relation  of 
man  with  God  is  not  merely  accidental  and  intermittent,  but 
essential  and  permanent.  They  take  for  granted,  to  begin 
with,  that  God  is  Father,  Son,  and  Holy  Ghost,  without 
going  into  details  respecting  the  relations  of  the  Persons  to 
one  another.  God  is  pre-eminently,  in  their  view,  a  self- 
revealing  Being  ;  in  such  wise  that  there  is  no  way  of  know- 
ing the  Father  without  the  Son,  nor  the  Son  without  the 
Holy  Spirit.  Again,  there  is  in  man  an  organ  of  immediate 
revelation,  in  intimate  connection  with  the  Holy  Spirit ; 
and  this  they  term  '■''  semen"  "lumen"  '"''  verbiun  Dei.^'  From 
this  rapid  sketch,  it  is  manifest  that  it  is  not  among  the 
English  Mystics  that  we  are  to  seek  the  origin  of  the  Unita- 
rian idea.^^     These  fall  rather  into  a  kind  of  Sabellianism. 

As  for  Puritanism,  it  is,  first  and  foremost,  a  thorough- 
going protest  against  the  Episcopal  hierarchy  and  Catholic 
ritual  retained  in  the  Anglican  Church  ;  a  protest  on  behalf 
of  the  constitution  of  the  Apostolic  Church.  In  other  words, 
it  is,  as  Schoell  remarks,  an  attempt  to  acclimatise  in  England 
"the  ideas  and  practices  of  the  Swiss  Reformers."  Of  the 
three  contrasted  religious  parties,  this  one  it  was  which 
played  the  most  important  part  in  opposition  to  the  Esta- 
blished Church.  Its  mouthpieces  were,  under  Edward  VI., 
John  Hooper,  Bishop  of  Gloucester,  a  friend  of  Bullinger, 


■'^  See  Robert  Baixlay,  Theolognr  vere  Christiana  Apologia :  Amster- 
dam, 1676,  4to.     Quoted  by  Baur,  nt  step.,  vol.  iii.  295. 


CHAPTER   I.  37 

who  perished  during  the  bloody  reaction  under  Mary  Tudor 
(1555);  and,  afterwards,  John  Knox,  a  disciple  of  Calvin, 
and  the  Reformer  of  Scodand.  The  two  parties,  brought 
together  for  the  moment  by  a  common  persecution,  found 
themselves  more  antagonistic  than  ever  under  Elizabeth  ;  so 
much  so,  that  the  Puritans  broke  into  schism  in  1566,  and 
declared,  twenty  years  afterwards,  in  the  foundation  charter 
of  the  Presbyterian  Church,  that  they  could  dispense  with 
the  help  of  the  Government  in  the  reformation  of  discipline. 
Notwithstanding  all  the  vexations  to  which  they  were  sub- 
jected, they  adopted  pretty  closely  the  confession  of  faith 
of  the  Anglican  Church,  and,  among  other  articles,  the  first 
one  concerning  the  Trinity. 

But  the  more  animated  and  even  savage  grew  the  conflict 
between  the  Anglican  and  Presbyterian  parties,  the  more 
did  calm  and  reflective  minds  and  gende  hearts  feel  the 
need  of  discovering,  beyond  and  above  all  parties,  some 
neutral  ground  where  they  could  re-unite  on  a  basis  of 
reason  and  piety.  It  was  this  need  which  gave  birth  in 
philosophy  to  the  theism  of  Herbert  of  Cherbury,^^  and  in 
religion  to  the  Latitudinarianism  of  Chillingworth  and  the 
Unitarianism  of  Bidle. 

"Before  Bidle,"  writes  Alexander  Gordon,  in  a  letter 
which  we  have  received  from  him,  "  I  am  not  aware  of  any 
Antitrinitarian  author  who  wrote  in  English,  or  who  was  of 
English  origin.  But  Antitrinitarian  works,  written  in  Latin, 
came  over  from  Holland."  Let  us  therefore  see  if  Unita- 
rianism can  be  considered  a  Dutch  importation. 

^^  G.  Lechler,  Geschichte  des  Englischen  Deisnms,  chap.  i. :  Stuttgart 
and  Tubingen,  1841,  8vo.  Cf.  E.  Sayous,  Les  Deistes  Anglais .  Paris, 
1882. 


CHAPTER  II. 

Was   Unitarian    Christianity   imported   into   England   from   the   Loav 
Countries? — Its  relation  to  Erasmus  and  the  Anabaptists. 

The  assertion  just  quoted  corresponds  with  that  of  Pere 
Guichard.  He  tells  us  that  what  allowed  Socinianism 
to  gain  an  entry  into  England  was  the  indulgence  shown 
(in  1535)  towards  certain  Dutch  Anabaptists,  exiled  on  the 
death  of  Jan  van  Geelen.^  Strype,  again,  the  exact  but 
desultory  chronicler  of  the  annals  of  the  Reformation  in 
Great  Britain,  relates  that  in  the  year  1548  Arian  and  Ana- 
baptist heresies  began  to  make  their  appearance.  These 
denied  psedo-baptism,  the  incarnation  of  Jesus  Christ,  the 
authority  of  magistrates,  the  lawfulness  of  oaths,  and  the 
rights  of  individual  proprietorship.  They  pretended  also 
that  Jesus  must  have  been  really  man,  since  he  shared  the 
attributes  of  human  nature,  such  as  hunger,  thirst,  and  a 
visible  body  ;  tind  they  declared  that  the  real  service  ren- 
dered by  Christ  was,  that  he  led  mankind  to  the  accurate 
knowledge  of  God.^  In  this  class  are  to  be  reckoned  John 
Assheton,  an  English  priest  (who  afterwards  recanted),  and 
the  celebrated  Joan  Bocher,  known  by  the  name  of  Joan  of 
Kent,  who  spread  the  Scriptures  abroad,  and  who  underwent 
martyrdom  with  great  courage.^ 

^  Guichard,  tit  sup.,  p.  126. 

^  Strype,  Cranmer's  Mcfiiorials,  vol.  i.  book  ii.  chap.  viii.  (1548). 

'  'RoheriYI^Wz.cQ,  AntitrmitarianBiagj-ap/iy.  3  vols.  London,  1S50. 
(Introduction,  p.  6.) 


CHAPTER   II.  39 

If  we  now  turn  to  M.  de  La  Roche's  abridgment  of  Brandt's 
History  of  ihe  Reformatmi  in  the  Low  Countries^  we  shall 
light  on  a  significant  document.*  This  is  the  judicial  exami- 
nation to  which  an  Anabaptist  preacher  in  the  province  of 
Flanders,  Herman  van  Flekwijk  (burnt  at  Bruges,  lo  June, 
1569),  was  subjected  by  Cornelis  Adriaans,  of  the  Franciscan 
convent  at  Dordrecht,  and  inquisitor  at  Bruges,  in  presence 
of  the  Secretary  and  of  the  Clerk  of  the  Inquisition  : 

Inquisitor.  "  What !  Don't  you  believe  that  Christ  is  the 
second  person  of  the  Holy  Trinity.'"' 

Anabaptist.    "  We  never  call  things  but  as  they  are  called  in 

Scripture The  Scripture  speaks  of  One  God,  the  Son  of 

God,  and  the  Holy  Spirit." 

Inq.  "  If  you  had  read  the  Creed  of  St.  Athanasius,  you  would 
have  found  in  it  '  God  the  Father,  God  the  Son,  and  God  the 
Holy  Spirit.'" 

Anab.  "  I  am  a  stranger  to  the  Creed  of  St.  Athanasius.  It 
is  sufficient  for  me  to  believe  in  the  living  God,  and  that  Christ 
is  the  Son  of  the  living  God,  as  Peter  believed ;  and  to  believe 
in  the  Holy  Spirit,  which  the  Father  hath  poured  out  upon  us 
through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord,  as  Paul  says." 

Inq.  "  You  are  an  impertinent  fellow,  to  fancy  that  God  pours 
out  His  Spirit  upon  you,  who  do  not  believe  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
is  God !  You  have  borrowed  those  heretical  opinions  from  the 
diabolical  books  of  the  cursed  Erasmus,  of  Rotterdam,  who,  in 
his  Preface  to  the  Works  of  St.  Hilar}',  pretends  that  this  holy 
man  says,  at  the  end  of  his  twelfth  Book,  '  That  the  Holy  Spirit 
is  not  called  God  in  any  part  of  the  Scripture ;  and  that  we  are 
so  bold  as  to  call  Him  so,  though  the  Fathers  of  the  Church 
scrupled  to  give  Him  that  name.'  Will  you  be  a  follower  of  that 
Antitrinitarian  ?".... 

*  G.  Brandt,  Histoire  abregee  de  la  Reformation  aux  Pays-Bas,  3  vols. : 
The  Hague,  1726,  vol.  i.  178.  [The  original,  in  Dutch,  was  published 
at  Amsterdam,  1671 — 1674,  4  vols.  4to,  plates.  It  has  been  translated 
into  Latin  and  English.  Dr.  Toulmin  published,  1784,  Flekwijk's 
Examination,  as  A  Dialogue  between  a  Dtikh  Protestant  and  a  Franciscan 
Fiiar.     See  Wallace,  ut  sup.,  ii.  273.] 


40  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Anab.  "  God  forbid  I  should  deny  the  divinity  of  Christ !  We 
beheve  that  he  is  a  divine  and  heavenly  person ;....!  call  him 
'  the  Son  of  the  living  God,'  as  Peter  does,  and  '  the  Lord,'  as  the 
other  Apostles  call  him.  He  is  called  in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles, 
'Jesus  of  Nazareth,  whom  God  raised  from  the  dead.'  And  Paul 
calls  him  '  that  man  by  whom  God  shall  judge  the  world  in 
righteousness.'" 

Inq.  "  These  are  the  wretched  arguments  of  the  cursed  Eras- 
mus, in  his  small  treatise  '  On  Prayer,'  and  in  his  '  Apology  to 
the  Bishop  of  Seville.'  If  you  are  contented  to  call  Christ  the 
'  Son  of  God,'  you  do  not  give  him  a  more  eminent  title  than  that 
which  St.  Luke  gives  to  Adam."  .... 

Anab.  "God  forbid!  We  believe  that  the  body  of  Christ  is 
not  earthly,  like  that  of  Adam,  but  that  he  is  a  heavenly  man, 
as  Paul  says."  .... 

Inq.  "  But  St.  John  says  .  .  .  .  '  There  are  three  that  bear 
record  in  heaven,  the  Father,  the  Word,  and  the  Holy  Spirit, 
and  these  three  are  one.'" 

Anab.  "  I  have  often  heard  that  Erasmus,  in  his  Annotations 
upon  that  passage,  shows  that  this  text  is  not  in  the  Greek 
original." 

"  Thereupon  Broer  Cornells,  turning  to  the  Secretary  and  the 
Clerk  of  the  Inquisition,  said:  'Sirs,  what  think  you  of  this? 
Am  I  to  blame  because  I  attack  so  frequently  in  my  sermons 
Erasmus,  that  cursed  Antitrinitarian  ?  Erasmus  has  done  worse 
still.  He  says  in  his  'Annotations  upon  the  Gospel  according 
to  St.  Luke,'  chapter  iv.  ver.  22,  that  a  strange  falsification  has 
crept  into  the  holy  Scripture,  by  interpolating  some  words,  on 

account  of  the  heretics Nay,  this  Antitrinitarian  whom  you 

see  here,  and  the  arch-heretic  Erasmus,  reproach  us  with  having 
added  these  words,  'Who  is  over  all,  God  blessed  for  ever. 
Amen,'  in  Rom.  ix.  5.  Or  else  they  pretend  that  this  doxology 
ought  to  be  translated  thus  :  '  Of  whom,  as  concerning  the  flesh, 
Christ  came,  who  is  over  all.    God  be  blessed  for  ever.    Amen.'" 

We  have  reproduced  this  lengthy  extract  from  an  Inqui- 
sitorial report  of  1569,  because  it  exhibits  a  lively  picture 
of  the  extent  to  which  Anabaptism  was  saturated  with  Anti- 
trinitarian ideas,  as  well  as  of  the  de2:ree  of  influence  exer- 


CHAPTER   II.  41 

cised  by  the  exegesis  of  Erasmus  on  the  Christology  of  the 
Reformers.  It  is  not  difficult  to  recognise  traces  of  this 
influence  in  Luther's  Bible  and  in  Calvin's  Commentaries. 
Still  more  decidedly  was  it  felt  in  England,  where  Erasmus' 
Annotations  and  his  Paraphrases  upon  the  New  Testament 
were  officially  introduced  into  every  parish  (1547).  More- 
over, the  great  missionary  of  the  Renascence  had  resided  at 
Oxford  for  several  years  (1498 — 1500),  had  been  professor 
at  Cambridge  (1509),  and  had  lived  in  intimate  relations 
with  the  leaders  of  the  new  learning  in  England,  John  Colet, 
Linacre  and  Latimer.  It  is  worth  while,  therefore,  to  inves- 
tigate the  measure  of  his  own  approach  to  Unitarian  Chris- 
tianity. 

If  we  examine  the  passages  in  the  writings  of  Erasmus 
bearing  upon  the  Trinity  and  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ, 
we  find  ourselves  confronted  by  two  sets  of  utterances  in 
direct  opposition  to  each  other.  Those  in  the  one  set  tend 
to  destroy  the  chief  Scriptural  arguments  invoked  in  aid  of 
these  dogmata ;  those  in  the  other,  on  the  contrary,  protest 
with  animation  against  accusations  of  Arianism,  and  display 
the  official  dogma.  The  passages  coming  under  the  former 
category  are  in  general  to  be  met  with  in  his  Annotations 
and  in  his  Preface  to  the  Works  of  St.  Hilary.'^ 

One  of  the  most  remarkable  is  the  note  upon  the  cele- 
brated verse  i  John  v.  7.  Having  justified  his  omission  of 
this  gloss  by  the  testimony  of  the  Fathers  and  of  the  oldest 
manuscripts,  Erasmus  adds  {0pp.  v.  1080): 

"  But  some  will  say  that  this  verse  is  an  effective  weapon 
against  the  Arians.  Very  true.  But  the  moment  it  is  proved 
that  the  reading  did  not  exist  of  old,  either  among  the  Greeks 
or  among  the  Latins,  this  weapon  is  no  longer  worth  anything.  .  .  . 

'  Cf.  Erasmi  Opera,  edit.  Leclerc,  vol.  vi.,  10  vols,  folio  :  Leyden, 
1706.  Annotationes  ad  Rom.  ix.  5;  ad  Ephes.  v.  5;  ad  Philipp.  ii.  6; 
ad  I  Johan.  v.  7,  &c.  Cf.  Divi  Hilarii,  Pictavorum  Episcopi,  Lucubra- 
tioHCS,  per  Erasmum  cmendatcE :  Basle,  1523.     See  Appendix  II. 


42  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Even  admitting  it  were  undisputed,  do  we  think  the  Arians  such 
blockheads  as  not  to  have  appHed  the  same  interpretation  [as  in 
the  previous  verse]  to  the  Father,  the  Word,  and  the  Holy  Spirit? 
.  .  .  Such  performances  rather  compromise  than  strengthen  the 
faith Far  better  is  it  to  employ  our  pious  studies  in  endeavour- 
ing to  resemble  God,  than  in  indiscreet  discussion  with  a  view  to 
ascertain  wherein  the  Son  is  distinguished  from  the  Father,  and 
wherein  the  Holy  Spirit  differs  from  the  other  two." 

On  the  other  hand,  in  his  Explication  of  the  Apostles' 
Creed,  and  in  his  Apology,  addressed  to  Alfonso  Manrico, 
Archbishop  of  Seville,  against  the  heretical  articles  extracted 
from  his  works  by  certain  Spanish  monks,*^  Erasmus  expresses 
his  adhesion  to  the  Trinitarian  dogma  in  these  terms : 

"All  my  studies,  in  innumerable  places,  clearly  proclaim  agree- 
ment with  the  definition  of  the  Trinity  handed  down  by  the 
Catholic  Church,  namely,  the  equality  of  the  Divine  nature  in 
three  persons ;  or  better  still,  the  same  undivided  essence  in  three 
persons,  distinct  in  that  which  is  peculiar  to  each  (proprietates)^ 
but  not  in  nature." 

This  contradiction  is  not  merely  apparent,  but  real.  It 
results  from  the  false  attitude  which  Erasmus  had  assumed 
towards  the  Roman  Church,  opposing  the  ignorant  and  fana- 
tical.monks  in  behoof  of  the  rights  of  philology  and  criti- 
cism, but  in  the  last  resort  subordinating — we  were  going  to 
say  sacrificing — the  results  of  his  inquiry  to  the  authority  of 
the  Church.  Erasmus  resembles  an  astronomer  who  should 
come  and  tell  you,  "All  my  observations  lead  me  to  think 
that  there  is  but  one  sphere  in  the  sun ;  but  the  Church 
teaches  that  there  are  three,  so  I  bow  to  its  decision."  He 
makes  this  avowal  in  his  letter  to  Wilibald  Pirckheimer,  when 
he  says,  "The  Church  has  so  much  authority  in  my  eyes, 

®  Apologia  adversiis  articulos  aliquos pa'  inonachos  quosdam  in  Hispania 
exhibitos,  Reverendiss.  Alfonso  Mam-ico,  archiepiscopo  Hispalensi:  Basle, 
14  March,  1528.  Erasmi  Opera,  ix.  1023.  Cf.  Explication  of  the  Apostles 
Creed,  vol.  v.  1 1 39. 


CHAPTER   II.  43 

that  I  would  subscribe  to  Arianism  and  to  Pelagianism,  if 
these  doctrines  were  approved  by  the  Church."'' 

If  Erasmus  was  not  Unitarian,  in  the  proper  sense  of  the 
term,  he  at  any  rate,  by  his  strictly  philological  exegesis, 
supplied  weapons  to  the  adversaries  of  the  Trinity,  particu- 
larly to  the  Anabaptists  of  the  Low  Countries.  What  is 
more,  this  most  moderate  of  the  initiators  of  the  Reforma- 
tion, with  his  strong  good  sense,  and  a  spirit  of  tolerance 
almost  unknown  in  that  age,  pleaded  the  cause  of  these 
radicals  against  the  magistrates  of  Zurich,  who  mercilessly 
carried  out  Zwingli's  cruel  jest  upon  the  Anabaptists  :  "  Qui 
iterum  mergunt,  mergantur  ipsi"  (Dip  the  twice  dippers, 
and  drown  them). 

"  What,"  cries  he,  speaking  of  the  people  of  Zurich,  "  they 
maintain  that  their  own  friends  ought  not  to  be  punished  with 
death  as  heretics,  and  yet  they  put  to  death  the  Anabaptists, 
though  these  are  people  against  whom  hardly  a  reproach  can  be 
cast,  yea,  though  many  of  them  have  given  up  a  very  bad,  and 
taken  to  a  very  virtuous  life.  ,  Mistakes  they  may  commit,  but 
never  have  they  laid  siege  to  towns  and  churches."* 

It  here  devolves  upon  us  to  determine  by  investigation 

-  ^  Erasmus  Roterodanius  Bilibaldo  Pirckheimero  (Basle,  19  Oct.  1527) : 
"  Ecclesiam  autem  voco  totius  populi  christiani  consensum. . . .  Quantum 
apud  alios  valeat  auctoritas  Ecclesi^,  nescio ;  certe  apud  me  tantum  valet, 
ut  cum  Arianis  et  Pelagianis  sentiri  possim,  si  probasset  Ecclesia  quod 
illi  docuerunt.  Nee  mihi  non  sufficiunt  verba  Christi,  sed  mirum  videri 
non  debet,  si  sequor  interpretem  Ecclesiam,  cujus  auctoritate  persuasus 
credo  Scripturis  Canonicis."  (Erasmi  0pp.  iii.  part  i.  1028,  letter  905.) 
["  By  the  Church  I  mean  the  consentient  voice  of  the  entire  Christian 
community. . . .  What  value  may  be  attached  by  others  to  the  authority  of 
the  Church,  I  cannot  say.  Certainly  with  me  it  is  so  strong  that  I  can 
think  with  the  Arians  and  Pelagians  if  the  Church  had  approved  what 
they  have  taught.  It  is  not  that  the  words  of  Christ  are  insufficient  for 
me ;  but  it  ought  not  to  seem  strange  if  I  follow  the  Church  in  her  inter- 
pretation of  them,  since  it  is  on  the  persuasion  of  her  authority  that  I 
believe  the  Canonical  Scriptures."] 
*  Brandt,  jU  sup..,  vol.  i.  33  if. 


44  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

what  are  the  points  in  common  between  Anabaptism  and 
Unitarian  Christianity,  and  wherein  they  differ.  In  con- 
ducting this  investigation,  we  shall  leave  aside  the  German 
Anabaptists,  such  as  Johann  Denk  (d.  1527)  and  Ludwig 
Hatzer  (d.  1529),  Martin  Cellarius,  or  Borhaus  (d.  1564), 
and  Melchior  Hofmann  (d.  1550),-'  as  not  directly  belonging 
to  our  subject.  We  shall  deal  specifically  with  the  Nether- 
land  Anabaptists,  inasmuch  as  in  them  the  Baptist  ideas  of 
the  continent  found  the  vehicle  of  their  transmission  into 
England.  Such  were  Jan  van  Geelen,  David  Joris,  Adam 
Pastoris  and  others. 

Anabaptism  made  its  appearance  in  the  Low  Countries 
almost  as  soon  as  it  did  in  Germany.  One  may  say  of  this 
region  what  Professor  Ch.  Schmidt  has  said  of  the  Rhine 
Provinces  in  the  middle  ages,  that  it  was  the  classic  ground 
of  heresy.  From  Leiden  and  Haarlem  came  the  leaders 
of  the  Miinster  Anabaptist  movement,  Jan  Bocholdt  (or 
rather  Beukelszoon)  and  Jan  Matthias,  or  Matthisson,  of 
Haarlem ;  and  we  must  do  these  men  the  justice  to  observe 
that,  if  they  had  recourse  to  revolutionary  proceedings  by 
way  of  reforming  the  Church  and  society,  they  bore  with 
courage  the  terrible  measures  of  repression  of  which  they 
were  the  victims.  The  two  first  agents  of  the  sect  were  Jan 
^Vaaden  and  Jan  Trijpmaaker  (i.  e.  plush-maker).  The  latter, 
a  friend  and  representative  of  Melchior  Hofmann,  had  re- 
baptised  many  citizens  of  Amsterdam.  Both  were  arrested, 
put  to  torture,  and  burnt  alive  at  The  Hague  (1527  and 
1533).  The  year  following,  Jan  Van  Geelen,  one  of  the 
followers  of  the  Prophet  of  Miinster,  provoked  a  species  of 
riot  at  Amsterdam  (March,  1534).     One  fine  morning,  the 


"  [This  exclusion  of  Hofmann  is  qualified  in  the  next  paragraph.  His 
personal  relations  with  Holland  were  very  close ;  and  the  influence  of 
his  opinions  in  England  was  direct.  See  Robert  Barclay,  Inner  Life  of 
Religions  Societies  of  the  Cominonwealt/i,  3rd  ed.  p.  14:  London,  1879.] 


CHAPTER   II.  45 

citizens  of  the  great  city  were  startled  out  of  their  sleep  by 
a  hundred  or  so  of  Anabaptists,  who,  divested  of  every  gar- 
ment and  brandishing  naked  swords,  ran  through  the  streets 
crying  out,  "  We  are  the  naked  truth  1  Woe  to  the  wicked  ! 
Repent,  and  the  blessing  of  the  Lord  shall  rest  upon  the 
city  !"  They  were  arrested  and  sent  to  the  stake.  Two 
years  later,  Anabaptism  had  made  such  progress,  that  van 
Geelen  succeeded  in  surprising  and  taking  the  Town-hall  of 
Amsterdam,  and  fortified  himself  in  it  with  two  or  three 
hundred  of  his  partisans.  Artillery  had  to  be  employed  to 
force  them  to  yield.  Van  Geelen  himself  was  killed  during 
the  assault  (lo  May,  1535).  The  survivors  were  quartered, 
and  their  hearts,  still  palpitating,  torn  out. 

Among  the  Anabaptists  of  the  first  raw  stage,  socialistic 
and  revolutionary  instincts  took  precedence  of  religious 
wants  and  theological  systems.  But  we  now  come  into 
contact  with  an  original  thinker,  the  author  of  nearly  three 
hundred  treatises,  some  of  them  of  great  length,  and  by  his 
correspondence  brought  into  relations  with  nearly  every 
country  in  Europe.  David  Joris,^^  born  at  Delft  (1501)  of 
poor  parents,  learned  the  profession  of  glass-painter  ;  but, 
endowed  with  an  ambitious  and  turbulent  character,  and  a 
teeming  imagination,  he  began  publicly  to  declaim  against 
the  idolatrous  pageantries  of  the  Catholic  worship,  and  was 
a  first  time  expelled  from  his  native  town,  after  having  had 
his  tongue  pierced.  Having  been  re-baptised  by  Obbe 
Philips,  he  went  back  to  Delft ;  and  persuading  himself,  as 
the  result  of  certain  visions,  that  he  was  the  first-born  of  the 
Spirit,  the  new  Adam,  he  began  an  active  propagandism. 
He  soon  acquired  such  influence  that,  at  the  Conference 


i"  [His  baptismal  name  was  Jan ;  his  father's  name  was  Georgius  Joris, 
and  hence  he  had  the  patronymic  of  Joris,  or  Joriszoon.  He  is  said  to 
have  got  the  name  of  Uavid  from  his  playing  that  part  as  assistant  to  his 
father,  a  travelling  mountebank.] 


46  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

held  (August,  1536)  near  Buckholdt,  in  the  diocese  of 
Miinster,  he  succeeded  in  reconciUng  the  four  branches 
of  the  Anabaptist  sect :  the  Hofmannites,  the  Miinsterians, 
the  Battenburgians,  and  the  Mennonites.^^  However,  the 
magistrates  of  Delft  having  been  informed  that  Joris  and  his 
assistant,  Mainard  van  Emden,  held  assemblies  day  and 
night,  ordered  (2  January,  1538)  all  Anabaptists  to  leave  the 
town  in  eight  days,  and  set  a  price  on  the  heads  of  the  two 
preachers.  The  Anabaptists  having  allowed  the  time  to 
expirej  in  expectation  of  miraculous  aid,  thirty-five  were 
ssized  and  executed.  Among  these  was  Mary,  the  mother 
of  David  Joris.  The  persecution  spread  to  the  towns  of 
Haarlem,  Amsterdam,  Leiden  and  Rotterdam.  Following 
these  bloody  deeds  of  repression,  in  1535  and  1538,  came 
the  first  emigrations  of  Anabaptists  to  England ;  where,  on 
the  contrary,  the  laws  against  heretics  had  lately  been  some- 
what relaxed. 

After  wandering  about  for  many  years,  and  having  vainly 
appealed  to  the  Landgrave  Philip  of  Hesse  (about  1543), 
Joris  retired  to  the  neighbourhood  of  Emden,  in  East  Fries- 
land,  where  he  gathered  a  little  community  around  him. 
This  town,  which  is  now  only  known  as  a  commercial  port, 
was  then  the  focus  of  a  great  religious  agitation.  The 
different  parties,  Lutheran,  Calvinist  and  Catholic,  there 
fought  for  souls,  and  gave  themselves  up  to  polemics.  The 
Anabaptists,  under  the  guidance  of  Obbe  and  Dirk  Philips, 
sons  of  a  Catholic  priest  of  Leeuwaarden,  had  formed  nume- 
rous societies.    When  John  a  Lasco  (Jan  Laski)  was  charged 

^^  ["A  certain  Englishman  of  the  name  of  *  Henry'  was  very  active  in 
promoting  this  meeting,  and  himself  paid  the  travelling  expenses  of  the 
deputies.  England  was  represented  by  John  Mathias,  of  Middleburg 
(who  was  afterwards  burnt  at  London  for  his  adhesion  to  the  tenets  of 
Melchior  Hofman).  It  is  interesting  to  notice  that  the  representatives  of 
England  were  very  indignant  at  the  loose  views  of  the  Miinster  party." 
Barclay,  Inner  Life,  p.  77,  his  authority  being  Nippold's  Life  of  Joris.] 


CHAPTER   II.  47 

by  the  reigning  Countess  Anna  of  Oldenburg  to  introduce 
the  Reformation  into  her  states,  and  to  give  a  regular  orga- 
nisation to  the  Church  (1540 — 1548),  the  noble  Pole  had 
particularly  to  contend  against  the  Anabaptist  societies  of 
Menno  Simons  and  David  Joris.  For  example,  he  main- 
tained, about  1543-44,  a  very  curious  controversy  in  writing 
with  Joris,^'-^  but  did  not  succeed  in  disabusing  him  of  his 
belief  in  a  "supernatural  vocation." 

The  ideas  of  Joris,  as  expounded  in  his  V  Wonderbocck 
(Book  of  Wonders),  and  in  his  Explication  of  the  Creation, 
are  reducible  to  this  fundamental  principle,  "  that  the  true 
Word  of  God  does  not  consist  in  the  outward  letter  of  the 
Bible,  but  in  the  inner  voice  which  is  audible  to  a  humble 
and  believing  heart."  As  for  the  Trinity,  he  thought  it  a 
useless  problem,  and  one  which  concerns  only  those  who 
are  well  prepared  for  meditation  on  celestial  things.  He 
explains  himself,  however,  on  this  point  in  his  IVonde^book. 
Joris  declares  that  there  is  but  "  one  God,  sole  and  indi- 
visible, and  that  it  is  contrary  to  the  operation  of  God 
throughout  creation  to  admit  a  God  in  three  persons,  or 
that  the  three  make  but  one,  as  taught  in  the  Athanasian 
Creed."  Nevertheless,  resuming  the  old  theory  of  Joachim 
of  Flora  (d.  1202),  he  admits  that  God  has  revealed  himself 
in  three  human  persons,  Moses,  Christ  and  David  (doubtless 
David  Joris),  who  preside  over  three  great  periods  of  history. 
Joris  was  excommunicated  by  the  disciples  of  Melchior  Hof- 
mann  at  Strassburg,  and  by  those  of  Menno  Simons  in  Fries- 
land,  on  account  of  his  Antitrinitarian  opinions.  He  took 
refuge  in  Basle,  where,  under  the  name  of  Johann  von 
Brugge,  or  von  Binningen,  he  lived  in  comfort  and  with 
security,  in  the  society  of  two  wives.  He  died  on  the  2nd 
August,  1556. 

^^  See  the  learned  monograph  of  Prof.  Nippold,  of  Berne,  on  David 
Joris,  in  the  Zeitschrift  fiir  Histonsche  Tkeologie,  1863,  1864,  1868;  3rd 
article,  p.  575. 


48  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Around  this  same  church  of  Emden  flits  the  figure  of 
another  Anabaptist  teacher,  Adam  Pastor,  who  had  also 
been  excommunicated  by  the  Mennonites  for  his  Antitrini- 
tarian  opinions.  In  the  view  of  Pastor,  as  in  that  of  Joris, 
the  Deity  is  one  and  indivisible ;  Christ  is,  it  is  true,  pre- 
existent  as  regards  the  world,  but  not  co-eternal  with  God  ; 
he  holds  with  the  Father  a  community  of  will,  but  not  of 
essence ;  and  the  Holy  Spirit  is  but  an  impersonal  power,  a 
gift  of  God.  Persecuted  by  Catholic  magistrates,  repulsed 
by  the  Anabaptists,  Pastoris  led  a  wayfaring  life,  and  con- 
cealed his  identity  under  various  pseudonyms,  among  others 
that  of  Rudolph  Martini. ^'^  According  to  a  very  probable 
conjecture,  he  it  was  who  first  carried  Unitarian  ideas  into 
Poland,  under  the  name  of  Spiritus  Belga ;  but  he  returned 
to  finish  his  days  at  Emden  about  1552.^'* 

Among  the  friends  of  David  Joris  was  a  certain  Hendrik 
Niclaes  (d.  about  1570),  originally  of  Miinster,  in  West- 
phalia (b.  1502),  who  separated  himself  from  the  rest  of  the 
Anabaptists  in  order  to  found  a  secret  society  of  mystics 
at  Emden,  called  the  Family  of  Love  [Hiisgesin  der  Lieften). 
He  taught  that  the  Bible  was  only  an  imprint  on  paper 
of  the  Word  of  God,  but  that  the  true  Word  is  spirit 
and  life  ;  that  this  Spirit  manifests  itself  by  revelations  in 
every  regenerate  man ;  and,  finally,  that  the  criterion  of  the 
presence  of  the  Spirit  in  us  is  peace  and  love.  Like  his 
master,  Joris,  he  denied  the  ontological  Trinity.  This  sect 
was  distinguished  from  the  rest  by  being  secret,  and  by  pos- 
sessing a  hierarchy  similar  to  that  of  the  Church  of  Rome. 
As  early  as  1555,  Hendrik  Niclaes  sent  one  of  his  disciples, 
Christopher  Vitells  (or  Virst),  from  Delft  to  Colchester  to 


•'■'  [This  was  probably  his  real  name.] 

^*  See  Trechsel,  ut  sup.,  i.  36.  Cf.  Wallace,  Antiir.  Biog.  ii.  163  ff. 
[Spiritus,  in  Ochino's  Thirty  Dialogues  (1563),  sustains  the  part  of  the 
Antitrinitarian.] 


CHAPTER   II.  49 

make  proselytes.  Vitells  denied  the  divinity  of  Christ,  and 
treated  Trinitarians  as  tritheists.  He  having  recanted,  about 
1569,  Niclaes  visited  England  in  person  ;  and  it  seems  that 
he  left  numerous  proselytes  there,  for  ten  years  afterwards 
the  Familists  and  their  writings  swarmed  in  England,  and 
became  the  subject  of  severe  edicts  on  the  part  of  Queen 
Elizabeth.  ^^ 

We  have  seen  that  the  bloody  persecution,  which  followed 
the  exploits  of  Jan  van  Geelen  at  Amsterdam  and  the 
preaching  of  Joris  at  Delft,  had  led  to  the  first  immigrations 
of  Anabaptists  into  England,  1535— 1538.  The  application 
of  the  Interim  of  Augsburg  to  all  the  Rhenish  Provinces, 
and  in  particular  to  the  County  of  East  Friesland,  compelled 
many  thousand  Protestants  of  Germany,  Alsace  and  the 
Low  Countries,  to  take  refuge  in  England.^"^  Then  it  was 
that  John  a  Lasco  left  Emden  (1549).  Among  the  refugees 
were  a  great  number  of  Anabaptists,  but  these  latter  did 
not  long  profit  by  the  generous  hospitality  of  Edward  VI. 

As  early  as  1551,  we  encounter,  among  the  victims  of 
the  intolerance  of  the  English  hierarchy,  a  surgeon  named 
Georg  van  Parris,  who  was  originally  from  Mainz,  and 
had  become  a  member  of  the  Strangers'  Church  in  London, 
where  he  won  esteem  by  his  piety,  his  temperance,  and  his 
charity.  This  medical  practitioner,  perhaps  a  disciple  of 
David  Joris,  forcibly  denounced  infant  baptism,  and  also 
the  dogma  of  the  Trinity.  He  acknowledged  the  Father  as 
the  only  true  God,  and  Jesus  Christ  as  his  supernatural  and 
perfect  Son.  Not  choosing  to  recant,  he  was  condemned 
to  the  torments  of  fire,  and  suffered  martyrdom  at  Smithfield 
(25  April,  155 1 )  with  a  constancy  that  drew  tears  from  his 
executioners.      Unquestionably  he   was  not  the   only  one 


^^  See  the  article  of  M.  Nippold,  in  the  Zeitschrift  ffn-  Jiistorische 
T/ieologie,  1862,  p.  543.     Cf.  Barclay,  Liner  Life,  pp.  25,  35. 
"  See  Zurich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letters  161  and  162  (Ochino  to  Musculus). 

E 


50  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

among  these  Anabaptist  refugees^"  who  professed  Antitrini- 
tarian  opinions.  For  it  is  precisely  in  this  Strangers'  Church 
that,  a  few  years  later,  as  we  shall  see,  the  first  controversies 
on  this  question  broke  out.^^ 

It  results  from  the  inquiry  we  have  undertaken,  that  in 
this  fermentation  period  of  the  Reformation  the  Anabaptists 
had  many  features  of  concurrence  with  Unitarians.  These 
two  parties,  placing  the  Word  of  God  above  human  tradition, 
represented  by  the  Papacy,  contemplated  a  radical  reform 
of  the  Church,  and  would  have  suppressed  every  rite  or 
dogma  which  was  not  expressly  set  forth  in  the  Bible  :  for 
example,  p^edobaptism,  the  hierarchy,  judicial  oaths,  military 
service,  &c.  They  entertained  a  kindred  antipathy  for  meta- 
physical discussions,  a  kindred  predilection  for  moral  and 
practical  questions.  In  their  eyes,  what  makes  the  Christian 
is  his  life  and  not  his  dogma ;  and  hence  the  real  Chris- 
tian faith  dates  only  from  conversion. ^'•^  In  fine,  most  of 
the  Anabaptists  denied,  in  common  with  Unitarians,  the 
orthodox  dogma  of  the  Incarnation,^'^  although  several  of 

^^  See  Zurich  Letters,  3  sen,  Letter  33  (Hooper  to  Bullinger). 

^^  We  must  also  reckon  in  the  number  of  these  Antitrinitarians  from 
Holland  a  certain  Justus  Velsius,  from  The  Hague.  He  published  at 
London,  about  1563,  a  book  entitled  Christianl  flominis  Norma,  in 
which  he  held  Jesus  Christ  to  be  "God  in  man,"  or  rather  Man-God, 
and  that  every  Christiaia  may,  like  his  exemplar,  become  by  faith  "  man- 
God."     See  Strype,  Life  of  Griitdal,  pp.  135,  138. 

■•^  Such  seems  to  us  the  tendency  of  an  anonymous  book  entitled 
Sumina  der  godliker  Scriftitren,  published  1523  in  Holland,  soon  trans- 
lated into  French,  English  and  Italian,  and  lately  reprinted  in  German 
under  the  auspices  of  Dr.  Benrath,  Leipzig,  1880.  In  this  little  book, 
derived  at  once  from  the  Theologia  Gerviattica  and  the  Suniniary  of 
Farel,  there  is  no  mention  of  the  Trinity. 

-*'  Zurich  Letters,  3  sen,  Letter  33  (Hooper  to  Bullinger) ;  letter  265 
(Micronius  to  Bullinger).  [The  doctrines  gibbeted  in  these  two  letters 
are  diametrically  opposed.  Hooper  says  the  Anabaptists  "deny  altoge- 
ther that  Christ  was  born  of  the  Virgin  Mary  according  to  the  flesh,"  i.e. 


CHAPTER   II.  51 

them,  Melchior  Hofmann  and  Menno  Simons,  for  example, 
remained  Trinitarians.-^ 

But  what  distinguished  the  Anabaptists  is,  that  for  the 
interpretation  of  Scripture  they  resorted  to  the  testimony  of 
the  Holy  Spirit ;  and  that,  by  degrees  reducing  the  written 
Word  to  a  lower  level  than  the  inner  Voice,  they  confounded 
the  latter  with  sensual  and  selfish  instincts,  and  fell  into 
antinomian  and  millenarian  mysticism.  The  Unitarians,  on 
the  contrary,  by  proclaiming  Reason  as  the  sovran  inter- 
preter of  the  Bible,  ran  the  risk  of  grounding  on  the  reef  of 
Rationalism ;  yet,  in  virtue  of  their  very  spirituality,  they 
did  not  insist  upon  a  radical  change  in  sacramental  forms 
and  church  government,  but  devoted  themselves,  above 
everything,  to  the  reformation  of  dogma  and  character. 

The  Anabaptists  reached  their  logical  issue  in  mystical 
fanaticism  ;  the  Unitarians,  in  rationalism  and  toleration. 

they  held  the  Valentinian  view,  that  the  heavenly  manhood  of  Jesus 
came  into  the  world  through  the  Virgin,  taking  nothing  of  her  substance. 
Microen  says  that  those  whom  he  calls  Arians  "deny  the  conception  of 
Christ  by  the  Virgin,"  i.e.  they  regard  Christ  as  a  purely  human  birth.] 
"^  [But  not  orthodox  Trinitarians,  since  both  were  Valentinians. 
Simons  expressly  objected  to  the  terms  "Trinity"  and  "person."] 


E  2 


CHAPTER  III. 

Is  Unitarian   Christianity  of  Alsatian  or  of  Swiss  Origin  ?— Capito — 
Hooper  and  Puritanism — Cranmer  and  the  Strangers'  Church. 

We  have  already  noticed  the  influence  exerted  by  certain 
writings  of  Erasmus  upon  the  development  of  Antitrinitarian 
ideas  among  the  Anabaptists  ;  no  less  marked  was  their 
effect  upon  the  revival  of  theological  studies  in  England. 
Not  only  were  his  Biblical  works,  his  Annotations,  and  his 
Paraphrases  of  the  New  Testament,  in  the  hands  of  the 
most  obscure  of  the  country  incumbents,  but  his  presence 
at  Basel  attracted  thither  all  those  of  the  English  clergy 
whose  hearts  were  set  on  shaking  off  the  intellectual  lethargy 
into  which  they  were  thrown  by  formalism.  Ere  long,  when 
Erasmus  shrank  from  a  schism  with  Rome,  another  group  of 
theologians,  following  the  Zwinglian  impulse,  and  including 
the  names  of  Q^^colampadius  (Hausschein),  Simon  Grynseus 
(Gryner)  and  Oswald  Myconius  (Geisshauser),  formed  itself 
at  Basel  side  by  side  with  the  party  of  Erasmus,  yet  not 
altogether  holding  aloof  from  him.  On  the  other  hand, 
Strassburg,  with  its  learned  philologists,  Sturm  and  Fagius, 
and  its  moderate  theologians,  Bucer  and  Capito  (Kopstein), 
kept  up  with  Basel  and  Zurich  an  interchange  of  ideas.  But 
for  a  long  period,  subsequent  even  to  the  death  of  Zwingli, 
and  lasting  till  the  advent  of  Calvin,  Ziirich  was  the  head- 
quarters of  the  directing  group.  It  was  there  that  Henry 
BuUinger,  Bibhander  (Buchmann\  Leo  Judae  (Jud),  Pellican 
(Kurschner)  and  others  taught. 

England  soon  entered  into  relations  with  these  Reformers 


CHAPTER   III.  53 

in  German  Switzerland.  She  had  then  at  her  head  a  king 
who  plumed  himself  on  being  a  theologian,  and  did  not  fear 
to  measure  swords  with  Luther.  It  was  in  connection  with 
the  affair  of  the  divorce  of  Henry  VIII.  from  Catherine  of 
Arragon  (1531 — 1534))  that  the  first  letters  were  exchanged 
between  the  theologians  of  the  two  countries. 

The  despotic  king,  impatient  of  the  delays  of  Pope  Cle- 
mente  VII.  and  of  Cardinal  Wolsey's  tergiversations,  had 
eagerly  accepted  the  idea  suggested  by  Dr.  Cranmer,  then 
but  a  Fellow  at  Cambridge,  that  the  principal  Universities 
of  Europe  should  be  consulted  on  the  question  of  the  valid- 
ity of  his  marriage  with  his  brother's  widow,  in  order  to 
impose  the  decision  of  the  majority  upon  the  Holy  See. 
Simon  Grynaeus,  Professor  of  Philosophy  and  Theology,  who 
had  visited  England  in  1531,  had  been  specially  charged  by 
the  king  to  collect  the  opinions  of  his  colleagues  at  Basel, 
Zurich  and  Strassburg ;  and  in  his  letter  to  the  king  of  loth 
September,  1531,  he  was  already  able  to  forward  him  those 
of  Qicolampadius  and  Zwingli,  which  were  favourable  to  the 
divorce,  while  Melanchthon's  was  opposed  to  it.^  Such  a 
result  was  well  calculated  to  augment  the  mutual  good  feel- 
ing. Hence,  when  Cranmer  had  obtained  the  metropolitan 
see  of  Canterbury  {1534),  he  gave  the  preference  to  the 
Swiss  Universities  when  sending  young  Englishmen  abroad 
to  study  for  the  Church.  Between  1536  and  1539,  we  find  at 
Ziirich  and  Geneva  four  English  theological  students — John 
Butler,  of  a  rich  and  noble  family ;  Nicolas  Partridge,  from 
Kent ;  Nicolas  Eliot,  also  a  law  student ;  and  Bartholomew 
Traheron  (a  writer  against  the  Arians,  1557),  who  had  suf- 
fered persecution  at  Oxford  in  the  cause  of  the  gospel. 

Already,  in  fact,  the  reputation  for  learning  and  piety  of 
the  young  author  of  the  Institution  of  the  Christian  Religion 
was  attracting  to  Geneva  all  minds  athirst  for  truth.     The 


^  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letters  255  to  259. 


54  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

letter  to  Calvin  from  two  of  these  students,  which  constitutes, 
as  it  were,  the  first  salutation  of  England  to  the  great  French 
Reformer,  testifies  to  the  enthusiasm  with  which  Calvin's 
''most  amiable  and  most  learned"  teaching,  and  Farel's 
"truly  heroic  spirit"  had  inspired  them." 

For  the  moment,  however,  it  was  still  Alsace  and  German 
Switzerland  that  obtained  the  highest  repute  among  the 
English.  In  return  for  the  students  which  were  sent  to 
them,  the  professors  of  Strassburg  and  Zurich  forwarded 
their  books  to  England.  Wolfgang  F.  Capito  dedicated  to 
Henry  VIII.  his  treatise  entitled  Responsnm  de  Missa,  Matri- 
monio  et  'jFure  Magistratus  in  Rdigione,  and  received  a 
hundred  crowns  as  a  present  from  the  king.^  Soon  after- 
wards, his  colleague,  Martin  Bucer,  dedicated  to  Cranmer 
his  Cojumentary  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Romajis,  complimenting 
him  on  lending  an  increasingly  active  support  to  the  efforts 
of  Latimer  and  Foxe,  and  penning  these  significant  counsels  : 
"There  are  too  many  things  still  wanting  to  us,  unless  it  be 
enough  to  have  shaken  off  the  yoke  of  the  Pope,  and  to  be 

unwilling  to  take  upon  us  the  yoke  of  Christ But  if 

God  be  for  us,  who  can  be  against  us  ?  And  Christianity  is 
a  warfare."'*  Finally,  Zwingli's  true  successor  at  Ziirich  and 
in  all  the  eastern  parts  of  Switzerland,  Henry  Bullinger,  dedi- 
cated to  Henry  VIII.  his  two  books  published  under  the 
title,  De  Scripturce  SanctcB  Authoritate,  Certitudinc,  Finnitate 
et  absobita  Perfectione,  deque  Episcoporuvi  .  .  .  Iiistitiitioiie  et 
Functione,  &=€.  (1538).  These  were  wonderfully  well  received, 
not  only  by  the  king,  but  also  by  Thomas,  Baron  Cromwell 
(afterwards  Earl  of  Essex),  Keeper  of  the  Privy  Seal,  and 
Vicar-General  of  the  Church  of  England.^     Bullinger  subse- 


-  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letter  285. 
^  Ibid.,  3  ser.,  Letter  8  (Cranmer  to  Capito). 
*  Ibid.,  3  ser.,  Letter  244  (Bucer  to  Cranmer). 

^  Ibid.,  3  ser.,  Letters  280  and  284  (Partridge  and  Eliot  to  Bullinger) ; 
Letter  260  (Micronius  to  Bullinger). 


CHAPTER   III.  55 

quently  dedicated  Book  iii.  and  a  part  of  Book  iv.  of  his 
Decades  to  Edward  VI. 

Furnished  with  this  stamp  of  royal  fav.our,  BuUinger's 
books  speedily  circulated  among  all  ranks  of  the  clergy,  and 
went  off  so  well  in  an  English  dress  that  many  booksellers 
were  enriched  by  their  sale.  Their  readers  especially  appre- 
ciated the  Commentaries  on  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul  and  the 
Decades,  which,  almost  as  much  as  the  Paraphrases  of  Eras- 
mus, helped  to  restore  evangelical  preaching  in  England. 
BuUinger's  Epistle  on  the  Mass  and  his  Treatise  on  Obedience 
to  Magistrates  were  also  translated.'' 

Such,  from  1531  to  15 40,  were  the  sympathetic  relations 
between  Reformed  Switzerland  and  England,  still  three  parts 
Catholic.  Do  we  find  in  this  first  period  any  traces  of 
Antitrinitarianism  ?  At  first  sight  it  would  seem  scarcely 
probable.  We  have  cited  above"  the  categorical  declaration 
of  Zwingli  in  favour  of  the  Athanasian  dogma  in  his  De  Vera 
et  Palsa  Religione.  Faithful  to  Zwingli's  teaching,  the  first 
Helvetic  Confession,  drawn  up  by  Henry  BuUinger  in  con- 
cert with  Grynasus  and  Myconius,  contains  the  following 
expressions : 

Art.  VI.  Of  God. — "  These  are  the  ideas  we  have  of  God : 
That  there  is  one  only  true,  living,  and  omnipotent  God, 
unique  in  essence,  and  who,  in  this  unity,  has  three  persons  ; 
who  has  created  all  things  from  nothing  by  His  Word,  that 
is  to  say,  by  Flis  Son."  Article  XI.  acknowledges  no  less 
explicitly  that  Jesus  Christ  is  "very  God  and  very  Man."^ 

^  Zurich  Letters,  3  sen,  Letter  189  (Johannes  ab  Ulmis  to  Bullinger 
{postscript). 

^  Zwingli  and  CEcolampadius,  to  meet  the  accusations  of  Luther  and 
Melanchthon,  who  reproached  them  with  encouraging  the  denial  of  the 
Trinity,  signed  a  Trinitarian  Confession  of  Faith  at  Marburg.  See  Erich- 
son  :  art.  on  the  Colloquy  of  Marburg  in  Lichtenberger's  Encyclopedic, 
and  Zwinglii  Opera,  ed.  Schuler  and  Schulthess,  viii.  1 18  (Zwingli  to  the 
Magistrates  of  Zurich). 

^  Ruchat,  Ilistoire  de  la  Reformation  en  Suisse,  vol.  v.  (1728),  S"- 


56  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Further,  the  severity  with  which  the  magistrates  of  Ziirich 
(1525;  and  of  Strassburg  (1527)  repressed  the  Anabaptist 
movements  is  well  known ;  and  the  letter  from  the  English 
students  to  Calvin  indicates  that,  in  1537,  the  authorities 
of  Geneva  were  not  less  busy  with  precautionary  measures 
against  these  radicals  of  the  Reformation. 

Yet  one  result  of  these  theological  conflicts,  as  of  the 
struggle  between  two  civilisations,  is  that  the  ideas  of  the 
vanquished  make  in  their  turn  an  impression  upon  the 
victors.  It  is  thus  that  Calvin  himself  felt  the  influence  of 
Servetus  and  of  Lelio  Sozini.''  An  analogous  phenomenon 
is  presented,  at  the  same  period,  by  the  mental  history  of 
W.  F.  Capito,  one  of  the  three  Reformers  of  Strassburg. 
Capito,  originally  from  Hagenau,  and  some  time  Provost 
of  St.  Thomas  at  Strassburg,  had  (subsequently  to  1523) 
entered  into  close  relations  with  several  Antitrinitarian  Ana- 
baptists ;  among  others,  with  Ludwig  Hatzer  {from  Thurgau) 
and  with  Martin  Cellarius  (d.  1564).^*^ 

Hatzer  (d.  1529),  who  was  for  a  considerable  time  the 
guest  of  Capito,  associated  himself  with  John  Denk  in  the 
propaganda  of  a  species  of  pantheism  ;  and  openly  pro- 
claimed the  personal  unity  of  God  and  the  humanity  of 
Christ.  Martin  Cellarius,  perhaps  chronologically  the  first 
of  the  Antitrinitarians  (if  we  except  Erasmus),  published  at 
Strassburg  his  book,  De  Operibus  Dei  (1527),  in  which  he 
accords  to  Jesus  the  title  of  God,  in  the  sense  that  the  Holy 
Spirit  dwelt  in  him  without  measure ;  but  in  which  he  also 
says  that  we  are  all  likewise  gods,  and  sons  of  the  Most  High, 
by  participation  in  the  same  Spirit,  and  according  to  the 
measure  of  the  gift  of  Jesus  Christ.     Capito  did  not  scruple 

^  [The  power  of  Servetus  as  a  Christian  thinker  is  recognised  in  the 
very  energy  with  which  Calvin  set  himself  to  crush  his  influence ;  the 
attraction  of  L.  Sozini  as  a  Christian  man  Calvin  owned  in  the  easy 
terms  on  which  he  recognised  his  soundness  in  the  faith.] 

^^  Trechsel,  ut  sup.,  vol.  i.  17,  24. 


CHAPTER   III.  57 

to  write  a  Preface  for  this  book,"  in  which  he  eulogises  the 
spiritual  gifts  of  the  author  ;  mentions  many  topics  on  which 
he  had  conversed  with  him,  among  others  the  knowledge  of 
one  only  God,  of  Christ,  and  of  the  Holy  Spirit ;  and  recog- 
nises the  incomplete  and  transitory  character  of  the  Refor- 
mation in  which  they  are  both  of  them  engaged.  Less  than 
this  would  have  sufficed  to  bring  Capito  under  suspicion  of 
heresy  ;  and  this  is  the  explanation  of  the  following  passage 
in  a  letter  from  Dionysius  Melander  to  Capito. 

"  For  there  are  false  brethren  who  say,  both  in  writing  and 
by  word  of  mouth,  that  you  to  begin  with,  and  further  that  the 
Strassburg  Protestants  in  general,  entertain  wrong  opinions  con- 
cerning the  Trinity,  and  concerning  Christ's  Divinity.  .  .  .  But 
I  made  excuse  in  the  mean  time  for  you  and  your  townsmen, 
whom  I  hold  second  to  none  in  my  affection.  I  said  you  hold 
sound  views  ;  that  perhaps  you  had  said  this  word  'Trinity'  is 
not  in  the  Scriptures  ;  but  that  it  does  not  follow  that  you  hold 
wrong  opinions  concerning  God,  Christ,  and  the  Holy  Spirit."^'^ 

Suspicions  such  as  these,  based  on  gossip,  do  not  appear 
to  us  to  warrant  the  classing  of  Capito  among  the  Antitri- 
nitarian  teachers  who  have  contributed  to  the  formation  of 
English  Unitarianism. 

1^  Wallace,  ut  sup.,  vol.  i.  art.  Cellarius.  [This  Preface  {Epistola 
privliminaria,  scripta  Argentina,  anno  1527)  was  reprinted,  along  with 
Cellarius'  chapter  De  Restaiiratione  Ecclesia:,  at  the  end  of  the  treatise 
De  Mediatoris  Jesti  Christi.  &c.  (by  Francis  David,  the  Unitarian  Bishop), 
published  in  1568  at  Alba  Julia  (Gyula  Fehervar,  now  Karoly  Fehervar 
or  Karlsburg,  in  Transylvania).] 

1-  Wallace,  tit  sup.,  vol.  iii.  app.  ii.  "  Sunt  enim  falsi  fratres,  qui  te 
primum,deinde  Argentoratenses  male  sentire  de  Trinitate,  deque  Christi 

divinitate  et  scribunt  et  dicunt Excusavi  tamen  interim  te  atque 

tuos,  quos  in  primis  charos  habeo Dixi  bene  sentire  vos,  fortasse 

voculam  hanc  'Trinitas'  non  esse  in  Scripturis  dixisse  vos;  non  tamen 
propterea  male  sentire  de  Deo,  Christo  et  Sp.  S." — This  letter  was 
extracted  by  Trechsel  (i.  25, 26')  from  a  manuscript  in  the  Frey-Grynaische 
Bibliothek  at  Basel,  i.  19,  No.  47. 


58  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

But  let  us  pursue  our  investigation  into  the  relations  of 
England  with  Switzerland. 

In  1539,  there  was  a  marked  coolness  between  the  two 
countries,  in  consequence  of  the  Act  of  the  Six  Articles, 
imposed  on  the  English  clergy  by  the  caprice  of  Henry  VIII. 
The  effect  of  these  Articles  was  to  re-establish  the  Mass,  the 
celibacy  of  the  priesthood  and  auricular  confession,  and  to 
tear  up  the  compact  arrived  at  in  1535  between  the  schismatic 
king  and  the  Protestant  theologians.^^  The  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  accustomed  to  bow  to  the  caprices  of  a  sovereign 
who  was  sure  to  reward  submission  by  promotion,  remained 
at  Lambeth  by  desire  of  Henry  VIII.,  simply  sending  his 
wife  and  children  to  Germany.  But  all  those  who  consti- 
tuted within  the  Church  of  England  an  element  firmly  and 
decisively  pledged  to  a  genuine  evangelical  Reformation, 
protested,  each  in  his  own  way. 

Latimer,  Bishop  of  Worcester,  who  was  chaplain  to  the 
king  and  had  plenty  of  courage,  resigned  his  see  and  retired 
to  the  country;  but  he  was  soon  arrested  and  shut  up  in  the 
Tower,  where  he  remained  until  the  death  of  Henry.  Miles 
Coverdale,  who  shares  the  palm  with  William  Tyndal  as  a 
translator  of  the  Bible,  and  who  afterwards  translated  into 
German  and  Latin  the  Communion  Order  of  Edward  VI. 
(1548);^*  John  Rogers,  chaplain  to  the  English  Church  at 
Antwerp,  and  Tyndal's  workfellow  in  the  translation  of  the 
Bible ;  and,  above  all,  John  Hooper  (properly  Hoper), 
chaplain  to  Sir  Thomas  Arundel, — left  England  to  take 
refuge  on  the  continent. 

After  having  passed  several  years  at  Strassburg,  where  he 
contracted  a  friendship  with  Girolamo  Zanchi,  Hooper  took 
up  his  residence  at  Zurich.      Here  he  gave  himself  with 

^*  Zurich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letter  245  (Bucer  to  Cranmer). 

^■*  Ibid.,  3  sen,  Letters  19  and  20  (Coverdale  to  Calvin;  Coverdale  to 
Fagius). 


CHAPTER   III.  59 

ardour  to  the  study  of  the  sacred  tongues  and  to  meditation 
upon  the  New  Testament,  and  here,  acting  on  the  advice 
of  BuUinger,  who  became  his  friend,  he  married.  Here  it 
was  that  Hooper  became  thoroughly  imbued  with  those 
convictions  of  the  exclusive  authority  of  the  Bible  and  the 
simplicity  of  divine  worship,  which  soon  made  him  the  father 
of  Puritanism.  In  fact,  when,  two  years  and  a  half  after  the 
accession  of  the  pious  Edward  VI.  (1550),  he  returned  to 
his  native  land  and  was  nominated  Bishop  of  Gloucester,  he 
refused  to  submit  to  two  formalities  which  he  considered  as 
remnants  of  Romish  superstition.  The  first  was  the  wearing 
of  the  sacerdotal  vestments,  which  he  regarded  as  a  symbolism 
keeping  up  a  connection  with  Antichrist ;  the  second  was  the 
Oath  of  Supremacy,  tendered  in  the  form,  "So  help  me  God, 
all  Saints,  and  the  holy  Evangelists." ^^  This  controversy, 
which  stirred  all  England  for  several  months,  and  ended  in  a 
compromise  very  honourable  for  Hooper,  was  not  so  childish 
as  it  appears  to  us  at  the  distance  of  three  centuries.  It  was 
the  very  principle  of  all  reformation  that  was  at  stake  ;  the 
principle  laid  down  by  the  Lord  Jesus  when  he  said,  "  No 
man  seweth  a  piece  of  undressed  cloth  on  an  old  garment : 
else  that  which  should  fill  it  up  taketh  from  it,"  nor  "  putteth 
new  wine  into  old  wine-skins ;"  and  confirmed  by  the  Apostle 
Paul,  "Let  each  man  be  fully  assured  in  his  own  mind." 
Yes,  in  this  resistance  of  Hooper  to  High-church  formalism, 
the  whole  Puritan  movement  was  latent  in  germ. 

The  too  brief  reign  of  Edward  VI.  saw  the  fullest  develop- 
ment of  the  Reformation  in  England.  It  was  aided  by  the 
return  of  the  English  refugees,  Hooper,  Coverdale  and 
Rogers,  who  had  in  exile  become  disciples  of  Calvin,  and 
by  the  influence  of  a  picked  band  of  foreign  theologians. 


^^  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letters  260  to  264  (Micronius  to  Bullinger). 
[This  was  the  1549  Oath;  in  1562  it  was  altered  to  "So  help  me  God, 
through  Jesus  Christ."] 


6o  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

Bucer  and  John  a  Lasco,  Pietro  Martire  Vermigli  and  Ber- 
nardino Ochino,  who  had  come  to  seek  in  Great  Britain  a 
shelter  from  the  vexations  of  the  Interim  (after  1547).  To 
this  period  belong  two  memorable  acts  of  Archbishop  Cran- 
mer,  the  scheme  for  convoking  "  a  Synod  of  the  most  learned 
and  excellent  persons,"  with  a  view  to  establish  a  consensus 
among  all  Protestant  churches  as  regards  fundamentals, 
"  and  especially  for  an  agreement  upon  the  sacramentarian 
controversy,"  ^'^  and  the  constitution  of  the  Strangers'  Church 
in  London.^'' 

In  the  matter  of  dogmatic  and  ritual  reforms,  Cranmer's 
first  principle  was  to  stay  within  the  strict  limits  of  apostolic 
tradition.  Hence  his  severity  against  the  Anabaptists,  who 
aimed  at  a  radical  reform,  and  hence  the  eighteenth  of  the 
Articles  of  1551,  which  declares  those  to  be  heretics  "that 
presume  to  sale,  that  euery  man  shalbe  saued  by  the  Lawe, 
or  Secte  which  he  professeth,  so  that  he  bee  diligente  to 
frame  his  life  according  to  that  Lawe,  and  the  lighte  of 
Nature."  ^s 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Primate  of  all  England  held  a 
deeply-rooted  feeling  for  the  corporate  union  of  all  the  Chris- 
tian churches,  and  for  the  triumph  of  the  evangelical  Refor- 
mation in  Europe.  Hence  his  second  principle,  namely,  to 
prove,  when  dealing  with  continental  Protestants,  very  broad 
in  regard  to  forms  of  worship  and  systems  of  church  govern- 
ment. 

This  double  principle  of  Cranmer,  dogmatic  strictness 
and  ecclesiastical  breadth,  presided  over  the  constitution 


1^  Zurich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letters  9  to  15  (Cranmer' to  Melanchthon. 
Calvin,  and  J.  a  Lasco).     Cf.  Strype,  Monorials,  vol.  ii.  part  i,  yi 
1548  (Letter  from  Melanchthon  to  Edward  VL). 

1^  Calvini  Opera,  lit  sup.,  vol.  xiii,   1399,   1409,   1432.     Cf.  Ziirich 
Letters,  3  ser.,  Letters  262  to  265. 

^^  [Hardwick,  Hist,  of  Articles,  app.  iii.] 


CHArTER   III.  6 1 

of  the  Strangers'  Church  in  London,  in  which  he,  with 
Sir  John  Cheke  and  VViUiani  Cecil,  the  Secretary  of  State, 
had  the  largest  share.  We  may  judge  of  this  from  a  brief 
analysis  of  the  Privilege  octroye par  le  Roy  \Edimard  Sixihne'] 
a  r Eglise  des  Estrangei's,  i?istituee  a  Londres  ran  1550.^-' 

After  divers  considerations  drawn  from  the  duty  of  princes 
towards  God's  holy  gospel  and  the  apostolic  religion,  and 
from  the  pity  inspired  by  the  "Germans  and  other  strangers" 
banished  on  account  of  religion,  and  who  had  no  place  in 
which  they  could  carry  on  their  religious  affairs  in  a  language 
they  understood  and  according  to  the  custom  of  their 
country,  the  king  orders  that  henceforth  there  shall  be  a 
temple  in  London,  called  the  Temple  of  the  Lord  Jesus, 
where  the  holy  gospel  may  be  purely  interpreted,  and  the 
Sacraments  administered  according  to  the  Word  of  God  and 
the  apostolic  ordinance.  The  further  provisions  of  the 
patent  may  be  arranged  under  four  heads. 

1.  This  temple  (or  maison  dediee)  shall  have  a  superinten- 
dent and  four  ministers  of  the  Word,  who  shall  form  a 
separate  corporation  in  the  city  of  London,  they  and  their 
successors. 

2.  The  king  grants  them  the  church  formerly  belonging 
to  the  Augustins,  and  all  the  ground  and  site  of  the  said 
church,  the  choir  excepted,  to  enjoy  in  frank-almoin. 

3.  The  king  accords  them  full  power  to  increase  the 
number  of  ministers,  according  as  necessity  shall  arise. 

4.  Finally  and  above  all,  the  king  commands  the  mayor, 
aldermen  and  sheriffs  of  his  city  of  London,  the  Bishop  of 

^^  Collier,  ut  sup.,  vol.  ix.  app.  No.  65.  Cf.  Joannes  Utenhovius 
Gandavus,  Simplex  et  fidclis  Narratio  de  instituta  ac  demuin  dissipala 
Belgarum  alioni nique  Peregn'nortctit  in  Anglia  Ecclesia,  &c. :  Basel,  1560. 
See  Appendix  III.  [In  Edward  VI. 's  Journal,  under  date  29  June, 
1550,  Austin  Friars  is  said  to  be  given  "to  the  Dutch  nation  in  London, 
to  have  their  service  in,  for  avoiding  all  sects  of  Ana- Baptists  and  such 
like."] 


62  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

London,  and  their  successors,  "  with  all  others,  Archbishops, 
bishops,  justices,  officers,  &c.,  that  they  permit  the  aforesaid 
superintendent  and  ministers  and  their  successors,  freely 
and  quietly  to  indulge,  enjoy,  use  and  exercise  their  own 
rites  and  ceremonies  and  proper  and  particular  ecclesiastical 
discipline,  notwithstanding  that  these  may  not  agree  with 
the  rites  and  ceremonies  practised  in  our  kingdom." 

The  Strangers'  Church,  endowed  with  so  liberal  a  charter, 
was  calculated  to  survive  Thomas  Cranmer;  but  other 
events  were  in  store;  the  Catholic  reaction  under  Mary 
Tudor  had  the  effect  of  violently  overturning  the  noble  plan 
of  an  Evangelical  Alliance  formed  by  him  ;  and,  by  sending 
many  hundreds  of  English  Protestants  to  the  continent, 
hurried  on  the  catastrophe  of  the  crisis  which  troubled  the 
Anglican  Church.  In  fact,  the  exile  of  five  or  six  hundred 
of  the  most  distinguished  members  of  the  Anglican  Church, 
such  men  as  Sir  John  Cheke,  Grindal,  Humphrey,  Foxe, 
Jewel,  Parker,  Ponet,  Sampson  and  others,-"  by  bringing 
them  in  contact  with  the  simple  worship  and  organisation  of 
the  Reformed  Churches  at  Frankfurt,  Strassburg  and  Ziirich, 
could  not  but  foster  the  tendencies  to  a  more  thorough 
purification  of  the  Anglican  worship. 

In  its  turn,  this  onward  movement  would  naturally  call 
forth  a  resistance,  based  on  that  attachment  to  ecclesiastical 
rites  and  customs  which  exercises  so  powerful  a  sway  over 
the  English  character.  In  this  way,  tw-o  opposite  poles  of 
thought  were  created  in  the  little  world  of  English  refugees 
on  the  continent :  the  conservative  or  Episcopal,  to  be 
found  at  Strassburg  and  Ziirich ;  and  the  radical  or  Puritan, 
at  Geneva  and  Frankfurt.  Those  attached  to  the  former — 
among  others.  Cox,  Coverdale,  Grindal,  Parker  and  Ponet — 
wished  to  keep  the  services  and  the  episcopal  system  as 
these  had  been  settled  under  Edward  VI.     On  the  other 

^"  Collie'-,  lit  Slip.,  vol.  vi.  19. 


CHAPTER   III.  63 

hand,  the  representatives  of  the  latter  school,  such  as  the 
ardent  Knox,  John  Foxe,  Humphrey,  &c.,  desired  to  adopt 
a  service-book  similar  to  that  which  Calvin  had  introduced 
at  Geneva,  and  claimed  for  the  Anglican  Church  the  auto- 
nomy and  liturgical  simplicity  which  the  patent  of  Edward 
VI.  had  granted  from  the  very  first  to  the  Strangers'  Church 
in  London.-^  So  long  as  the  English  Protestants  were  drawn 
together  by  common  sufferings  for  the  sake  of  the  gospel, 
this  divergence  of  opinions  only  gave  rise  to  liturgical  or 
personal  controversies  ;  but  in  accordance  with  a  melancholy 
law  of  the  human  heart,  more  quickly  corrupted  by  prosperity 
than  by  misfortune,  the  antagonism  became  sharper  under 
the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  The  Puritans  created  a  schism 
(1566),  and  declared  that  they  would  dispense  with  the  help 
of  the  Government,  and  reform  the  Church  according  to  this 
three-fold  principle:  i,  Auctoritas  Scripturarum ;  2,  Sim- 
plicitas  ministcrii ;  3,  Puritas  ecclesia7'ii)n  priviarum  et  opti- 
marimi  (1586). 

Having  witnessed  the  rise  of  the  Strangers'  Church  and  of 
Puritanism  from  these  fruitful  relations  between  England  and 
Switzerland,  the  question  again  presents  itself.  Was  there,  in 
either  of  these,  any  germ  of  Unitarianism  ? 

Let  us  inquire  first  among  the  Puritans,  and  begin  with 
Hooper,  initiator  and  martyr  of  Puritanism.  Hooper  has 
left  but  few  works,  and  the  most  important  are  on  moral  and 
liturgical  subjects. ^"-^  But  we  have  a  large  part  of  his  cor- 
respondence with  Henry  BuUinger,-^  a  real  treasure  of  healthy 
piety  and  frank  friendship.  From  this  is  to  be  gathered  that 
Hooper  was,  in  matter  of  dogma,  the  disciple  of  Zwingli  and 
of  BuUinger;    that  is  to  say,  he  adopted  the  Athanasian 

-^  See  Herzog's  Rcal-Encydopmdie,  art.  Furitajis,  by  Schoell. 

^'•^  [But  see  Hooper's  Early  IVritings  (Parker  Society)  for  A  Declara- 
tion of  Christ  and  his  Opice,  which  is  expressly  Niccean  in  doctrine.] 

-^  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letters  32  to  48  (Hooper  to  BuUinger). 


64  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Creed  pure  and  simple,  not  dreaming  for  a  moment  of  veri- 
fying its  authenticity,  or  even  its  conformity  with  the  Holy 
Scriptures.  Thus,  in  his  letter  to  Bullinger,  already  quoted, 
Hooper  complains  that  the  Anabaptists  give  him  "  much 
trouble,  with  their  opinions  respecting  the  incarnation  of  the 
Lord ;  for  they  deny  altogether  that  Jesus  Christ  was  born 
of  the  Virgin  Mary  according  to  the  flesh."  And  further  on 
he  exclaims  :  "  Alas  !  not  only  are  those  heresies  reviving 
among  us  which  were  formerly  dead  and  buried,  but  new 
ones  are  springing  up  every  day.  There  are  such  libertines 
and  wretches  who  are  daring  enough  in  their  conventicles, 
not  only  to  deny  that  Christ  is  the  Messiah  and  Saviour  of 
the  world,  but  also  to  call  that  blessed  Seed  a  mischievous 
fellow  and  deceiver  of  the  world." '^* 

Might  there  not  be  an  allusion  here,  in  calumnious  form, 
to  the  first  Antitrinitarians  of  England  ? 

John  Hooper  was  one  of  the  first  victims  of  the  Catholic 
reaction.  On  ist  September,  1553,  he  was  arrested  and 
consigned  to  the  Fleet  prison  in  Babington's  charge,  and 
after  two  years'  rigorous  incarceration  was  sent  to  the  stake 
(1555).  While  in  prison  he  wrote  two  books:  his  Hyper- 
aspismus,  on  the  true  doctrine  and  use  of  the  Lord's  Supper, 
which  has  been  printed ;  and  De  vera  Ratione  inveniendcE 
etfugiendcE  Falsce  Doctrince,  breve  Syntagma,  which  doubtless 
referred  to  the  same  subject  as  the  above-mentioned  letter. 
Unhappily,  only  the  Epistle  Dedicatory  to  this  last  work  has 
been  preserved."'^ 

According  to  the  declarations  of  their  principal  teachers, 
Humphrey  and  Sampson,  who  took  part  in  their  controversies 
with  the  Established  Church  {1566 — 1586),  the  Puritans 
were  in  full  accord  with  the  Anglicans  in  matter  of  dogma. 

-*  Zurich  Letters,  3  sen,  Letter  33. 

"®  [See  Hooper's  Later  Writings  (Parker  Society).  In  the  Hyper- 
aspismus,  Hooper  cites  and  endorses  the  Syfnboliii?i  Qiiicnmqiu'.\ 


CHAPTER   III.  65 

They  accepted  the  Thirty-nine  Articles  of  1563  ;  BuUinger's 
Decades  were  authoritative  for  the  whole  clergy,  while  Calvin's 
Institntio  was  scarcely  read  outside  the  Universities.  Still, 
little  by  little,  under  the  influence  of  strife  and  schism,  a 
dogmatic  divergence  ensued  between  the  Established  Church 
and  the  Puritan  Nonconformists.  While  the  Puritans  pushed 
the  Calvinistic  dogma  of  predestination  to  its  extreme  con- 
sequences, the  Anglican  bishops  allowed  themselves  to  be 
won  over  by  degrees  to  Arminian  ideas.  Now  it  is  well 
known  that  the  Dutch  Arminians  were  much  inclined  to- 
wards Unitarian  doctrines.  It  is  therefore  in  the  Episcopal 
Church,  and  nowise  among  the  Presbyterians,  that  we  discern 
an  open  door  for  UnitarianisuL^*^ 

But  the  Strangers'  Church  in  London  offered  a  field  much 
more  propitious  for  the  introduction  of  Unitarian  tendencies. 
Christians  of  every  nation  and  every  denomination  met  there  ; 
Germans  and  Dutch,  French  and  Walloons,  Italians  and 
Spaniards ;  Georg  van  Parris,  Adriaans  van  Hamstede, 
Vauville  and  Utenhoven,  Acontius  and  Corranus ;  and  all 
were  under  the  superintendence  of  a  Pole,  John  a  Lasco. 
Outwardly,  it  is  true,  the  Strangers'  Church  conformed  to  the 
Calvinistic  orthodoxy;  John  a  Lasco  drew  up  a  Co7ifession 
of  Faith,  which  was  signed  by  all  the  ministers  and  elders, 
and  of  which  he  submitted  copies  for  the  approbation  of 
Bullinger  and  Calvin.-'  But  this  Confession  did  not  prevent 
grave  discussions  from  arising  among  the  laymen,  and  even 
among  the  pastors,  of  this  Church,  as  we  shall  see  in  Chapter 
VII.  That  we  may  judge  of  the  notable  influence  exercised 
by  this  Strangers'  Church  upon  the  development  of  eccle- 


^^  Schoell,  art.  Puritans,  tit  sup.  As  early  as  1590,  W.  Barrett  intro- 
duced Arminianism  at  Cambridge,  and  did  not  shrink  from  opposing 
the  dogmatic  systems  of  Calvin  and  Beza. 

2'  Calvini  Opei-a,  ut  sup.,  vol.  xiv.  1432  (Letter  from  a  Lasco  to 
Bullinger). 

F 


66  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

siastical  and  theological  ideas  in  England,  we  will  cite  the 
testimony  of  Collier,  which  is  all  the  more  valuable  as  coming 
from  a  hostile  source. 

"This  indulgence,"  says  he,  speaking  of  the  Patent  of  Edward 
VI.,  "though  going  upon  motives  of  generosity  and  compassion, 
proved  unserviceable  to  the  English  Reformation :  for  this  Ger- 
inan  congregation  was  very  remote,  both  in  government  and 
worship,  from  our  ecclesiastical  constitution.  The  allowing, 
therefore,  a  religious  society  so  widely  different  from  that  of  the 
country,  and  the  exempting  these  foreigners  from  the  jurisdic- 
tion of  the  bishops,  was  thought,  in  effect,  an  encouragement  of 
schism,  and  setting  up  one  altar  against  another.  It  must  be 
said,  this  friendship  and  correspondence  with  the  reformed  of 
other  nations  disturbed  our  harmony  at  home,  and  proved  an 
occasion  of  divisions."-^ 

To  us,  on  the  contrary,  it  appears  that  this  Ecclesia  Pere- 
gnnorum  has  been,  in  the  body  of  the  Church  of  England,  as 
the  leaven  that  leavened  the  whole  lump.  Without  it,  and 
the  Puritan  and  Unitarian  movements  to  which  it  gave  birth, 
the  Anglican  Church  would  perhaps  have  long  since  fallen 
again  under  the  yoke  of  the  Church  of  Rome. 

^*  Collier,  tit  sup.,  vol.  v.  386. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

Is  Unitarian  Christianity  of  Italian  or  Spanish  origin? — Antitrinitarian 
tendencies  of  the  Italian  Reformation. — Influence  of  Juan  de  Valdes 
and  Michael  Servetus. 

Up  to  this  point  of  our  researches  into  the  origin  of 
English  Unitarianism,  we  have  not  quitted  the  zone  of  the 
Germanic  races.  We  have  interrogated,  one  after  another, 
the  heresiarchs  of  all  the  Teutonic  lands,  Wiclif  and  the 
Lollards,  Erasmus  and  the  Anabaptists ;  and  on  putting  our 
question  respecting  the  Trinity,  we  have  nearly  everywhere 
been  referred  in  reply  to  the  Symbobim  Quicuinque.  Only 
at  two  or  three  points  have  we  come  upon  traces  at  all 
marked  of  Antitrinitarian  criticism  ;  namely,  among  the 
Anabaptists  of  Flanders  and  of  Switzerland,  and  in  the 
Strangers'  Church  in  London.  But  among  the  first-named, 
taking  Adam  Pastoris  and  Hatzer  as  samples,  the  Unitarian 
idea  is  still  enveloped  in  a  certain  pantheistic  and  millenarian 
mysticism,  and  complicated  with  revolutionary  aspirations 
respecting  the  Church  and  society.  In  the  Ecdesia  Percgri- 
/lonim,  on  the  contrary,  it  appears  in  the  form  of  Scriptural 
theory,  and  it  is  represented  by  men  who  respected  esta- 
blished order,  such  as  Acontius  and  Hamstede,  Ochino  and 
Corranus. 

Most  of  these  men  were  Italians  or  Spaniards.  Let  us 
then  turn  towards  the  south  of  Europe,  and  ask  Italy  to 
declare  her  secret. 

For  a  long  time  England  had  carried  on  a  literary  inter- 
course with  Italy.     We  know  that  Chaucer,  the  creator  of 

F  2 


68  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

English  poetic  diction,  is  under  constant  obligation  to  Boc- 
caccio and  Petrarca  ;  and,  two  centuries  afterwards,  it  was 
still  in  that  land  of  hereditary  loves  and  hates  that  Shakspere 
sought  the  story  of  his  most  pathetic  dramas.  It  was  not 
only  for  literary  models  or  souvenirs  of  the  past  that  the 
English  resorted  to  Italy  ;  they  were  drawn  thither  by  the 
renown  of  her  Universities,  whose  authority  was  recognised 
in  the  sciences  of  Law  and  Medicine. 

At  the  commencement  of  the  sixteenth  centur}',  the 
English  students  were  so  numerous  at  Ferrara  as  to  form  a 
distinct  "nation"  in  that  University.^ 

A  little  later,  Reginald  Pole,  the  last  scion  of  the  unfor- 
tunate house  of  York,  fleeing  from  the  wrath  of  Henry  VIII., 
sought  refuge  in  Italy  (July,  1531),  and  joined  the  devotional 
conferences  which  the  dispersed  members  of  the  "  Oratory 
of  Divine  Love"  held  at  Venice,  under  the  patronage  of  the 
Cardinals  Morone  and  Contarini.  It  was  with  this  introduc- 
tion that  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  several  advocates  of 
an  evangelical  reform — Luigi  Priuli,  Marcantonio  Flaminio, 
and  Aonio  Paleario  (Antonio  della  Paglia) — and  that  he  was 
chosen  in  1537  by  Pope  Paolo  III.  to  take  part  in  the  Com- 
mission of  Reforms.^  Unhappily,  Reginald  Pole  soon  went 
over  to  the  side  of  the  reaction  in  favour  of  Catholic  autho- 
rity, represented  by  Caraffa,  and  employed,  in  opposing  the 
progress  of  the  gospel  in  Italy,  especially  among  the  ladies 
of  the  Colonna  family,  all  the  ardour  which  shortly  before 
he  had  placed  at  the  service  of  the  reforming  party. 

But,  failing  the  ambitious  Pole,  the  English  had,  about 
the  same  epoch,  1532 — 1540,  a  devoted  agent  in  Italy  who 
served  as  negociator  between  the  two  countries.  This  was 
Baldassare  Altieri.     Originally  from  Aquila,  in  the  kingdom 

■^  M'Crie,  Rcfonnation  in  Italy,  p.  80,  note. 

^  F.  Meyer,  Die  Evangelische  Gemdnde  zu  Locarno:  Zurich,  1836, 
vol.  i.  20  ff. 


CHAPTER   IV.  69 

of  Naples,  he  was,  during  eight  years,  accredited  as  Secretary 
to  the  EngUsh  Embassy  at  Venice,  and  by  his  inteUigence 
and  activity  was  well  fitted  to  advance  the  prestige  of  the 
King  of  England  with  the  "  Queen  of  the  Adriatic."  Altieri, 
converted  to  the  gospel  by  the  writings  of  the  German 
Reformers,  placed  all  his  energy  at  the  service  of  the  evan- 
gelical cause  ;  he  did  not  consider  himself  simply  as  agent 
of  England,  but  as  envoy  of  the  King  of  Heaven,  Jesus 
Christ.  The  English  Embassy  at  Venice  became  at  that 
time  the  focus  of  an  active  circulation  of  the  literature  of 
the  Reformation,  and  an  asylum  for  all  who  were  exiled  in 
the  cause  of  religion.^ 

But  the  very  excess  of  his  zeal  compromised  him  in  the 
eyes  of  his  superior,  who  was  avaricious  and  a  bigot ;  and 
Altieri,  to  place  himself  in  safety,  was  obliged  to  come  with 
his  wife  and  children  to  England  (1540 — 1542),  where  he 
was  warmly  received  by  the  members  of  the  Privy  Council, 
including  Sir  William  Paget.* 

He  afterwards  returned  to  Italy,  as  agent  of  the  Elector 
of  Saxony  and  of  the  Landgrave  of  Hesse.  In  this  capacity 
he  rendered  great  services  to  the  cause  of  the  persecuted 
Protestants,  but  was  at  length  obliged  to  quit  Venice  and 
take  refuge  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Brescia,  where  he  died, 
in  August,  1550.  We  make  this  digression  concerning  Altieri, 
partly  because  he  was  in  familiar  relations  with  Celio  Secondo 
Curione  and  Lelio  Sozini,  and  partly  because,  by  his  frequent 
correspondence  with  Luther  and  Bullinger,  we  may  consider 
him  the  medium  of  relations  between  Italy  and  the  northern 
Reformers. 

If  England  was  thus  represented  in  Italy  by  men  of  emi- 
nence and  advocates  of  Reformation — although  diametri- 
cally opposed  to  each  other  in  regard  to  methods  —there  was, 

^  M'Crie,  Reformation  in  Italy,  p.  106. 
■*  F.  Meyer,  ut  sup.,  app.  pp.  471  ff. 


JO  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

on  the  other  hand,  no  lack  of  ItaUans  in  England.  A  num- 
ber of  families  had  lately  established  themselves  in  London 
for  purposes  of  commerce,  which  was  then  brisk  between 
the  two  countries.  In  the  first  rank  of  these  were  the  Brunetti 
and  the  Torriani,  held  in  esteem  as  much  for  their  probity 
as  for  their  business  ability.^  After  the  establishment  of  the 
Inquisition  in  Italy  and  of  the  Interim  in  Germany,  a  great 
stream  of  emigration  began,  which  carried  the  Italian  Pro- 
testants, by  successive  stages,  first  into  Switzerland,  then  to 
Alsace  and  the  Low  Countries  (after  1548),  and  at  length  to 
the  shores  of  Great  Britain.  The  young  king,  Edward  VI., 
and  his  Council  of  Regency,  accorded  them  a  favourable 
reception,  and  furnished  them  with  sufficient  funds  to  enable 
them  to  proceed  to  the  northern  counties  in  search  of  em- 
ployment.*^ 

Archbishop  Cranmer  held  the  learned  Italians  in  particular 
esteem ;  he  gave  a  chair  of  theology  in  the  University  of 
Oxford  to  Peter  Martyr  (Pietro  Martire  Vermigli),  and  to 
Emanuele  Tremellio  the  chair  of  Hebrew  at  Cambridge,  in 
succession  to  Fagius  ;  he  licensed  Bernardino  Ochino  as 
preacher  to  the  Italian  congregation  in  London.  We  may 
further  mention  among  the  Italians  of  distinction  who  were 
included  in  this  first  emigration,  Giulio  Terenziano,  the 
faithful  companion  of  Peter  Martyr,  Lelio  Sozini  of  Siena, 
and  Pietro  Bizarri  of  Perugia.  The  publications  of  the 
Italian  Reformers  were  in  high  repute  at  the  court  of  Edward 
VI.,  to  whom  many  of  them  were  dedicated.  One  of  the 
three  copies  of  the  book,  Del  Beiiefizio  di  Gesfi  Christo,  which 
have  survived  the  hecatomb  of  the  Inquisitors,  has  been 
discovered  at  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  bearing  this 


'  Gregorio   Leti,   //   Teatro  Britannico  oz'ero  Histofia  della   Grande 
Bretagna,  5  vols.  i2mo. :  Amsterdam,  1684,  vol.  i.  316. 

^  Cahtidar  of  State  Papej-s :  Reigit  of  Edward  VI.  (1549). 


CHAPTER   IV.  71 

truly  Pauline  motto,  "  Live  to  die — Die  to  live  again,"  in 
the  handwriting  and  with  the  signature  of  the  young  king.^ 

The  Italian  emigration,  interrupted  under  Mary  Tudor, 
began  once  more  on  the  accession  of  Elizabeth,  who  was 
passionately  fond  of  the  Italian  language  and  literature,  which 
she  studied  under  one  of  the  persecuted  exiles.  It  is  to  this 
second  group  that  Acontius,  the  Cardoini  and  the  Gentili 
belong. 

So  much  in  proof  of  the  mutual  relations  between  English 
Protestants  and  those  of  Italy  about  the  middle  of  the  six- 
teenth century  (1530 — 1570).  We  must  now  trace  in  rapid 
outline  the  course  of  the  Italian  Reformation,  that  we  may 
take  our  bearings  for  the  investigation  of  the  sources  of  those 
Antitrinitarian  opinions  which,  as  we  have  seen,  suddenly 
sprang  up  in  1550  within  the  Italian  congregation  of  London. 
In  Italy  the  Reformation  developed  new  features  ;  it  had  no 
political  character,  and  nowhere  did  it  bear  a  stamp  more 
distinctively  literary,  humanistic  and  rational.  The  prophetic 
accents  of  Savonarola,  and  the  exegetical  boldness  of  Lorenzo 
Valla,  had  re-awakened  minds  stupefied  with  the  incense  of 
Romish  pageantry.  On  every  hand  a  fresh  demand  arose 
for  a  reform  of  the  Church  in  head  and  members ;  and  in 
the  Council  of  1511-12,  convened  at  Pisa  at  the  instance  of 
Louis  XII.,  and  afterwards  transferred  to  the  Lateran,  Pope 
Julius  II.  had  to  listen  to  the  speeches  of  Egidio  di  Viterbo, 
General  of  the  Eremitani  of  St.  Augustine,  and  of  Giovanni 
Francesco  Pico  della  Mirandola,  energetically  denouncing 
abuses  in  the  Church.  Ten  years  afterwards,  the  letter 
addressed  by  the  inhabitants  of  Bologna,  within  the  Papal 
territory,  to  Johann  Planitz,  envoy  in  Italy  from  the  Elector  of 
Saxony  to  Charles  V.,  well  expresses  the  sentiment  of  those 
noble-hearted  Christians  who  sighed  for  a  peaceful  reforma- 
tion of  the  Catholic  Church.^ 

'   The  Benefit  of  Christ's  Death,  edited  by  Babington  :  Cambridge 
1855.  "  M'Crie,  t<t  sup.,  pp.  90  ff. 


72  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Again,  at  both  extremities  of  the  ItaUan  Peninsula,  in  the 
upper  valleys  of  the  Cottian  Alps,  and  in  the  mountains  of 
Calabria  and  Apulia,  the  Waldenses  kept  alive  the  sacred 
fire  of  the  Word  of  God.  In  Piedmont,  after  the  defeat  of 
the  brutal  expedition  of  Albertus  de  Cataneis,  they  enjoyed 
some  degree  of  toleration  at  the  hands  of  the  Dukes  of  Savoy, 
including  Filiberto  VI.  and  Emanuele  Filiberto,  who  had 
married  Catherine  II.  of  France,  sister  to  Henry  II.  and 
friend  of  Renee  of  Ferrara.  They  had  schools  and  meeting- 
houses at  Cavour,  at  Carignano,  at  Chieri ;  and,  during  the 
French  occupation,  they  opened  a  place  of  public  worship 
at  Turin.^ 

But  it  was  especially  in  the  kingdom  of  Naples,  where, 
since  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century,  the  emigrants  from 
Pragela  had  founded  agricultural  colonies  and  brought  under 
cultivation  a  kind  of  desert,  that  the  Waldenses  were  treated 
with  much  respect.  They  possessed  flourishing  churches  at 
Borgo  d'Oltramontani,  at  Guardia  and  at  Voltatura,  which 
endured  for  about  forty  years  (1558 — 1560)  after  the  intro- 
duction of  the  Reformation  into  Italy. 

Hence,  when  the  writings  of  Luther  and  Melanchthon, 
of  Bucer  and  Zwingli,  brought  out  in  large  editions  by  the 
printers  of  Basel  and  Strassburg,  reached  Italy  (under  pseudo- 
nyms, it  is  true)  through  the  booksellers  of  Pavia  and  Venice, 
they  were  read  with  avidity,  and  praised  even  by  members 
of  the  Sacred  College.^*'  Add  to  these  causes  the  interchange 
of  students  which,  so  soon  as  the  Renascence  had  penetrated 
to  the  north  of  Europe  {from  1525),  became  customary 
between  Oxford  and  Wittenberg  on  the  one  part,  and  Ferrara 
and  Padua  on  the  other,  and  the  rapid  and  simultaneous 
outbreak  of  the  Reformation  in  Italy  will  become  intelligible. 

®  Muston,  Histoire  des  Vandois  et  de  lews  Colonies,  new  Edition,  Paris, 
1880,  vol.  i.  267 — 282. 

^^  M'Crie,  ut  sup.,  pp.  6,  39. 


CHAPTER    IV.  73 

To  shorten  matters,  we  shall  specify  three  principal  centres, 
Naples,  Tuscany  and  the  Venetian  territory. 

Naples  and  Sicily  were  at  that  time  under  Spanish  rule, 
and  governed  by  two  viceroys  of  Charles  V.  Every  one 
knows  that  this  emperor  was  not  indulgent  to  heretics ;  and 
during  a  visit  which  he  paid  to  Naples  he  published  an  Edict 
(Feb.  4,  1536)  forbidding  all  intercourse  with  heretics,  under 
pain  of  death  and  confiscation  of  property.  But  in  vain  did 
the  puissant  emperor  set  himself  to  extinguish  the  light  of 
the  gospel.  God  had  determined  otherwise,  and  it  was  pre- 
cisely through  the  efforts  of  one  of  his  Spanish  knights  that 
the  gospel  was  to  make  its  greatest  strides  in  the  district  of 
Naples. 

Juan  de  Valdes,  a  native  of  Cuenga  in  Castille  (often 
confounded  with  his  twin-brother  Alfonso  (d.  1532),  who 
accompanied  Charles  V.  on  his  German  campaigns  as 
Latin  Secretary),  had  fled  from  Spain,  where  his  dialogue, 
Mercury  and  Charon,  had  compromised  him  with  the  Holy 
Office,  to  Naples,^^  and  to  Rome,  where  he  stayed  two 
years.  He  was  an  accomplished  man,  of  gentle  birth  and  of 
irreproachable  purity  of  morals,  whose  countenance,  pale  and 
delicate,  and  eyes  beaming  with  enthusiasm,  seemed  to  reflect 
the  brightness  of  the  invisible  world,  where  in  heart  he  lived. 
Converted  to  the  evangelical  doctrines  by  reading  St.  Paul's 
Epistles  and  the  writings  of  Luther,  "he  thought  thenceforward 
but  of  one  thing,  to  win  for  Christ  as  many  souls  as  possible.^'-^ 


"  [Valdes  was  in  Naples  in  1530-31,  and  returning  in  1533,  remained 
there  till  his  death  in  May,  1541.  There  is  no  proof  that  he  was  ever 
in  the  Emperor's  service,  though  he  was  in  that  of  Pope  Clemente  VII. 
His  brother's  will  made  him  independent.  See  Boehmer's  Lives  of  the 
Tivin-brothersjudn  and  Alfonso  de  Fa/rf/j,  with  Betts'  IntroducHoft,  1882.] 

12  See  the  remarkable  article  of  E.  Boehmer  on  Valdes  in  Spanish 
Reformers  of  Tzuo  Centwies :  Lond.  1874.  [The  life  and  works  of  Valdes 
are  now  rendered  available  to  English  readers  by  the  valuable  labours 
of  B.  B.  Wiffen,  and  the  translations  of  Betts  and  others.] 


74  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

He  never  came  forward  as  a  public  speaker  or  preacher : 
he  reUed  enth-ely  on  speech  with  two  or  three  in  form  of 
dialogue  ;  and  many  of  his  works  which  have  been  preserved, 
e.  g.  the  Alfabeto  Cristiano  and  the  Ziento  i  Diez  Conzidcra- 
ziones,  bear  the  character  of  conversations.  Indeed,  his  house, 
picturesquely  situated  on  the  Chiaja,  near  Virgil's  tomb,  soon 
became  the  resort  of  all  the  best  society  the  kingdom  of 
Naples  could  show,  in  the  way  of  men  and  women  distin- 
guished in  letters  and  animated  with  religious  sentiments. 
Hither  came  Vittoria  Colonna,  Marchioness  of  Pescara,  and 
her  sister-in-law,  Giulia  Gonzaga,  Duchess  of  Trajetto,  the 
most  beautiful  woman  of  her  time ;  Costanza  d'Avalos, 
Duchess  of  Amalfi,  and  Isabella  Manriquez,  sister  of  a  Car- 
dinal. And  here  they  met  Pietro  Carnesecchi,  formerly 
protonotary  to  Clement  VII.  and  secretary  to  the  Medici; 
Marcantonio  Flaminio,  one  of  the  translators  of  the  Psalms 
into  Latin  verse;  Benedetto  of  Mantua;  Lattanzio  Ragnone, 
of  Siena ;  and  the  young  Neapolitan  noblemen,  Francesco 
Caserta  and  Galeazzo  Caracciolo. 

The  charm  of  Valdes'  evangelical  character  was  also  felt 
by  two  ecclesiastics,  Giovanni  MoUio,  a  Minorite  from  Mon- 
talcino,  who  had  been  removed  from  Bologna  under  sus- 
picion of  heresy,  and  was  now  Reader  at  San  Lorenzo  in 
Naples ;  and  Pietro  Martire  Vermigli,  ex- Abbot  of  Spoleto, 
and  now  Prior  of  the  Augustinian  convent  of  San  Pietro  ad 
Aram.  Finally,  to  complete  the  catalogue,  let  us  add  the 
name  of  the  celebrated  Vicar-general  of  the  Capuchins,  Ber- 
nardino Ochino  of  Siena,  who  preached  his  first  Lenten 
course  at  Naples  in  1536,  and  of  whom  it  was  said  by  Charles 
v.,  that  he  "could  draw  tears  from  the  very  stones  !"^^  So 
completely  did  Ochino  fall  under  the  spell  of  Valdes,  that 


^^  [This  is  the  expression  employed  by  an  eye-witness,  Gregorio  Rosso, 
and  has  been  attributed  to  Charles  V.  by  a  misapprehension.  Benrath's 
Ochino,  1875,  p.  25.] 


CHAPTER   IV.  75 

he  would  go  to  him  for  texts  and  subjects  for  his  sermons, 
and  imbibed  the  inspiration  of  many  of  his  friend's  theolo- 
gical ideas.  ^■^ 

Thus,  at  the  time  of  his  death  (May,  1541),  the  number 
of  Valdes'  disciples  was  considerable  at  Naples,  and  from 
thence  his  influence  was  extended  far  and  wide  in  the  Italian 
Peninsula.  Benedetto  of  Locarno,  who  preached  justifica- 
tion by  faith  at  Palermo  and  at  Milan,  and  Paolo  Ricci,  called 
Lisia  Fileno,  who  evangelized  Modena,  were  looked  upon 
as  disciples  of  Valdes. 

Whilst  the  churches  of  Naples  resounded  with  the  evan- 
gelical tones  of  Mollio,  of  Ochino,  and  of  Vermigli,  in  Flo- 
rence, the  home  of  Savonarola  their  precursor,  silence  was 
enforced  by  the  sovereign  authority  of  Cosimo  de'  Medici. 
To  the  noble  outburst  of  liberty  which  had  marked  the  last 
years  of  the  fifteenth  century,  had  succeeded  a  reaction  both 
in  politics  and  religion.  Nevertheless,  a  few  faithful  friends, 
Fra  Benedetto,  the  historian  Nardi,  and  Stefano  Vermigli, 
father  of  Peter  Martyr,  had  cherished  a  reverent  regard  for 
the  spirit  of  their  "holy  prophet."  And,  towards  1525,  we 
behold  the  rise  of  a  younger  generation,  who  devote  them- 
selves to  the  examination  of  the  Scriptures,  and  who  under- 
take the  translation  of  them  into  classical  Italian.  In  1530 
appeared  the  first  Italian  translation  of  the  New  Testament,^^ 
by  Antonio  Bruccioli,  with  a  dedication  to  Renee  of  France, 
Duchess  of  Ferrara;  and,  some  years  later,  came  that  of 
Massimo  Theofilo  (Lyons,  1556).  Pietro  Carnesecchi  and 
Pietro  Martire  Vermigli  were  also  Florentines ;  but,  despair- 

1*  Benrath,  Bernardino  Ochino  of  Siena,  1875,  trans,  by  Miss  Zim- 
mern  :  London,  1876,  pp.  63,  68,  156. 

I''  [That  is  to  say,  the  first  Protestant  version.  The  first  was  that 
contained  in  the  Italian  Bible  edited  by  Nicolo  di  Mallermi  (or  Mal- 
herbi),  published  at  Venice,  i  Aug.  1471 ;  and  there  were  many  editions 
of  this,  as  well  as  of  the  Italian  version  of  the  Bible  by  Giovanni  Rosso 
of  Vercelli,  first  published  at  Venice,  1487.] 


76  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

ing  of  obtaining  liberty  in  the  territory  which  had  given  them 
birth,  they,  Uke  Dante,  sought  in  exile  freedom  of  conscience. 

Two  small  Republics  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Florence, 
Siena  and  Lucca,  enjoyed  liberty  of  thought  for  some  time 
longer.  Siena,  the  birthplace  and  home  of  St.  Catherine, 
often  listened  to  Ochino's  pleadings  for  reformation,  and  the 
similar  appeals  of  Aonio  Paleario,  both  children  of  hers.  She 
gave  birth  to  Lattanzio  Ragnone,  one  of  the  first  pastors  of 
the  Italian  Church  at  Geneva,  and  to  Mino  Celsi,  the  aposde 
of  toleration.  Siena,  too,  was  the  cradle  of  the  illustrious 
family  of  the  Sozzini.^*' 

Lucca  was  the  State  which  furnished  the  largest  contingent 
of  Italian  Protestant  emigrants.i^  The  flourishing,  though 
secret,  church  of  this  city  owed  its  existence  to  the  combined 
exertions  of  Peter  Martyr,  who  as  prior  of  San  Frediano 
(about  1540)  had  founded  at  Lucca  a  college  or  seminary  for 
the  study  of  the  classical  languages,  and  of  Aonio  Paleario, 
who  was  Professor  of  Latin  Literature  in  the  Academia  during 
the  years  1546— 1555.  It  was  in  Lucca,  at  San  Frediano, 
that  the  Latinists  Curione  and  Lacisio,  the  Hellenist  Marti- 
nengo,  and  the  Hebraists  Emanuele  Tremellio  and  Giulio 
Terenziano,  were  professors.  They  almost  all  embraced  the 
principles  of  the  evangelical  Reformation,  and  we  shall  meet 
them  again  on  foreign  soil. 

It  is  well  known  that  Ferrara,  under  the  generous  stimulus 
of  Alfonso  L,  rivalled  Florence  in  the  cultivation  of  literature 
and  philosophy  (1527).  The  young  Duke,  Ercole  II.,  hav- 
ing married  Renee,  daughter  of  Louis  XIL,  who  had  been 
brought  to  a  knowledge  of  the  gospel  by  Marguerite  de 


IS  Cantu,  Gli  Eretici  d' Italia  (1865— 1867);  see  vol.  ii.,  Appendix,  for 
a  genealogy  of  the  Sozzini  [which  needs  some  correction].  M'Crie,  ut 
Slip.,  p.  444. 

I''  Moerikofer,   Gesc/i.  d.  Prot.  Fliicht.  i.  Sc/iweiz,  chap.  v. :  Leipzig, 


\l 


CHAPTER   IV.  y-J 

Valois,  and  by  her  governess,  Madame  de  Soubise,  the  court 
of  Ferrara  became  the  centre  of  Uterary  reunions,  whose 
members  were  not  slow  to  discuss  the  "  one  thing  needful," 
the  question  of  salvation.  Clement  Marot  and  Lyon  Jamet, 
who  were  secretaries  to  the  Duchess,  Calvin  and  Hubert 
Languet,  who  were  her  correspondents,  communicated  to  the 
literary  circle  the  influence  of  Protestant  France ;  while,  on 
the  part  of  Italy,  Marcantonio  Flaminio  and  Fulvio  Pellegrino 
Morato,  father  of  the  incomparable  Olympia  Fulvia  Morata, 
were  the  brightest  gems  in  this  crown  of  Ferrara. ^'^ 

But  neither  Naples,  nor  Lucca,  nor  even  Ferrara,  are  to 
be  compared  with  Venice  and  her  territory  in  respect  of  the 
activity  and  continuance  of  the  evangelical  propaganda.  It 
will  be  remembered  that  Altieri,  the  Secretary  to  the  English 
Embassy,  was  the  medium  of  relations  between  the  Protes- 
tants of  Venice  and  the  Reformers  of  Germany  and  Switzer- 
land.^^ Baldo  Lupetino,  Provincial  of  the  Franciscans  in 
the  Venetian  territory,  displayed  no  less  zeal  for  the  conver- 
sion of  souls.  He  it  was  who  gained  over  to  the  cause  of 
the  gospel  his  cousin,  Mattia  Flacio  Illyrico  (Mat.  Flach 
Francowitz),  the  chief  author  of  the  ecclesiastical  history 
known  as  the  CentiiricE  Magdebicrgicce,  and  of  the  Catalogus 
Testitim  Veritatis ;  but  he  expiated  his  zeal  by  a  captivity  of 
twenty  years,  crowned  at  length  by  martyrdom. 

The  Bruccioli  and  the  Braccietti  were  among  the  founders 
of  the  evangelical  church  at  Venice ;  while  two  brothers, 
Pierpaolo  Vergerio,  Bishop  of  Capo  d'Istria,  and  Giambattista 
Vergerio,  Bishop  of  Pola,  carried  the  light  of  the  gospel  into 

^^  See  the  fine  work  of  Jules  Bonnet  on  Olympia  Morata. 

^^  He  wrote  a  letter  to  Luther  on  behalf  of  the  Protestants  of  Venice 
(24  Nov.  1542),  pi-aying  him  to  influence  the  German  princes  to  inter- 
vene in  their  favour ;  and  it  is  to  him  that  we  may  reasonably  attribute 
the  letter  to  the  ministers  of  Geneva  (6  Dec.  1542),  written  in  the  name 
of  all  the  brethren  of  the  church  of  Venice,  Vicenza  and  Treviso. — 
Calvini  Opera,  vol.  xi.  438. 


78  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Istria  and  the  district  of  Trent.  Furthermore,  the  numerous 
printers  and  merchants  of  Venice,  among  others  the  brothers 
Bruccioh,  disseminated  throughout  the  peninsula  the  Italian 
version  of  the  New  Testament  and  of  the  other  books  of  the 
Bible,  as  well  as  the  Latin  writings  of  the  Reformers.  The 
Council  of  Ten,  zealous  for  the  independence  of  Venice, 
closed  her  gates  against  the  Inquisitors,  at  the  same  time 
opening  them  to  refugees  in  the  cause  of  religion.  Under 
favour  of  this  toleration,  secret  congregations  of  Protestants 
were  formed  in  Treviso  and  Vicenza.  The  University  of 
Padua,  in  its  turn,  saw  its  students  and  many  of  its  professors 
won  over  to  the  gospel ;  Antonio  della  Paglia  (Paleario)  and 
Matteo  Gribaldo  taught  there  for  many  years. 

If  now  we  take  our  stand  on  a  height  above  these  particular 
phenomena,  to  contemplate,  as  in  a  bird's-eye  view,  the 
general  movement  of  the  Reformation  in  Italy,  we  shall 
have  no  difficulty  in  perceiving  the  principal  causes  which 
could  not  but  impress  upon  it  an  Antitrinitarian  bias.  What 
strikes  us,  on  the  first  glance,  is  the  absence  of  any  great 
personality,  like  that  of  Luther,  Zwingli  or  Calvin,  concen- 
trating in  itself  the  aspirations  of  all,  and  furnishing  them, 
by  the  force  of  its  genius,  with  a  common  expression  and  a 
common  organization.  It  is  not  that  the  Italians  were  de- 
ficient in  the  raw  material  of  genius;  assuredly  Pietro  Martire 
Vermigli  is  to  the  full  as  keen  a  theologian  as  Calvin,  and 
Bernardino  Ochino  bears  the  palm  from  Luther  for  power 
of  oratory  ;  but,  whether  because  they  were  too  near  Rome, 
or  because  they  could  count  on  no  adequate  support  from 
their  princes,  they  were  unable  to  assume  the  direction  of 
the  movement.  Besides,  the  repressive  force  exerted  by  the 
Holy  See  was  so  strong  at  the  outset,  even  within  the  free 
republic  of  Venice,  that  the  churches,  placed  under  a  ban 
which  compelled  them  to  assemble  in  secret,  were  from  this 
circumstance  unable  to  provide  themselves  with  a  regular 
organisation.      They  remained  in  the  condition  of  eglises 


CHAPTER   IV.  79 

plantks  (stick-fast  churches),  as  Theodore  Beza  calls  them  ; 
not  having  minister,  liturgy  or  discipline,  still  less  any  con- 
fession of  faith,  to  set  bounds  to  the  rationalism  of  individual 
members.  To  these  causes  add,  lastly,  the  feeling  which 
leads  the  oppressed  to  take  in  every  respect  a  line  opposed 
to  that  of  their  persecutors,  and  it  will  be  easy  to  understand 
how  it  was  that  Italy  presented  a  favourable  soil  for  the  unre- 
stricted exertion  of  free  inquiry,  and  for  the  development  of 
the  most  anti-catholic  and  anti-clerical  opinions.-*^ 

If  circumstances  fostered  this  tendency,  no  less  true  is  it 
that  the  natural  temperament  of  the  Italians  led  them  in  the 
direction  of  critical  discussion  and  scepticism.  The  revival 
of  classical  literature  had  brought  back  the  study  of  the 
ancient  philosophers,  Plato  and  Aristotle,  and  had  emanci- 
pated the  human  mind  from  the  yoke  of  scholastic  rules. 
No  sooner  was  the  penetrating  and  subtle  intellect  of  the 
Italians  set  free,  than  it  applied  its  solvent  to  traditions  that 
seemed  most  soundly  established.  Lorenzo  Valla  (d.  1457), 
the  true  precursor  of  Erasmus,  by  application  of  the  rules  of 
historical  criticism,  had  demonstrated  the  falsity  of  the  pre- 
tended Donation  of  Constantine,  and  the  legend  of  the  origin 
of  the  so-called  Apostles'  Creed.  And,  later,  Pietro  Pom- 
ponazzi,  Professor  of  Philosophy  at  Padua  and  at  Bologna 
(1488 — 1525),  did  not  hesitate  to  declare  that,  according  to 
Aristotle's  doctrine,  the  human  soul  is  mortal ;  that  is  to  say, 
it  participates  in  immortality  only  so  far  as  it  has  a  know- 
ledge of  the  Universal. 2^  It  was  Pomponazzi  who,  doubtless 
to  shelter  himself  from  the  censures  of  the  Church,  drew  that 
imaginary  distinction  between  the  domain  of  Faith  and  that 


^^  The  Universities  of  Bologna  and  Padua  were  at  that  time  centres 
of  daring  speculation  and  free  thought.  See  Lecky,  History  of  the  Rise 
and  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  Rationalism  in  Europe,  vol.  i.  370  fif. : 
London,  1882. 

^^  See  Trechsel,  id  sitp.,  vol.  ii.  10 — 12.     Cf.  Lecky,  ut  sup. 


8o  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

of  Reason,  which  is  convenient  perhaps  for  weak  natures, 
but  fatal  to  reUgious  sentiment  and  sincerity  of  conscience. 
But,  above  all,  the  study  of  Cicero's  writings  had  dissemi- 
nated in  most  literary  circles  a  sort  of  eclectic  philosophy, 
content  to  acknowledge  the  data  of  the  universal  conscious- 
ness {consensus  generis  humaiii),  such  as  the  existence  of  a 
God,  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  the  duties  of  man, 
without  probing  the  problems  of  metaphysics. 

Further,  the  science  of  Law,  held  in  such  great  esteem  at 
the  Universities  of  Bologna  and  Padua,  and  conferring  a 
hereditary  glory  upon  the  Alciati,  the  Gentili  and  the  Sozzini, 
developed  among  the  Italians  a  demand  for  equity,  and,  so 
to  speak,  a  geometrical  method  of  reasoning,  which  would 
ill  adapt  themselves  to  the  dogmata  of  the  Trinity,  the  two 
natures  in  Christ,  and  the  vicarious  atonement. 

Lastly,  among  the  general  causes  of  the  Antitrinitarian 
movement  in  Italy,  we  have  hitherto  omitted  to  notice  the 
influence  which  the  monotheism  of  the  Jewish  doctors  was  sure 
to  exert  on  the  Hebraists  who  studied  under  them.  The  truth 
is,  the  Jews  played  a  very  important  part  in  the  revival  of  the 
study  of  Oriental  languages  in  Italy.  Since  the  end  of  the 
fifteenth  century,  the  family  of  the  Soncinati,  from  Soncino 
near  Cremona,  had  established  printing-presses  in  the  prin- 
cipal cities  of  southern  Europe-  and,  in  15 18,  Daniel  Bom- 
berg  brought  out  at  Venice  a  magnificent  edition  of  the 
Hebrew  Bible,  with  rabbinical  commentaries.  The  first 
Hebraists  of  Italy,  Pico  della  Mirandola,  uncle  and  nephew, 
Agathias  Guidaccerio  (the  first  Professor  of  Hebrew  at  the 
College  of  France)  and  Egidio  of  Viterbo,  had  been  pupils 
of  Jewish  doctors.  And  if,  in  the  contact  of  the  two  reli- 
gions, we  note  some  conversions  from  the  old  to  the  new,  as 
was  the  case  with  Felice  of  Prato  and  Emanuele  Tremellio, 
who  were  of  Israelitish  origin,  and  became  professors  of 
Hebrew  at  Rome  and  Oxford, — on  the  other  hand  we  must 
acknowledge  the  marked  influence  of  Judaism,  in  an  Anti- 


CHAPTER    IV.  8  I 

trinitarian  direction,  upon  the  Hebraist,  Francesco  Stancaro, 
of  Mantua.  22 

We  are  by  this  time  in  a  position  to  resume  our  funda- 
mental question,  Did  there  exist,  in  the  Italy  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  any  Unitarian  tendencies?  And  if  so,  within  what 
circles,  and  in  the  case  of  what  individuals,  were  they  brought 
out  ?  The  result  of  our  scrutiny  of  the  general  conditions 
of  Italian  Protestantism  is,  that  everything  bore  in  this  direc- 
tion. But  have  we  come  across  the  name  of  any  one  who 
should  disengage  the  consequent  of  all  these  aspirations,  and 
discover  the  formula  of  Antitrinitarianism  ? 

Yes,  two  men  proved  the  awakeners  of  the  theological 
intellect  in  the  Italy  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  these  two, 
strange  to  say,  were  not  Italians,  but  Spaniards  —  Miguel 
Serveto  y  Reves  and  Juan  de  Valde's.  It  was  as  though 
Providence  had  willed  that  the  spark  of  truth  should  flash 
from  the  contact  of  the  two  pre-eminently  Latin  races. 
Gentile  and  Gribaldo,  Acontius  and  the  Sozzini,  have  the 
same  title  to  be  reckoned  disciples  of  Servetus,  that  Ochino, 
Vermigli  and  Curione  have  to  be  deemed  heirs  of  the  spirit 
of  Valdes.-^  Even  as  the  influence  of  the  translated  Con- 
siderazioni  oiNdXd.^'s,  is  felt  in  Ochino's  Dialogi  Seffe,-'^  so  do 
we  find  the  writings  of  Servetus  "■^•^  current,  during  the  period 
1533 — 1544,  in  the  circles  of  Padua,  Vicenza  and  Venice. 
Let  us,  then,  seek  to  determine  how  far  this  pair  of  gifted 
pioneers  contributed  to  the  formation  of  Italian  Unitarianism. 

--  M'Crie,  tit  sup.,  pp.  42  ff.     Trechsel,  tit  sup.,  vol.  ii.  76. 

2^  [The  names  of  Acontius  and  Curione  might  perhaps  be  transposed.] 

^*  [The  Six  Dialogues  of  1539;  not  to  be  confounded  with  his  more 
famous  Dialogi  XXX.  of  1563.] 

*5  [The  reader  must  carefully  bear  in  mind  that  this  refers  to  the 
earliest  publications  of  Servetus,  the  De  Tritiitatis  Erroribus,  153^1  ^"^ 
the  Dialogi  de  Trinitate,  &c.,  1 532;  not  to  his  mature  work,  the  Chris- 
tianismi  Restitutio,  I553-] 

G 


82  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

We  will  begin  with  Valdes,  who  is  catalogued  by  Christoph 
Sand  as  second  in  his  chronological  series  of  Antitrinitarians. 
What  gave  rise  to  this  presumption  was  doubtless  a  letter  of 
Theodore  de  Beza  (2  Sept.  1566).'^*^  In  this  circular  to  the 
Churches  of  East  Friesland,  Beza  smartly  scolds  a  minister 
of  the  French  Church  at  Emden  for  having  had  the  CX. 
Considerations  of  Valdes  translated  into  Flemish.  From  this 
book,  he  says,  Ochino  had  imbibed  his  profane  speculations  ; 
and  he  points  out  that  the  work  of  the  Spanish  knight  con- 
tains several  Anabaptist  errors  and  blasphemies  against  the 
Holy  Scriptures ;  among  others,  the  following,  derived  from 
Considerations  2)'^,  A^  ^i^d  63. 

1.  "The  Holy  Spirit,  being  the  source  of  Scripture,  is 
superior  to  it,  and  can  alone  give  the  key  to  its  interpreta- 
tion. The  Spirit  has  retained  the  power  of  revealing  divine 
truth  to  the  heart  of  man,  as  in  the  days  of  the  Apostles ; 
and  this  inward  and  present  revelation  is  more  fresh  and 
vital  than  the  written  Revelation." 

2.  Moreover,  on  the  question  of  free-will  and  grace,  Valdes 
admits,  with  Erasmus  and  Melanchthon,  and  contrary  to  the 
opinion  of  Luther  and  Calvin,  that  the  human  will  has  re- 
tained the  faculty  of  appropriating  the  divine  grace  [Frceee- 
dente  gratia,  comitante  voluntate). 

It  will  be  observed  at  once  that  Beza  brings  no  charge 
against  Valdes  in  the  matter  of  the  Trinity.  And,  moreover, 
if  we  turn  to  the  actual  works  of  the  Spanish  thinker  at 
Naples,  we  shall  there  meet  with  categorical  declarations 
such  as  the  following  :  "  Christ  is  no  mere  man,  but  one  and 
the  same  thing  with  God.  The  understanding  of  the  rela- 
tions of  the  Father  with  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Spirit  is 


"^^  Beza,  CEuvres,  vol.  iii.  ep.  4.  See  Appendix  IV.  [Sand  gives 
as  his  authority  for  Valdes'  antitrinitarianism  a  rare  work  by  P^-ancis 
David,  De  Falsa  et  Vera  Unius  Dei  Cognitione,  1567,  bk.  i.  chap.  3.] 


CHAPTER    IV.  83 

above  my  comprehension  ;  may.  God.  be  pleased  some  day 
to  clear  up  this  mystery  to  me."^'' 

Thus  we  see  that  Valdes,  like  the  sage  Melanchthon  and 
the  prudent  Erasmus,,  kept  to  the  declarations  of  the  Scrip- 
ture on  this  point.  As  regards  the  Athanasian  dogma,  he 
pronounced  neither  for  nor  against  it,.  This  of  itself  does 
not  afford  sufficient  grounds  for  classing  him  among  the 
Antitrinitarians. 

Still,  if  the  gracious  and  mystic  master  kept  this  reserve,  it 
is  very  probable  that  several  of  his  immediate  disciples  went 
to  greater  lengths.  Balbani  expressly  notes  in  Valdes'  com- 
pany "a  band  of  Anabaptists  and  abominable  Arians,  whose 
brood  had  swarmed  in  Naples  and  throughout  the  kingdom, 
and  put  in  peril  the  faith  of  the  Evangelicals.  ""■^'^  Again,  we 
shall  find  among  the  Antitrinitarian  refugees  in  Switzerland 
and  the  Val  Tellina  many  Neapolitans  and  Sicilians  who  had 
been  within  the  circle  of  Valdes'  influence,  including  Valen- 

^^  Boehmer's  art.  on  Valdes  in  Herzog's  Encydop.  [Without  its  con- 
text, the  expression  above  (suggested  by  the  tv  of  John  x.  30)  is  some- 
what misleading.  Valdes  was  no  Sabellian.  Readers  of  his  works  will 
observe  a  distinction  between  what  he  says  when  he  is  dealing  with 
essentials,  and  what  he  gives  as  his  own  fuller  opinion.  Thus,  in  the 
Latte  Spiritiiale,  written  for  the  instruction  of  children,  the  doctrine  pre- 
sented, though  not  technically  Arian,  does  not  get  beyond  what  is  best 
known  as  the  Clarkean  scheme,  and  the  Trinity  is  expressly  reserved  as 
a  topic  for  advanced  Christians.  The  Trinity  is  not  a  topic  with  which 
Valdes  anywhere  deals.  He  avoids  it  even  in  commenting  upon  Matt. 
xxviii.  19.  But  he  frequently  expresses  his  belief  in  the  consubstantiality 
of  the  Father  and  the  Son,  offers  doxologies  to  Christ,  and  once  {Opitsc. 
p.  145)  gives  glory  and  honour  to  him  "with  the  Father  and  the  Holy 
Spirit."  As  regards  the  personality  of  the  Spirit,  the  Latte  Spu-itiialc 
tells  us  that  "  this  Holy  Spirit  is  a  divine  favour,  by  which  God  viviiies 
our  minds,  maintaining  them  in  spiritual  life,"  just  as  the  air  we  breathe 
vivifies  the  body.] 

-^  Balbani,  'Vie  du  Marquis  Galcace  Caracciolo,  Geneva,  1587,  i2mo. 
[Originally  published  in  Italian,  1581 ;  the  English  translation,  160S,  by 
\V.  Crashaw  (who  ascribes  it  to  Beza),  has  been  often  reprinted.] 

G  2 


84  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

tino  Gentile  of  Cosenza,  Francesco  of  Calabria,  and  Camillo 
Renato  of  Sicily. 

While  Valdes  limited  himself  to  placing  the  testimony  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  above  Holy  Scripture,  and  declaring  the 
dogma  of  the  Trinity  to  be  incomprehensible,  Servetus  did 
not  hesitate  boldly  to  attack  this  dogma,  in  the  name  of  the 
Bible  and  of  Reason.  Although  Spanish  by  birth  (1511),^-' 
the  education  of  Servetus  was  chiefly  French.  It  was  at 
Paris  that  he  studied  medicine,  and  in  France  that  he  made 
his  splendid  discovery  of  the  (pulmonary)  circulation  of  the 
blood.  But  in  his  nineteenth  year  he  had,  as  page  of  the  con- 
fessor Quintana,  been  present  at  the  coronation  of  Charles  V. 
at  Bologna.  His  two  earlier  works  on  the  Trinity  (1531 
1532)  were  no  sooner  printed  at  Hagenau  in  Alsace  by 
Setzer,  than  they  got  into  circulation  throughout  northern 
Italy,  and  recruited  his  cause  with  numerous  partisans.  A 
shrewd  suspicion  of  this  transpires  in  IMelanchthon's  letter 
to  the  Venetians  (1539),  in  the  judicial  examination  of  Ser- 
vetus at  Geneva,  and  in  the  miserable  apology  for  his  con- 
duct which  Calvin  felt  called  upon  to  publish  after  the  death 
of  his  victim.^*' 

What  then  were  the  ideas  propounded  by  Servetus  ?  On 
the  question  of  the  Trinity,  Servetus  sets  out  with  these  two 
axioms:  i.  That  the  nature  of  God  is  one  and  indivisible; 
2.  That  the  nature  of  God  can  only  be  subject  to  dispositiones 
(modes  of  relation)  and  not  to  divisions.    It  follows  that  the 

^^  [There  are  two  possible  dates  for  the  birth  of  Servetus  at  Tudela  in 
Navarre,  1509  and  151 1,  each  depending  on  his  own  sworn  testimony; 
but  the  evidence  for  151 1  is  cumulative  and  irresistible.  His  education 
was  Spanish  and  French  (at  Saragossa,  Toulouse,  Lyons,  Paris  and 
Montpellier) ;  none  of  it  was  Italian,  excepting  the  education  of  travel, 
in  his  pre-scientific  period,  to  which  also  belong  his  brief  residences  at 
Basel  and  Strassburg.] 

3"  Henri  Tollin,  Das  Charaderbild  M.  Servet's  (1876).  See  Appendix 
to  the  French  translation  by  C.  Dardier  (1879),  pp.  64,  65. 


CHAPTER   IV.  85 

Persons  of  the  Trinity  are,  in  his  view,  only  metamorphoses 
of  one  and  the  same  God.  The  Son  is  no  other  than  the 
Word  of  God,  manifested  in  time,  and  not  from  all  eternity. 
The  Holy  Spirit  is  again  God,  communicating  himself  to 
men  by  the  ministry  of  angels. 

With  regard  to  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  Servetus  starts  from  the 
point  of  view  adopted  by  the  English  Unitarians,  that  his 
humanity  was  in  the  strict  sense  real  and  historical ;  and  he 
proves  from  the  express  words  of  Scripture,  that  the  man 
Jesus  was  at  one  and  the  same  time  the  Christ  or  Messiah, 
anointed  with  the  Holy  Spirit ;  the  Son  of  God,  begotten  in 
time ;  and  God,  by  the  fulness  of  the  divine  life  which  was 
in  him. 

Thus,  from  the  point  of  view  of  Servetus,  it  was  not  God 
who  had,  so  to  speak,  split  and  abased  Himself  in  a  hypos- 
tasis, of  human  form,  called  Jesus,  which  would  be  incom- 
patible with  the  unity  of  the  Divine  nature ;  but  it  was  the 
man  Jesus  who  had  been  exalted  and  associated,  on  the 
ground  of  his  merits,  with  the  Majesty  Divine.  In  two 
'vords,  Christ  is  man  by  nature,  God  by  the  grace  of  the 
Father.  The  whole  of  the  Socinian  Christology  exists  in 
germ  in  this  formula  of  Servetus.^^ 

These  ideas,  spread  abroad  by  his  books  and  by  an  active 
correspondence,  were  rapidly  disseminated  at  Mantua,  Padua, 
Vicenza,  Venice,  in  the  valleys  of  the  Grisons,  the  Val  Tel- 
lina,  the  Val  Bregaglia  or  Bergell,  and  the  Val  di  Poschiavo, 
where  numbers  of  exiled  Italians  had  taken  refuge.     They 

^1  Baur,  Lehre  von  der  Dreieinigkeit,  vol.  iii.  54 — 62  ff.  [This  account 
of  the  Christology  of  Servetus  must  be  received  with  some  caution.  It 
is  based,  not  on  his  riper  teaching  in  the  Christ.  Rest.  (1553),  but  solely 
on  the  first  (1531)  stage  of  his  opinions.  And  into  this  it  imports 
inferences  which,  so  soon  as  they  were  drawn  by  his  critics,  Servetus 
expressly  rejected.  F.  P.  Sozzini  himself,  who  knew  the  early  writings 
of  Servetus  well,  distinctly  says :  "  Negamus  Servetum  fuisse  progeni- 
torem  nostrum"  [0pp.  ii.  535),  and  gives  good  grounds  for  his  denial.] 


S6  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

certainly  were  the  subject  of  frequent  discussions  in  those 
secret  conferences  at  Vicenza,  which  brought  together  in 
1545 — 1555  the  ehte  of  Venetian  Protestantism,  and  were 
the  cradle  of  modern  Unitarianism.^"-^  So,  on  learning  that 
the  author  of  the  Dialogues  on  the  Trinity  (1532)  and  the 
CJiristianismi  Restitutio  (1553)  had,  in  1553,  been  delivered 
to  the  flames  and  burned  at  the  stake  by  his  pitiless  adver- 
sary, nothing  was  heard  throughout  the  camp  of  the  Italian 
Unitarians  but  a  cry  of  indignation  against  Calvin.  Gribaldo, 
who  had  been  unable  to  obtain  audience  of  the  "  Pope  of 
Geneva,"  wrote  a  letter  on  the  heroic  martyr  to  the  brethren 
at  Vicenza.  Lelio  Sozini  did  not  conceal  his  grief;  and 
Camillo  Renato  addressed  Calvin,  in  his  beautiful  Latin 
poem,  on  the  unjust  burning  of  Servetus.^^  When  their 
turn  came,  the  disciples  of  Servetus,  tracked  by  the  spies  of 
the  Inquisition,  had  to  leave  Italy  and  take  refuge  in  Swit- 
zerland (some  time  after  1547-48).  But  this  very  exile  was 
favourable  to  the  development  of  Unitarian  Christianity.  Till 
then,  never  knowing  when  the  stroke  of  persecution  might 
fall,  the  Italian  Unitarians  had  been  content  with  vague 
aspirations  and  with  negations  of  established  dogma.  Hence- 
forth, in  the  freer  air  of  the  Alps,  they  will  give  precision  to 
their  arguments  and  formulate  their  systems.  We  emerge 
from  the  period  of  sterile  agitations,  to  enter  upon  that  of 
rational  conceptions. 

^-  Trechsel,  vol.  ii.  app.  i.  [But  in  this  Appendix,  Trechsel,  so  far 
from  supporting,  conclusively  disproves  tlie  whole  myth  of  these  Vicenza 
conferences."! 

^^  Trechsel,  vol.  i.  app.  iv. 


CHAPTER  V. 

The  Italian  Reformed  Churches  in  Switzerland. — Antitrinitarian 
Controversies. — Relations  with  England. 

I.  The  Reformation  in  the  Italian  Bailiwicks. 

On  the  way  from  Italy  into  Switzerland,  high  up  the 
mountain  beds  of  the  Adda  and  the  Ticino,  beyond  those 
azure  mirrors  known  as  the  Lago  di  Como  and  Lago  Mag- 
giore,  on  the  southern  slope  of  the  Rhaetian  Alps,  we  come 
across  the  valleys  known  as  the  Val  Tellina,  Val  Bregaglia, 
Val  di  Lugano  and  Val  Maggia.  This  region,  exposed  to 
the  rays  of  the  southern  sun,  and  sheltered  from  the  winds 
of  the  north  by  a  screen  of  mountain  peaks,  suggests,  by  the 
mildness  of  its  climate  and  the  richness  of  its  productions, 
a  dream  of  the  garden  of  Eden.  In  the  hollow  of  the 
valley  are  yet,  as  formerly,  to  be  seen  numerous  flocks  feed- 
ing in  the  verdant  meadows.  Half  way  up  the  mountain 
sides,  roads  bordered  by  pomegranate  and  fig  trees,  inter- 
laced with  vine  branches,  lead  to  the  fertile  fields  which  often 
yield  in  one  season  two  crops  of  barley,  wheat  or  maize. 
Higher  still,  laurels,  Cyprus  and  chesnuts  crown  the  amphi- 
theatre with  their  different  shades  of  verdure.  In  the  six- 
teenth century,  this  favoured  region  was  inhabited  by  a 
commercial  and  industrious  population,  of  Latin  race  and 
language,  subject  to  the  Bishopric  of  Como  and  the  Duchy 
of  Milan.  Here  were  a  great  number  of  Franciscan  and 
Dominican  convents.  Notwithstanding,  from  the  remote- 
ness of  the  situation,  a  great  number  of  heretics  were  also  to 
be  found  here,   from  the  eighth  to  the  eleventh  century, 


88  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

including  the  Waldenses,  or  "  Poor  men  of  Lyons,"  as  they 
were  then  often  called. 

At  the  opening  of  the  sixteenth  century,  this  privileged 
district,  which  possessed,  moreover,  a  high  strategic  import- 
ance as  the  key  to  communications  between  Germany  and 
Italy,  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Swiss,  as  if  Providence  had 
resolved  to  prepare  a  refuge  in  time  to  come  for  exiles  in 
the  cause  of  the  gospel,  fleeing  from  the  bloodhounds  of  the 
Roman  Inquisition.  The  Grey  League  (Grisons),  allied  with 
Massimiliano  Sforza  against  France,  took  from  the  latter  the 
counties  of  Bormio,  Chiavenna  and  Val  Tellina  (vale  of  the 
Upper  Adda) ;  while  the  twelve  Swiss  cantons  received  from 
Sforza,  as  remuneration  for  the  keys  of  his  capital  which 
they  had  retaken  (Oct.  15 12),  the  lordships  of  Lugano, 
Locarno  and  Domo  d'Ossola  (vale  of  the  Upper  Ticino). 
This  last,  it  is  true,  was  lost  by  the  Swiss  after  the  battle  of 
Marignano.  Thus  these  Italian  bailiwicks  fell  under  two 
different  governments.  The  bailiwicks  of  the  Upper  Adda 
were  dependent  on  the  three  Grey  Leagues,  and  were  admi- 
nistered by  Syndics  or  Podestas  appointed  by  the  general 
Diet,  which  sat  every  two  years,  alternately  at  Curia  (Chur 
or  Coire,  chief  town  of  the  Lia  da  Ca  £)e.  House  of  God 
League),  at  Davos  (Tavau,  chief  town  of  the  Lia  Grischa  or 
Alta^  Grey  or  Upper  League),  and  at  Glion  (Ilanz,  chief 
town  of  the  Lia  dellas  Dcsch  Drcttiiras,  Ten  Jurisdictions' 
League).  On  the  other  hand,  the  bailiwicks  of  the  Upper 
Ticino  were  governed  by  bailiffs  or  commissioners  sent  every 
second  year  by  the  twelve  cantons  of  Switzerland  in  turn.^ 

It  had  been  expressly  stipulated  at  the  time  of  the  transfer, 
that  the  bailiwicks  should  retain  their  separate  laws  and 
usages,  and  remain  under  the  ecclesiastical  jurisdiction  of 
the  Bishop  of  Como.      These  conditions  were  religiously 

^  Rosio  de  Porta,  Hisioria  Ecclcsiarnm  Refonuataruin  Rhccticariun : 
Chur,  1770 — 1774. 


CHAPTER   V.  89 

observed  by  the  bailiffs,  whether  Swiss  or  Grison,  who  con- 
tented themselves  with  levying  an  annual  tribute  on  the 
revenues  of  these  rich  valleys.  But  it  was  impossible  to 
prevent  the  Reformation  ideas,  when  they  had  broken  out 
in  Switzerland,  from  penetrating  into  these  Italian  bailiwicks 
by  the  assistance  of  a  more  liberal  legislation  on  the  subject 
of  religion. 

It  was  at  the  Diet  of  Ilanz  (1526)  and  that  of  Davos  (1544) 
that  the  statutes  were  passed  which  determined  the  Grison 
legislation  on  the  subject  of  worship,  and  favoured  the  deve- 
lopment of  the  Reformation  in  the  Italian  bailiwicks,  while 
at  the  same  time  guarding  its  development  from  the  divarica- 
tions inseparable  from  every  political  or  religious  crisis.  At 
Ilanz,  it  was  enacted  that  every  individual  of  either  sex  and 
every  condition,  in  the  territory  of  the  Confederation  of  the 
Three  Leagues,  should  be  permitted  to  choose  and  profess 
either  the  Catholic  or  the  Evangelical  creed,  and  that  no 
one  should  be  allowed,  under  severe  penalties,  to  reproach 
another  on  account  of  his  religion,  whether  in  private  or  in 
public.  Furthermore,  an  old  law  was  revived  and  enforced, 
according  to  which  ministers  were  forbidden  to  teach  any- 
thing except  what  was  contained  in  the  Old  and  New  Tes- 
taments, or  could  be  proved  thence ;  and  the  parish  priests 
were  enjoined  to  devote  themselves  assiduously  to  the  study 
of  the  Holy  Scriptures,  the  only  rule  of  faith  and  morals."" 

Later  on,  at  Davos,  it  was  decreed  that  the  Protestants  of 
the  Italian  bailiwicks  should  have  the  right  of  maintaining 
pastors  for  themselves  and  their  families  at  their  own  charge  ; 
and  free  right  of  asylum  was  accorded  to  exiles  in  the  cause 
of  religion,  on  condition  that  they  paid  caution  money,  and 
conformed  to  the  faith  of  the  national  Church. 

These  arrangements,  liberally  conceived  for  the  sixteenth 
century,  were  highly  honourable  to  the  deputies  of  the  Grison 

-  M'Crie,  ut  sup.,  pp.  357,  368. 


go  SOURCES   OF   ExNGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Republic,  and  powerfully  assisted  in  the  dissemination  of  the 
gospel,  effected  by  the  exertions  of  Biveroni  (Tutschet)  and 
Comander  (Dorfmann),  Fabriz  and  Saluz,  the  Reformers  of 
the  Grisons. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  Ticinese  bailiwicks,  depending 
on  the  Twelve  Cantons  (seven  Catholic  and  five  Protestant), 
the  administration  of  the  law  of  public  worship  was  more 
arbitrary  and  variable,  in  consequence  of  the  biennial  charge 
of  bailiffs,  delegated  now  by  a  Catholic,  now  by  a  Protestant 
canton.  Nevertheless,  the  influence  of  magistrates  so  devoted 
to  the  gospel  as  Jakob  Werdmliller  of  Ziirich  (1530 — 1532), 
and  Joachim  Baeldi  of  Glarus(i542),  the  distributor  of  Bibles, 
could  not  be  effaced  by  all  the  Inquisitors  in  the  world. 

The  great  obstacle,  however,  to  the  Evangelical  propaganda 
in  these  districts  was  the  difference  of  language.  The  people 
spoke  an  Italian  dialect,  of  which  the  Swiss  commissioners 
and  preachers  knew  not  a  word.  In  the  Grisons  the  difticulty 
was  still  greater,  for  here  four  different  tongues  were  spoken, 
German,  Italian,  Latin  and  Romani.  A  further  difficulty 
was  the  lack  of  candidates  for  the  ministry.  Hence  the 
arrival  of  the  Protestant  refugees  from  Italy  was  hailed  with 
an  enthusiasm  such  as  would  have  greeted  a  reinforcement 
of  picked  troops  at  the  critical  moment  of  a  battle.  With 
good  reason  were  these  refugees  from  the  Roman  Inquisition 
received  with  open  arms.  For  it  was  theirs  to  be  the  true 
missionaries  of  Protestantism  in  Latin  Switzerland  ;  yea 
more,  in  their  religious  consciousness  they  bore  with  them 
two  prophetic  principles  —  the  one,  the  Personal  Unity  of 
God ;  the  other,  salvation,  not  by  faith  in  book  or  rite,  but 
by  the  spirit  of  Christ  that  maketh  alive. 

The  road  which  the  greater  part  of  these  exiles  followed 
passed  through  Chiavenna,  a  small  town  situated  at  the 
entrance  of  the  Val  Bregaglia  (formerly  Prsegallia) ;  thence 
they  reached  the  Engadine,  arriving  at  Chur  by  the  Julier- 
Alp,  and  at  Zurich  by  the  valleys  of  the  Rhine  and  the  Seez. 


CHAPTER   V.  91 

Between  1542  and  1550,  these  wild  gorges  -saw  more  than 
two  hundred  refugees  passing  on  their  way.  By  1559,  their 
number  had  risen  to  eight  hundred,  and  it  continued  to 
increase  up  to  the  closing  years  of  the  sixteenth  century. 

The  first  Italian  evangelist  of  the  Val  Bregaglia  was  a 
certain  Bartolommeo  Maturo,  formerly  prior  <of  a  convent  ot 
Dominicans  at  Cremona,  who  had  been  led  to  the  gospel  by 
witnessing  the  secret  vices  of  the  cloister,  and  the  sham 
miracles  performed  by  his  fellow-monks.  He  was  preacher 
during  eighteen  years  (1530 — 1547)  at  Vicosoprano,  where 
he  was  succeeded  by  the  restless  Pierpaolo  Vergerio.  This 
man,  who  had  been  Bishop  of  Capo  d'Istria  and  Papal 
legate  in  Germany,  could  never  tie  himself  to  any  settled 
abode.  We  find  him  by  turns  at  Chiavenna,  at  Ziirich,  at 
Basel,  and  at  length  at  Tiibingen,  preaching  in  season  and 
out  of  season,  crying  up  one  set  -of  i^eople,  blackening  ano- 
ther, and  holding  but  one  fixed  idea,  namely,  to  make  war 
on  Antichrist,  that  is  to  say  the  Pope,  with  volleys  of  pam- 
phlets, which  he  got  printed  at  Basel  or  at  Poschiavo,  and 
spread  throughout  the  Milanese  territory  by  means  of  his 
friends  at  Locarno  and  Chiavenna.^ 

The  Val  di  Poschiavo,  which  'unites  the  Val  Tellina  to 
the  Engadine  by  the  Bernina  Pass,  had  as  its  missionary, 
between  1540  and  1570,  Giulio  di  Milano,  a  doctor  of  theo- 
logy and  distinguished  preacher,  converted  by  Valdes.  He 
had  been  thrown  into  the  dungeons  of  the  Inquisition  at 
Venice.  It  was  on  his  behalf  that  Bernardino  Ochino  up- 
lifted his  voice,  in  a  Predica  delivered  in  that  city  in  1542.* 

He  had  been  so  fortunate  as  to  make  his  escape,  and 
devoted  all  his  talents  and  the  remainder  of  his  life  to  the 


^  Meyer,  tit  sup.,  vol.  i.  51,  61. 

■*  He  must  be  carefully  distinguished  from  Giulio  Terenziano,  who  was 
from  Florence,  and  the  faithful  companion  of  Pietro  Martire  Vermigli  at 
Strassburg,  London  and  Ziirich. 


92  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

evangelisation  of  Poschiavo  and  the  adjacent  towns,  Tirano 
and  Teglio,  in  the  Val  TelUna.  Through  his  aid,  Rodolfo 
Landolfi  established  a  printing-press  at  Poschiavo,  which 
rendered  great  services  to  the  cause  of  the  evangelisation  of 
the  Grisons,  and  to  that  of  the  antipapal  polemic  in  Italy. 
From  this  press  came  the  first  Protestant  works  issued  in 
the  Romani  language,  namely,  Biveroni's  translations  of 
Comander  s  German  Catechism  and  of  the  New  Testament, 
with  the  Psalms  in  verse.  So  much  dreaded  was  this  print- 
ing establishment  by  the  Roman  Catholics,  that,  during  the 
negociations  entered  into  by  Spain  and  the  Holy  See  with 
the  Grey  Leagues  on  the  subject  of  the  passage  of  the  allied 
forces  through  the  Val  Tellina  (1561),  the  envoys  of  the 
Pope  demanded  its  suppression.^ 

Chiavenna,  as  we  have  seen,  was  the  head-quarters  of  the 
Italian  refugees.  Situated  a  little  to  the  north-east  of  the 
Lago  di  Como,  on  the  Mera,  a  tributary  of  the  Adda,  and  at 
the  entrance  of  the  Val  Bregaglia,  this  town  was  the  nearest 
haven  of  refuge  out  of  Italy,  and  offered  a  safe  shelter  to 
those  shipwrecked  in  the  great  storm  of  persecution.  From 
about  1539,  we  find  there  Agostino  Mainardo,  an  ex-Augus- 
tinian  of  Saluzzo  and  Doctor  of  Theology,  whose  preaching 
had  made  him  suspected  of  a  Lutheran  tendency.  He  had 
been  heartily  welcomed  by  the  Pestalozzi  and  de  Salis  fami- 
lies, who  were  already  in  sympathy  with  the  Reformation. 
Around  him  soon  gathered  about  a  hundred  Protestants, 
among  whom  were  such  men  as  Camillo  Renato,  Lodovico 
Castelvetro,  the  brothers  Lelio  and  Camillo  Sozini,  Francesco 
Negri  and  Lodovico  Fieri.  In  1544,  thanks  to  the  Statute 
of  Davos,  the  little  community  was  enabled  to  establish 
itself  in  the  chapel  of  Santa  Maria  del  Paterino,  granted  by 
the  proprietor  of  the  soil,  Ercole  de  Salis.  The  church  con- 
tinued to  grow,  in  spite  of  a  good  many  quarrels,  partly  due 

5  M'Crie,  p.  382. 


CHAPTER   V.  93 

to  Mainardo's  negligence,  and  his  susceptibility  of  temper. 
He  remained  its  pastor  until  his  death  in  1563,  and  was 
succeeded  by  Girolamo  Zanchi,  the  Hebraist. 

While  thus  at  Chiavenna  the  Reformed  Church  enjoyed 
the  protection  of  the  Grison  laws,  that  of  Locarno  was  ex- 
posed to  all  the  mischief-making  of  the  bailiffs  delegated  by 
Catholic  cantons.  A  certain  Giovanni  Beccaria,  no  more 
than  a  schoolmaster  of  the  Franciscans  at  Locarno,  became 
the  modest  and  indefatigable  instrument  of  the  Evangelical 
movement  in  that  town.  Converted  by  reading  the  Bible 
and  the  writings  of  Zwingli  and  Bullinger,  he  entered,  about 
1544,  into  correspondence  with  Conrad  Pellican,  who  had 
also  belonged  to  the  Order  of  St.  Francis.  He  had  procured, 
too,  the  delivery  of  some  evangelical  sermons,  the  preacher 
being  a  compatriot  and  brother  monk,  Benedetto,  rector  ox 
the  Franciscans  at  Bologna.  Through  the  affection  he  in- 
spired in  his  pupils,  quite  as  much  as  by  his  private  converse, 
he  had  won  many  souls  for  Christ.  Among  his  more  dis- 
tinguished pupils  were  Lodovico  Ronco,  student  of  law, 
and  his  friend  Taddeo  Duno,  student  of  medicine  ;  and 
among  the  friends  of  the  gospel  were  representatives  ot 
some  of  the  best  families,  e.g.  Giovanni  and  Martino  Muralto, 
the  one  practising  as  a  physician  in  the  town,  the  other,  a 
Doctor  of  Laws  and  advocate ;  with  the  high-born  Milanese 
gentlemen,  Varnerio  Castiglione  and  Antonio  Maria  Besozzo, 
formerly  tutor  to  the  son  of  Count  Filiberto  di  Masserano.'^' 

These  evangelical  communities,  directed  in  the  period 
1544 — 1562  by  Italian  preachers,  most  of  whom  had  formerly 
belonged  to  religious  orders,  but  who  had  received  no  regular 
instruction  or  ordination  for  their  new  work,  enjoyed  a  high 
degree  of  independence.  In  principle  they  had  adopted  the 
Presbyterian  organisation  which  prevailed  in  the  other  parts 
of  Switzerland.    As  a  final  court  of  appeal  they  acknowledged 

^  Meyer,  ut  sup.,  p.  388, 


94  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

the  authority  of  the  General  Synod  of  the  Grisons,  which 
met  at  Chur  in  the  month  of  June  each  year,  from  1537, 
and  which  had  promulgated  in  1551  the  Rhstic  Confession 
of  Faith.  7  In-  point  of  fact,  however,  the  representative 
church  sessions,  set  over  each  separate  church,  were  auto- 
nomous ;  they  alone  had  the  right  of  nominating  and  dis- 
missing pastors.'^  It  is  easy  to  see  how  favourable  was  this 
soil  for  the  development  of  the  Antitrinitarian  opposition, 
which  dates  from  the  same  period,  1544 — 1562.^ 

It  was  in  the  Lower  Engadine  and  the  Val  di  Poschiavo 
that  the  first  symptoms  of  it  made  their  appearance.  Fran- 
cesco of  Calabria,  pastor  at  Fettan,  and  Girolamo  Marliano 
of  Milan,  pastor  of  Lavin,  who  claimed  to  be  disciples  of 
Ochino,  and  who,  without  doubt,  had  like  him  belonged  to 
the  Capuchin  Order,  pushed  the  doctrine  of  predestination 
to  the  point  of  making  God  the  author  of  evil,  and  reached 
the  verge  of  moral  indifferentism.  Having  to  defend  himself 
in  1544,  in  a  public  discussion  at  Siis,  against  Philipp  Saluz, 
professor  at  the  seminary  of  Chur,  Francesco  fell  into  the 
other  extreme'.  He  made  the  grace  of  God  the  real  and 
supreme  cause  of  redemption,  reducing  the  work  of  Christ 
to  a  merely  instrumental  position,  as  the  secondary  cause. 
In  this  there  was  still  only  a  subordinationist  tendency. 

But  with  another  preacher,  Tiziano,  this  tendency  reached 
the  verge  of  the  denial  of  the  Trinity  and  of  the  divinity  of 
Jesus  Christ.  According  to  Tiziano,  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the 
prime  mover  in  the  work  of  redemption.     Jesus  was  born  of 


''  Trechsel,  ut  sup.^  vol.  ii.  121.  Cf.  De  Porta,  i.  2,  p.  197. 
8  [The  rights  of  patrons  were  vested  in  the  church  sessions.] 
^  Nine  of  these  Grisons  churches  still  exist,  Brusio,  Poschiavo, 
Casaccia,  Vicosoprano,  Stampa,  Soglio,  Bondo,  Castasegna,  Bivio.  In 
1880  they  reckoned  2384  members.  They  have  discarded  the  Helvetic 
Confession,  and  most  of  their  pastors  are  liberal.  See  Free  Ch.  Monthly, 
Dec.  1883. 


CHAPTER   V.  95 

a  human  father  and  mother,  and  became  the  Saviour  of  men 
only  because  he  was  filled  with  the  Spirit  of  God.^** 

Tiziano,  who  was  but  an  itinerant  preacher,  and  who  had 

gained  several  adherents  in  the  Val  Tellina  and  Val  di  Pos- 

chiavo,  was  cited  before  the  Grison  Synod,  convicted  of  having 

revived  the  heresies  of  the  Ebionites  and  of  Helvidius/^ 

and  obliged,  under  pain  of  death,  to  make  a  humiliating 

recantation  (June,   1554).     Thereafter  he  was  beaten  with 

rods  at   the   several  cross-ways  in  Chur,  and  banished  for 

ever  from  the  territory  of  the  Three  Leagues.    This  sentence, 

which  to  us  appears  harsh,  was  very  mild  in  the  eyes  of  the 

orthodox  of  that  day,  with  whom  the  penalty  of  death  against 

heretics  was  almost  an  article  of  faith ;  and  the  good  Philipp 

Saluz  thought  himself  bound  to  apologise,   in  a  letter  to 

BuUinger,  for  not  having  burned  this  emulator  of  Servetus.^'^ 

It  was  also  in  the  name  of  the  Holy  Spirit  that  Camillo, 

who  styled  himself  Renato,  protested  against  the  attribution 

oi  a  supernatural  character  to  the  Sacraments,  and  against 

the  dogma  of  vicarious   satisfaction  through  the  merits  of 

Jesus   Christ.      Camillo,  by  birth  a  Sicilian,  after   having 

suffered  much  in  Italy  in  the  cause  of  the  gospel,  1542,  had 

taken  refuge  with  his  friends  Curione  and  Stancaro  in  the 

Val  Tellina,  where  he  filled  the  office  of  tutor  successively  at 

Tirano  and  at  Caspan  ;  where,  through  his  knowledge  of 

Latin  literature,  as  well  as  his  pious  and  retiring  character, 

he  stood  high  in  the  good  graces  of  the  powerful  family  of 

the  Pallavicini.     Cautious  in  temperament,  he  first  touched 

the  discussion  in  a  correspondence  with  Bullinger  on  the 


1"  De  Porta,  i.  2,  pp.  70,  78. 

^^  [A  layman  at  Rome  at  the  end  of  the  fourth  century,  who  taught 
that  the  brethren  of  Jesus  were  later-bom  sons  of  Mary,  and  thus  denied 
her  perpetual  virginity.] 

^^  Trechsel,  ut  sup.,  vol.  ii.  03,  84. 


g6  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

meaning  of  the  two  Sacraments.  In  his  eyes  they  had  no 
value  except  as  a  testimony  of  our  faith  and  of  Christian 
love.  Hence  he  denied  the  value  of  Catholic  baptism  ; 
questioned  whether  there  was  any  use  in  employing  in 
baptism  the  triple  formula;  and  expressed  a  wish  for  the 
revival  of  communions  in  the  form  of  agap^e  (love-feasts). 

But,  once  settled  at  Chiavenna  (from  1545)  in  a  circle 
where  he  was  surrounded  with  more  ardent  sympathisers, 
he  openly  attacked  the  doctrine  of  redemption.  With  him, 
as  with  Tiziano,  Christ  possessed  no  expiatory  or  sacrificial 
merit.  He  suffered  to  expiate  the  original  sin  in  himself, 
which  made  him  fallible ;  and  the  service  which  he  did  for 
us  was  to  reveal  to  us  the  way  of  salvation.  But  the  true 
Redeemer  is  the  Holy  Spirit  of  God,  working  in  man  and 
transforming  him  into  a  new  creature.  Before  this  new  birth, 
man  is  but  a  miserable  being,  destitute  of  reason  and  even 
of  immortality ;  only  after  it  is  he  reconciled  with  God  and 
destined  to  eternal  life.^^  These  theories,  which  tended  by 
implication  to  the  denial  of  the  second  person  of  the  Trinity, 
and  to  the  Socinian  conception  of  redemption,  found  a 
violent  adversary  in  Mainardo,  one  of  the  two  pastors  of 
Chiavenna,  who  drew  up  a  special  Confession  of  Faith, 
which  he  required  every  member  of  his  flock  to  sign,  with  a 
view  to  exclude  Renato  and  his  adherents.  After  lengthy 
controversies,  which  were  carried  before  the  Synod  of  Chur, 
and  in  which  Vergerio  did  not  fail  to  put  in  his  restless 
finger,  Camillo  Renato  was  excommunicated,  and  withdrew 
to  Traona,  in  the  Val  Tellina.  But,  keeping  up  relations 
with  Curione,  Francesco  Negri  and  Stancaro,  he  continued 
to  exercise  a  marked  influence  over  the  younger  theologians, 
including  Lelio  Sozini,.his  friend,  and  Gianandrea  Pallavicini, 
his  pupil  (Sept.  1554).  From  Traona  it  was  that  he 
launched  against  Calvin   that   imprecation   in   Latin   verse 

^^  Trechsel,  tct  sup.,  vol.  ii.  85  ff. 


CHAPTER   V.  97 

on  the  subject  of  the  execution  of  Servetus,  which  is  one  of 
the  most  eloquent  of  pleas  for  religious  toleration.^^ 

Traces  of  Camillo  Renato's  ideas  may  clearly  be  discerned 
in  the  last  Antitrinitarian  controversy  which  we  shall  mention 
in  connection  with  the  Italian  bailiwicks.  It  was  started 
about  1558  by  two  ministers  of  Chiavenna,  Pietro  Leone 
and  Lodovico  Fieri,  in  conjunction  with  Girolamo  Turriano, 
pastor  at  Plurs,  and  Michel-Angelo  Florio,  aforetime  pastor 
in  London,  then  at  Soglio.  These  theologians  followed 
Renato  in  denying  the  doctrine  of  vicarious  satisfaction 
through  the  merits  of  Jesus  Christ ;  this  they  did  in  the 
name  of  the  Scripture,  which  says  not  a  word  of  the  doctrine; 
and  they  assigned  the  leading  part  in  redemption  to  the 
grace  of  God,  who  has  declared  and  accepted  the  sacrifice 
of  Jesus  Christ  as  a  sufficient  expiation  for  our  sins.  What 
contributed  yet  more  to  recommend  their  theory  was,  that 
they  professed  to  know,  through  the  brothers  of  Lelio  Sozini, 
members  of  the  church  at  Chiavenna,  that  Ochino  shared 
this  way  of  looking  at  the  matter ;  and  it  is  a  fact  that  the 
celebrated  Capuchin  adopted  the  acceptationist  point  of 
view.  Cited  by  the  irritable  Mainardo  before  the  Synod  at 
Chur,  these  ministers  endeavoured  to  obtain  support  of  the 
Ziirich  theologians.  To  this  end  they  addressed  to  them 
(24  May,  1561)  a  series  of  twenty-six  questions,  propounded 
with  great  elevation  of  sentiment,  and  rather  with  the  object 
of  protesting  against  constraint  in  matters  of  faith,  than  of 
setting  out  a  statement  of  their  own  peculiar  views.  The 
real  tendency  of  these  may  be  judged  by  the  following 
specimens  : 

"  Art.  4. — Whether  it  will  not  avail  more  for  the  attainment 
of  eternal  salvation,  to  adore  in  silence  the  most  holy  mystery  of 
the  Trinity,  than  rashly  to  speak  of  it  otherwise  than  the  holy 
writings  teach,  and  according  to  the  various  opinions  of  men  ? 

^■*  Trechsel,  nt  sup.,  vol.  i.  app.  iv. 
H 


98  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

"  Art.  5. — Whether,  for  the  attainment  of  eternal  Hfe,  a  clearer 
or  sharper  understanding  of  the  most  holy  Trinity  is  necessary 
for  us,  than  that  which  is  transmitted  to  us  by  the  Holy  Spirit 
in  the  divine  writings  ? 

"Art.  6. — Whether  the  ministers  and  teachers  of  the  churches 
of  God  may  compel  the  simple  and  unskilful,  under  pain  of 
deprivation  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  to  employ,  when  they  discuss 
the  most  holy  Trinity,  other  words  and  terms  (by  them  ill  under- 
stood) than  those  which,  in  the  sacred  writings,  the  Holy  Spirit 
uses  ? 

"  Art.  20. — Whether  any  one  should  be  excommunicated,  as 
an  obstinate  and  convicted  heretic,  for  simple  error  in  the  article 
of  the  Trinity  (whose  most  sacred  mysteryis  hardly  comprehended 
by  the  angels),  however  much,  in  all  other  respects,  he  be  of 
blameless  doctrine  and  life,  yea  adorned  with  most  laudable 
morals,  and  the  greatest  charity  towards  the  poor?"^^ 

It  is  obvious  that  the  drift  of  these  interrogations  was, 
without  calling  in  question  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity,  to  pass 
over  the  topic  in  silence,  as  being  external  to  Scripture,  and 
as  doing  more  harm  than  good  to  the  salvation  of  souls. 

But  the  confession  of  Lodovico  Fieri,  at  the  Synod  of 
Chur,  was  quite  another  thing  in  the  way  of  explicitness. 
He  asked  for  a  discussion  on  Article  20,  above;  and  declared 
that,  for  his  part,  he  differed  from  the  church  of  Chiavenna 
on  the  three  following  points.  He  did  not  believe  (i)  that 
Jesus  was  the  Eternal  Son  of  the  Father;  (2)  that  he  was 
equal  with  God;  (3)  that  he  was  the  creator  of  the  world. 
These  declarations  were  undisguisedly  Antitrinitarian  ;  hence 
the  members  of  the  Synod  at  Chur,  less  tolerant  than  the 
theologians  of  Ziirich,  confirmed  the  excommunication  of 
Lodovico  Fieri  and  Pietro  Leone.^^ 

But  the  progress  of  true  ideas  is  not  to  be  arrested  by 
excommunication,  any  more  than  by  martyrdom  ;  and  these 

'^  Quastiones  Miiiistrorum  Ecclesiaru77i  qucz  sunt  apud  Rhatos. 
Trechsel,  vol.  ii.  app.  v.     See  Appendix  V. 

16  Trechsel,  vol.  ii.  131. 


CHAPTER   V.  99 

doctrines,  banished  from  the  Val  Tellina,  were  destined  to 
make  their  way  in  England. 

2.  The  Italian  Church  at  Geneva. 

Picturesque  and  smiling  as  were  these  valleys  of  Bregaglia, 
Tellina,  and  the  Engadine,  they  did  not  offer  sufficient 
intellectual,  much  less  sufficient  theological  food,  to  satisfy 
that  ardent  hunger  and  thirst  for  religious  truth  which 
animated  the  Italian  Protestants.  So,  while  a  majority  of 
the  refugees  remained  in  these  localities,  the  flower  of  them 
only  passed  through,  and  proceeded  to  settle,  as  far  as  this 
was  possible  to  a  race  so  mercurial  and  enterprising,  in 
the  great  evangelical  centres  of  Switzerland  and  Alsace,  at 
Geneva  and  Zurich,  Basel  and  Strassburg.^' 

It  was  at  Geneva  (1542)  that  the  first  Italian  church  was 
gathered  together.  A  certain  number  of  Italians,  such  as 
the  Lifforti  and  Delia  Riva  families,  had  been  domiciled 
there  for  some  time  back,  brought  thither  by  intercourse  with 
Savoy  and  the  business  of  commerce.^*^  But  the  first  arrestb 
of  the  Roman  Inquisition  cast  as  it  \vere  a  flood  of  emigrants 
on  Geneva,  bringing  introductions  to  Calvin  from  the  duchess 
of  Ferrara,  or  from  Aonio  Paleario.^''  To  the  city  which 
had  banished  him  three  years  previously,  Calvin  had  in  fact 
gone  back  as  its  master ;  and  his  Ecclesiastical  Ordinances, 
accepted  by  the  vote  of  2nd  January,  1542,  and  enforced 
with  a  will  of  iron,  made  Geneva  a  kind  of  holy  city,  a  new 
Zion,  where  the  sound  of  games  and  feasts  had  given  place 
to  sermons,  catechising,  and  singing  of  psalms. 

Geneva   beheld   the   flower  of  Protestantism    thronging 

17  Calvini  Opo-a,  vol.  ix.  441  (Letter  from  Bullinger  to  Vadian,  19 
December,  1542). 

18  Galiffe,  Le  Refuge  Italien  de  Geneve:  Geneva,  1881,  p.  56. 

19  J.  G.  Schelhorn,  Amauitates  Historia  Ecclesiasticcc  et  Littcraj'iu:  : 
Frankfort,  1737 — 1740,  vol.  i.  462. 

H   2 


lOO         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

within  her  walls,  from  Piedmont,  Tuscany  and  the  Venetian 
territory.  Among  them  were  Alciati,  Castelvetro,  the  Balbani 
and  Burlamacchi  from  Lucca,  Caracciolo  and  Martinengo 
(Oct.  1542).  At  their  head,  towering  above  them  with  his 
crown  of  whitened  hair,  and  with  the  splendour  of  his 
oratorical  renown,  appeared  Bernardino  Ochino  of  Siena. 
The  eloquent  general  of  the  Capuchins,  converted  by  the 
gentle  and  penetrating  power  of  Valdes,  had  continued  to 
preach  salvation  through  Christ,  under  the  veil  of  mysticism. 
But  his  generous  protest,  at  Venice,  against  the  incarceration 
of  Giulio  di  Milano,  had  betrayed  him.  Summoned  before 
the  fiery  tribunal,  he  had  fled  ;  at  the  age  of  fifty-five  sacri- 
ficing everything,  glory  and  fatherland,  to  the  dictates  of  his 
conscience.  Calvin  received  him  with  the  respect  due  to 
his  age  and  character,  and  supported  his  application  to  the 
council  for  the  grant  of  a  place  of  worship  for  his  fellow- 
countrymen.  The  Genevese  magistrates  granted  them,  23rd 
Oct.  1542,  the  use  of  Cardinal  Ostia's  chapel,  called  the 
Chapel  of  the  Maccabees,  adjoining  the  cathedral  of  St. 
Peter. 20  From  November  1542  to  1545,  Ochino  had  the 
joy  of  preaching  the  gospel  with  perfect  frankness  in  his 
mother  tongue.  To  this  period  belong  the  later  volumes 
of  his  Prediche,  printed  in  Italian  and  Latin  at  Geneva  in 
1542 — 1544,  and  continued  at  Basle,  1544 — 1549-  He  men- 
tions also  and  commends,  in  one  of  his  letters,  an  explanation 
of  the  Catechism  which  was  given  every  Sunday ;  and  the 
congregational  service,  a  sort  of  conference,  in  which  each 
member  had  the  right  of  bringing  forward  what  the  Holy 
Spirit  suggested  to  him,  after  the  example  of  the  Apostolic 
Church.2i 

Although  there  were  two  other  preachers  among  the  Italian 


20  Registers  of  the  Council,  23  Oct.  1542. 

^-  Prediche  di  Bernardino  Ochino  da  Siena:  Geneva,  1542,  Sermon  i. 
§  10. 


CHAPTER   V.  lOI 

refugees  at  Geneva,  one  of  whom  was  named  Girolamo  di 
Melfi,  it  appears  that,  after  the  departure  of  Ochino  for 
Basel  and  Strassburg,  pubUc  worship  in  ItaUan  suffered  a 
temporary  interruption.  But  in  1552,  on  the  arrival  of 
Galeazzo  Caracciolo,  Marquis  deVico,  and  under  his  auspices, 
it  was  resumed,  and  placed  under  the  direction  of  Lattanzio 
Ragnone,  former  master  in  the  college  of  San  Frediano  at 
Lucca,  and  friend  of  Vermigli ;  with  him,  soon  afterwards, 
was  joined  Count  Celso  Massimiliano  Martinengo  of  Brescia, 

(1553—1579-) 

At  first  the  Italians  held  their  revived  services  in  the  hall 
of  the  old  College  de  Rive,  and  afterwards  at  the  Madeleine. 
In  1555  the  council  granted  the  Italians  the  use  of  the 
Madeleine  Chapel  and  that  of  the  Auditoire  alternately;  and 
in  the  following  year,  the  Italian  Church  was  organised  on 
the  Geneva  model.  It  had  a  church  session  [coUcgio),  com- 
posed of  the  two  pastors,  four  elders  [seniori),  and  four 
deacons  (diaconi).  The  Marquis  de  Vico  was  chosen  one  of 
the  elders,  and  during  thirty  years  filled  this  office,  with  a 
devotedness  and  fidelity  the  more  remarkable  from  his  being 
exposed  to  many  temptations  and  importunities  on  the  part 
of  his  father,  wife  and  children,  who  remained  at  Naples  in 
the  bosom  of  the  Church.-^  There  was  also  a  catechist  and 
a  precentor.-^ 

This  community  afforded  a  rallying-point  also  for  the 
Spanish  refugees,  among  whom  were  Juan  Perez  de  Pineda, 
Cassiodoro  de  Reyna,  and  Juan  Diaz,  assassinated  in  1546; 
they  were  too  few  in  number  to  form  a  separate  church."* 
It  was  during  the  ministry  of  Martinengo  and  Ragnone  that 
the  Antitrinitarian  controversy  broke  out  in  Geneva.     It  is 

^2  Bulletin  du  Protestantisme  Frangais,  2  sen,  vol.  iv.,  art.  by  Jules 
Bonnet  on  the  Marquis  de  Vico.  Cf.  Vincentio  Burlamacchi,  Memorie 
diverse  delle  Chiese  Italiane  (1650),  MS.  in  the  Archives  of  Geneva. 

-^  Galiffe,  ict  sup.,  pp.  37—39.  =4  j/^ij^  p_  ^]-_ 


102         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

well  known  that,  years  before  this,  the  first  books  of  Servetus 
on  the  Trinity  had  penetrated  into  Switzerland  and  Italy, 
and  had  been  much  read  (1539);  but  when  the  Spaniard 
despatched  to  Calvin  the  manuscript  (1546)  of  his  forth- 
coming Christianisnn  Restitutio,  he  unconsciously  kindled  a 
conflagration  which  was  not  to  be  extinguished. 

In  this  his  last  work  (printed  1553)  the  physician  of 
Vienne  sought  to  reconcile  the  elements  of  truth  in  the 
Catholic  tradition  with  the  evangelical  dogmata.  He  com- 
pleted his  theory  of  the  Logos,  only  roughly  drafted  in  his 
first  two  Vv'orks,  and  propounded  his  special  views  on  adult 
baptism  and  the  millennial  reign.  The  Logos,  in  his  eyes, 
is  the  ideal  Divine  Reason,  which,  after  having  created  the 
world,  and  clothed  itself  in  different  forms  or  masks  {persofics), 
found  at  length  its  perfect  incarnation  in  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
alone.  The  Word  and  the  Spirit  are  two  modes  of  varied 
revelation  of  one  and  the  same  divine  substance.  Thus 
Servetus,  not  daring  boldly  to  substitute  the  perfect  humanity 
of  Christ  for  his  divinity,  fell  into  Sabellianism.-'^ 

But,  in  place  of  meeting  it  with  a  courteous  return,  Calvin 
kept  the  manuscript  and  sent  a  harsh  rebuke  to  its  author. 
Nay,  so  soon  as  it  was  printed,  he  authorised  a  French 
gentleman,  Guillaume  de  Trye,  to  communicate  extracts 
from  it  to  the  Inquisitor  at  Lyons,  who  had  the  author 
arrested  as  a  suspected  heretic.  All  the  world  knows  what 
followed  ;  how  Servetus  only  escaped  from  the  prison  of  the 
episcopal  palace  at  Vienne,  to  fall  a  victim  at  the  pyre  of 
Champel.  He  expired  in  the  midst  of  the  flames,  invoking 
the  mercy  of  "Jesus,  Son  of  the  Eternal  God." 

This  tragic  and  undeserved  end  excited  a  lively  indigna- 
tion in  the  bosom  of  the  Italian  Church  at  Geneva,  among 

^^  Baur,  Die  Christliche  Lehre  von  der  Dreieinigkeit.  Cf.  A.  Gordon, 
Miguel  Serveto-y-Revh,  in  Theological  Revieiv,  April  and  July,  1878. 
[According  to  Servetus,  the  perfect  humanity  of  Christ  is  his  divinity.] 


CHAPTER   V.  103 

all  the  refugees  in  Switzerland.  While  David  Joris  despatched 
from  Basel  his  appeal  to  the  Swiss  towns  in  favour  of 
tolerance,  and  Camillo  Renato  directed  his  apostrophe  to 
Calvin,  Matteo  Gribaldo,  Bernardino  Ochino,  and  Lelio 
Sozini  did  not  conceal  their  grief -'^ 

Matteo  Gribaldo,  professor  of  law  at  the  University  of 
Padua,  and  lord  of  Farges  in  the  district  of  Gex,  not  having 
been  able  to  obtain  audience  of  Calvin,  resolved,  shortly 
after  the  execution  of  Servetus,  to  make  reprisal.  The 
congregational  usage  of  the  discussion  society,  which  the 
Italian  Church  had  borrowed  from  the  Reformed  Church  at 
Geneva,  afforded  him  an  excellent  opportunity  for  pro 
pounding  his  ideas  on  the  Trinity.  Maintaining  respect  for 
the  objective  notion  of  the  Trinity,  he  conceived  of  the 
three  Persons  in  the  following  way.  The  Father,  the  Son 
and  the  Holy  Spirit  were,  in  his  eyes,  three  distinct  divine 
hypostases  (constituent  personalities) ;  while  with  Servetus 
they  were  but  modes  of  manifestation  of  one  and  the  same 
Person.-'  There  was,  however,  in  Gribaldo's  view,  no  other 
relationship  between  the  Persons  but  that  of  species ;  the 
Son  and  the  Holy  Spirit  were  two  varieties  of  the  species 
God,  subordinated  to  the  Father.  Gribaldo  struck  against 
the  rock  directly  opposed  to  the  position  of  Servetus;  he  fell 
into  tritheism  ;  and  even  thereby  he  prepared  the  way  for  a 
Unitarian  Christology.^^ 

In  fact,  after  the  exile  of  Gribaldo,  who  was  pursued  by 
the  theological  hatred  of  Calvin  as  far  as  Tubingen,  where 
he  had  been  appointed  professor,  Gianpaolo  Alciati,  a  Pied- 
montese   officer,  and   Giorgio  Biandrata,  a  physician  from 

^^  Benrath,  ut  sup.,  p.  217. 

-"  [Say,  rather,  Being ;  Servetus  never  applies  the  term  persona  to  the 
Dens  in  se,  the  unmanifested  God.] 

-8  Trechsel,  vol.  ii.  282— 3cx>.  [Gribaldo's  own  terminology  contains 
no  trace  of  a  doctrine  of  "  varieties  of  the  species  God."] 


104         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

Saluzzo,  continued  the  discussion.  They  maintained  that 
the  traditional  dogma  of  the  Trinity  was  contrary  to  holy 
Scripture  and  to  reason,  denied  the  duality  of  natures  in 
Christ,  and  held,  on  the  authority  of  the  Bible  and  the 
epistles  of  Ignatius,  that  Jesus  Christ,  though  very  God  and 
very  man,  experienced  death  in  his  whole  being  on  the 
cross,  and  consequently  was  inferior  to  the  Father.-'^ 

Valentino  Gentile  of  Cosenza  in  Calabria,  a  tutor,  and 
Silvestro  Telio,  a  refugee  from  Rome,  and  friend  of  Betti, 
shared  these  Antitrinitarian  views,  and  defended  them  with 
a  perseverance  worthy  of  a  better  fate.  They  found  apolo- 
gists also  among  several  ladies  of  the  Italian  congregation. 

Now  this  opposition,  stronger  in  talent  than  in  numbers, 
gave  much  trouble  to  the  two  pastors,  and  one  of  them, 
Martinengo,  who  had  himself,  shortly  before,  given  in  to 
the  Sabellian  tendencies  of  Renato  and  Pallavicini,  adjured 
Calvin,  from  his  death-bed,  to  take  pity  on  his  flock,  and 
preserve  it  from  the  artifices  of  these  unquiet  spirits.  So 
Calvin,  in  concert  with  Lattanzio  Ragnone  (d.  i6  Feb.  1559), 
the  surviving  pastor,  compiled  on  18  May,  1558,  a  Confes- 
sion of  Faith,  which  so  defined  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity 
and  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ,  as  to  exclude  at  the  same 
time  the  heresy  of  Servetus  and  the  error,  in  the  contrary 
sense,  of  Biandrata,  Gentile  and  Gribaldo.^^ 

This  Confession,  maturely  deliberated,  and  adopted  in 
public  session,  was  signed  by  all  the  members  of  the  Italian 
Church,  except  perhaps  Biandrata,  Alciati,  and  Francesco  of 
Padua.  Six  others,  Telio,  Porcellino,  Rustici,  Gentile,  Pele- 
rino  and  Nicolao  Gallo,  scrupled  at  it  in  the  first  instance. 
These  latter,  however,  after  three  days'  hesitation,  decided 


351  ft- 


Trechsel,  vol.  ii.  303 — 315. 

Ibid.  vol.  ii.   312,  313.      Cf.  M'Crie,  Reformation  in  Spain,  pp. 


CHAPTER   V.  105 

to  subscribe  it  without  reserve.^^  But  Valentino  Gentile, 
secretly  encouraged  in  his  heresies  by  Gribaldo,  was  arrested 
and  condemned  to  death  as  a  heretic  and  a  perjurer.  As 
he  recanted,  he  was  released  from  the  death  penalty.  He 
retired  at  that  time  to  the  district  of  Gex,  afterwards  to 
Grenoble  and  Lyons,  where  he  published  his  Antidota. 
Subsequently  he  went  to  Poland  with  Alciati  and  Biandrata, 
who  both  remained  there.  But  Gentile,  having  had  the 
imprudence  to  return  to  Switzerland,  was  retaken  at  Gex  by 
the  most  high  and  puissant  lords  of  Bern ;  and,  this  time, 
refusing  to  accord  absolute  divinity  to  the  Son,  he  was 
beheaded  (10  Sept.  1566).  Thus  tragically  perished  the  last 
mover  of  the  Trinitarian  controversies  in  the  Italian  Church 
at  Geneva. 

3.  The  Italian  Church  at  Zurich. 

From  1525,  Zurich  was  considered  by  the  Protestants  of 
the  Milanese  district  as  the  "city  set  on  a  hill"  spoken  of  in 
the  gospel,  from  which  the  light  of  Jesus  Christ  was  destined 
to  rise  on  those  who  were  plunged  in  darkness.  It  was  to 
Zwingli,  the  valiant  chaplain  of  the  Swiss  troops  in  Italy, 
that  those  of  the  laity  or  of  the  religious  orders  who  hungered 
and  thirsted  for  truth  and  liberty,  directed  their  gaze.  An 
Augustinian  of  Como,  Egidio  a  Porta,  wrote  (1525)  to 
Zwingli,  praying  him  to  deliver  him  from  the  Pelagian  errors 
in  which  he  pined,  and  to  teach  him  the  true  doctrine 
of  Christ.^^  Somewhat  later,  a  Carmelite  of  Locarno,  Bal- 
dassare  Fontana,  asked  the  Evangelical  Cantons  to  send  him 
the  writings  of  the   "divine"  Zwingli,   of  Luther,  and  of 

''  Archives  of  Geneva,  Proces  Oiminels,  1st  series,  No.  746.  See 
Appendix  VI.  [See  also  Fazy,  Proces  de  Valentin  Gentilis  et  de  Nicolas 
Gallo,  1878.] 

^2  Meyer,  ut  sup.,  vol.  i.  137.  Cf.  Zwinglii  Opera,  ut  sup.,  vol.  vii, 
447- 


I06         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

CEcolampadius  ;  supplicating  them  in  a  touching  manner 
"  not  to  refuse  him,  a  poor  Lazarus,  the  crumbs  that  fell 
from  the  master's  table. "^^  Varnerio  Castiglione,  a  high-born 
Milanese  gentleman,  Beccaria,  rector  of  the  school  al  Locarno, 
and  the  members  particularly  of  the  Order  of  St.  Francis, 
preferred  to  have  recourse  to  their  former  fellow-labourer, 
Conrad  Pellican,  as  a  member  of  the  fraternity  who  had 
been  emancipated  by  Biblical  research.  The  hospitable 
abode  of  this  learned  Hebrew  professor  at  Zurich  speedily 
became  a  refuge  for  the  most  distinguished  of  these  refugees. 
We  shall  find  there,  in  succession,  Beccaria  and  Castiglione, 
Lelio  Sozini  and  Pietro  Martire  Vermigli.^'^  Bullinger,  in 
his  turn,  also  received  several  Italian  fugitives,  including 
Ochino  (Dec.  1542).^^  Up  to  that  date  they  were  but  few 
in  number.  But,  in  May  1555,  a  veritable  caravan  of 
emigrants  entered  Ziirich.  It  was  the  entire  church  of 
Locarno,  with  scarcely  an  exception  (120  to  180  souls), 
which  had  quitted  its  sunny  home  rather  than  abjure  the 
faith  of  the  gospel.  Vainly  had  they  appealed  to  the  trea- 
ties which  guaranteed  a  freedom  of  worship  in  the  Italian 
bailiwicks ;  vainly  had  they  presented  a  Confession  of  Faith 
in  strict  conformity  with  the  Apostles'  Creed  and  those  of 
the  Oecumenical  Councils.  The  arbitrary  decree  passed 
(18  Nov.  1554)  at  Baden  in  the  Aargau  must  take  its  course, 
and  all  that  the  Ziirich  bailiff,  Johann  Rauchlin,  had  been  able 
to  do,  was  to  allow  them  the  respite  necessary  for  realising 
their  property,  and  to  recommend  them  to  the  Christian 
love  of  his  fellow-citizens.  The  heads  of  the  principal 
patrician  families  of  Locarno  led  the  way :  Martino  Muralto, 

3'  Meyer,  ut  sup.,  vol.  i.  127. 

'*  Concerning  the  evangelical  tendencies  of  a  great  number  of  Fran- 
ciscans, see  Meyer,  vol.  i.,  notes  66  and  72. 

'*  Calvini  Opera,  vol.  xi.  441  (Letter  from  Bullinger  to  Vadian,  already 
quoted). 


CBAPTER   V.  107 

doctor  of  laws,  Taddeo  Duno,  doctor  of  medicine,  Barto- 
lommeo  Orelli,  notary  public,  with  their  wives.  Among 
those  of  the  middle  class  may  be  mentioned  the  names  of 
Appiano,  Ronco,  and  Clara  Orella,  wife  of  Besozzo.^*^  After 
having  provided  for  their  material  wants,  the  Zurich  magis- 
trates granted  them  the  use  of  the  Church  of  St.  Peter  for 
worship  in  Italian,  and  invited  them  to  choose  a  pastor. 

Beccaria  having  declined  their  call,  on  account  of  insuf- 
ficient theological  culture,  their  unanimous  choice  fell  upon 
•Ochino,  who  had  already  exercised  pastoral  functions  with 
universal  acceptance  at  Geneva  (1542 — 1545),  at  Augsburg 
(1545 — 1547),  and  in  London  (1548 — 1553),  and  who  had 
acqnired  a  great  reputation  by  his  writings. 

The  exiles  from  Locarno  had  elected  a  church  session, 
composed  of  four  elders  (soon  afterwards  increased  to  six, 
out  of  respect  to  Vermigli  and  another  refugee  of  distinction). 
Two  of  them,  Martino  Muralto  and  Lelio  Sozini,  were  deputed 
to  carry  the  letter  of  invitation  to  Ochino,  who  was  then 
with  his  family  at  Basel.  A  few  weeks  later,  Ochino  preached 
his  first  sermon  at  Zurich.  The  arrival,  in  the  following 
year,  of  his  old  friend  Vermigli,  summoned  to  succeed 
Pellican  in  the  chair  of  Hebrew,  was  a  doubly-prized  acces- 
sion ;  since  it  brought  to  Ochino  the  counsels  of  a  tried 
friendship,  and  the  assistance  of  a  colleague  who  filled  his 
place  in  the  pulpit  whenever  he  was  absent  or  ill.^'^ 

During  the  eight  years  of  Ochino's  ministry  at  Zurich,  he 
did  more  than  discharge  his  pastoral  functions  with  an  inde- 
fatigable devotion,  preaching,  consoling  the  afflicted,  opening 
his  house  to  exiles,  including  Acontius  and  Betti  (1557),  and 

^®  Meyer,  tit  sup.,  vol.  ii.  passim,  and  Appendix  vii.  to  vol.  i. 

^^  Benrath,  td  sup.,  pp.  225,  240.  It  was  a  Locainian  named  Filippo 
Appiano  who  was  appointed  to  fetch  Ochino's  family,  which  had  remained 
at  Basel,  and  to  house  them  at  ZUrich  in  the  bailiff's  residence  of  the 
Riitli  convent,  which  had  been  allotted  as  a  manse  for  the  minister  of 
the  Italian  church. 


I08         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

visiting  widows,  for  instance  Isabella  Manriquez  and  her 
son,  old  friends  belonging  to  the  Valdes  circle.  He  dis- 
played, in  addition,  a  theological  productiveness  truly  mar- 
vellous, when  it  is  remembered  that  he  was  sixty-eight  years 
of  age  at  the  time  of  his  call  to  Ziirich.  It  was  in  this  city 
that  he  composed  his  dialogue  on  Purgatory  (translated  into 
German  by  the  son  of  Zwingli) ;  his  treatise  on  the  Lord's 
Supper,  in  answer  to  the  attacks  of  the  Lutheran  doctor 
Westphal  on  the  Sacramentarians ;  his  Labyrinths,  a  disser- 
tation on  free-will  and  predestination,  dedicated  to  Queen. 
Elizabeth  of  England ;  his  Catec/iistn,  for  the  use  of  his 
parishioners ;  and,  finally,  his  Thirty  Dialogues,  on  the 
Messiah,  the  Trinity,  &c.  (Basel,  1563).^^ 

Since  the  death  of  Servetus  nothing  so  bold  had  appeared 
on  these  burning  questions  as  the  last-named  work,  in  two 
volumes.  In  the  first,  Ochino  refutes  the  various  objections 
brought  against  the  Messiahship  and  the  redeeming  work  of 
Christ,  putting  them  into  the  mouth  of  a  Jew  named  Jacob. 
Even  at  this  stage,  considering  the  sharpness  with  which  the 
objections  are  presented,  one  is  tempted  to  ask  if  the  author 
does  not  rather  share  the  opinion  of  the  Jew  than  that  of 
the  Christian.  But  in  the  second  volume,  dedicated  to 
Prince  Mikolaj  Radziwill,  Ochino  clearly  betrays  a  tendency 
to  place  the  strongest  arguments  against  the  Trinity  in  the 
mouth  of  the  opponent,  in  such  wise  that  the  reader  may  be 
led  to  agree  with  him. 

It  required  some  courage  on  Ochino's  part  to  propound 
his  doubts  concerning  this  most  sacred  dogma,  even  under 
the  indirect  method  of  dialogue.  The  unanimity  with  which 
the  Swiss  theologians  had  approved  the  execution  of  Servetus, 
should  have  forewarned  him  that  the  Athanasian  Creed  was 
not  to  be  lightly  treated  with  impunity.  But  he  knew,  as 
the  motto  he   placed  on  the   title-page   of  earlier  works 

^^  Benrath,  at  sup.,  pp.  245,  264. 


CHAPTER   V.  109 

indicates,  that  "Truth  overcometh  all"  {omnia  vincit  Veritas, 
I  Esd.  iii.  12) ;  and  he  was  ready,  like  his  divine  Master,  to 
suffer  persecution  in  this  holy  cause. 

Denounced  to  the  Zurich  magistracy  by  a  merchant  of 
the  town,  who  had  heard  the  book  spoken  of  at  the  Basel 
falr,'^''  and  abandoned  by  his  colleagues  of  the  Zwinglian 
church,  Ochino  was  condemned  to  exile,  without  even  being 
allowed  to  defend  himself  A  widower,  accompanied  by 
four  children,  he  set  forth  on  his  journey  of  exile,  in  the 
depth  of  winter,  at  the  age  of  seventy-six.  After  having 
been  repulsed  in  succession  from  Basel,  Miihlhausen,  Niirn- 
berg,  and  even  from  Krakow,  and  having  lost  three  children, 
owing  to  sickness  and  privation,  he  succumbed  beneath  the 
weight  of  so  many  insults  and  sorrows,  and  died  at  Slavkov 
in  Moravia  (1564).  His  martyrdom  had  lasted  nearly  a 
year.  But,  by  his  preaching  and  his  writings,  he  had  brought 
light  to  the  minds  of  many  who  entertained  his  doctrines,  at 
Geneva,  Basel,  Augsburg,  London,  Ziirich,  and  the  Val 
Tellina.  Among  these  must  be  mentioned  that  devoted 
member  of  the  church  of  Locarno,  Antonio  Maria  Besozzo, 
of  whom  Ave  have  so  frequently  spoken,  and  who  in  the 
following  year  was  also  excommunicated,  and  expelled  from 
Zurich  as  being  tainted  with  the  heresies  of  Servetus  and 
Ochino  (1565).  He  raised  aloft  the  banner  of  Unitarianism 
at  Basel,  which  had  been  struck  down  by  the  Trinitarians  at 
Ziirich.^o 


^^  [The  portion  which  excited  popular  clamour  was  the  polygamy 
dialogue  (xxi.);  but,  in  their  second  report  to  the  Senate,  the  Ziirich 
ministers  specify  also  the  tendency  of  the  book  to  cast  doubts  on  the 
Trinity,  the  divinity  of  Christ,  and  the  necessity  of  atonement.] 

''°  Trechsel,  vol.  ii.  272 — 276.  Cf.  Meyer,  vol.  ii.  156 — 195.  Besozzo 
was  followed  to  Basel  by  many  Locarnese  families  (Appiano,  Rosalino, 
Versasca). 


no         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

4.    The   Italian   Church   at   Basel  ;   Focus   of  Anti- 
Calvinist  Opposition. 

The  Church  of  Basel,  thanks  to  the  Uberty  at  that  time 
enjoyed  by  the  imperial  cities,  had  assumed  an  independent 
attitude  towards  the  two  opposite  poles  of  Reformed  Switzer- 
land, Geneva  and  Zurich.  Under  the  leadership  of  QEcolam- 
padius,  Oswald  Myconius,  and  above  all  of  Simon  Sulzer, 
moderator  (antistes)  of  the  presbytery,  it  had  entered  into 
friendly  relations  with  the  Lutheran  churches  of  South 
Germany,  Augsburg  and  Strassburg.  Furthermore,  the  Uni- 
versity of  Basel,  covered  with  fresh  glory  by  the  long 
Iresidence  of  Erasmus,  had  very  extensive  privileges ;  while 
the  press,  represented  by  the  celebrated  printers  Froben, 
Oporinus  (Herbst),  Pietro  Bizarri  of  Perugia,  and  Pietro 
Perna  of  Lucca,  enjoyed  there  an  extraordinary  freedom. 
Thus  Basel  had  been,  in  good  season,  a  refuge  for  the 
victims  of  the  intolerance  of  the  North  and  of  the  South. 
David  Joris,  Jerome  Hernias  Bolsec,  Besozzo,  and  especially 
the  eminent  Sebastian  Castellio  (Chateillon),  found  there  a 
safe  harbour,  and  established  a  philosophico-literary  centre, 
in  opposition  to  Calvin  and  his  alter  ego  Theodore  Beza. 

A  situation  thus  privileged  was  sure  to  attract  the  eyes  of 
the  Italian  refugees.  So,  from  the  early  years  following  the 
estabhshment  of  the  Inquisition,  many  emigrants  of  distinc- 
tion took  u])  their  residence  at  Basel,  the  d'Annoni  and 
Curioni  of  Piedmont,  the  Grataroli  of  Bergamo,  the  Colli  a 
Collibus  of  Alessandria,  Mino  Celsi  and  A.  Socini  (with  his 
five  sons),  from  Siena,  the  Betti  of  Rome,  the  Zannoni  of 
Vicenza,  and  the  Balbani,  the  Diodati  and  the  Micheli  of 
Lucca.*^ 

But  there  were  two  who  eclipsed  all  these;  one  by  his 

''^  Moerikofer,  ut  sup.,  p.  418.  Cf.  extract  from  \\^&  Registers  of  the 
French  Church  at  Basel,  communicated  by  Pastor  Bernus. 


CHx\PTER    V,  III 

eloquence  and  his  controversial  ability,  the  other  by  his 
literary  and  teaching  powers,  Ochino  and  Celio  Secondo 
Curione.  The  former  only  stayed  two  years,  1553 — 1555)  a.t 
Basel,  but  many  of  his  books  were  printed  there;  his  sermon 
on  ^Justification  (translated  into  Latin  by  Curione  (1554), 
the  five  volumes  of  his  Prediche  ( 1 548 — 1562),  his  dissertation 
on  the  Lord's  Supper  (1561),  his  Labyriiiths  (1561),  his 
Catechism  (1561),  and  lastly,  his  famous  Thirty  Dialogues 
(translated  into  Latin  by  Castellio,  1563).'*^ 

As  to  Curione,  nominated  professor  of  Latin  eloquence, 
and  thus  colleague  of  Castellio  at  the  academy  of  Basel, 
he  attracted  thither  during  twenty-three  years  (1546 — 1569) 
a  crowd  of  hearers,  as  much  by  his  piety  and  the  charm 
of  his  social  intercourse  as  by  his  literary  culture.  He 
entered,  too,  into  correspondence  with  all  the  European 
men  of  letters,  including  Sir  John  Cheke,  and,  following 
in  the  steps  of  Erasmus,  he  gathered  around  him  at  Basel 
a  literary  and  evangelical  circle,  in  which  the  Italian  element 
predominated.'*^     If  we  may  judge  from  the  dialogues  of 


■*-  Benrath,  ut  sup.,  pp.  219  ff. 

■*■'  Trechsel,  vol.  i.  208,  217.  Cf.  Lecky,  tit  «//.,  vol.  ii.  46.  It  appears 
from  the  researches  which  Pastor  Bernus  has  kindly  undertaken  for  us 
in  the  Archives  of  Basek  that  there  was  no  organised  Italian  Church  in 
that  city  before  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century.  The  refugees 
from  the  Italian  peninsula  were  at  first  joined  to  the  Evangelical  Church 
of  Basel ;  afterwards,  from  the  time  of  the  formation  of  the  French 
Church  in  1582,  a  portion  of  the  Italian  refugees  attached  themselves  to  it ; 
Giovanni  Francesco  Castiglione,  for  example,  elder  of  the  Church  at  Basel 
in  1 588.  The  numbers  of  the  refugees  being  augmented  in  the  first  half  of 
the  seventeenth  century  by  the  arrival  of  the  families  of  Pallavicini  and 
Stuppani  from  the  Engadine,  the  Fatio  family  from  Chiavenna,  and  others, 
they  were  authorised  to  found  an  independent  church.  Andrea  Costa,  ex- 
Theatine  of  Piacenza,  doctor  of  philosophy  and  theology  in  the  University 
of  Padua,  converted  at  Basel  1657,  was  received  into  the  ministry,  and 
preached  with  great  success  in  the  Italian  Church.  After  him,  Giovanni 
Toniola  (originally  from  the  Grisons)  became  the  pastor  of  the  Italian 


112         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Curione,  De  Amplitudine  Beati  Regni  Dei,  and  from  the 
celebrated  work  of  Mino  Celsi,  /;/  Hareticis  cocrcendis 
qnatemis  progredi  liceat  (i577),'*-*  long  confounded  with 
another  work,  sometimes  attributed  to  Lelio  Sozini,*^  there 
reigned  in  this  group  of  refugees  a  universalist  tendency 
and  a  spirit  of  tolerance,  which  present  a  striking  contrast  to 
the  particularism  and  intolerance  of  the  Reformers  of  the 
North.  Hence  Calvin  accused  them  of  "permitting  all  sorts 
of  discordant  disputations,  and  of  regarding  the  controversies 
on  the  Trinity  and  predestination  as  open  questions."'^" 

But  in  our  eyes  this  reproach  is  their  glory ;  for  it  proves 
that  these  Christians,  without  abandoning  the  gospel  founda- 
tion, had  succeeded  in  rising  superior  to  the  dogmatic 
prejudice  of  their  age. 

It  was  accordingly  through  this  tendency  to  set  God's 
love  above  His  justice,  and  to  regard  the  gospel  as  in 
harmony  with  reason,  that  Castellio,  Curione,  Celsi,  and 
their  like,  prepared  the  way  for  the  Unitarianism  of  the 
seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries. 

5.    Relations   of  the   Italian   Refugees  in   Switzer- 
land WITH  England. 

We  have  already  indicated  the  sympathetic  relations  which 
existed  as  early  as  1531  between  the  Swiss  theologians  and 
the  English  Reformers ;  and  the  scheme  which  Cramner 
had  entertained  of  forming  at  his  palace  of  Lambeth  a  sort 

community,  which  he  served  faithfully  during  thirty  years.  This  Toniola 
was  the  author  o'i  Basilea  Scpiilta,  and  father  of  J.  Toniola,  a  celebrated 
professor  of  law  at  Basel.     Cf.  Athena  RauriccE :  Basel,  1778. 

■*•*  [A  second  edition  bore  the  title,  De  Hcareticis  capitali  suppUcio  non 
afficiendis  (1584).] 

^^  [This  was  the  De  Hcrrelicis  an  sint persequendi  (1553).] 
■*«  Calvini  Opera,  vol.  xv.  21 18  (Letter  from  Calvin  to  the  Church  of 
Poitiers,  22nd  February,  1555). 


CHAPTER   V.  113 

of  synod  of  the  most  learned  divines  of  the  Continent,  with 
a  view  to  arrive  at  an  agreement  concerning  the  fundamental 
points  of  Christian  doctrine. 

The  heads  of  the  conflicting  parties,  Calvin  and  Melanch- 
thon,  having  declined  the  generous  invitation  of  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  he  was  desirous  at  any  rate  of  turning 
to  account  the  good-will  of  other  theologians,  so  as  to  raise 
the  standard  of  theological  studies,  which  at  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  had  fallen  very  low,  and  thus  to  form  a  nursery 
of  trained  ministers  for  the  Anglican  Church.  Sir  John 
Cheke,  the  learned  preceptor  of  Edward  VI.,  and  the  corre- 
spondent of  Erasmus  and  Curione,'^''  was  of  great  assistance 
to  him  in  this  delicate  task,  by  drawing  his  attention  to  men 
of  mark  on  the  continent."*^ 

Furthermore,  the  terror  of  the  Roman  Inquisition,  and 
the  severities  of  the  Augsburg  Interim,  supphed  him  with 
an  excellent  occasion  for  carrying  out  his  plan.  Then  it 
was  that  Bucer  and  Fagius  from  Strassburg,  and  John  a 
Lasco  from  Emden,  acceded  to  Cramner's  invitation. 

Among  these  guests  of  the  Archbishop,  Primate  of  all 
England,  a  great  number,  even  a  majority  we  think,  belonged 
to  the  Italian  emigration,  and  came  from  Switzerland  and 
South  Germany. 

There  had  been  formed  at  Augsburg,  a  place  of  commercial 
importance  owing  to  the  banking  establishment  of  the  Fugger 
family,  an  Italian  congregation,  of  which  Ochino  had  been 

*''  Cheke,  professor  at  St.  John's  College,  Cambridge,  was  one  of  the 
revivers  of  classical  and  Biblical  learning  in  that  University.  It  is  to  him 
that  Curione  had  recommended  Ochino;  and  further  on  we  shall  see 
him  on  friendly  terms  with  John  a  Lasco.  Cf  Olympias  Fulvise  Morata" 
Opera:  Basel,  1570.  At  the  end  will  be  found  Ccclii  S.  Curionis  Epistolce. 
(See  p.  287,  "Curio,  Johanni  Keko:"  Basel,  Sept.  1547.) 

*8  Castellio  dedicated  his  Latin  version  of  the  Bible  to  Edward  VI. 
in  1 55 1,  following  the  example  of  many  Swiss  theologians,  BuUinger, 
Calvin,  &c. 

I 


114         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

pastor  after  leaving  Geneva  (1545 — 1547)-  Strassburg  also 
counted  its  distinguished  Italian  refugees  ;  Pietro  Martire 
Vermigli,  professor  of  Hebrew ;  Paolo  Lacisio,  professor  of 
Greek;  Girolamo  Massario,  professor  of  medicine;  Girolamo 
Zanchi,  the  Citolini  and  the  Odoni  (1553  — 1563).  Strassburg 
was  at  that  time  the  half-way  stage  on  the  road  which  travellers 
followed  in  going  from  Basel  to  London.  This  will  explain 
why  most  of  the  Italians  halted  there  in  December  1547.*^ 
It  was  thence  that  Ochino  and  Vermigli,  accompanied  by 
their  faithful  companion  Giulio  Terenziano,  started  on  their 
journey  to  England ;  Lelio  Sozini  and  Pietro  Bizarri  of 
Perugia  also  passed  through  in  1548;  and  it  was  there,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  the  English  Protestants  proscribed  by 
Mary  Tudor,  Foxe,  Grindal,  Ponet  and  Sampson,  pitched 
their  camp. 

The  generous  offers  of  the  English  king,  Edward  VI.,  not 
only  reached  Basel  and  Zurich,  but  also  the  Val  Tellina. 
Mainardo  and  Zanchi,  pastors  of  Chiavenna,  Martinengo, 
pastor  at  Geneva,  and  Vergerio,  the  ecclesiastical  inspector 
(insitator)  of  the  Italian  churches  in  the  Val  Tellina,  were 
thus  invited  to  cross  over  to  Great  Britain,  at  that  time  the 
citadel  of  Protestantism  in  Europe.  From  Soglio,  in  the 
Val  Bregaglia,  came  the  first  minister  of  the  Italian  Church 
in  London  (1551 — X553),  Michel- Angelo  Florio;  and  thither 
he  returned  in  1558.5*^ 

^'^  According  to  a  memorandum  communicated  by  M.  Rod.  Reuss, 
librarian  at  Strassburg,  there  was  not  in  that  city,  any  more  than  in 
Basel,  an  organised  Italian  Church.  The  refugees  of  that  nationality, 
such  as  Vermigli  and  Zanchi,  attached  themselves  to  the  French  Church, 
of  which  those  just  mentioned  soon  became  elders. 

^"  Meyer,  iit  stip.,  vol.  i.  57,  59,  note.  Cf.  Zurich  Letters,  3  ser., 
Letter  234  (Martyr  to  Bullinger). 


CHAPTER  VI. 

The  Strangers'  Church  in  London. — Birth  of  tire  Unitarian  idea. 

The  reasons  which  induced  Thomas  Cranmer,  Archbishop 
of  London,  to  invite  foreign  scholars  to  come  to  his  aid  in 
the  work  of  raising  the  standard  of  the  Enghsh  Universities, 
have  already  been  passed  in  review.  Two  other  motives, 
of  a  less  interested  character,  influenced  him  in  the  same 
direction ;  the  project  of  establishing  an  agreement  among 
all  the  Protestant  churches  on  certain  controverted  points, 
including  the  question  of  the  Eucharist,  and  the  hope  that 
when  they  returned  home  to  their  respective  countries,  these 
emigrants  would  all  disseminate  the  same  evangelical  doctrine. 
From  the  accession  of  Edward  VI.  there  was  in  the  policy 
of  Cranmer  an  elevation  of  view,  and  a  catholicity  of  senti- 
ment, which  prove  that  his  intellect  was  of  a  higher  order 
than  his  character.  Freed  from  the  despotic  sway  of 
Henry  VIIL,  he  threw  his  energies  into  the  scale  of  progress 
and  liberty.  The  continental  theologians  who  first  responded 
to  his  appeal  were  Italians  and  Spaniards.  On  20  December, 
1547,  Bernardino  Ochino  and  Pietro  Martire  Vermigli 
arrived  in  London,  after  a  favourable  journey  of  six  and  a 
half  weeks  from  Basel,  and  received  the  Archbishop's  hos- 
pitality at  Lambeth  palace.^      Peter  Martyr  was  at  once 

^  The  memorandum  of  their  traveUing  expenses,  drawn  up  by  Sir 
John  Abel,  who  had  been  charged  to  conduct  them  from  Basel,  gives 
curious  details  concerning  their  dress,  arms  and  horses ;  unfortunately, 
the  list  of  the  theological  books  bought  for  Ochino  at  Basel  is  lost ;  for 

I   2 


Il6         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

appointed  professor  of  theology  at  Oxford,  where  he  was 
rejoined  by  his  faithful  companion  Giulio  Terenziano,  who, 
doubtless,  acted  as  his  amanuensis.  Vermigli  had  married 
at  Strassburg  a  French  lady  named  Dammartin,  a  refugee 
from  Metz.  He  took  an  important  part  in  the  controversies 
on  the  Lord's  Supper,  which  were  evoked  by  the  Bill  in 
Parliament  introducing  communion  in  both  kinds  into  the 
Anglican  Church,  and  which  excited  also  much  interest  in 
the  Strangers'  Church,  by  whose  members  he  was  often 
consulted.^ 

As  for  Bernardino  Ochino,  furnished  with  a  recommenda- 
tion from  C.  S.  Curione  to  Sir  John  Cheke,  preceptor  of 
Edward  VI.,  he  was  presented  to  a  prebend  at  Canterbury, 
in  January  1548,  without  obligation  of  residence;  and  was 
commissioned,  as  at  Augsburg,  to  preach  before  the  Italian 
community  at  London,  consisting  of  merchants  and  of 
refugees.  He  too  was  married,  and  the  father  of  a  little 
daughter,  and  he  rejoiced  in  the  birth  of  a  son  during  his 
sojourn  in  England.  Cranmer  commissioned  him  to  invite 
Wolfifgang  Musculus  (Mosel),  who  had  been  his  neighbour 
as  pastor  of  the  German  Reformed  Church  at  Augsburg, 
and  was  now  menaced  by  the  Interim ;  but  Musculus  pre- 
ferred to  withdraw  to  Bern.^  Ochino  did  not  content 
himself  with  regularly  discharging  the  duties  of  preaching 
and  the  cure  of  souls  ;  he  continued  to  exert  his  powers  as 
writer  on  topics  of  the  day.  It  was  in  London  that  he 
composed  his  Tragxdie  (existing  only  in  the  English  trans- 
lation, 1549),  a  kind  of  dramatic  dialogue,  directed  against 

Vermigli  were  purcliased  the  Basel  editions  of  Augustine,  Cyprian,  and 
Epiphanius.  See  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser.,  p.  541,  note.  Cf.  Benrath, 
Ochino,  p.  186. 

2  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letters  225,  226.  Cf.  Cranmer''s  Memorials, 
vol.  i.  338. 

^  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letters  161— 163  (Ochino  to  Musculus). 


CHAPTER  VI.  117 

the  unjust  supremacy  of  the  Bishop  of  Rome  ;  and  the  third 
volume  of  his  Prediche  (155 1).  While  Peter  Martyr  was  of 
a  calm  and  peaceful  disposition,  altogether  averse  to  theo- 
logical subtleties  and  discussions  of  the  Byzantine  type, 
Ochino's  temperament  was  ardent  and  adventurous,  loving 
arduous  questions  and  paradoxes,  undisturbed  by  contra- 
dictions or  by  calumnies,  since  he  had  confidence  in  the 
triumph  of  truth.* 

The  year  1548  witnessed  the  arrival  of  Francisco  de 
Enzina,  Tremellio,  Bizarri  and  others.  The  first  of  these, 
born  at  Burgos  in  1520,  had  taken  the  name  of  Dryander 
(oakman,  from  cncina).  He  was  the  author  of  the  first 
translation  of  the  New  Testament  into  Spanish,  dedicated 
to  Charles  V.  (1543).^  Having  escaped  the  gaolers  of  the 
Inquisition  at  Brussels,  he  had  gone  to  pursue  his  studies 
under  Melanchthon.  He  was  the  bearer  of  the  answer  from 
Melanchthon  to  the  letter  of  Edward  VL,  inviting  him  to 
the  synod  of  theologians  projected  by  Cramner;  and  although 
this  reply  was  in  the  negative,  Dryander  was  well  received, 
and  appointed  professor  of  Greek  at  Cambridge.  He  had 
also  attended  several  classes  at  Zurich,  and  kept  up  a 
correspondence  with  Bullinger.*^  According  to  Melanchthon, 
he  was  "  a  learned  man,  serious,  and  endowed  with  a  rare 
virtue,  displaying  a  philosophic  ardour  in  all  his  engage- 
ments." Emanuele  Tremellio,  sprung  from  an  Israelitish 
family  of  Ferrara,  had  already  taught  Hebrew  in  the  San 

^  See,  in  Benrath's  Ochino,  App.  iii.,  the  beautiful  device  placed  at 
the  head  of  his  Prediche :  "  If  they  have  persecuted  me,  they  will  also 
persecute  you ;  but  truth  overcometh  all  things." 

^  [The  first  published  translation.  Juan  de  Valdes  seems  to  have 
been  the  first  to  translate  the  New  Testament  from  Greek  into  Spanish. 
Portions  were  published,  with  commentary,  in  1557.] 

®  See  Boehmer,  Spanish  Reformers,  yo\.  i.  152;  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser. 
Letters  170,  174.  Cf.  Strype,  Eccles.  Memorials,  vol.  ii.  1st  part,  pp. 
1 88,  189. 


Il8         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Frediano  college  at  Lucca,  under  the  auspices  of  Petei 
Martyr;  he  too  was  married,  and  obtained  the  preferment 
of  canon  of  Carlisle,  until  a  professorial  chair  should  fall 
vacant.     Ultimately  he  succeeded  Fagius." 

As  for  Pietro  Bizarri  of  Perugia,  an  eloquent  humanist, 
also  exiled  from  Italy  for  having  professed  the  gospel  faith, 
he  was  for  many  years  secretary  to  John  Russell,  Earl  of 
Bedford  (created  1550,  d.  1554),  and  afterwards  became 
lecturer  at  St.  John's  College,  Oxford.  While  there,  he 
composed  in  Italian  a  curious  history  of  the  war  in  Hungary 
between  the  Emperor  and  the  Turks  (1569),  and  other 
histories.^ 

France  and  x\lsace  also  furnished  their  contingent  to  this 
select  body  of  learned  refugees  in  England. 

Pierre  Alexandre,  a  native  of  Brussels,  who  had  already 
been  "  preacher  to  Queen  Mary  of  Hungary,  Governess  of 
the  Low  Countries,"  and  professor  of  theology  at  Heidelberg, 
obtained  a  prebend  at  Canterbury,  and  was  commissioned 
to  lecture  to  candidates  in  theology  on  the  Fathers  of  the 
Greek  Church,  Ignatius,  Ireneeus,  Origen  and  Epiphanius, 
with  special  reference  to  the  anti-Romish  controversy.''' 

In  Canterbury  also  was  placed  at  the  head  of  the  French 
and  Walloon  refugees,  Valerand  PouUain,  a  gentleman  of 
Lille,  active  and  high-souled,  but  somewhat  turbulent  and 
disputatious.  He  had  succeeded  Pierre  BruUy  as  minister 
of  the  French  Church  at  Strassburg.  Having  quarrelled 
with  some  prominent  elders  of  his  church,  Johann  Sturm, 
Peter  Martyr  and  Tremellio,  he  had  been  obliged  to  resign 

■^  Strype,  AIe?norials,  vol.  ii.  i.  306  ff.  Cf.  Haag,  La  France  Protes- 
tante,  art.   T?-e?neniits. 

^  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letter  164  (Pietro  di  Perugia  to  Bullinger). 
Cf.  Bayle's  Dictionary,  ed.  Birch  and  Lockman,  art.  Acontius. 

^  See  Rod.  Reuss,  Notes  stir  VEglise  Fran^aise  de  Strasbourg  :  Strasb. 
1880.  Zurich  Letters,  3  sen,  Letter  157.  Cf.  Biographie  Nationale 
Belgique,  vol.  i.  217. 


CHAPTER   VI.  119 

in  favour  of  Jean  Garnier  of  Avignon ;  he  did  not  suspect 
that  later  on  he  would  see,  as  second  in  succession  to  him 
at  Strassburg,  this  same  Pierre  Alexandre,  whom  he  then 
met  at  Canterbury. ^•^  In  these  ways  persecution  brought 
about  an  interchange  of  pastors  and  of  good  offices  between 
the  various  reformed  churches  of  Europe,  such  as,  unhappily, 
takes  place  no  longer,  under  our  existing  regime  of  peace 
on  a  war  footing. 

Precisely  as  Ochino  had  been  commissioned  to  invite 
Curione  and  Musculus,  was  Pierre  Alexandre  requested  to 
otter  hospitality  in  England  to  Bucer  and  Fagius,  who  had 
been  obliged  to  leave  Strassburg  on  account  of  the  Interim. 
He  also  received  from  Edward  VI.  the  honourable  mission 
of  going  to  meet  them  at  Calais  with  a  view  to  procure  them 
every  facility  for  trie  cross-channel  passage. 

These  two  pastors  arrived  in  London  at  the  end  of  April, 
T549,  and  were  forthwith  received  at  Lambeth  Palace, 
where  Archbishop  Cranmer  welcomed  and  entertained  them 
as  brothers,  not  as  subordinates.  With  delicate  attention  he 
had  gathered  under  his  own  roof  their  old  Strassburg  friends, 
to  bid  them  welcome :  Peter  Martyr  and  Terenziano,Tremellio 
and  de  Enzina,  and  some  pious  Frenchmen  as  well.^^  Bucer 
was  entrusted  with  the  teaching  of  theology  at  Cambridge, 
while  Fagius  occupied  the  chair  of  Hebrew,  which,  after  his 
death  (Nov.  1549),  fell  to  the  lot  of  Tremellio.  His  colleague 
Bucer  scarcely  survived  him  a  year,  dying  in  February, 
155 1  ;  but  he  played  a  great  part  in  the  organization  of  the 
Anglican  Church. 

In  the  month  of  March  of  the  same  year,  1549,  John  a 
Lasco,^^  reformer  of  the  churches  in  East  Friesland,  had 

1"  See  Rod.  Reuss,  ut  step.,  pp.  6  ff.  Cf.  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letter 
348  (Poullain  to  Calvin). 

"  Ziirich  Letters,  3  sen,  Letters  157  and  248  (Bucer  and  Fagius  to 
the  ministers  of  Strassburg). 

^'^  For  wliat  follows,  see  Jo.  Utenhovius,  id  sup. 


I20         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

come  to  London  to  prepare  a  refuge  for  his  flock  at  Emden, 
in  danger  from  the  Catholic  reaction,  for  which  the  Augsburg 
Interim  had  given  the  signal.  He  was  a  Polish  baron,  born 
at  Warszaw  in  1499,  of  one  of  the  richest  families  in  that  city, 
and  educated  with  the  greatest  care  by  his  uncle,  the  Arch- 
bishop of  Gniezno,  primate  of  Poland.  He  had  been  con- 
verted to  the  gospel  through  intercourse  with  Erasmus  and 
the  influence  of  Hardenberg,  and  inclined  towards  the  school 
of  Melanchthon  in  his  ideas  of  dogma.  Furnished  with  a 
literary  and  theological  culture  of  the  first  order,  and  endowed 
with  a  conciliating  and  generous  disposition,  he  awakened 
sympathy  by  an  abnegation  well-nigh  heroic,  and  commanded 
respect  by  his  noble  mien.  Well  received  by  the  Archbishop 
of  Canterbury  and  by  Sir  John  Cheke,  a  Lasco  was  presented 
to  the  Duke  of  Somerset,  Lord  Protector,  by  his  physician. 
Dr.  Turner,  and  had  little  trouble  in  demonstrating  the 
moral  and  political  advantages  of  the  reception  of  these 
refugees  from  Flanders  and  Friesland,  the  chief  economical 
gain  being  the  introduction  of  wool-weaving  into  England. 
After  having  charged  one  of  his  Italian  friends,  Signore 
Fiorenzio,  to  give  an  account  of  his  interview  with  the 
Protector,  to  Sir  William  Cecil,  Secretary  of  State,  and 
having  begged  Cecil,  by  letter  dated  from  Yarmouth,  to  let 
him  know  the  result  through  a  certain  Robert  Legate,  an 
English  merchant  established  at  Emden,  a  Lasco  returned 
to  his  flock.  ^^ 

In  his  absence,  Latimer,  the  valiant  champion  of  evan- 
gelical reforms,  then  living  in  retirement  at  Lambeth,  warmly 
pleaded  his  cause,  and  was  not  afraid  to  say  in  a  sermon 
preached  before  the  young  king,  that  it  was  pity  if  John  a 
Lasco,  that  most  learned  man  and  excellent  Christian,  had 
gone  away  for  want  of  support;  that  the  king  would  do 
himself  honour,  and  forward  the  prosperity  of  the  kingdom, 

"  See  Strype,  Cranmer's  Memorials,  vol.  ii.  app.  50. 


CHAPTER   VI.  121 

in  gathering  together  such  men;  and  he  applied  to  k  Lasco's 
case  the  word  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  "  He  that  receiveth 
you  receiveth  me." 

It  must  not  be  too  hastily  imagined  that  all  the  English 
clerg}'  beheld  with  a  favourable  eye  the  establishment  of  a 
Strangers'  Church,  enjoying  its  own  government  and  separate 
form  of  worship.  Many  bishops,  including  Ridley,  Bishop 
of  London,  whose  mouthpiece  was  the  Lord  Treasurer,  the 
same  bishop  to  whose  use  the  choir  of  the  Augustin  Church 
had  been  reserved,  claimed  to  subject  the  Protestant  refugees 
to  the  alternative  of  either  adopting  the  Anglican  ritual  and 
liturgy,  or  else  proving  that  these  were  not  in  harmony  with 
the  Word  of  God.  These  tactics  were  not  wanting  in  clever- 
ness ;  they  were  foiled  by  the  firmness  of  Thomas  Cranmer, 
who  to  the  great  surprise  of  many — for  in  the  affair  of  Hooper 
he  had  not  shown  himself  so  liberal — was  the  principal 
champion  of  the  rights  and  Uberties  of  the  Strangers'  Church.^* 

Thanks  to  him  and  to  the  perseverance  of  John  a  Lasco, 
the  latter  obtained  the  letters-patent  from  Edward  VL  which 
we  have  summarised  in  the  fourth  chapter,^''  and  which  have 
remained  to  this  day  a  charter  of  freedom  for  dissenting 
worship  in  England.  There  were  at  that  time  in  London  at 
least  three  thousand  Protestant  refugees,  for  the  most  part 
of  Flemish  or  Walloon  origin,  and  perhaps  two  or  three 
hundred  Italians  and  Spaniards.  Most  of  them  lived  in  the 
parishes  of  St.  Martins-le-Grand,  St.  Catherine  Coleman, 
and  St.  Martins-in-the-Fields.^^ 


^^  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letter  263  and  postscript  (Microen  to  Bul- 
linger). 

^^  See  Appendix  III. 

1®  For  statistics  of  the  Protestant  refugees  in  London,  see  Zurich 
Letters,  3  sen,  Letters  162,  163,  172  and  250.  Cf.  Calendar  of  State 
Papers  (Edward  VI. ),  which  mentions  the  passage  of  two  hundred  Italians 
going  northward.  We  have  talien  a  mean  between  the  exaggerated 
figures  of  Ochino,  more  than  five  thousand,  and  those  of  Bucer,  six  to 


122         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

The  privilege  granted  by  the  king  was  very  extensive,  as 
we  have  seen  above.  He  conceded  to  the  two  nations,  the 
French  and  Dutch  (the  Walloons  were  ranked  under  the 
former,  the  Flemings  under  the  latter  title),  the  Church  of 
the  Augustins  in  perpetuity.  Furthermore,  full  and  entire 
liberty  was  granted  them  to  elect  their  ministers,  elders  and 
deacons,  with  the  single  reservation  that  the  successive 
superintendents  and  other  ministers  should  be  presented  to 
and  instituted  by  the  king.  In  good  sooth,  a  Lasco  had 
obtained  more  than  he  had  asked  for ;  no  English  bishop, 
not  even  the  Bishop  of  London  or  the  Primate,  had  any 
supervision  in  the  affairs  of  the  church  in  Austin  Friars,  and 
the  prelates  were  not  at  all  pleased  about  it.^" 

John  a  Lasco  was  appointed  Superintendent  of  the  two 
branches  of  the  church,  and  the  choice  of  the  young  sovereign 
was  ratified  by  general  approbation.  Richard  Francois 
(Gallus),  otherwise  called  Vauville,  a  disciple  of  Calvin,  and 
Francois  Martoret  du  Rivier  (Riverius),  otherwise  called 
Perucell,  were  the  first  pastors  of  the  French  Church.  The 
Flemings  had  as  ministers  Wouter  Deloen,  or  Walter 
Delvin  (Deloenus),  ex-librarian  of  Henry  VHL,  and  Marten 
Microen,  an  excellent  friend  of  BuUinger.^*  ^g  ^j^g  ].jj^g 
had  undertaken  the  charge  of  repairing  the  Augustin  Church, 
and  as  the  work  "was  being  protracted  day  after  day"  to  a 


eight  hundred,  which  appear  to  us  too  few.  See  also  J.  S.  Burn,  Hist, 
of  the  French,  Walloon,  Dutch  and  other  Prot.  Refugees  settled  in  England: 
London,  1846,  pp.  6,  7.  [Ochino's  figures  (23  Dec.  1548)  are  confirmed 
to  the  letter  by  Musculus  ("more  than  five  thousand,"  12  March,  1549), 
and  corroborated  by  de  Enzina  ("  four  thousand,"  5  June,  1549).  Bucer's 
"six  to  eight  hundred,  all  godly  men"  (14  Aug.  1549),  were  probably 
the  residue  left  after  successive  deportations  to  the  foreign  settlements  in 
the  provinces.] 

^^  Calvini  Opera,  ut  sup.,  vol.  xiii.  1399  ( Utenhoz'ius  Calvino). 
^*  See  Werken  van  de  Maarnix-  Vereeiiiging,  part  i.    Kerkraad's  Pro- 
tocollen  der  Hollandsche  Geineente  te  Lo>idon  (1569 — 1571). 


CHAPTER   VI.  123 

more  lengthened  period  than  their  reHgious  wants  would 
allow,  the  Flemings  obtained  from  "some  citizens  of  London" 
the  provisional  use  of  another  church,  where  Microen 
preached  for  the  first  time  on  the  21st  September,  1550, 
before  a  congregation  so  numerous  that  the  edifice  would 
not  hold  them.  The  French  had  their  place  of  worship  in 
the  chapel  of  St.  Anthony's  Hospital,  Threadneedle  Street.^'' 

As  soon  as  he  saw  things  going  on  smoothly,  John  a  Lasco 
gave  his  mind  to  furnishing  the  Strangers'  Church  with  a 
regular  organization. 

He  began  by  drawing  up  a  Confession  of  Faith  and  a 
Catechism,  in  accordance  with  the  principles  of  doctrine 
adopted  by  the  church  at  Emden  (1544).  These  two  docu- 
ments, dedicated  to  King  Edward  VI.,  were  published,  in 
Latin  and  in  Dutch,  for  the  use  of  the  members  of  the 
community.-"  This  creed,  "  founded,"  as  he  said,  "  on  the 
authority  of  the  voice  of  God,  revealed  by  angels,  the  pro- 
phets and  Christ,"  proclaimed  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity,  in 
the  sense  of  three  hypostases,  distinct  and  yet  united,  con- 
formably to  the  Baptismal  formula. 

It  was  next  resolved  that  each  branch  of  the  church  should 
elect  its  own  church  session  and  diaconate,  by  plurality  of 
votes,  but  subject  to  the  royal  sanction.  As  regards  the 
church  session  {consistorium  or  concilium)^  a  Lasco,  influenced 
by  a  passage  from  the  first  Epistle  of  St.  Paul  to  the  Corin- 
thians (xii.  28),  added  to  the  two  classes  of  pastors  {prophetce 
or  doctores)  and  elders  {semores,  presbyteri),  a  third  class,  that 

^^  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letter  264  (Microen  to  Bullinger).  For  all 
that  concerns  the  organisation  of  this  Church,  see  the  second  volume  of 
Dr.  Kuyper's  work,  entitled,  yoannis  a  Lasco  Opera,  tain  edita  qiiam 
inedita,  2  vols.  8vo :  Amsterdam  and  The  Hague,  1866. 

-"  Kuyper,  tttsup.,  vol.  ii.  pp.  285 — 339,  Compendiuvi  de  vera  unicaque 
Dei  et  Chi-isti  Ecclesia,  ejusque  fide  et  conpessione  ptira  :  hi  qua  Peregri- 
noru7ii  Ecclesia  Londini  instiUita  est:  London,  1551.  Cf.  Calvini  Opera, 
vol.  xiv.  1432  (Letter  from  a  Lasco  to  Bullinger,  London,  7  Jan.  1551). 


124         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

of  assistants  or  men  of  affairs  {seiiiores  subsidarii  or  politici 
viri),  who  were  specially  charged  to  watch  over  the  material 
interests,  and  maintain  the  rights  and  liberties  of  the  church 
in  its  relations  with  the  Government. 

Another  very  useful  institution  of  a  Lasco  was  that  of 
Biblical  conferences  {propheticE),  which  were  held  on  Tuesday 
in  the  French  church,  and  on  Thursday  in  the  Flemish 
church,  on  the  model  of  the  congregational  usage  of  Geneva. 
In  these  conferences  the  laity  had  the  right  of  discussing 
the  sermons  of  the  preceding  week,  while  on  the  ministers 
devolved  the  duty  of  explaining  obscure  or  doubtful  points 
in  their  teaching.^^ 

The  first  elections  of  elders  and  deacons  took  place  in  the 
two  churches  on  5th  and  12th  October,  1550,  and  the  year 
following  the  Flemings  had  already  three  conferences,  two 
in  Latin,  presided  over  by  a  Lasco  and  Deloen,  and  one  in 
their  mother  tongue.-- 

They  lacked  but  one  thing,  liberty  to  administer  Baptism 
and  the  Lord's  Supper,  which  had  been  accorded  to  them 
by  the  king's  patent,  but  was  withheld  by  the  ill-will  of  the 
bishops. 

In  spite  of  a  Lasco's  exertions,  the  bishops,  by  their 
intrigues,  ended  in  obtaining  an  Order  in  Council  which 
obliged  the  Strangers  to  receive  the  sacraments  "fettered  by 
the  English  ceremonies,"which  to  them  appeared  "intolerable 
to  all  godly  persons."'^^  The  courageous  Superintendent  was 
more  successful  when  he  went  before  the  Lord  Chancellor 
and  the  Secretary  of  State  to  defend  those  members  of  his 

21  Kuyper,  ut  sup.,  vol.  ii.  45 — 50,  Forma  ac  Ratio  Rcdesiastici  Minis- 
terii  in  Pej'egrinorutu  Ecclesia  :  Frankfort,  155 1.  Cf.  Theological  Review, 
Jan.  1876,  art.  Gordon  on  Hook's  Laud,  referring  to  records  of  the 
Walloon  Church  at  Norwich.     See  Appendix  VII. 

2^  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser..  Letters  264  and  265  (Microen  to  Eullinger). 

^^  Lbid.  3  sen,  Letter  264,  postscript  (Microen  to  Eullinger). 


CHAPTER   VI.  125 

church  whom  the  churchwardens  would  have  compelled  to 
resort  to  their  respective  parish  churches,  on  pain  of  fine  or 
imprisonment.-^ 

To  bring  to  a  close  what  relates  to  the  Flemish  and 
Walloon  Churches,  we  must  mention  the  organisation  and 
worship  for  which  John  a  Lasco  was  arranging,  at  the  very 
time  when  the  Ecdesia  Peregrinoruin  was  again  scattered.-'^ 
A  Lasco,  in  a  letter  to  Bullinger,  7  January,  1551,  after 
having  informed  him  that  the  '•  Word"  was  held  forth  in 
Flemish  and  in  French,  in  two  different  places  of  worship, 
and  having  begged  him  to  forward  to  Calvin  a  copy  of  his 
Confession  of  Faith,  added,  "  The  Italians  also  will  soon 
have  their  church  ;  they  have  already  a  place  of  worship  and 
a  minister  of  their  own,  a  pious  and  learned  man,  gifted  with  a 
rare  eloquence,  and  who  has  suffered  much  for  Christ's  sake." 

Is  there  a  reference  in  this  letter,  as  seems  at  the  first 
glance,  to  Bernardino  Ochino  ?  We  think  not,  for  he  was 
well  known  to  Bullinger,  and  were  it  he,  a  Lasco  need  only 
have  called  him  Master  Bernardine,  as  in  his  other  letters. 
Moreover,  Ochino,  wholly  absorbed  in  the  composition  of 
his  great  polemical  and  metaphysical  works,  would  doubtless 
have  been  unequal  to  the  manifold  exigencies  of  the  regular 
pastorate.  The  minister  in  question  can  be  no  one  but 
Michel- Angelo  Florio,  a  proscribed  Florentine,  who  had 
emigrated  at  the  same  time,  doubtless,  as  Vermigli  and 
Terenziano,  and  hence  was  already  in  London,  enjoying  the 
favour  of  Sir  William  Cecil,  at  the  time  of  a  Lasco's  first 
visit. ^''   There  were  besides  in  London  two  or  three  hundred 


**  Strype,  Cranmer's  Memorials,  vol.  ii.  app.  5i' 

2^  Calvini  Opera,  vol.  xiv.  1750  (a  Lasco  to  Bullinger:  Lond.  7  June, 
1553).  Cf.  Kuyper,  iit  sup.,  vol.  ii.  i.  Forma  ac  Ratio  lata  Ecdesiastici 
Ministerii,  in  Peregrinoriim,  potissimiim  vera  Germanoriim  Ecclesia, 
instituta  Londini  in  Anglia :  Frankfort,  1555' 

2^  M'Crie,  Reformation  in  Spain:  Edin.  1829,  pp.  365  ff.  Cf.  p.  120, 
ante,  where  "  S  ignore  Fiorenzio"  maybe  identical  witli  Florio. 


126         SOURCES   OF    ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

refugees  from  Tuscany,  Genoa,  Milan,  the  Venetian  territory 
and  Istria,  including  some  Spaniards. 

An  Italian  Church  was  therefore  constituted  in  the  course 
of  the  year  155 1,  by  the  assiduity  of  Cranmer  and  Cecil,  and 
placed,  along  with  the  two  preceding  churches,  under  the 
superintendence  of  k  Lasco.  Its  members  enjoyed  the  same 
privileges  as  the  Flemings  and  Walloons  ;  that  is  to  say,  they 
were  independent  of  the  English  parishes,  and  exempt  from 
ecclesiastical  dues,  but  had  to  furnish  by  assessment  a  salary 
for  their  pastor.  "  The  Italian  service,"  says  Cantu,  "  was 
held  in  a  church  dedicated  to  St.  Cecilia;"  but  we  suspect 
that  this  learned  writer  has  too  hastily  confounded  St.  Cecilia, 
patroness  of  musicians,  with  Sir  William  Cecil,  patron  of  the 
Protestant  refugees.  It  appears  that,  outdoing  even  Ochino, 
Florio  thundered  against  the  "  Antichrist  whose  seat  was  at 
Rome,"  and  moreover  did  not  carry  matters  well  with  those 
of  his  flock  who  were  weak  in  their  new  faith ;  for  in  the  course 
of  the  year  1552,  fourteen  of  them  went  back  to  the  Mass,  and 
refused  to  contribute  to  his  salary.  The  irascible  Florentine, 
in  place  of  winning  them  back  by  mildness,  denounced  them 
to  the  severity  of  the  magistrate  as  apostates,  in  a  letter  to 
Sir  William  Cecil,  in  which  he  invokes  against  them  the  laws 
of  Moses  and  those  of  England.-" 

Never  was  the  word  of  Jesus  Christ,  "  With  what  judgment 
ye  judge,  ye  shall  be  judged,"  better  verified  than  in  the 
case  of  Florio  ;  for,  in  the  month  of  January  of  the  following 
year,  having  committed  a  scandalous  sin,  he  was  deprived 
by  the  Privy  Council,  expelled  from  the  house  of  Sir  William 
Cecil,  his  protector,  and  driven  to  invoke  in  his  own  favour 
the  examples  of  clemency  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments 
which  he  ought  to  have  recollected  in  dealing  with  his 
dissentient  parishioners.^^    It  was  at  this  juncture  that,  out  of 

-''  Strype,  Cranmer'' s  Memorials,  vol.  ii.  app.  52. 
-«  Ibid.,  app.  53,  54. 


CHAPTER   VI.  127 

spite,  he  sought  to  sow  in  the  Strangers'  Church  the  dogmatic 
divisions  which  we  shall  examine  in  a  subsequent  paragraph. 
He  ended  by  regaining  the  favour  of  the  Secretary  of  State 
and  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury ;  and  composed  later  on, 
doubtless  after  his  retirement  to  the  Val  Tellina,  that  very 
rare  book  entitled,  Historia  de  la  Vita  e  de  la  Morte  de 
rUlustrissiina  slgnofa  Giovanna  Grdia,  gia  Regina  eletta 
d' Inghilterra  (1607). --^ 

The  Italian  Church,  like  the  two  elder  branches  of  the 
Peregrinoriim  Ecclesia,  was  dispersed  in  September  1553,  a 
little  after  the  triumph  of  Bloody  Mary  over  the  innocent 
Jane  Grey :  as  for  the  Spanish  Church,  it  was  not  separately 
organised  until  the  reign  of  Elizabeth. 

There  were,  in  the  reign  of  Edward  VI.,  other  churches 
of  refugees  outside  of  London,  including  the  one  at  Canter- 
bury (1547),  which  held  its  services  in  the  crypt  of  the  cath'e- 
dral.^*^  The  one  at  Glastonbury  in  Somersetshire,  founded 
under  the  auspices  of  the  Duke  of  Somerset  and  the  super- 
intendence of  Valcrand  PouUain,  deserves  a  special  mention, 
because  it  was  composed  of  Flemish  and  Walloon  weavers, 
who  imported  into  the  West  of  England  the  manufacture  01 
broadcloth  and  blankets. -^^ 

It  was  in  the  bosom  of  the  Strangers'  Church  at  London 
that  the  Unitarians,  whose  tendencies  had  hitherto  been 
disconnected,  and  mixed  up  with  Anabaptism,  formulated 
for  the  first  time  a  clear  and  definite  programme.  In 
Hooper's  letter  of  25  June,  1549,  which  we  have  quoted  in 

'^^  [Also  an  Apologia  .  ,  .  tte  la  quale  si  tratta  de  la  vera  e  falsa  chiesa, 
de  Vessere  e  qualita  de  la  messa  .  .  .  scritta  contra  a  un  heretico  (1557)]. 

^^  [This  still  exists,  under  the  pastorate  of  the  Rev.  J.  Martin.  It 
employs  in  its  services  the  English  Prayer-book,  translated  into  French. 
The  disposition  of  its  endowments  was  recently  revised,  under  the  friendly 
supervision  of  the  late  Archbishop  Tait.J 

3'  Strype,  Eccles.  Memorials,  vol.  ii.  part  i.  (1547).  Cf.  Craniner''s 
Memorials,  vol.  ii.  app.  55  to  57. 


128  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

Chapter  III.,  p.  64,  there  was  no  idea  but  of  "libertines 
and  wretches,  who  are  daring  enough"  to  deny  the  Messiah- 
ship  of  Jesus,  and  to  call  him  a  deceiver.  Two  years 
afterwards,  Microen  writes  also  to  BuUinger,  respecting 
"  pseudo- evangelical "  sectaries,  whom  he  expressly  dis- 
tinguishes from  the  foregoing.  The  phenomenon  is  of 
sufficient  importance  to  lead  us  to  quote  an  extract  from  his 
letter  (14  Aug.  155 1): 

"  In  addition  to  the  ancient  errors  respecting  pfedobaptism, 
the  incarnation  of  Christ,  etc.,  new  ones  are  rising  up  every 
day,  with  which  we  have  to  contend.  The  chief  opponents, 
however,  of  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ  are  the  Arians,  who  are 
now  beginning  to  shake  our  churches  with  greater  violence  than 
ever,  as  they  deny  the  conception  of  Christ  by  the  Virgin. 

"  Their  principal  arguments  may  be  reduced  under  three 
heads  :  The  first  is  respecting  the  Unity  of  God,  as  declared 
throughout  all  the  Scriptures  both  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments ;  and  that  the  doctrine,  as  well  as  the  name,  of  the  Trinity 
is  a  novel  invention,  as  not  being  mentioned  in  any  passage  of 
Scripture. 

"  Their  next  argument  is  this  :  the  Scripture,  they  say,  which 
everywhere  acknowledges  one  God,  admits  and  professes  that 
this  one  God  is  the  Father  alone  (John  xvii.  3),  who  is  also 
called  the  one  God  by  Paul  (i  Cor.  viii.  6). 

"  Lastly,  they  so  pervert  the  passages  which  seem  to  establish 
the  divinity  of  Christ,  as  to  say  that  none  of  them  refer  intrin- 
sically to  Christ  himself,  but  that  he  has  received  all  from 
another,  namely,  from  the  Father  (John  v.  19  ;  Matt,  xxviii.  18) : 
and  they  say  that  God  cannot  receive  from  God,  and  that  Christ 
was  only  in  this  respect  superior  to  any  of  mankind,  that  he 
received  more  gifts  from  God  the  Father." ^^ 

We  here  retrace,  in  a  form  more  condensed  and  more 
systematic,  many  of  the  objections  against  the  Trinity  which 
we  saw  raised  by  the  Anabaptist  Herman  van  Flekwijk  in 

32  Zurich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letter  265  (Microen  to  Bullinger).  See 
Appendix  VIII. 


CHAPTER   VI.  129 

his  curious  dialogue  with  the  Inquisitor  of  Bruges  (1569). 
Now,  since  this  appearance  of  the  Unitarians  in  London  is 
eighteen  years  earUer,  and  since  they  allowed  paedobaptism,^^ 
it  is  impossible  to  assign  to  the  phenomenon  an  iVnabaptist 
origin.  It  is  more  likely  that  the  two  Antitrinitarian  parties, 
on  either  side  of  the  North  Sea,  borrowed  their  weapons 
from  the  same  arsenal,  that  is  to  say,  from  the  Annotations 
on  the  Neiv  Testamejit  of  the  arch-heretic  Erasmus. 

Microen  does  not  mention  the  names  of  those  who  com- 
batted  with  the  above  arguments  the  received  dogmata  of 
the  Trinity  and  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ.  He  only  says 
that  John  a  Lasco  helped  him  to  refute  them,  and  that  he 
found  in  Bullinger's  Decadeu'^on  this  subject  "Httle  or  nothing 
which  may  be  satisfactorily  brought  against  them,"  and  he 
asks  the  aid  of  Bullinger's  enlightenment.  Who  could  these 
"Arians"  have  been,  who  shook  the  Strangers'  Church  by 
"  denying  the  conception  of  Christ  by  the  Virgin"? 

The  date  of  the  execution  of  Georg  Van  Parris  (25  April, 
155 1 ),  and  the  fact  that  he  was  a  member  of  the  Strangers' 
Church,  turn  our  thoughts  to  him.  He  was  in  truth  an  able 
physician,  conspicuous  for  his  temperate  habits,  who  might, 
by  his  practical  virtues,  have  suggested  to  Microen  the  term 
"  pseudo-evangelical,"  with  which  he  asperses  these  Anti- 
trinitarians.  It  is  well  known  that  he  was  tried  by  a  Royal 
Commission,  and  burned  at  Smithfield;^*  but  the  fact  that 
he  attacked  psedobaptism  is  sufficient  to  exclude  him  from  the 
Neo-Arians  or  Unitarians  who  allowed  it. 

He  was  not,  however,  the  only  one  who  shared  these 
ideas  ;  and  the  stir  raised  about  the  name  of  Michel-Angelo 
Florio,  the  second  pastor  of  the  Italian  Church,  leads  us  to 
examine  his  opinions.  We  have  valuable  documents  for 
this  purpose,  consisting  of  a  letter  from  Calvin  to  the  French 

^'  [This  seems  a  somewhat  doubtful  inference  from  Microen 's  state- 
ment. ] 

•*•*  Strype,  Cran)ner''s  Memorials,  vol.  i.  book  ii.  (1548). 
K 


130         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

Church  at  London  (27  September,  1552),  and  another  from 
k  Lasco  to  BulUnger  (7  June,  1553).     In  these  two  letters  a 
personage  is  dealt  with,  who  shows  himself  more  Calvinistic 
than  Calvin,  and  who,  sheltering  himself  under  the  authority 
of  the  Reformer  of  Geneva,  criticises  the  liturgical  rites  and 
formularies  of  the  Strangers'  Church,   including   the  title 
"  Mother  of  God"  given  to  the  Virgin  Mary,  and  the  prayers 
for  the  Bishop  of  Rome.     A  Lasco,  on  his  part,  says  that 
the  disturber,  when  excluded  from  the  ministry  because  of  a 
scandal  against  morals,  reproached  one  of  his  colleagues 
with  having  said  (i)  that  Adam's  sin  was  not  sufficient  to 
entail  the  condemnation  of  the  human  race ;  (2)  that  it  is 
possible  to  be  saved  without  having  a  knowledge  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  ;  and  above  all,  for  having  taught   (3)  a  theory  of 
predestination  differing  from  that  of  Calvin. ^^   If  we  compare 
these  allusions  with  the  facts  that,  four  years  later,  Ochino 
was  accused  by  the  churches  in  the  Val  Tellina  of  having 
depreciated  the  work  of  Christ,  and  that  Florio,  then  pastor 
at  Soglio,  thought  it  his  duty  to  denounce  him  to  Peter 
Martyr,  we  shall  come  to  the  conclusion  that  already  in 
1552  the  allusion  was  to  a  discussion  between  Ochino  and 
Florio.^*'     But  Florio  does  not  seem  to  have  been  suspected 
of  Antitrinitarian  tendencies.    There  is  still  Ochino  himself. 
Undoubtedly,  in  his  works  of  this  epoch,  there  are  as  yet  no 
objections  brought,  even  indirectly,  against  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity.     But  from  his  whole  theory  of  redemption  by 
the  grace  of  God — "who  has  attached  acceptableness  to  the 
merits  of  Jesus  Christ" — and  from  his  very  silence  on  the 
Trinity  dogma,   the   inference  is,  that  he   leaned  already 
towards  what  was  afterwards  known  as  the  Socinian  theory  of 
expiation,  and  of  the  subordination  of  Jesus  Christ  to  God 
the  Father.    If,  then,  he  did  not  openly  fight  against  the  deity 

^^  Calvini  Opera,  lit  sup. ,  vol.  xiv.  1653,  1750. 
'^  Benrath,  Ochino,  p.  241. 


CHAPTER   VI.  131 

of  Christ  and  the  personality  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  he  at  least 
undermined  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity  by  his  presentation  of 
Arianism. 

Three  months  after  a  Lasco's  letter,  namely,  in  September 
1 553)  the  Strangers'  Church  was  dispersed  by  the  storm  of 
the  Catholic  reaction  under  Mary  Tudor ;  a  portion  of  it, 
after  having  vainly  asked  asylum  from  King  Christiern  of 
Denmark,  finished  its  maritime  exodus  by  returning  to 
Emden,  its  original  point  of  departure.^'' 

The  wanderings  in  exile  of  the  members  of  the  Strangers' 
Church  of  London  lasted  five  or  six  years,  during  which  they 
were  dispersed  along  the  banks  of  the  Rhine  and  as  far  as 
Switzerland,  fraternising  with  the  most  eminent  members  of 
the  English  episcopate,  in  exile  like  themselves.  It  was 
during  this  period,  as  we  have  seen,  that  the  two  tendencies 
of  the  English  Church,  the  Episcopal  and  the  Puritan  ten- 
dency, assumed  definite  shape.  As  soon  as  the  accession  of 
Elizabeth  to  the  throne  of  England  had  given  courage  to 
evangelical  Protestants,  the  Flemings  and  Dutch  once  more 
assembled  in  London,  and  addressed  petitions  to  the  Queen 
for  the  restitution  of  the  church  in  Austin  Friars,  and  for 
the  confirmation  of  the  charter  of  Edward  VL  They  were 
already  (1559)  the  most  numerous  of  the  foreigners,  and 
counted  some  six  or  seven  hundred  families,  in  various  parts 
of  England.^^  The  year  following  (1560)  the  Queen,  by 
sign-manual,  allowed  them  once  more  the  use  of  Austin 

^'^  Zurich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letters  182  and  240,  n.  A  Lasco  embarked 
at  Gravesend  on  15  Sept.  1553,  with  175  members  of  his  flock,  resolved 
to  follow  their  pastor.  Their  vessel  entered  the  port  of  Elsinore  in 
Denmark.  The  Danish  king  accorded  them  a  favourable  audience,  but, 
warped  by  his  chaplain  Noviomagus,  an  ultra-Lutheran,  finally  declared 
that  he  would  rather  harbour  Papists  than  them ;  so  they  were  forced  to 
re-embark,  notwithstanding  the  inclemency  of  the  season.  See  J.  U  ten- 
hove,  ut  sup. 

^^  Greg.  Leti,  ut  sup.,  vol.  i.  323. 
K  2 


132         SOURCES  OF  ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

Friars,  which  she  had  cleaned  and  fitted  up  at  her  own 
expense,  "  so  as  no  rite  nor  use  be  therein  observed  contrary 
or  derogatory  to  our  laws."  In  1567,  in  consequence  of 
complaints  of  some  members  of  the  congregation,  the 
privileges  of  the  Strangers'  Church  were  confirmed  anew  ;^^ 
and,  in  1573,  an  Order  in  Council  gave  this  valuable  authori- 
sation to  its  governing  body  : 

"  We  are  not  ignorant  that,  from  the  beginning  of  the  Christian 
religion,  various  churches  always  had  various  and  diverse  rites 
and  ceremonies ;  and  yet  piety  and  religion  is  the  same,  if  prayer 
be  truly  directed,  and  to  the  true  God,  and  impiety  and  super- 
stition, &c.  be  absent.  We  do  not  despise  your  rites,  nor  compel 
you  to  ours  ;  and  we  approve  your  ceremonies,  as  fit  and  con- 
venient for  you  and  your  nationality  {res  publico)  whence  ye  are 
sprung."  *'' 

Notwithstanding  all  these  declarations,  whether  from  the 
bishops'  jealousy,  or  from  distrust  on  the  part  of  the  Govern- 
ment, which  feared  the  influence  of  an  autonomous  body 
politic,  the  Strangers'  Church  lost  at  this  time  its  supreme 
guarantee  of  independence.  It  no  longer  had  a  Superin- 
tendent of  its  own,  but  was  subjected  to  the  superintendence 
of  the  Bishop  of  London.  It  is  true  that,  for  the  moment, 
it  had  no  vexations  to  fear  from  this  quarter,  for  the  jealous 
Ridley  had  been  succeeded  by  the  liberal  and  conciliatory 
Grindal,  the  friend  of  Peter  Martyr  and  Girolamo  Zanchi.*^ 

If  the  Ecdesia  Peregrinoriim  lost  its  caput  proprium^  on 
the  other  hand  it  was  augmented  by  an  additional  branch, 
having  its  own  distinct  organisation,  creed  and  services, 
the  Spanish  Church  (1560).  The  refugees  from  that  country 
had,  in  fact,  for  more  than  a  year  (beginning  in  1558)  cele- 
brated their  worship  in  a  private  house,  a  circumstance 
which  gave  occasion  to  vexatious  comments,  including  a 

39  Collier,  ut  sup.,  vol.  vi.  443.  ^^   Thcol.  RevicM,  Jan.  1876. 

*^  Strype,  GrindaPs  Life,  book  i.  chap.  v.  61  ff. 


CHAPTER   VI.  133 

suspicion  on  the  part  of  their  Catholic  fellow-countrymen 
that  they  met  to  conspire  against  the  King  of  Spain.  Ac- 
cordingly their  pastor,  the  learned  Cassiodoro  de  Reyna 
(Reinius),  addressed  a  strongly-argued  request  to  the  Bishop 
of  London  and  to  the  Secretary  of  State,  William  Cecil,  for 
authority  to  celebrate  their  worship  in  public.*^  His  suc- 
cessor was  Cipriano  de  Valera;  and,  eight  years  later,  in 
1568,  we  find  a  certain  Antonio  de  Corro  (Corranus)  of 
Seville,  surnamed  Bellerive,  formerly  pastor  at  Antwerp, 
head  of  the  Spanish  Church  in  London,  stirring  up  a  con- 
troversy. He  became  divinity  reader  at  the  Temple  and  at 
Oxford;  and  died  canon  of  St.  Paul's,  at  London,  in  1591. 

In  1560  appeared  the  Confession  de  Fe  Christiana  (preface 
dated  4  Jan.  1559,  i.e.  1560)  of  these  Spanish  Christians 
{hecha  por  ciertos  fieles  espafioles).  They  counted  a  member- 
ship of  about  sixty,  among  whom  may  be  mentioned  the 
names  of  the  "  sehores,"  Baron,  M.  de  Questa,  Marco  de  la 
Palma,  and,  above  all,  the  celebrated  Adriano  de  Sarravia, 
born  at  Hesdin  (Flanders),  collaborator  with  Guy  de  Brez 
in  the  Confession  of  Faith  of  the  Walloon  churches  in  the 
Low  Countries,  who  became  professor  of  theology  at  Cam- 
bridge, after  having  been  at  Leiden,  1597.^^ 

The  Italian  Church,  however,  was  re-constituted  by  the 
exertions  of  Sir  William  Cecil,  in  whose  house  it  had  long 
assembled.      It  comprised  a  select  body  of  jurisconsults, 


■*^  Strype,  GrindaVs  Life,  pp.  69,  71.  Cf.  Droin,  Rtformation  en 
Espagne,  vol.  ii.  156 — 160.  [Respecting  Cassiodoro  de  Reyna  and  his 
tindisgiTised  admiration  for  Servetus,  especially  the  story  of  his  kissing 
one  of  the  books  of  Servetus,  and  saying  "  that  he  never  rightly  knew 
God  till  he  had  that  book,  and  that  Servetus  had  alone  understood  the 
mystery  of  the  Trinity,"  see  Tolhn,  in  the  Bulletin  Historique  et  Littcraire 
of  the  Soc.  de  I' Hist,  du  Protestantisme  Francais,  15  Sept.  1882;  15  June 
and  15  July,  1883.] 

^^  M'Crie,  Reformation  in  Spain,  p.  370.  Cf.  Brandt,  ut  sup.,  art. 
Sarravia. 


134         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

engineers  and  physicians,  among  whom  must  be  mentioned 
Giacomo  Contio  (Acontius),  miUtary  engineer,  and  his  friend 
Giovanni  Battista  Castiglione,  the  Queen's  Itahan  tutor  ;  the 
doctors,  Andrea,  of  Rome,  and  GiuUo  Borgarucci,  physician 
to  the  Earl  of  Leicester;  the  two  Gentih,  Alberico  and 
Scipione,  sons  of  Matteo  Gentile,  a  physician  of  Ancona, 
who  were  jurisconsults  of  the  first  class.  Girolamo  Jerhto  had 
succeeded,  as  minister  to  the  Italians,  to  Florio,  who  had 
returned  after  the  death  of  Mary  Tudor,  but  who  had  not 
been  reinstated  by  the  Bishop  of  London,  on  account  of 
his  irascible  and  vindictive  character.*'* 

Finally,  the  two  sections,  Flemish  and  Walloon,  had  re- 
turned in  greater  numbers  than  before.  Instead  of  two 
ministers  a-piece,  they  now  had  three.  The  Walloons  had 
as  ministers  Jean  Cousin,  Antoine  de  Ponchell  and  Pierre 
Chastellain;  and  the  Flemings,  Pieter  Deloen(son  of  Wouter), 
Govert  Wyngins  and  Cornells  Adriaans  or  Adriaanszoon  van 
Hamstede.  We  shall  see  the  last-named  taking  an  important 
part  in  the  controversies  relating  to  the  humanity  of  Jesus 
Christ.*^ 

Such  was  the  position  of  the  Strangers'  Church  in  London. 
In  the  provinces,  the  Netherlanders  formed  eleven  churches, 
many  of  which  consisted  of  two  branches,  the  Flemish  and 
the  Walloon — for  example,  at  Canterbury,  Colchester,  Maid- 
stone, Sandwich,  Southampton,  Norwich,  &c.  The  Walloon 
Church  in  Norwich  assembled  at  first  in  the  chapel  adjoining 
the  episcopal  palace ;  afterwards,  owing  to  the  bishop's 
illiberality,  it  had  to  change  to  the  church  of  Little  St.  Mary. 
It  was  in  this  Walloon  Church  at  Norwich  that  the  Martineaus, 
those  ornaments  of  English  Unitarianism,  were  nurtured. 
Accordingly,  Lord  Chancellor  Eldon  formally  stipulated  that 

^  M'Crie,  Reformation  in  Spain^  pp.  365 — 368.     Cf.  Gaiiffe,  tit  stip., 
p.  92. 

*^  Strype,  GrindaVs  Life,  p.  199. 


CHAPTER   VI.  135 

it  should,  for  the  future,  never  be  let  to  any  sect  whatever 
which  denied  the  Trinity.**' 

But  no  human  precaution  or  barrier  can  hold  its  ground 
before  the  expansion  of  the  human  intellect  and  the  search 
for  divine  truth.  Neither  the  Confession  of  Faith  imposed 
by  John  a  Lasco,  nor  the  vigilant  control  of  Bishop  Grindal, 
could  prevent  the  ancient  Antitrinitarian  controversy  from 
being  re-opened  in  the  new  church.  Only,  this  time,  the 
question  presented  itself  in  another  shape ;  it  arose  out  of 
the  action  of  some  refugees  from  the  Low  Countries  who 
had  commissioned  their  countryman  Hamstede  to  present  to 
the  bishop  a  petition  demanding  the  free  exercise  of  their 
worship.  Grindal,  recollecting  the  case  of  Van  Parris,  sur- 
mised them  to  be  Anabaptists,  and,  as  the  petition  was  not 
signed,  suspected  Hamstede  of  sharing  these  ideas.  The 
Flemish  minister  strenuously  repudiated  having  attacked 
paedobaptism  or  the  supernatural  conception;'*^  but  he  dis- 
puted the  propriety  of  refusing  to  the  Anabaptists  the  title 
of  Christian  on  the  ground  of  their  denying  these  two 
dogmata,  "  which"  said  he,  "  are  not  funda77iental  articles  of 
the  Christian  faith,  since  they  cannot  be  proved  by  the  Scripture.'^ 
Hamstede  declared  that  direcdy  they  admitted  that  Jesus 
Christ  died  and  rose  again  for  the  remission  of  their  sins, 
they  believed  in  the  true  Redeemer.  Throughout  this  dis- 
cussion, Hamstede  found  a  stout  supporter  in  Giacomo 
Contio  (Acontius),  the  most  eminent  member  of  the  Italian 
Church.  Both  were  cited  before  the  Bishop  of  London  and 
excommunicated  (Hamstede  in  November,  1560,  Acontius 
on  29  April,  1561),  along  with  their  adherents,  who  were 
numerous.      A  year  later,   31  July,    1562,   Hamstede  was 

'^  Greg.  Leti,  ut  sup.,  vol.  i.  325  ff.  Cf.  TJieol.  Review,  Jan.  1876, 
Gordon  on  Hook's  Laud. 

*7  [They  were  not  accused  of  attacking  the  supernatural  conception, 
but  of  pressing  its  supernatural  character  to  the  extent  of  denying  that 
Christ  took  flesh  of  the  Virgin.] 


136         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

summoned  to  retract,  which  he  would  not  do  ;  Acontius 
also  held  firmly  to  his  opinion,  and  went  so  far  as  to 
develope,  in  an  admirable  book,  the  idea,  essentially  Uni- 
tarian, that  all  dogmata  which  are  not  instrumental  to  eternal 
life  must  be  dropped  from  the  Hst  of  fundamentals.*^ 

There  were,  furthermore,  two  other  controversies  in  the 
Strangers'  Church ;  that  of  Justus  Velsius  from  the  Hague 
(1563),  of  Avhich  we  have  spoken  in  Chapter  II.  (p.  50, 
note  18) ;  and  that  of  Antonio  de  Corro  (Corranus)  with  Jean 
Cousin  and  Girolamo  Jerlito,  on  predestination  and  free-will, 
which  is  beyond  the  field  of  our  discussion.*^  The  Unitarian 
idea,  planted  by  Ochino  and  watered  by  the  blood  of  Georg 
Van  Parris,  was  about  to  be  developed  by  Acontius,  and 
above  all  by  the  genius  of  the  Sozzini. 


^  Strjrpe,  GrindaVs  Life,  pp.  64,  66.   Cf.  app.  52.   See  Appendix  IX. 

49  Ibid.  pp.  185 — 187,  217 — 222.  Cf.  Chr.  Sepp.  Geschiedkundige 
Nasporingen,  vol.  iii.,  Corranus^  dii  Belkt-ive,  een  "  moderaet"  Theology 
Leyden,  1875. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

Bernardino  Ochino,  his  religious  development,   and  his  influence  on 
English  theology. — Corranus. 

"  All  will  be  easy  to  me  in  Christ, 
For  whom  I  live  and  hope  to  die  !" 

A  GRAND  figure  is  that  of  Fra  Bernardino  Ochino,  the 
grandest,  perhaps,  that  had  appeared  in  Italy  since  Savo- 
narola. He  must  indeed  have  been  a  man  of  more  than 
ordinary  gifts  of  oratory,  personal  character  and  intellectual 
power,  to  have  inspired  the  two-fold  testimony  of  his  con- 
temporaries, both  Catholic  and  Protestant.  Passing  over 
the  witness  of  Aonio  Paleario,  who  might  be  suspected  of 
partiality  from  his  relations  of  fellow-citizenship  and  friend- 
ship with  Ochino,  mark  what  Cardinal  Bembo  wrote  of  him 
to  Vittoria  Colonna,  Marchioness  of  Pescaro,  the  year  when 
he  preached  his  second  Lent  course  at  Venice  (1539): 
"  Ochino  is  literally  adored  at  Venice.  Every  one  praises 
him  to  the  skies."  We  have  cited  above  the  saying  of 
Charles  V.^  Mark  now  the  testimony  of  Calvin  :  "  This 
testimony  to  the  pious  and  holy  man  I  feel  it  my  duty  to 
render,  that  he  may  be  saved  from  incurring  the  slightest 
unmerited  suspicion.  For  he  is  a  man  of  eminent  learning, 
and  his  manner  of  life  is  exemplary." ^  But  for  the  Inquisi- 
tion of  1542,  he  might  have  become  the  Luther  of  Italy ;  as 
it  was,  Ochino  rendered  to  Switzerland  and  to  England  the 

1  Lettere  di  M.  Pietro  Bembo:  Venezia,  1522;   quoted  by  Benrath, 
p.  18.     Cf.  M'Crie,  Refor7nation  in  Italy,  p.  125.     See  ante,  p.  74. 
^  Calvini  Opera,  vol.  xxxix.  462. 


138         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

service  which  Servetus  rendered  to  France  and  Italy.  He 
compelled  Protestant  dogmatics  to  emerge  from  the  Catholic 
formulae  in  which  they  were  entrenched,  and  opened  the 
way  for  the  free  development  of  a  more  human  Christology, 
and  a  theodicy  (divine  poHty)  at  once  more  rational  and 
appealing  more  directly  to  the  heart.  Ochino,  the  Italian, 
was  to  England  what  Servetus,  the  Spaniard,  had  been  to 
Italy,  the  initiator  of  the  Unitarian  movement.  As  we  have 
already  encountered  Ochino  at  various  stages  of  his  career, 
we  shall  do  no  more  than  rapidly  mention  in  order  the 
principal  episodes  of  his  life.^ 

Born  at  Siena,  the  home  of  St.  Catherine,  in  1487,  four 
years  after  Luther  and  twenty-two  years  before  Calvin, 
Bernardino,  son  of  Domenico  Tommasini,  a  resident  in  the 
cotitrada  deWoca,  received  the  surname  of  Ochino  (gosling), 
which  in  Italian  has  the  same  meaning  as  Hus  (goose)  in 
Czech.  He  was  ten  years  old  when  Girolamo  Savonarola 
delivered  at  Florence  his  prophetic  discourses  on  the  freedom 
of  Italy  and  the  reform  of  the  Church ;  and  if  but  an  echo 
of  these,  at  any  rate  the  noise  of  Savonarola's  catastrophe 
must  have  reached  Siena,  situated  fifteen  leagues  from 
Florence,  and  in  constant  relations  with  it.  Yet  political 
anarchy  and  the  disorders  of  the  Roman  Church  ran  their 
course,  scandalised  all  good  men.  Such  times  of  public 
calamity  evoke  the  call  to  a  religious  life.  Like  Luther,  like 
Savonarola,  Ochino,  with  his  ardent  temperament  and  passion 
for  divine  truth,  was  soon  sick  of  life  in  an  age  when  elegance 
of  manners  and  literary  distinction  served  as  masks  for  the 
most  shameful  vices;  and  in  1514,^  at  the  age  of  twenty- 

'  For  the  details  of  this  biography,  we  must  refer  the  reader  to  the 
work  by  Dr.  Benrath  of  Bonn,  entitled,  Bernardino  von  Siena :  Leipzig, 
1875.  This  work,  in  which  the  author  has  made  use  of  inedited  and 
previously  unknown  sources,  calls  Ochino  to  life  again.  Our  quotations 
are  from  Miss  Helen  Zimmern's  English  translation,  1876  (portrait). 

*  [This  conjectural  date  seems  several  years  too  late.] 


CHAPTER  VII.  139 

seven,  he  entered  the  Franciscan  convent  of  the  Osservanza, 
near  to  Siena.  What  he  there  sought  was  the  way  of  gaining 
his  own  salvation,  by  efforts  of  abnegation  and  humility. 
Having  encountered  there  only  pride  and  sensuality,  twenty 
years  later  he  went  over  (1534 — 1542)  to  the  Order  of 
Capuchin  Friars,  recently  founded  by  Matteo  Baschi,  a 
Franciscan.  Like  Luther,  Ochino  said  then  to  himself, 
"  The  more  I  do  pious  works,  the  nearer  shall  I  be  to 
heaven ;"  and  still  he  was  ever  disquieted  by  his  conscience 
and  deceived  in  his  aspirations.  Nevertheless,  the  twenty- 
eight  years  of  his  life  under  the  rule  of  St.  Francis  were  not 
without  service  to  Ochino,  and  even  after  his  conversion  he 
never  regretted  them.  If  the  conventual  life  did  not  lead 
him  to  the  real  source  of  salvation,  at  least  it  carefully 
preserved  him  from  the  world's  temptations  ;  and  it  brought 
him  into  relations  with  two  men,  one  dead,  the  other  living, 
who  exercised  a  decisive  influence  over  his  mind.  Duns 
Scotus  and  Juan  de  Valdes. 

John  Duns,  called  Scotus  (d.  8  Nov.  1308),  forms  along 
with  the  mystical  Bonaventura  and  the  daring  William  of 
Ockham,  the  triad  of  illustrious  theologians  of  the  Order  of 
St.  Francis.  From  their  works  it  was,  rather  than  from  the 
Bible,  that  masters  and  novices  drew  their  spiritual  nourish- 
ment. But  it  appears  that  our  author  gave  the  preference 
to  Duns  Scotus ;  for,  as  Mr.  Gordon  puts  it,  Ochino  "  threw 
off  his  Capuchin's  garb,  but  never  doffed  the  Scotist  vesture 
of  his  thought."^  The  Doctor  Subtilts,  by  the  importance  he 
attaches  to  free-will,  to  human  worth,  and  to  the  perfection 
of  Christ  as  man,  separated  from  the  rest  of  humanity  through 
his  immaculate  conception  by  the  Virgin — lastly,  by  the  limit 
he  assigns  to  divine   predestination  in  the   prescience  of 

5  Theological  Jievie7u,]vL\y 'i'&']<j,Y>-'2.()2)-  See  also  A.  Gordon's  article 
(Oct.  1^16)  on  Bernardino  Tommasini  ( Ochino).  This  article,  written 
in  review  of  Dr.  Benrath's  book,  gives  some  particulars  as  to  English 
translations  of  Ochino's  works. 


I40         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

human  actions,  ajDpears  as  the  spiritual  father  of  the  author 
of  the  Prediche.  But  it  is,  above  all,  by  his  critical  and 
analytical  method,  by  his  hcccccitates  and  his  qtiidditafes,  that 
the  scholastic  doctor  of  Oxford  has  stamped  his  mark  on 
one  who,  by  a  curious  return  journey  of  ideas,  was  to  become, 
two  and  a  half  centuries  later,  the  awakener  of  theological 
thought  in  this  same  England. 

Besides  this,  the  general  tendency  of  the  Franciscans, 
whether  Cordeliers  or  Capuchins,  was  in  Ochino's  time  singu- 
larly evangelical.  We  have  already  remarked,  while  treating 
of  the  earliest  relations  between  Italy  and  Switzerland,  how 
earnestly  the  members  of  this  Order  sighed  for  the  "  bread 
of  life"  which  is  in  the  word  of  God ;  e.g.  Baldo  Lupetino, 
Beccaria  and  Benedetto  of  Locarno,  Francesco  Lismanini, 
&c.^  This  tendency  was  unquestionably  due  to  the  blessed 
task,  imposed  on  them  by  their  founder,  of  preaching 
repentance  and  the  gospel  of  forgiveness  to  the  people.  Our 
author  by  no  means  escaped  this  influence ;  in  his  mission 
preachings  he  speedily  developed  a  talent  for  oratory,  all  the 
more  efficacious  with  his  hearers,  as  his  life  accorded  with 
his  word,  and  his  outward  man  was  but  the  genuine  expres- 
sion of  the  attitude  of  his  soul.  He  was  never  seen  to  go 
otherwise  than  on  foot,  staff  in  hand,  clothed  in  a  woollen 
frock ;  he  slept  on  a  plank  bed,  and  eat  only  bread  and 
vegetables.  His  visage  pale  and  wasted,  his  whitening  hair, 
his  snowy  beard,  which  descended  to  his  breast,  all  proclaimed 
him  an  ascetic,  a  worthy  emulator  of  St.  Benedict ;  while 
his  gleaming  eyes,  upturned  to  heaven,  revealed  the  sacred 
fire  which  burned  in  his  heart.''     He  was  at  that  time  the 

^  See  Chapter  V.  p.  io6,  note  34. 

'  See  the  fine  portrait  of  Ochino  prefixed  to  Dr.  Benrath's  book. 
[This  portrait  is  in  profile,  and  represents  Ochino  as  a  capuchin.  For 
a  front-face  likeness  of  Ochino  as  a  Protestant  minister,  see  the  Paris 
reprint  (1878)  of  the  old  French  version  of  his  Dialogue  on  Purgatory, 
where  also  will  be  found  a  brief  but  admirable  memoir.] 


CHAPTER  VII.  141 

most  docile,  the  most  humble  servant  of  the  Roman  Church, 
which  he  believed  infallible ;  nay,  historians  have  even  made 
him,  in  error,  the  confessor  of  Pope  Paolo  III. 

And  yet  this  was  the  man  whom  Providence  destined  as 
the  herald  of  the  gospel  of  love  and  of  free  inquiry,  in  Italy, 
and  subsequently  throughout  Europe.  Juan  de  Valdcs  was 
the  instrument  of  Ochino's  conversion  to  the  evangelical 
doctrines.  In  1536,  Ochino  preached  his  first  Lent  course 
at  Naples,  in  S.  Giovanni  Maggiore.  There  were  in  his 
congregation  there  two  men  who  were  amazed  at  his  talent. 
One  of  these,  Charles  V.,  was  destined,  ten  years  later,  to 
demand  his  head  from  the  magistrates  of  Augsburg,  as  that 
of  a  man  dangerous  to  the  Church.  The  other,  who  was 
in  the  court  of  the  viceroy,  Don  Pedro  de  Toledo,  was 
destined,  on  the  contrary,  to  lead  him  captive  to  the  foot  of 
the  cross  of  Jesus  Christ.  It  is  easy  to  imagine  the  bright- 
ness that  was  sure  to  flash  from  the  contact  of  these  two 
choice  natures, — Valdes,  a  tender  and  chivalrous  soul,  a  hero 
in  courage,  almost  a  woman  in  gentleness, — Ochino,  that 
volcanic  spirit,  ever  seething  within,  and  on  the  verge  of 
eruption.  Force  was  taken  captive  by  gentleness :  introduced 
to  the  intimate  circle  of  Valdus,  Ochino  experienced,  in  the 
society  of  women  who  were  as  virtuous  as  they  were  beautiful 
and  learned,  the  sweetness  of  those  familiar  talks,  in  which 
the  one  favourite  topic  was  salvation  through  the  love  of 
God  and  the  merits  of  Christ ;  he  read  that  golden  book  of 
the  Italian  Reformation,  entitled  Del  Bencfizio  di  Gcsu  Crista 
crocefisso,^  and  he  was  transformed.  From  that  time  he  did 
not  cease  to  speak  out  as  he  believed ;  each  day  he  asked 
his  lay  confessor  for  a  subject  for  his  sermon  of  the  morrow  ; 
and  we  find  in  his  Prediche  published  at  Venice,  just  as  in 

8  Written  in  Sicily  by  Benedetto  of  Mantua,  a  Benedictine  monk,  and 
edited  by  Marcantonio  Flaminio. 


142         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

those  subsequently  published  at  Geneva,  reminiscences  of 
the  ex.  Considerations  of  Valdes.^ 

What  Valdes  wished,  was  not  to  reform  the  Church  by 
outward  and  general  measures,  but  to  reform  men,  the  inner 
tribunal:  to  ecclesiastical  forms  he  attached  little  importance. 
In  this  respect  he  was  the  direct  heir  of  the  reforming  mystics 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  Thomas  \  Kempis,  Gansfort,  Geiler 
of  Keisersberg,  and  others.  Strict  Calvinists  have  not  for- 
given him  for  continuing  to  frequent  the  churches,  attend 
mass,  and  take  part  "  with  the  Papist  community,  in  divers 
idolatries."  ^"^  What  does  this  prove  but  that  Valdes  had  not 
the  revolutionary  temperament,  and  that  he  thought,  with 
many  of  the  wise  of  his  time,  that  it  was  better  to  stay  in  the 
Church  with  the  purpose  of  transforming  it,  than  to  leave  it 
in  order  to  fight  against  it  ? 

Ochino  followed  this  example.  During  the  six  years  that 
he  was  appointed  to  preach  the  Advent  courses  at  Siena  and 
Modena,  and  the  Lent  courses  at  Naples  and  Venice,  he 
had  the  talent,  or  let  us  rather  say  the  infinite  patience,  to 
preach  salvation  through  Christ,  while  yet  putting  up  with 
the  invocation  of  Saints  and  of  the  Virgin,  and  the  thousand 
puerile  practices  of  the  Roman  cult.  However,  little  by 
little  he  dropped  out  of  sight  the  merit  of  works,  the  inter- 
vention of  saints;  he  went  so  far  as  to  say,  "  Christ  has  done 
enough  for  his  elect,  and  has  gained  Paradise  for  them.''^^ 
Above  all,  he  insisted  on  the  grace  of  God  towards  us,  and 

^  Compare  Part  iv.  of  the  Prediche  (Basel,  1555)  with  the  Benefizio, 
capp.  i.  iv.,  and  with  the  Considerazioni,  i.  and  xiii.  Mark  the  analogy 
between  this  mystical  influence  of  Valdes  on  Ochino  and  the  conversion 
of  Tauler  by  the  great  "  Friend  of  God"  in  the  Oberland."  See  Jundt, 
I.es  Aniis  de  Dieti :  Strassburg,  1879,  p.  115. 

^^  See  Balbani,  Vie  du  Marquis  Galcace  Caracciolo.  (Zi.T>rd\Vi,  Rcformc 
en  Espagne,  vol.  ii.  75 — 90. 

■'■'  See  his  letter  to  Girolamo  Muzio  of  Capo  d'Istria. 


CHAPTER   VII.  143 

the  love  we  owe  to  Him.  Mysticism  was  the  chrysalis  in 
which  he  wrapped  his  thought  until  its  wings  were  formed, 
and  it  had  strength  to  burst  freely  into  the  light  of  day. 
This  day  arrived  when,  towards  the  middle  of  August,  1542, 
he  received  from  Cardinal  Caraffa  a  summons  to  appear 
before  the  tribunal  of  the  Inquisition,  just  then  instituted. 
Three  courses  now  presented  themselves  to  him :  to  make 
open  profession  of  his  evangeHcal  faith,  and  perish  like 
Savonarola;  to  submit  himself  to  the  judgment  of  the  Church 
by  abjuring  his  beliefs  ;  lastly,  to  flee  far  from  that  Italy 
which  almost  adored  him  as  a  divine  being,  and  which 
he,  for  his  part,  loved  as  a  mother.  We  can  imagine  what 
conflicts  must  have  raged  in  his  soul ;  he  did  not  feel  himself 
ripe  for  martyrdom  ;  had  he  been  pastor  of  a  congregation 
that  looked  up  to  him  as  its  spiritual  head,  he  might 
perhaps,  as  he  avowed  later  on,  have  thought  it  his  duty  to 
give  his  life  as  a  good  shepherd  for  his  sheep.  How  could 
he  possibly  abjure,  without  lying  to  his  conscience,  without 
renouncing  all  he  had  preached  for  six  years  with  the  applause 
of  a  whole  nation,  salvation  through  Christ  alone  ?  How 
bend  the  knee  before  that  hierarchy,  with  whom  vows  were 
but  the  mask  for  ambition  and  for  adultery  ? 

He  had  had  interviews  with  Cardinals  Morone  and  Con- 
tarini,  already  suspected  of  Lutheranism  ;  he  had  met  Peter 
Martyr,  his  old  friend  of  Naples,  himself  likewise  summoned 
before  the  chapter  of  his  Order  at  Genoa.  Ochino  resolved 
to  escape  by  flight  the  alternative  of  death  or  disgrace,  and  to 
seek  liberty  in  exile.  After  having  written  farewell  letters  to 
his  two  noble  friends,  A'ittoria  Colonna  and  Caterina  Cibo, 
and  taken  leave  of  the  Duchess  of  Ferrara,  Ochino  shaped 
his  course  towards  Chiavenna ;  passed  on  to  the  house  of 
BuUinger  at  Ziirich,  where  he  missed  Vermigli  by  a  day ;  and 
arrived  at  Geneva  towards  the  middle  of  September,  1542.^^ 

^■■^  Calvini  Opera,  tit  sup.,  vol.  xi.  426,  Letter  from  Calvin  to  Viret. 
Cf.  p.  438,  Letter  from  BuUinger  to  Vadian,  already  quoted. 


144         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

We  need  not  revert  to  the  part  filled  by  Ochino  at  Geneva 
as  first  pastor  of  the  Italian  Church ;  but  we  must  indicate 
in  this  place  the  state  of  his  opinions  about  that  time,  on 
the  two  or  three  points  which  interest  us, — the  Trinity, 
Redemption,  and  the  Person  of  the  Redeemer. 

The  fruitful  idea  which  dominates  his  whole  theology  is, 
that  God  is  Love ;  it  is  through  love  that  He  created  us  in 
His  own  image,  and  it  is  also  through  love  that  He  resolved 
to  save  us,  at  the  price  of  His  unique  and  well-beloved  Son. 
This  God  is  unique,  eternal,  necessary,  infinite  and  immu- 
table. As  Father  He  is  uncreate,  but  He  has  procreated 
the  Son,  and  has  endowed  him  with  all  perfections.  The 
Father  and  the  Son,  by  the  exertion  of  their  wills,  have  in 
their  turn  produced  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  have  endowed  him 
also  with  every  perfection.  Thus  the  Father,  the  Son,  the 
Holy  Spirit,  are  one  in  substance,  in  person  several. ^^ 

As  regards  redemption,  Ochino  explains  it  in  accordance 
with  Anselm's  theory  of  the  "  vicarious  satisfaction  through 
the  merits  of  Jesus  Christ;"  and  admits,  with  St.  Paul,  that 
we  are  justified  solely  by  faith,  independently  of  works. 
Under  the  influence  of  Calvin  and  of  Vermigli,  he  w^ent  so 
far  as  to  say  that  man  cannot  do  the  least  thing  for  his  own 
salvation.  But  already  we  feel  that,  with  him,  the  primal 
cause  of  redemption  is  the  infinite  love  of  God  for  His 
creature,  not  the  satisfaction  rendered  to  His  justice ;  and 
that  the  indispensable  condition  of  the  realisation  of  the 
Divine  plan  is  living  faith,  produced  in  man  by  the  Holy 
Spirit.  1*  Ochino,  after  the  example  of  the  Beneftzw,  compares 
the  effects  of  the  union  of  the  soul  with  Jesus  to  the  fruits 
of  marriage.  But  it  seems  to  us  that  in  Ochino's  soteriology 
the  person  of  Christ  is  eclipsed  by  the  Holy  Spirit ;  it  is  the 
Spirit  that  should  be  the  supreme  rule  of  our  life ;  it  is  this 

^3  Dialogi  Sette,  dial,  i.,  analysed  by  Benrath,  p.  75. 

"  Prediclie,  part  i.  sermon  i,  analysed  by  Benrath,  p.  155. 


CHAPTER   Vir.  145 

inner  voice  we  must  obey  rather  than  men  and  angels,  rather 
than  our  own  wisdom,  rather  even  than  the  hteral  words  of 
Jesus.  Here  we  recognise  the  preponderance  of  the  mys- 
tical principle  inherited  from  Valdes.^^ 

This  brief  sketch  of  Ochino's  ideas  at  that  time  makes 
it  intelligible  that,  when  he  left  Geneva  in  the  middle  of 
August,  1545,  Calvin  furnished  him  with  the  certificate  of 
orthodoxy  to  be  found  in  his  letters  to  Pellican  and  Myco- 
nius.     But  this  complete  accord  was  not  to  last  long. 

During  his  first  visit  to  Basel,  in  the  latter  half  of  August, 
1545,  Ochino  met  the  man  whose  influence  on  his  mind 
was  to  counterbalance  that  of  Calvin,  and  who  was  to 
become,  as  translator  of  his  works  into  Latin,  the  accomplice 
of  his  daring  flights  of  criticism.  This  was  Sebastian  Castellio. 
The  Savoyard  schoolmaster  had  quitted  Geneva  in  the 
previous  year,  he  having  been  unjustly  refused  an  appoint- 
ment to  the  pastoral  ofiice,  to  which  he  was  entitled  by  his 
knowledge  of  the  Scriptures  and  the  purity  of  his  morals.  The 
reason  was,  that  he  could  not  subscribe  to  Calvin's  opinion 
in  regard  to  the  mystical  sense  of  the  book  of  Canticles, 
and  the  descent  of  Jesus  Christ  into  hell.  At  Basel,  Castellio 
made  a  very  wretched  living  to  begin  with,  by  giving  private 
lessons  and  correcting  the  press ;  but  his  merit  having 
become  recognised,  he  was  called  to  the  chair  of  Greek 
Literature  in  the  University,  which  he  filled  until  his  death 
(1562 — Dec.  1563).  Translator  of  the  Bible,  and  eminent 
as  a  critic,  Castellio  opposed  the  opinion  of  Calvin  respect- 
ing predestination  and  free-will.  The  purpose  of  doctrines, 
said  he,  is  to  make  men  better.  Those,  then,  which  do  not 
contribute  to  this  result,  should  be  discarded  as  calamitous. 
Such,  in  his  eyes,  were  the  doctrines  of  the  Trinity  and  of 
predestination.  A  mind  so  broad  and  practical  was  sure  to 
delight  Ochino,  who  was  doubtless  introduced  to  him  by  his 

^^  Predic/u;  part  ii.  sermon  50;  Benrath,  p.  165. 
L 


146         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

countryman,  Curione.^^  Ochino  was  but  passing  through 
Basel  on  his  way  to  Strassburg  when  he  again  met  Peter 
Martyr,  and  made  the  acquaintance  of  Bucer,  with  whom  he 
had  already  corresponded  on  the  subject  of  the  Eucharistic 
controversy.^'^ 

Called  to  Augsburg  through  the  influence  of  Xystus  Betulej  us, 
the  learned  editor  of  Lactantius,  and  placed  by  the  municipal 
council  as  pastor  (Oct.  1545 — ^Jan.  1547)  over  the  Italian 
Church  in  that  city,  which  had  a  considerable  membership, 
Ochino  there  married  a  French  lady,  whom  he  had  known 
at  Geneva,  and  contracted  a  close  friendship  with  Francesco 
Stancaro  of  Mantua,  and  with  his  co- presbyter  Wolfgang 
Musculus,  minister  of  the  German  Church. ^^  The  sixteen 
months  of  his  stay  in  Augsburg  were  not  barren  of  exegetical 
and  hortatory  works.  There  it  was  that  he  published,  for 
example,  his  Exposition  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Roinans  and  his 
Sermojis  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians,  as  well  as  three 
curious  treatises  which  have  only  been  preserved  to  us  in 
German,  viz.  a  Prayer,  in  which  is  contained  the  whole 
doctrine  of  salvation, ^^  a  Dialogue  of  the  Carnal  Reaso?i  and 
a  Spiritual  Christian,  and  lastly,  a  brilliant  treatise  On  the 
Hope  of  a  Christian  Heart. 

Driven  from  Augsburg  by  the  victorious  Charles  V.  (23 
January,  1547),  Ochino  passed  through  Constanz  and  Zurich, 
and  took  refuge  at  Basel,  where  he  spent  the  remainder  of 
the  year,  enjoying  the  society  of  Castellio  and  Curione,  and 
superintending  the  printing  of  the  second  edition  of  the  first 


■^®  Lichtenberger's  Encyclopedie,  art.  Castalion,  by  Henri  Lutteroth, 
Cf.  Lecky,  td  sup.,  vol.  ii.  44 — 49. 

^^  Calvini  Opera^  vol.  ix.  689,  Letter  from  Bucer  to  Calvin. 

^*  Schelhorn,  Ergbtzlichkeitetz,  Ulm,  1763,  vols.  v.  and  vi.,  pieces  9, 
10,  II  and  12. 

^^  [This  exists  also  in  Italian,  and  is  printed  with  the  Frediche.'] 


CHAPTER   VII.  147 

part  of  the  Prcdiche,  and  the  first  edition  of  the  second 
part.2o 

Our  rapid  narrative  of  this  phase  of  his  career  proves  an 
alibi  to  the  story  that  Ochino  took  part  in  the  Vicenza  con- 
ferences of  1546,  as  Christoph  Sand  pretends  in  his  Biblio- 
theca  Antitrinitarioriim.  Though  he  carried  ever  his  beautiful 
Italy  in  his  heart — it  was  for  her  he  wrote  his  Prediche,  as 
Vergerio  his  pamphlets — he  turned  still  northward  his  wan- 
dering steps.  The  invitation  of  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
found  him  at  Basel,  where  Peter  Martyr  had  rejoined  him ; 
and  on  4  November,  1547,  he  set  out  for  England,  furnished 
with  a  letter  of  introduction  from  Curione  to  Sir  John  Cheke, 
the  preceptor  of  Edward  VI. ^^ 

Ochino's  long  residence  in  London  (December  1547 — 
August  1553),  to  which  we  shall  recur  presently,  does  not 
seem  to  have  produced  any  appreciable  development  of  his 
thought.  While  this  phase  lasted,  Ochino  took  in  more 
than  he  gave  out.  At  least  the  development  of  his  ideas 
cannot  be  detected  either  in  his  celebrated  Tragcedie  de- 
dicated to  Edward  VI.,  a  sort  of  satirical  dialogue  between 
Satan  and  Christ,  Bonifacio  VIII.  and  Henry  VIII.,  on  the 
grandeur  and  decadence  of  the  Papacy ;  or  in  the  third  part 
of  his  Prediche,  which  appeared  at  Basel  in  1551.  We  will 
draw  attention,  however,  to  a  passage  which  seems  to  us  to 
possess  a  Unitarian  tint :  "  Even  the  soul  of  Christ,  before 
Thou  hadst  created  it,  was  not  in  itself  worthy  of  the  treasures 
with  which  Thou,  in  Thy  mere  grace,  hast  endowed  it.  Thou 
didst  not  endow  Christ  thus  on  account  of  his  virtuous  life, 
but  it  is  because  Thou  hast  thus  endowed  him  that  he  led  a 
life  holy  and  worthy  Thee.  What  shall  I  say  more?  In 
Christ  Thou  hast  given  us  all  things,  even  Thyself,  and  that 

'■'<'  Calvini  Opera,  vol.  xl.,  Letter  from  Calvin  to  Musculus  (25  April, 
1547);  cf.  Bemath,  p.  1S2. 

^^  Coelii  Secundi  Curionis  Epistolce,  lib.  ii.  287. 
L  2 


148         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

is  why  I  have  the  assurance  that  Thou  wishest  to  save 
me."22 

There  is  here  an  evident  tendency  to  subordinate  the 
person  and  work  of  the  Son  to  the  sovereign  action  of  the 
Father.  It  appears  that  Ochino  took  part  with  VermigH, 
Cranmer  and  Melanchthon  in  the  compilation  of  the  Prayer 
Book. 2^  But  what  occupied  him  more  than  anything  else 
at  that  time  was  the  question  of  predestination  and  free-will, 
to  which  he  had  already  devoted  fourteen  of  his  Prediche.  It 
seems  that  after  reading  them,  the  princess  Elizabeth,  then 
eighteen  years  of  age,  wished  to  confer  with  him,  and  asto- 
nished the  veteran  dialectician  by  the  penetration  of  her 
thought.^*  However,  the  idea  of  God's  love  embracing  all 
His  creatures,  and  that  of  an  invisible  and  universal  Church 
welcoming  all  children  of  the  Spirit,  were  always  prepon- 
derant in  Ochino's  religious  consciousness.  Never  did  he 
sacrifice  God's  love  to  His  prescience  of  human  sin. 

It  is  in  Switzerland  that  we  shall  witness  the  production 
of  the  capital  development  of  Ochino's  thought.  He  arrived 
at  Geneva,  it  is  said,  on  the  morrow  of  the  execution  (27 
Oct.  1553)  of  Michael  Servetus,  the  first  illustrious  victim 
of  the  Unitarian  cause,  and  he  did  not  conceal  his  disap- 
probation of  such  a  cruelty,  a  course  which  rendered  him 
unpopular  with  Calvin's  hangers-on. ^^  While  here  he  pub- 
lished his  Apologhi,  or  five  satires  on  the  abuses  and  errors 
of  the  Popish  Synagogue,  1554,  dedicated  to  Sir  Richard 
Morison,  one  of  the  English  gentry  who  had  quitted  England 
on  the  accession  of  Mary  Tudor.     Then,  after  a  flying  visit 

22  Prediche,  part  iii.  sennon  30;  Benrath,  p.  211. 

^^  Taine,  Histoire  de  la  Liiterahire  Anglaise,  vol.  ii.  316. 

"^^  Preface  to  the  Labyrinths  of  Ochino,  addressed  to  Queen  Elizabeth  : 
Basel,  1561. 

^^   Contra   libellum   Calvijii,   in  quo  ostcndere  conatur  hcereticos  jure 
gladii  cocrctiidos  esse,  1554. 


CHAPTER   VIT.  149 

to  Chiavenna,  he  returned  to  his  much-loved  Basel,  where  he 
spent  1554  and  the  spring  of  1555,  and  published  the  fourth 
part  of  his  Prediche.  Note  should  be  taken  of  the  fourth 
sermon  in  this  volume,  on  the  Image  of  God  in  Man,  which 
presents  striking  resemblances  to  the  first  of  the  Considerations 
of  Valdes,  which  had  just  (1550)  been  pubUshed  at  Basel  by 
Curione,  and  with  the  first  chapter  of  the  Betiefizio  di  Gesic 
Crista  P-^ 

Ochino  was  then  sixty-eight  years  old.  For  fifteen  years 
he  had  travelled  over  land  and  sea,  driven  by  armies  or  by 
revolutions,  battered  by  tempests  and  by  trials ;  nevertheless, 
he  had  succeeded  in  creating  an  inner  circle  of  adherents ; 
in  London  he  had  left  behind  him  devoted  friends,  and  at 
Basel  he  had  others,  in  whose  society  the  veteran  disputant 
asked  nothing  more  than  to  spend  the  remainder  of  his  days 
in  peace.  God  had  decided  otherwise.  The  voice  which  at 
Florence  had  cried  unto  him,  "  Leave  thy  country  and  thy 
church  to  be  my  witness  in  the  land  of  the  stranger,"  again 
made  itself  heard.  In  June,  1555,  he  received  the  visit  of 
Dr.  Martino  Muralto  and  the  young  LeHo  Sozini,  who 
brought  him  the  call  to  become  the  pastor  of  the  Locarnese 
exiles  at  Zurich. 

Whatever  his  need  of  repose,  Ochino  was  not  long  in 
deciding  between  his  own  interest  and  duty ;  he  accepted 
the  summons  of  the  Italians  at  Ziirich.  He  did  not  suspect 
that,  a  new  Servetus,  he  was  about  to  encounter  another 
Calvin.^'''  Every  one  recollects  how,  after  an  eight  years' 
ministry,  the  publication  of  his  Thirty  Dialogues  cost  him 
exile  at  the  age  of  seventy-six,  and  how,  rejected  by  all 
the  churches,  he  wandered  to  an  out-of-the-way  corner  of 
Moravia,  there  to  die  of  hunger  and  sorrow  (about  December, 
1564)- 

^®  Compare  Benefizio,  cap.  i.  with  C outsider azioni,  No.  i.,  and  Benef, 
cap.  iv.  with  Consid.  No.  xiii. 

^7  Calvini  Opera,  vol.  xv.  2355  (Ochino  to  Calvin,  4  Dec.  1555). 


ISO         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

Bernardino  Ochino — and  this  is  what  constitutes  him  a 
figure  so  original — exhibits,  in  epitome,  by  the  sweep  of  his 
thought,  the  whole  curve  described  by  Protestant  dogmatics 
in  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries.  All  the  ques- 
tions that  have  since  been  agitated  were  revolved  in  his 
brain  ;  and  he  threw  out  a  number  of  heresies  which  were 
to  be  accepted  as  truths  two  centuries  after  his  death.  We 
may  get  an  idea  of  this  in  a  detail  of  the  progress  made  by 
his  thought,  on  the  two  or  three  points  above  referred  to, 
between  the  period  of  his  Prediche  at  Venice  and  Geneva 
(1539 — 1545)  and  the  publication  at  Ziirich  of  his  Dialogue 
on  Purgatory  (1556),  dedicated  to  Francesco  Lismanini 
(ex-Provincial  of  the  Franciscans  or  Minorites  in  Poland, 
and  converted  to  the  gospel  by  Ochino),  and  his  Thirty 
Dialogues  on  the  Messiah  and  the  Trinity  (1563). 

Ochino's  first  breach  with  traditional  orthodoxy  was  on 
the  question  of  Redemption.  Christ,  he  says  in  his  Dialogue 
on  Purgatory,  made  satisfaction  for  all  the  elect.  Not  that 
his  work,  his  life,  or  his  sufferings  were  in  themselves  of 
infinite  merit,  for  he  owed  all  to  God,  absolute  obedience 
included — but  because  God,  of  His  infinite  grace  and  love 
for  humanity,  determined  to  confer  this  expiatory  value  on 
the  work  of  Christ.^^ 

Here  we  are  very  far  from  Anselm's  theory,  and  much 
nearer  to  that  of  Duns  Scotus,  who  had  said  that  "  the  works 
of  Christ  have  an  infinite  value,  not  in  themselves,  but 
because  of  mere  grace  the  Father  has  accepted  them  for 
such."  This  strongly  resembles  also  the  Socinian  doctrine 
of  expiation. 

With  respect  to  the  person  of  Christ,  it  is  true  that,  in  his 
Catechism  (1561),  he  expresses  himself  almost  in  the  terms 

28  Ochino,  De  Purgatorio  Dialogus:  Zurich,  1556;  translated  out  of 
Italian  into  Latin  by  Taddeo  Duno ;  and  Dialogi  XXX.  (Dial.  vi.).  Cf. 
Alex.  Schweizer,  Die  Protcstantischeit  Centraldogmen :  Ziirich,  1854, 
vol.  i.  309.     See  Appendix  X. 


I 


CHAPTER   VII.  151 

of  the  Calvinistic  dogmatic  theology ;  and  yet  he  is  careful 
to  mark  the  subordination  of  Jesus  to  his  Father,  and  to 
insist  upon  his  functions  as  Priest  and  Revealer."^ 

It  is  above  all  in  his  T/u'rty  Dialogues,  dedicated  to 
the  Earl  of  Bedford  and  Prince  Mikolaj  Radziwill,  that  he 
furthest  advances  the  line  of  his  batteries  against  the  formulas 
of  Trinitarian  orthodoxy.  The  better  to  veil  his  attacks, 
he  puts  them  under  the  form  of  dialogue ;  but  the  theologians 
of  Zurich  were  not  thus  to  be  deceived,  and  they  scented 
the  author's  heresy  in  the  strength  of  the  arguments  placed 
in  the  mouth  of  his  x\ntitrinitarian  interlocutor.  This,  for 
example,  is  the  way  in  which,  in  the  nineteenth  dialogue, 
the  author  makes  the  Spirit  of  Doubt  to  speak :  "  Do  you 
believe  that  the  man  Jesus  Christ  is  the  Son  of  God?" 
Ochino  answers,  "Yes;  first  because,  as  man,  he  received 
his  existence  from  God;  secondly,  because  he  was  conceived 
in  a  different  manner  from  us;  thirdly,  because  he  participates 
in  the  attributes  of  God."  "  But,"  says  Doubt,  "  the  Scrip- 
tures speak  of  several  sons  of  God."  "  Christ,"  responds 
Ochino,  "  is  the  only  begotten  Son,  in  the  sense  that  he 
alone,  of  all  the  elect,  is  the  highest  Prophet,  Priest  and 
King ;  that  he  alone  was  conceived  of  the  Holy  Spirit ;  that 
to  him  alone  God  has  given  his  Spirit  without  measure."^*' 
Here  we  have  a  Christology  which  presents  singular  analogies 
with  that  of  Fausto  Sozzini. 

But  the  following  is  weightier  still.  Spiritus  (Doubt) 
asks,  "  How  is  it  possible  to  conceive  the  Trinity  of  hypos- 

23  //  Catechisnio,  overo  Institiitione  Christiana^  di  M.  Bernardino 
Ochino  da  Siena :  Basel,  1561,  8vo,  p.  159. 

30  See  Bernardini  Ochini  Senensis  Dialogi  XXX. :  Basel,  1563 ;  trans- 
lated into  Latin  by  Castellio  (Dialogue  xix.  De  Sanda  Trinitate).  See 
Appendix  X.  [Taken  with  what  follows,  the  passage  amounts  to  this, 
that  Ochino  holds,  with  the  common  Catholic  christology,  that  Christ  is 
entitled  to  the  appellation  "  only  begotten  Son,"  in  virtue  of  his  humanity 
as  well  as  of  his  divinity.] 


152         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

tases  in  the  Unity  of  the  Divine  Being?"  "Because," 
responds  the  author,  "  these  hypostases  correspond  with  the 
three  functions  of  the  Divine  Life,  paternity,  sonship  and 
spiration;  now  these  three  persons  are  equal  and  co-eternal." 
"  But,"  objects  Doubt,  "  the  idea  of  Sonship  excludes  that 
of  equality,  as  the  idea  of  proceeding  excludes  that  of  co- 
eternity.  Furthermore,  Jesus  has  said,  '  The  Father  is 
greater  than  I.'  Now  if  it  be  conceded  that  the  Son  is 
identical  with  the  Father,  it  follows  that  the  Father  is  greater, 
not  only  than  the  Son,  but  than  Himself,  which  is  absurd." 
To  this  objection  the  orthodox  interlocutor  finds  no  reply. 
He  contents  himself  with  saying  that  the  Trinity  is  a  subject 
above  our  capacity ;  and  that  it  is  better  to  adore  it  in 
silence,  without  overstepping  the  limitations  which  God  has 
imposed  on  His  revelation.  ^^ 

It  will  now  be  easy  for  us  to  verify  the  accuracy  of  the  re- 
mark of  Pere  Guichard  when  he  says  that  Bernardino  Ochino 
began  in  England  to  "preach  a  refined  Arianism,  which 
awakened  the  curiosity  of  lovers  of  novelty,"  and  that  several 
of  his  followers  were  prosecuted.^-  How,  in  fact,  could  so 
ardent  a  man,  whose  thought  was  like  a  steam-engine  at  high 
pressure,  and  displayed  itself  at  once  by  word,  through  the 
press,  and  in  act,  how  could  he  do  other  than  wake  up  the 
most  lethargic?  Ochino  became  the  first  agitator  of  theolo- 
gical thought,  which  had  been  slumbering  in  England  since 
Wiclif  and  Pecock ;  and  he  had  two  powerful  instruments  of 
action  at  his  command,  his  writings  and  his  disciples. 

Ochino  spent  six  years  in  England,  and,  according  to  the 

^^  Dialogue  xix.  Cf.  Qmrstiojies  Ministroriwi  Ecclesiarum  qua:  stinf 
apud  Rhaetos  (May,  1561),  quoted  above,  Chap.  V.  pp.  97,  98. 

^^  L.  A.  Guichard,  ut  sup.,  pt.  i.  chap,  xxviii.  p.  127.  Vaiillas,  in  his 
Histoire  des  Heresies,  book  xvii.  p.  66,  also  says  that,  during  his  sojourn 
in  London,  Ochino  secretly  promulgated  his  fancies  on  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity,  which  cost  him  the  displeasure  of  the  Duke  of  Somerset, 
Lord  Protector.      But  his  testimony  is  not  always  to  be  depended  upon. 


CHAPTER   VII.  153 

testimony  of  his  friends,  never  had  his  Hfe  been  more  happy 
and  better  employed  than  during  that  period.  "  Bernardino," 
writes  de  Enzina,  "  employs  his  whole  time  in  writing,  and 
this  too  with  a  force  and  rapidity,  as  he  tells  me,  beyond 
what  he  ever  did  before." ^^  It  was  in  London  that  he 
composed  in  Latin  that  curious  Tragcedie,  or  satire  in  dialogue 
against  the  Papacy,  which  was  translated  into  English  by 
"  Master  John  Ponet,  Doctor  of  divinitie,"  afterwards  Bishop 
of  Winchester.  The  printer,  John  Day,  also  published 
Certayne  Sermojis  of  Ochino,  translated  into  English ;  among 
the  rest  his  fourteen  sermons  on  Predestination,  which  went 
through  several  editions.^*  Ochino  was  intimate  with  all 
the  distinguished  men  of  England,  Sir  Richard  Morison,  the 
Earl  of  Bedford,  Sir  W.  Cecil  (Lord  Burleigh),  Cheke,  Sir 
Anthony  Cooke,  Jewel  and  Sampson.  He  was  soon  received 
at  court,  like  John  "k  Lasco.  It  was  doubtless  from  the  hand 
of  Ochino  that  the  pious  Edward  YI.  received  the  manuscript 
copy  of  the  Be7iefizio  di  Gesii  Crtsio,  on  which  he  has  left  his 
touching  epigraph ;  and  from  the  same  hand  he  accepted 
the  dedication  of  the  Tragmdiey^ 

At  the  restoration  of  Protestantism  under  Elizabeth,  press- 
ing overtures  were  made  to  Ochino  to  induce  him  to  resume 
his  Canterbury  prebend,  of  which  he  had  been  deprived 
through  contumacy.^^     He  was  held  in  such  esteem  by  the 

^^  Zurich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letter  173  (Dryander  to  BuUinger). 

^*  Mr.  Gordon  (see  Theol.  Rev,  Oct.  1876,  art.  Bernardino  Tomma- 
sini)  had  before  him  an  8vo  vokime,  without  date,  with  the  following 
title:  Sermons  of  Barnardine  Ochyne,  concerning  the  Predestination  and 
Election  of  God,  translated  by  A.  C.  This  translation  Mr.  Gordon  attri- 
butes to  Anne,  daughter  of  Sir  Anthony  Cooke. 

^*  A  Tragoedie  or  Dialoge  of  the  vnitiste  vsurped  J>ri77iacie  of  the  Bishop 
of  Rome,  and  of  all  the  iust  abolishing  of  the  same,  made  by  Master  Bar- 
nardine Ochine,  an  Italian,  ^  translated  out  of  Latine  into  Englishe  by 
Master  fohn  Ponet,  Doctor  of  divinitie,  &c. :  London,  1549. 

•'^  Ziirich  Letters,  I  ser.,  Letters  16  and  24  (J.  Jewel,  Bishop  of  Salis- 
bui-y,  to  Peter  Martyr). 


154         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

Virgin  Queen,  that  Thomas  Sampson  wrote  (6  January, 
1560)  to  Peter  Martyr:  "His  authority,  I  know,  has  very 
great  weight  with  the  queen.  Should  he  at  any  time  be 
disposed  to  write  to  her,  to  exhort  her  to  persevere  with  all 
diligence  in  the  cause  of  Christ,  I  can  most  cordially  testify, 
what  I  certainly  know  to  be  the  fact,  and  assert  most  con- 
fidently, that  she  is  indeed  a  child  of  God.  But  she  has  yet 
great  need  of  such  advisers  as  himself.  She  is  acquainted, 
as  you  know,  with  Italian,  and  also  well  skilled  in  Latin  and 
Greek.  If  anything  is  written  in  these  languages  either  by 
yourself  or  Master  Bernardine,  I  am  quite  of  opinion  that 
you  will  not  only  afford  much  gratification  to  her  Majesty, 
but  perform  a  most  useful  service  to  the  Church  of  En- 
gland." ^^  Ochino  was  very  ill  at  Ziirich  when  this  letter 
arrived,  and  we  do  not  know  whether  he  carried  out  Samp- 
son's wish.  But  in  the  following  year  he  dedicated  his 
Labyrinths  to  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  in  the  Preface  he  ex- 
presses himself  as  follows  : 

"  The  question  whether  or  not  man  has  a  free-will  is  one  of 
the  most  difficult,  because  both  the  affirmative  and  the  negative 
are  open  to  the  most  serious  objections.  Having  observed  that 
a  great  many  authors,  in  reflecting  on  these  questions,  have  only 
lost  themselves  in  the  most  inextricable  difficulties,  I  have  for  a 
long  time  sought  a  way  of  escape.  God,  at  length,  has  granted 
me  this  favour.  And,  as  I  very  well  remember  that  your  Majesty, 
when  I  was  in  England,  read  some  of  my  treatises  on  pre- 
destination, and  that,  when  you  consulted  me  on  this  subject, 
you  gave  me  many  proofs  of  the  extent  and  the  penetration  of 
your  understanding,  as  well  as  of  your  desire  to  sound  the 
mysteries  of  God,  I  have  concluded  that  you,  before  all  others, 
ought  to  gather  the  fruits  of  my  labour.  Such  are  the  reasons 
that  have  led  me  to  dedicate  this  work  to  you."^^ 

^^  Zurich  Letters,  I  ser.,  Letter  27  (Sampson  to  Peter  Martyr). 

'^  Labyrinthi,  Hoc  est  de  Libera  aiit  servo  Arbitrio,  de  divina  Prczno- 
tione,  Destinatione,  et  Libertate  Dispidatio.  Et  quonam  pacta  sit  ex  iis 
Labyrinthis  exeundum.     Basel,  1561,  8vo. 


CHAPTER   VII.  155 

This  royal  favour  was  sure  to  procure  hundreds  of  readers 
for  Ochino  in  the  ranks  of  the  aristocracy  and  the  clergy,  and 
it  was  among  these  that  his  first  disciples  were  formed.  Fore- 
most in  their  number  must  be  placed  his  translators ;  for 
to  translate  is  not  always  to  betray,  as  the  Italian  proverb 
{fradiittore,  traditore)  has  it;  it  is  often  to  enrich  one's 
country  with  treasures  of  foreign  literature,  as  we  acclimatise 
beautiful  exotics.  Moreover,  except  in  the  case  of  paid 
labour,  one  only  translates  what  one  admires,  and  the  work 
of  translation  still  further  increases  the  train  of  sympathy 
between  the  author  and  his  interpreter.  This  was  sure  to  be 
the  case  with  Dr.  John  Ponet,  the  translator  of  the  Tragcedie, 
and  that  sensible  young  gentlewoman  who  translated  the 
Sermons  of  Barnardine  Ochyjie,  concernmg  the  Predestinatmi 
and  Election  of  God,  and  piously  dedicated  them  to  her 
mother,  Lady  F.^^  This  young  gentlewoman  was  Anne 
Cooke,  who  became  the  second  wife  of  Sir  Nicholas  Bacon, 
and  the  mother  of  the  great  Bacon.  Through  this  channel 
the  critical  spirit  of  Ochino  was  sure  to  communicate  itself 
to  the  presumed  author  of  the  Christian  Paradoxes  {1645).*'' 

Still  more  markedly  than  these  interpreters,  did  two  men 
of  Latin  race,  one  a  Spaniard,  the  other  an  Italian,  become 
in  England  the  heirs  of  the  humanitarian  and  latitudinarian 
tendency  of  Ochino.     These  were  Corranus  and  Acontius. 

Antonio  de  Corro  (Corranus),  called  Bellerive,  born  at 
Seville  in  1527,  after  having  for  five  years  ministered  in  the 
churches  at  Saintonge,  had  been  excluded  from  pastoral 
functions  by  the  Synod  of  Loudun ;  and,  pursued  by  the 
hatred  of  the  Spanish  Catholics  to  Antwerp,  had  been  unable 


^^  T}ieol.Rev.Ozt.\%']b.  Cf.  Benrath,  Oc/zm^,  p.  208.  [Lady  F.  was 
the  translatress'  grandmother.  Sir  Anthony  Cooke  married  Anne,  daugh- 
ter of  Sir  William  Fitzwilliam.] 

**  [It  has  been  proved  by  Rev.  A.  B.  Grosart  that  the  real  author  of 
the  C/vistian  Paradoxes  was  Rev.  Herbert  Palmer.] 


156         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARTANISM. 

to  obtain  the  magistrates'  confirmation  of  the  call  he  had 
received  from  the  Walloon  Church  in  that  city. 

Failing  to  obtain  a  pulpit,  he  at  any  rate  made  use  of  the 
press  to  propound  his  ideas,  and  seized  the  occasion  of  the 
appearance  of  the  Confession  of  Faith  of  the  Lutherans  of 
Antwerp,  published  in  December,  1567,  by  Mattia  Flacio 
lUyrico,  to  write  a  letter  to  his  Lutheran  colleagues,  in 
which  he  exhorted  them  to  concord  and  moderation  in  the 
Eucharistic  controversy,  and  invoked  the  authority  of  John 
a  Lasco.  He  reached  England  then,  preceded  by  a  repu- 
tation for  latitudinarianism  as  regards  confessions  of  faith. 
He  at  once  announced  his  arrival  to  Archbishop  Parker, 
sending  him  two  pamphlets,  his  epistle,  afterwards  published 
in  English  (1570),  with  the  title,  A  Godly  Admonition  sent  to 
the  Pastor  of  the  Flemish  Church  in  Antwerp,  exhorting  them 
to  Concord  with  other  Minister's,  and  a  letter  published  in 
English  (1577),  with  the  title,  A  Supplication  to  the  Kijig  of 
Spain,  wherein  is  showed  the  Sum  of  Religio?i,  &c.  They 
were  originally  published  in  Latin  and  French,  and  Cor- 
ranus  told  Parker  he  thought  that  they  would  be  useful 
reading  for  his  daughters,  who  were  studying  the  French 
language.  Thanks  to  this  high  protection,  he  was  accepted 
as  the  second  minister  of  the  Spanish  Church  in  London, 
and  filled  that  charge  successfully  for  the  space  of  two  years, 
conciliating  the  favour  of  Sir  William  Cecil  and  the  Earl  of 
Leicester. 

But  in  his  second  year  of  office  (1570),  symptoms  of 
disagreement  appeared  between  Corranus  and  his  co-pres- 
byter Jerlito,  minister  of  the  Italian  Church.*^  And  when 
a  tract  by  Corranus  appeared  under  the  title.  Tableau  de 
r OEuvre de Dieu  (before  1568),  printed  at  Norwich,  and  dedi- 
cated to  the  most  noble  Lady  Stafford,  he  was  immediately 

*^  For  details  of  this  controversy,  see  Strype,  Life  of  Grindal,  pp. 
1S5 — 187,  217—222. 


CHAPTER   VII.  157 

denounced  in  the  presbytery  common  to  the  two  churches, 
ItaUan  and  Spanish,  as  tainted  with  heresy.  Very  soon 
Jean  Cousin,  the  minister  of  the  French  Church,  mingled  in 
the  fray,  taking  the  part  of  JerUto.'*-  Corranus,  on  his  side, 
defended  himself  tooth  and  nail ;  he  wrote  seven  letters, 
one  after  the  other,  to  Theodore  Beza,  who  referred  the 
whole  affair  to  Bishop  Grindal,  superintendent  of  the 
Strangers'  Church.  He,  after  an  inquiry,  suspended  Cor- 
ranus from  his  functions.  When  Corranus  appUed  for  the 
degree  of  Doctor  of  Divinity  at  the  University  of  Oxford, 
he  incurred  a  strong  opposition  on  the  part  of  his  fellow- 
clergymen  in  the  Strangers'  Church  in  London.  They 
forwarded  to  Grindal,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  Edwin 
Sandys,  then  Bishop  of  London,  a  list  of  138  heretical  theses 
extracted  from  the  lectures,  conversations  and  works  of 
Corranus,  setting  against  them  as  many  orthodox  theses.''^ 
However,  by  favour  of  his  powerful  friends,  the  Spanish  ex- 
pastor  was  appointed  reader  of  theology  in  Latin  at  the 
Temple  church  in  London  (1571 — 1575),  and  afterwards  at 
Oxford  (1575 — -1586).  He  was  Ce?isor  Theologicus  at  Christ 
Church,  Oxford  (1581 — ^1585),  and  prebendary  of  Harleston 
(1586 — 1591)  in  St.  Paul's,  London,  where  he  died,  30 
March,  1591. 

What,  then,  were  the  charges  of  heresy  on  which  Corranus 
was  incriminated?  The  first,  beyond  doubt,  was  his  not 
deferring  to  the  authority  of  a  confession  of  faith.  At  Ant- 
werp, the  Lutherans  had  confronted  him  with  their  modifica- 
tion of  the  Augsburg  Confession ;  and  now  in  London  the 
Calvinists  reproached  him  with  not  putting  himself  under 
the  sanction  of  Calvin  or  Theodore  Beza.  The  truth  is,  the 
author  of  the  Tableau  de  fCEuvre  de  Ditu  had  deemed  it 

*'  Ziirich  Letters,  2  ser.,  Letter  66  (Bishop  Grindal  to  Theodore  Beza 
and  others). 

*^  Christiaan  Sepp,  Polemische  en  Irenische  Theologie:  Leyden,  1881. 


158         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

suiificient  to  invoke  the  authority  of  the  Scriptures.  Let  us 
see,  then,  how  on  this  principle  he  treats  the  dogma  of  the 
persons  of  the  Trinity  : 

Thesis  IV.  "  Deus  est  unitas  et  unicus  existit ;  et  manat  ab 
eo  solo,  nee  tamen  de  alio,  quia  ea  decresceret  fieretque  minor. 
Ubi  sunt  duo,  fieri  potest  ut  inter  ea  oriatur  discordia." 

Thesis  V.  "  Hoc  unum,  Deus,  vult  unum,  estque  omnibus 
binis  contrarium " 

Thesis  X.  "  Omnium  in  eo  (Christo)  perfectissimum  fuit 
Integra  et  omnibus  numeris  absoluta  unitio  voluntatis,  quae  sibi 
non  arrogavit  a  quo  erat  ipse,  unum  alioqui  decessisset  uni." 

Thesis  XXV.  "  ^ternus  Deus,  Jesum  ex  hoc  mundo  educens, 
misit  Spiritum  Suum,  habitum,  flatum,  vim,  potentiam  et  ener- 
giam  in  corda  filiorum  suorum  regeneratorum."  ** 

These  articles  bear  evident  signs  of  an  extra- trinitari an 
bias  exactly  similar  to  Ochino's  Thirty  Dialogues  and  Florio's 
famous  questions  to  the  Ziirich  ministers.  But  the  sources 
from  which  all  these  imbibed  their  opinions  were  the  Anno- 
tations on  the  New  Testament  of  Erasmus,  and  the  Biblical 
works  of  Castellio,  Ochino's  translator  and  friend.  Here  is 
the  proof  of  it : — Corranus,  writes  William  Barlow,  son  of 

^*  ["4.  God  is  a  unity,  and  exists  as  unique  ;  and  [this  unity]  flows  from 
him  alone,  and  not  from  any  other,  because  [if  so]  it  would  diminish  and 
become  less.  Where  there  ai^e  two  things,  it  may  happen  that  discord 
may  arise  between  them. — 5-  This  one  [word]  God  means  one  thing,  and 
is  opposed  to  all  doubles. — 10.  In  Christ  the  most  perfect  thing  of  all 
was  his  entire  and  absolute  union  of  will,  which  [will]  did  not  arrogate 
to  itself  that  from  which  he  himself  was,  the  one  would  otherwise  have 
been  wanting  to  the  one.- — 25.  The  everlasting  God,  when  withdrawing 
Jesus  from  this  world,  sent  into  the  hearts  of  His  regenerate  children  His 
own  Spirit,  a  breath,  blast,  force,  potency  and  energy."]  See  Theses 
excerptcz  ex  ledionibus,  colloquiis,  et  maxime  e  scriptis  D.  Corrani,  in 
Dr.  Christiaan  Sepp's  learned  monogi^aph,  Polemische  eti  Irenische  Theo- 
logie,  Leyden,  1881,  pp.  30  ff.  [In  his  Aj-ticles  of  Faith  (1574),  Corranus 
explicitly  sets  forth  the  Trinity  and  the  Incarnation;  in  1576  he  sub- 
scribed the  Thirty-nine  Articles,  as  a  condition  of  obtaining  the  degree 
of  D.D.  at  Oxford.] 


CHAPTER   VII.  159 

the  Bishop  of  that  name,  in  a  letter  to  Josiah  Simler,  "  is  a 
great  admirer  of  Castalio,  of  whose  version  of  the  Bible  he 
declares  this  opinion,  that  he  is  a  very  bad  translator,  for  he 
has  given  anything  rather  than  a  literal  rendering;  but  if 
you  speak  about  a  paraphrase,  then,  says  he,  Castalio  excels 
all  other  interpreters  by  many  leagues.  I  know  also,"  adds 
Barlow,  "  that  he  made  earnest  enquiry  from  a  person  of 
my  acquaintance  whether  or  not  he  had  some  dialogues  on 
the  Trinity,  by  an  anonymous  individual,  printed  at  Basel, 
but  Castalio,  he  said,  is  thought  to  have  been  the  author  of 
them ;  and  he  added  that  he  was  very  anxious  to  procure 
them.'"*^ 

Giacomo  Contio  (Acontius)  is  sure  not  to  have  had  so 
much  trouble  in  procuring  this  forbidden  book,  for  an  ex- 
pression in  a  letter  from  Bishop  Jewel  to  Peter  Martyr 
reveals  to  us  the  existence  of  friendly  relations  between 
him  and  Ochino.  "  I  would  not,"  says  Jewel,  "  that  Master 
Bernardine  should  suppose  that  I  have  forgotten  him.  My 
influence  and  exertions  have  not  been  wanting  .  .  .  The  five 
Italian  crowns  which  I  received  from  Master  Barthol.  Com- 
pagni  in  his  name,  I  handed  over  to  Acontius.  We  are 
now  exerting  ourselves  about  his  canonry,  and  there  is  a 
good  prospect  of  obtaining  it."^^ 

It  may  be  recollected  that  Acontius  was  mixed  up  in  the 
Adriaans  van  Hamstede  controversy,  and  excommunicated 
on  that  ground  by  Bishop  Grindal.  In  the  following  chapter 
we  shall  see  the  decisive  part  he  played  in  the  English  Uni- 

*^  Ziirich  Letters,  2  ser.,  Letters  loi  (Corranus  to  Bullinger)  and  105 
(W.  Barlow  to  J.  Simler).  [Barlow's  letter,  above  quoted,  bears  date 
25  Jan.  1575.  The  Thirty  Dialogues  of  Ochino  were  not  anonymous, 
and  had  made  a  noise  over  Europe  eleven  years  before.  It  may  well  be 
that  de  Corro  had  not  seen  them ;  but  it  is  strange  that  he  should  be 
ignorant  of  their  authorship,  if  he  had  heard  of  them  at  all.  Possibly 
the  reference  is  to  some  other  book.] 

"^  Ziirich  Letters,  I  ser.,  Letters  16  and  24.    . 


l6o         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

tarian  movement.     We  have  now  to  sum  up  the  account  of 
Ochino's  influence  exerted  in  this  direction. 

The  leading  idea  of  Ochino's  theology  is  that  God  is  Love. 
His  grace  does  all ;  man  has  but  to  surrender  himself  with 
confidence  to  the  Spirit  of  God,  which  acts  and  speaks  in 
him.  This  inner  voice  of  the  Spirit  (Dei  sermo  interior)  is 
superior  even  to  the  written  word  of  the  gospel.  Starting 
from  this  position,  and  pursuing  the  method  of  Duns  Scotus, 
Ochino  maintains  that  the  work  of  Christ  has  an  infinite 
value  for  the  expiation  of  our  sins,  not  in  itself,  but  because 
God  has  endowed  it  with  this  virtue  and  accepted  it  in  this 
light.  Lastly,  in  his  Thirty  Dialogues,  Ochino  betrays  the 
secret  doubts  in  his  own  soul  which  were  shaking  faith  in 
the  received  doctrines  of  the  Trinity  and  the  Deity  of  Jesus 
Christ ;  and  concludes  that  the  best  thing  to  do  is  to 
prostrate  one's  self  in  silence  before  this  mystery,  and  not 
seek  on  this  subject  to  be  wiser  than  the  Scripture.  On  the 
whole,  he  did  not  directly  attack  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity, 
and  yet  no  one  after  Servetus  dealt  stouter  blows  against  that 
doctrine.  By  his  Scotist  theory  of  redemption,  he  opened 
the  way  for  the  Socinian  Christology;  and  through  his  dis- 
ciples, Acontius  and  Corranus,  he  bequeathed  to  English 
Unitarianism  these  two  great  ideas,  the  Divine  Love  which 
respects  human  liberty,  even  in  a  rebellious  child,  and  the 
Universal  Church,  towering  above  all  the  particular  churches, 
each  with  its  own  ambition  of  infallibility. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

Acontius,  his  philosophical  and  religious  ideas,  and  his  influence  on 
English  theology. 

"Ab  omni  autem  Christiano  congressu 
prorsus  abesse  vincendi  studium  oportet ; 
unus  enim  sit  scopus,  ut  vincat  Veritas." 
Siratagemata,  ii. 

Who,  then,  was  this  ItaHan  whom  we  have  twice  noticed 
in  connection  with  the  Ecdesia  Peregrino7'um ;  first  as  a 
friend  of  "Master  Bernardine"  and  Bishop  Jewel  (1559), 
and  two  years  afterwards  (1561)  as  implicated  in  the  con- 
troversy about  Adriaans  van  Hamstede,  one  of  the  Flemish 
pastors  ?  M'Crie  places  him  at  the  head  of  the  list  of  notables 
of  the  Italian  Church  in  London,  together  with  Giambattista 
Castiglione,  one  of  Queen  EUzabeth's  gentlemen  of  the  Privy 
Chamber;  and  we  know  from  another  source  that  he  received 
a  pension  from  that  princess  in  his  quality  of  military 
engineer.^  To  him,  in  fact,  is  generally  attributed  one  of 
the  first  treatises  on  fortifications,  which  appeared  at  Geneva 
under  the  title  A/s  Muniendonim  Oppidorum  (1585).  As, 
moreover,  he  published  a  book  entitled  Siratagemata  Satance, 
it  looks  at  first  as  though  we  had  to  do  with  a  soldier  or  a 
diplomatist.  But  the  illusion  is  of  no  long  duration.  In 
reading  his  works,  taking  care  not  to  neglect  the  prefaces, 
we  are  soon  convinced  that  we  are  in  the  presence  of  a  man 

^  M'Crie,  Reformatio7i  in  Spain,  p.  366.  The  real  name  of  Acontius, 
as  given  in  Francesco  Betti's  letter  to  the  Marquis  of  Pescaro,  and  in 
Pietro  Bizarri's  History  of  Huns^ary,  was  Giacomo  Contio. 

M 


102         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

of  eminence  in  almost  every  department ;  at  once  engineer 
and  theologian,  philosopher  and  lawyer,  mathematician  and 
poet.  We  shall  briefly  sketch  his  biography,  from  the 
materials  supplied  by  the  prefaces  to  his  books,  which  are 
the  most  important  documents,  and  by  the  clear  and  accurate 
article  which  M.  Charles  Waddington  has  devoted  to  him 
in  the  second  edition  of  the  Didionnaire  des  Sciences  Philo- 
sophiques. 

A  dark  veil  conceals  the  dates  of  his  birth  and  of  his  death. 
All  we  know  is,  that  he  was  born  at  Trienta  (Trent)  and  died 
in  London.  It  may  be  concluded  from  his  letter  to  Francesco 
Betti  (1558)  that  he  was  his  contemporary;  and,  from  his 
letter  to  Johann  Wolff  (20  November,  1562),  that  by  this 
last  date  he  had  passed  the  meridian  of  his  life,  that  is  to 
say,  his  fortieth  year.'^  He  had  spent  long  years  in  studying 
the  works  of  Bartolo  and  Baldo  (de  Ubaldis),  jurisconsults 
who  were  then  authorities  in  the  law  schools,  but  had  little 
esteem  for  "men  of  that  sort"  {ejus  faririce),  as  he  calls 
them.^  He  seems  to  have  had  more  taste  for  Aristotle, 
Plato  and  Archimedes,  for  we  find  in  his  works  numerous 
references  to  their  principles.  Taken  into  the  service  of 
the  Marquis  of  Pescaro,^  one  of  the  members  of  that 
d'Avalos  family  which  has  given  such  great  generals  to 
Spain,  he  there  doubtless  learned  the  military  art,  especially 
that  branch  of  it  which  relates  to  sieges,  and  spent  several 
years  at  the  court  of  the  Spanish  viceroy  at  Milan.  Here 
he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Francesco  Betti,  a  Roman 

^  Compare  also  these  words  from  lib.  vii.  p.  311  (edition  of  1610),  of 
the  Stratageviata :  ^^  Quid  nostra  accidit  cetate?  Sunt  Jam  anni  plus 
minus  quadraginta  septem,  quum  ccepit  Lutherus  contra  Romanam  eccle- 
siam  docere."  From  these  various  indications  we  draw  the  inference  that 
Giacomo  Contio  was  born  at  Trent  somewhere  about  the  year  1520. 

^  Letter  to  J.  Wolff,  in  the  1610  edition  of  the  Stratagemaia  [also  in 
the  1565  duodecimo  and  the  1653  edition],  dated  London,  20  Nov.  1562. 

*  [He  was  the  husband  of  Vittoria  Colonna.] 


CHAPTER   VIII.  163 

knight,  son  of  one  of  the  Marquis's  stewards.  To  use  his 
own  words,  "  The  laborious  and  anxious  employments  in 
which  we  have  long  been  engaged  together,  the  similarity 
of  our  studies  and  inclinations,  and,  what  is  above  all,  our 
identity  of  sentiment  in  religion,"  gave  rise  to  "  such  an  inti- 
mate friendship"  between  them,  that,  when  residence  in  Italy 
became  intolerable  for  Protestants,  even  secret  ones,  they 
together  made  up  their  minds  to  go  into  exile.^ 

Betti  was  the  first  to  set  out,  and  went  to  Basel.  Two 
months  afterwards  (in  the  middle  of  October,  1557),  he  was 
rejoined  by  Acontius,  and  they  both  sought  refuge  at  Zurich, 
where  they  were  received  with  open  arms  in  Ochino's  house. 

The  Italian  Church  at  Ziirich  was  then  at  the  height  of 
its  prosperity.  Peter  Martyr,  who  had  succeeded  Pellican 
in  the  chair  of  Hebrew,  and  who  was  received  by  the 
Locarnese  community  "  as  a  second  father,"  was  the  means 
of  drawing  them  into  close  relations  with  the  University.** 
Acontius,  with  his  ardour  for  work  and  his  modest  and 
conciliatory  character,  speedily  made  friends  with  Josias 
Simler,  Johann  Frisius  (Friese),  and  above  all  Johann  Wolff 
who  had  been  put  into  the  place  of  Bibliander  when  the 
latter  was  pensioned  off  {emeritus)  on  the  ground  of  his 
anti-Calvinistic  opinions  on  predestination.'^  On  the  other 
hand,  he  also  became  acquainted  with  Lelio  Sozini,  the 
young  magician  who  had  succeeded  in  disarming  Calvin 
himself.^     As  for  Betti,  who  was  perhaps  a  younger  man,  he 

^  See  the  letter  to  Francesco  Betti,  serving  as  preface  to  the  Methodus 
sive  recta  investigaiidaru?n  tradendariimque  Artiuni  ac  Scientiarum  ratio: 
Basel,  1558  (title  as  reprinted,  1658). 

^  Benrath,  Ochino,  pp.  271  ff. 

^  This  T-  Wolff  was  pastor  of  the  Fraumiinster  at  Zurich,  and  was  a 
distinguished  Hebraist  and  theologian ;  we  meet  him  again  in  corre- 
spondence with  Lelio  Sozini,  and  with  the  English  exiles. 

*  [This  seems  barely  possible;  Lelio  Sozini  left  Ziirich  4  Nov.  1557, 
and  did  not  return  till  August,  1559.     See  below,  p.  174.] 

M  2 


1 64         SOURCES   OF    ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

attached  himself  more  to  Fausto,  the  nephew  of  LeUo.-'  At 
this  period  Acontius  gave  proof  at  once  of  great  maturity 
of  intellect  and  remarkable  originality  by  publishing  his 
essay  on  Method^  dedicated  to  Francesco  Betti.  The  printing 
of  this  book  at  Basel,  by  Peter  Perna,  took  him  often  to 
that  city,  where  he  was  certainly  introduced  to  Curione,  to 
Silvestro  Telio,  and  to  the  elite  of  the  Italian  society. 

From  Basel  Acontius  proceeded  to  Strassburg,  where  he 
met  with  a  knot  of  Italian  Protestants,  Zanchi,  Odone, 
Massario  and  others,  and  also  with  a  group  of  English  exiles, 
Grindal,  Jewel,  Sampson,  &c.^*' 

When  these  latter  returned  home  on  the  accession  of 
Elizabeth,  Acontius  accompanied  them,  or  at  any  rate  he 
followed  them  very  shortly,  for  we  have  discovered  his  pre- 
sence in  London  in  November,  1559.^^ 

He  must  have  been  furnished  with  letters  of  recom- 
mendation from  Ochino  to  powerful  personages,  for  he  was 
soon  presented  to  the  Queen,  and  obtained  from  her  a 
pension  as  engineer. 

Acontius  had  not  merely  material,  but  also  religious  wants. 
He  assiduously  frequented  the  Italian  services,  and  took 
interest  in  all  that  passed  in  the  Strangers'  Church.  We 
have  seen  him  advocating,  in  the  van  Hamstede  controversy, 
the  cause  of  tolerance  towards  the  Anabaptists,  and  excom- 
municated on  this  account  by  Bishop  Grindal.^-  This  did 
not  prevent  Queen  Elizabeth,  who  took  a  broader  view  of 
things,  from  continuing  her  favour  to  Acontius,  or  from 
accepting  the  dedication  of  his  Stratagemata  Satance.  Acon- 
tius was  a  man  as  modest  as  he  was  industrious,  as  pious  as 

^  [Not  at  Zurich ;  they  were  warm  friends  already,  but  F.  Sozzini  had 
not  yet  left  Italy.     They  renewed  their  intercourse  at  Basel  in  1575.] 
^^  M'Crie,  Reformation  in  Italy,  pp.  448  ff. 
"  Ziirich  Letters,  i  ser.,  Letters  16  and  24. 
12  Chap.  VI.  p.  135. 


CHAPTER   VIII.  165 

he  was  learned.  He  enjoyed  the  general  esteem  of  the 
Italian  Church,  and  kept  up  a  correspondence  with  the 
learned  men  of  Europe,  including  the  French  philosopher, 
Ramus. '^ 

He  had  finished  several  poems  and  treatises — one,  for 
example,  on  Dialectics — when  he  was  interrupted  without 
being  surprised  by  death  (about  1570).  He  bequeathed  his 
papers — all  his  fortune — to  his  friend  Giovanni  Battista 
Castiglione,  gentleman-in-waiting  to  her  Majesty,  who,  shortly 
afterwards,  published  his  Essortazione  al  timer  di  Dio, 
together  with  some  poetical  pieces  (doubtless  hymns),  as  a 
kind  of  religious  bequest,  and  an  irrefragable  testimony  to 
his  evangelical  piety.  ^^  Among  his  admirers,  especially  the 
Arminians,  Acontius  left  the  reputation  of  "  a  divine  light 
of  prudence  and  moderation  ;"  and  even  his  opponents, 
applying  to  him  a  judgment  passed  on  Origen,  said  of  his 
works,  "  Ubi  bene,  nemo  melius ;  ubi  male^  nemo  pejiis."^'^ 
There  were  two  individualities  in  Acontius,  the  philosopher 
and  the  theologian  :  but  differing  in  this  respect  from  Pom- 
ponazzi,  from  Bacon,  and  even  from  Descartes,  who  placed 
the  things  of  Reason  and  of  Faith  in  two  distinct  spheres, 
one  w^here  everything  is  submitted  to  the  free  investigations 
of  the  human  mind,  the  other,  where  there  is  nothing  for  it 


^'^  .See  letter  from  Ramus  to  Acontius,  15  Dec.  1565.  Professor  C. 
Waddington  has  proved  that  he  could  not  have  been  dead  in  1566,  as 
most  of  the  biographers  say,  since  Ramus  addresses  him  in  1567,  at 
p.  59  of  his  Proxmium  Mathematicuni.  [There  seems  no  real  proof 
that  Ramus  knew  him.  Jo.  Ja.  Grasser,  who  visited  Oxford  and  London 
in  1606,  was  told  that  Acontius  died  shortly  after  the  issue  of  the  Strata- 
gt/nata  in  1565.  If  so,  the  letter  of  Ramus  never  reached  him,  and  he 
may  not  have  heard  of  his  death ;  it  is  plain  from  his  letter  to  Dee  that 
his  knowledge  of  English  affairs  was  of  the  slightest.] 

1*  See  article  on  Acontius  in  Birch  and  Lockman's  English  translation 
of  Bayle's  Dictionary:  London,  1734. 

^5  Hallam,  History  of  LiL-ratun;  vol.  iii.  75.  Cf.  Episcopii  Opera, 
vol.  i.  301  (1665  edition). 


l66         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

but  to  bow  before  the  dogmata  proclaimed  by  the  Church — 
Acontius  never  separated  what  God  has  joined ;  he  made 
use  of  one  and  the  same  method,  namely,  the  analytic,  for 
arriving  at  the  solution  both  of  scientific  and  of  ecclesiastical 
problems.  If  we  add  that  this  method  was  novel  in  his 
time,  that  it  preceded  Bacon's  Novum  Orgatw?i  by  sixt}- 
years,  and  the  Method  of  Descartes  by  seventy-five,  the 
reader  will  form  his  own  judgment  of  the  profound  intuition 
of  our  Italian  Protestant. 

The  philosophical  ideas  of  Acontius  were  propounded  in 
three  works  :  ( i )  De  Methodo,  hoc  est  de  Recta  Investiganda- 
rtim  Tradendarumque  Scientiarum  Ratione  (Basel,  1558);  (2) 
Epistola  de  Ratione  Edendorum  Ltbromm,  addressed  to  J- 
Wolff  (first  printed,  1610);  (3)  a  treatise,  Be  Dialectica,  which 
remained  unfinished  in  manuscript,  and  was  neverpublished.^'' 

By  method,  Acontius  means  the  right  way  of  studying 
and  teaching  the  sciences  ;  and  on  this  ground  it  forms  a 
part  of  logic.  Now,  the  first  condition  of  arriving  at  the 
knowledge  of  truth  is  the  possession  of  a  right  intelligence, 
that  is  to  say,  the  faculty  of  discerning  the  true  from  the 
false. 

Here  Acontius  is  not  an  optimist  like  Descartes;  he  does 
not  admit  that  "  good  sense  is  the  most  generally  distributed 
possession  in  the  world ;"  and  he  recommends  us  to  make  sure 
of  the  rightness  of  our  judgment,  by  comparing  our  spon- 
taneous opinions  with  the  judgment  of  the  wisest  men 
(siunmonofi  hominmu).  As  regards  the  origin  of  his  method, 
he,  like  Descartes,  confesses  that  he  has  borrowed  it  from 
the  mathematicians,  who,  by  their  rigorous  deductions,  attain 
certain  and  incontestable  results.  He  would  have  us,  above 
everything,  keep  a  firm  hold  of  a  small  number  of  funda- 
mental points,  and  define  things  in  clear  terms,  exact  and 
concise,  in  order  that  they  may  be  precisely  distinguished 

'"  Letter  to  J.  Wolff  (printed  at  the  end  of  the  Strafagevmta.) 


CHAPTER   VIII.  167 

from  everything  else  :  Pauca  conafe,  sed  ut  perfictas.  Ad 
nimis  midta,  si  sapis,  animiim  71071  adjicies.  Here  we  have, 
if  not  the  formula,  at  any  rate  the  spirit,  of  the  first  rule  of 
the  Method oi  Descartes.^''  Acontius  does  not  trouble  himself 
with  the  vast  multitude  of  philosophical  axioms,  or  of  theo- 
logical dogmata ;  he  will  admit  as  true  only  that  small 
number  of  verities  which  shall  appear  to  him  to  be  in  con- 
formity with  reason  and  Scripture. 

After  having  laid  this  foundation,  he  distinguishes  between 
the  two  branches  of  method,  that  which  relates  to  the  search 
for  truth,  and  that  which  consists  in  propounding  truth  ; 
and  he  gives,  at  the  outset,  the  rules  which  are  common 
to  both.  According  to  Acontius,  these  rules  are:  (i)  To 
investigate,  in  the  first  place,  the  more  familiar  things,  in 
order  to  pass  from  the  better  known  to  the  less  known 
(compare  Descartes'  third  rule).  ^^  (2)  To  begin  with 
singulars,  or  things  less  common,  in  order  to  advance  from 
them  to  things  more  universal  (for  example,  from  the  indi- 
vidual to  the  species,  from  the  species  to  the  genus),  and 
thus  to  mount  from  effects  to  causes  in  a  nearer  and  nearer 
approach. ^^  (3)  Once  having  learned  the  genus  to  which  a 
thing  belongs,  to  proceed  by  dividing  everything  into  its 
parts,  that  is  to  say,  genus  into  its  several  species,  species 
into  its  families  (compare  Descartes'  second  rule).^'*  (4)  To 
observe  such  an  order  in  these  divisions  and  sub-divisions, 
that  no  one  of  the  parts  constitutes  more  than  half  the 

^'  See  Descartes,  Discoiirs  de  la  Methode,  edit.  Vapereau,  p.  19.  "Au 
lieu  de  ce  grand  nombre  de  preceptes  dont  la  logique  est  composee,  je 
crus  que  j'aurais  assez  des  quatre  suivants,  pourvu  que  je  prisse  la  ferme 
resolution  de  ne  manquer  pas  une  seule  fois  de  les  observer."  ["In 
place  of  the  large  number  of  rules  of  which  logic  is  made  up,  I  think  I 
should  do  very  well  with  the  four  following,  provided  I  took  a  firm 
resolve  never  once  to  neglect  observing  them."]  Cf.  Letter  to  Wolff", 
p.  409. 

^*  De  Metkodo,  p.  40,  ed.  Basel,  1559. 

^»  Ibid.  pp.  48,  49.  2»  Ibid.  pp.  50—56. 


l68         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

whole ;  and  that  no  part  is  omitted  (compare  Descartes' 
fourth  rule).-^ 

Comparing  these  precepts  with  the  four  rules  of  Descartes 
(1637),  we  are  struck  with  the  analogy,  not  only  of  ideas, 
but  even  of  expressions ;  and  knowing,  as  we  do,  that  the 
X.x&'sAviQ.  De  Methodo  of  Acontius  (1558)  was  reprinted  several 
times  in  Switzerland  and  in  Holland,  we  cannot  discard  the 
idea  that  Descartes  had  some  knowledge  of  the  essay  of 
his  precursor.  Moreover,  this  resemblance  has  not  escaped 
the  notice  of  Descartes'  disciples.  Hulner,  a  learned  Dutch 
Cartesian,  wrote  to  Pere  Mersenne  (19  August,  1641)  on  the 
occasion  of  the  publication  of  Descartes'  Meditations,  that 
"  he  approved  the  preference  given  by  the  author  to  the 
analytic  method  over  the  synthetic ;  that  up  to  that  time  he 
had  met  with  nothing  similar,  except  in  the  little  book  on 
Method  by  Acontius,  who,  in  addition  to  that  excellent  essay, 
had  also  given  a  fine  example  of  the  analytic  method  in  his 
Stratagemata  Satance,  a  work  worthy  to  be  read  by  all  lovers 
of  peace  in  the  Church."^^ 

This  leads  us  to  the  consideration  of  Acontius  as  a  theo- 
logian, the  sequel  to  our  examination  of  him  as  a  philosopher. 
What  strikes  us  above  everything  is  the  religious  character 
of  this  Italian,  who  had  sacrificed  a  considerable  position  in 
his  own  country  in  order  to  obey  his  conscience.  He  paints 
his  own  picture,  when,  in  his  letter  to  Wolff,  he  says  that  we 
must  write,  not  for  vain  renown,  but  for  the  public  utility 
and  for  the  glory  of  God ;  and  that  with  the  help  of  God, 
sought  in  prayer,  all  things  may  be  attempted.  ^^ 

Unhappily,  the  work  in  which  Acontius  revealed  the 
innermost  sentiments  of  his  piety,  his  Essortaziojie  al  timor 
di  Dio,  has  not  come  down  to  us.     We  can  judge  of  its 

^1  De  Methodo,  p.  99. 

22  A.  Baillet,  Vic  de  Descartes :  Paris,  1691,  vol.  ii.  138. 

'^^  Letter  to  Wolff,  p.  407. 


CHAPTER   VIII.  169 

spirit  only  from  his  Stratageinata  Satancc,  and  a  letter  which 
has  lost  its  address,  designed  to  refute  certain  objections 
which  a  friend  (doubdess  Francesco  Betti)  had  forwarded  to 
him  concerning  that  work.''^  The  Siratagemata  is  a  kind  of 
eirenicon,  dealing  with  the  variations  of  doctrine  and  morals 
in  the  Christian  Church,  and  the  means  of  remedying  them. 

The  form  which  Acontius  gives  to  his  meditations  is  very 
original  and  poetic.  Like  the  author  of  the  Apocalypse,  he 
represents  the  world  as  the  scene  of  the  conflict  between 
the  kingdom  of  light,  ruled  by  Christ,  and  the  kingdom  of 
darkness,  governed  by  Satan.  Just  as  the  aim  of  Satan  is 
man's  death,  so  the  aim  and  end  of  Christian  doctrine  is 
eternal  life.'^^ 

This  first  principle,  once  settled,  serves  him  as  a  criterion 
to  distinguish  sterile  controversies  from  profitable  questions  : 
all  that  avails  to  attain  this  end  is  profitable  to  be  known  ; 
whatever  does  not,  is  injurious  and  to  be  avoided.  What 
we  have  to  seek,  in  profitable  discussions,  is  not  the  vain 
delight  of  a  personal  success,  but  solely  the  triumph  of 
tfuth.2«3 

It  is  on  the  strength  of  this  same  principle  (drawn  from 
St.  John  xvii.  3)  that  Acontius  discriminates  between  the 
articles  of  faith  which  are  necessary  to  salvation,  and  those 
which  may  be  abandoned  to  controversy  without  risking  the 
Church's  weal.-' 

This  sorting  out  of  essential  truths  leads  the  author  to 
examine  the  question  of  Confessions  of  Faith.  Acontius  is 
much  struck  with  the  reproach,  which  the  Catholics  cast 

^*  This  letter,  whose  heading  has  been  mutilated  by  time,  was  found 
and  published  for  the  first  time  by  Thomas  Crenius,  in  his  Aniniadver- 
siones  Philologicce  et  Historicce,  Leyden,  1697,  3  vols.  8vo,  vol.  i.  part  ii. 
pp.  30—131. 

-^  Cf.  the  argument  of  Milton's  Paradis£  Lost. 

28  Stratagemata,  book  i.  pp.  38 — 40.  -''  Ibid,  book  iii,  p.  108. 


I/O         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

against  Protestants,  of  having  almost  as  many  confessions  as 
they  have  cities  or  particular  sects ;  and  he  avows  that  the 
tendency  of  these  formularies  is  to  place  the  authority  of 
human  words  above  that  of  the  Word  of  God.  Nothing,  in 
his  opinion,  would  be  of  greater  service  to  the  Reformed 
churches,  than  to  abolish  all  these  confessions,  with  a  view  to 
replace  them  by  a  single  creed.-^  He  asks  himself  whether 
the  so-called  Apostles'  Creed  would  attain  this  end,  by  its 
simplicity  and  its  conciseness ;  but,  having  shown  that  on 
the  cardinal  question  of  justification  its  language  is  inade- 
quate, and  that  it  makes  no  mention  of  Baptism  or  of  the 
Lord's  Supper,  he  expresses  the  wish  that  pious  men  may 
compose  a  Confession  of  Faith  which  may  satisfy  all  the 
churches.  For  himself,  he  is  too  modest  to  put  forward  a 
model, -^  but  we  gather  from  his  book  and  from  his  letters 
that  he  only  admitted  as  indispensable  the  four  or  five 
points  following:  i.  God  the  Father  is  the  only  true  God. 
2.  Jesus  Christ  is  truly  the  Son  of  God,  and  the  only 
Mediator.  3.  Salvation  is  obtained  of  free  grace  through 
faith.  4  and  5.  Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper  are  thp 
necessary  sacraments,  for  admission  into  the  Church,  and 
the  reception  of  eternal  life. 

As  regards  the  other  dogmata,  which,  on  his  principle,  it 
is  not  necessary  to  know,   Acontius  does  not  enumerate 

-^  Stratag.  book  vii.  pp.  331,  332.     See  Appendix  XII. 

^^  The  editor  of  the  third  edition  of  the  Stratagetnata,  Johann  Jakob 
Grasser,  of  Basel,  was  less  modest,  and  has  set  forth,  as  coming  from 
Acontius,  a  logical  series  of  essential  truths,  as  well  as  a  Confession  of 
Faith,  in  longer  and  shorter  alternative  forms.  Comparing  the  1610 
edition  with  the  two  editions  of  1565,  the  only  ones  published  during  the 
author's  lifetime,  it  is  probable  that  the  entire  contents  of  pp.  109 — 132, 
and  334 — 344,  are  interpolations.  [If  this  were  so,  the  enumeration  of 
the  five  necessary  points  could  no  longer  be  attributed  to  Acontius,  for  it 
belongs  to  the  second  of  these  passages.  But  the  truth  is  that  both 
these  sections  appear  in  the  duodecimo  of  1565,  and  also  in  the  French 
version  of  1565,  Le  Ruzes  de  Safan.] 


CHAPTER   VIII.  171 

tliem  ;  but  in  his  last  letter  to  Betti  he  mentions  that  of  the 
Trinity  as  having  given  rise  to  irritating  controversies,  and 
as  having  led  Sabellius  to  slight  one  of  the  fundamental 
truths  of  Christianity.  "  One  thing  only  is  required  of  us," 
he  says,  "  namely,  that  we  believe  in  Christ  as  the  Son  of 
God ;  that  is  to  say,  not  that,  in  thinking  or  speaking  about 
him,  we  make  use  of  this  term,  but  that  we  admit  the  notion 
which  it  contains.  Now,  the  notion  of  a  Son  can  only  apply 
to  one  who  has  really  a  Father,  different  from  himself. 
Sabellius,  therefore,  in  identifying  the  Son  with  the  Father, 
destroys  the  notion  that  Jesus  is  the  true  Son  of  God  ;  and 
so  puts  himself  outside  the  beliefs  essential  to  salvation." -^'^ 

If  we  compare  this  declaration  with  the  language  of  Strype, 
who,  in  his  Life  of  Gn'tidal,  relates  that  Acontius  was  ex- 
communicated, along  with  van  Hamstede,  by  the  Bishop  of 
London,  for  having  denied  that  Christ's  taking  flesh  of  the 
Virgin  Mary  was  a  fundamental  article  of  faith  \^^  if,  espe- 
cially, we  compare  it  with  the  letter  which  he  wrote  (1562) 
to  Bishop  Grindal,  claiming  to  be  again  allowed  to  com- 
municate in  the  French  Church,  we  shall  infer  from  tliis 
comparison  that  our  engineer  was  a  Unitarian  of  the  first 
rank.  Van  Hamstede  retracted  a  year  afterwards  ;  Acontius 
maintained  his  affirmation  of  the  five  points,  conformable 
to  Scripture  and  alone  necessary  for  salvation  ;  and,  more 
fortunate  than  Servetus  and  Ochino  in  his  opposition  to  the 
Trinity,  he  died  in  favour  with  the  Queen,  and  in  the  faith 
of  the  Son  of  the  only  God. 

Acontius  did  not  wholly  die  ;  and  it  is  not  without  mean- 
ing that  Francis  Cheynell,  the  ardent  defender  of  the  Trinity, 
attests  that  in  16 13  he  still  lived.     For  his  mind  and  his 

^^  Crenius,  Animadversiones,  ut  sup.  (Letter,  without  address,  of 
7  June,  1566).     [Also,  almost  verbatim,  in  the  Stratagemata,  bk.  iii.] 

^^  Strype's  Grindal,  pp.  66  ff.  See  letter  of  Acontius  among  MSS. 
of  the  Dutch  Church  (.Ser.  1.  pp.  149 — 153)  in  the  Guildhall  Library 
[printed  in  Gerdes'  Scrinium  Antiqvariiini,  vii.  i.  123]. 


172         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

method  exercised  an  influence  which  extended  beyond  the 
limits  of  his  hfe  and  the  boundaries  of  England.  While  he 
was  yet  living,  the  learned  Ramus  had  paid  homage  to  his 
mathematical  power  in  a  letter  dated  15  December,  1565  ;^- 
and  after  him  Hulner,  in  his  letter  on  the  Meditations  of 
Descartes,  and  John  Amos  of  Komni?  (Comenius),  in  the 
Preface  to  his  Idea  vel  Epitome  Philosophice  Naturalis,  speak 
the  praises  of  his  method  for  the  study  of  philosophy. 

With  the  Arminians,  the  Stratagemata  was  one  of  their 
great  authorities,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  above  phrase  of 
Arminius  ;  and  Episcopius  declares  that  he  refrains  from 
citing  the  testimonies  in  favour  of  Acontius,  because  all  the 
Arminian  books  draw  their  inspiration  from  him.^^ 

But  it  is  especially  in  England  that  it  is  important  for  us 
to  pursue  traces  of  the  ideas  of  Acontius.  We  already  know, 
from  Strype,  that  he  counted  numerous  admirers  in  the 
bosom  of  the  Strangers'  Church.  These  contested  the  law- 
fulness of  the  excommunication  with  which,  together  with  his 
friend  the  Flemish  pastor,  he  had  been  smitten;  and  several 
of  them,  having  refused  to  retract,  were  excommunicated 
in  their  turn.^*  After  his  death,  his  friend  Castighone  and, 
without  any  doubt,  the  Spanish  pastor  Antonio  de  Corro 
(Corranus),  whose  moderate  and  biblical  ideas  we  have 
already  shown,  kept  up  among  the  Protestant  refugees  in 
London  the  eirenic  and  extra-trinitarian  tendency  of  the 
author  of  the  Stratagemata. 

But  his  real  representatives  were  his  books.  His  Strata- 
gemata went  through,  to  our  knowledge,  five  editions  in 
Ladn  before  1660 ;  the  first  two  at  Basel,  printed  by  Pietro 
Perna,  1565,  one  in  octavo,  the  other  in  duodecimo;  the 
third  in  16 10  (edited  by  Crasser)  ;  the  fourth  appeared  at 
Oxford  in  1631,  and  the  fifth  at  Amsterdam,  1652. ^^ 

=*"^  See  Appendix  XI.     =^^  Episcopii  Opera,vd\..  i.  301.     '^*  Strype,  utsnp. 
33  ("There  was  a  sixth  at  Neomagus  (probably  Speyer),  1661,  a  seventh 
at  Amsterdam,  1674.] 


CHAPTER   VIII.  173 

In  March,  1648,  there  was  sitting  in  the  Jerusalem 
chamber  at  Westminster  a  large  Assembly  of  English  eccle- 
siastics, composed  of  Presbyterians,  Episcopalians  and 
Independents,  and  busied  in  endeavouring  to  discover  a 
compromise  between  their  several  systems  of  church  govern- 
ment, when,  one  day,  the  above-mentioned  Cheynell  laid 
on  the  table  a  book  which  he  denounced  as  containing 
pestilent  heresy.  This  was  the  English  translation  of  the 
first  four  books  of  the  Stratagemata^  dedicated  to  the  Lords 
and  Commons,  without  the  name  of  the  translator  (John 
Goodwin),  but  with  a  letter  from  John  Durie  to  Samuel 
Hartlib,  recommending  the  work.'^''  Durie,  as  it  happened, 
was  a  member  of  the  Assembly ;  he  was  questioned,  stam- 
mered out  vague  explanations,  and  then  declared  his  willing- 
ness to  make  a  public  retractation  of  his  letter. 

The  Westminster  Assembly  appointed  a  committee  to 
examine  the  work  of  Acontius,  and  Cheynell,  deputed  to 
draw  up  the  report,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the  author 
should  be  condemned  as  a  heretic  and  the  book  prohibited  : 
"  I.  Because  in  the  Creed  which  Acontius  framed  there  is 
no  mention  made  either  of  the  Godhead  of  Jesus  Christ,  or 
of  the  Godhead  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  2.  Although  Acontius 
doth  acknowledge  Jesus  Christ  to  be  truly  the  Son  of  God, 
yet  he  doth  not  in  his  Creed  declare  him  to  be  the  natural 
Son  of  God."  ^^ 

^  {Satan^s  Stratagems ;  or  the  DevWs  Cabinet- Cotmcel  discovered, 
4to,  1648,  with  portrait  headed,  "James  Acontius  a  Reuerend  Diuine.' 
Part  of  the  impression  was  re-issued,  165 1,  with  the  title,  Darkness 
Discovered ;  or  the  Devil^s  secret  Stratagems  laid  open.  It  is  a  poor 
translation,  but  Acontius  is  not  a  very  smooth  writer ;  he  did  not, 
like  Ochino,  get  his  works  rendered  out  of  Italian  by  a  classic  pen. 
Goodwin  was  an  Arminian  Independent,  a  zealous  republican  and  regi- 
cide. Durie  (Dureeus),  a  Scottish  divine,  once  minister  of  Leith,  spent 
his  life  in  unwearied  endeavours  to  bring  about  a  reconciliation  between 
the  Lutheran  and  Calvinist  Churches,  and  died  abroad.  The  Unitarians 
of  Transylvania  were  among  the  fewwho  looked  favourably  on  his  scheme.] 

^^  Wallace,  ut  sup.,  vol.  i.  108— 1 10. 


174         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

This  judgment  was  ratified  by  the  Assembly,  who  had 
the  Stratagems  of  Acontius  suppressed,  as  if  they  were  in 
very  deed  artifices  of  Satan.^^ 

It  was  in  vain  to  condemn  the  memory  of  Master  Acontius ; 
his  ideas  could  not  be  prevented  from  having  their  course, 
and  even  their  conquests,  among  enlightened  minds,  who 
felt  the  need  of  a  common  ground  of  reconciliation.  Hales 
and  ChiUingworth,  the  heads  of  the  Latitudinarian  party, 
borrowed  the  method  of  Acontius,  in  order  to  reduce  the 
truths  of  the  Christian  religion  to  a  small  number ;  and  the 
finest  pages  of  Milton's  Areopagitica  were  inspired  by  the 
Stratagemata  Satance. 

The  heresies  for  which  the  Calvinistic  writers  censured 
Acontius  may  be  summed  up  under  three  heads — indif- 
ferentism,  Socinianism,  and  liberalism.^'-*  So  far  as  the  first 
is  concerned,  it  does  not  appear  to  us  to  be  well  founded. 
The  man  who,  in  the  maturity  of  his  age  and  the  zenith  of 
his  career,  condemned  himself  to  a  voluntary  exile  in  order 
to  worship  God  according  to  the  dictates  of  his  conscience, — 
the  refugee  who  did  not  fear  to  expose  himself  to  excom- 
munication for  having  pleaded  the  cause  of  tolerance  in 
the  case  of  poor  Anabaptist  immigrants,— lastly,  the  author  of 
those  fine  pages  of  the  Stratagemata,  whose  only  aim  is  the 
glory  of  God,  peace  on  the  earth,  and  the  union  of  the 
Protestant  churches — this  man  was  no  indififerentist. 

Is  the  second  reproach  better  founded?  To  judge  of 
this,  no  more  is  needed  than  a  comparison  of  dates  and 
places.  Acontius  left  Switzerland  in  1558,  at  the  moment 
when  Lelio  Sozini  was  taking  his  great  journey  through 
Germany  and  Poland ;  and  he  does  not  appear  to  have  had 


^'^  [The  Assembly  requested  Cheynell  to  publish  his  views  on  the  sub- 
ject, but  it  does  not  appear  that  Contio's  book  was  suppressed.  The  re- 
issue of  unsold  copies  in  165 1  proves  the  contrary.] 

^®  Struve,  Obse]'vatio7ies  Seleda  ad  rem  literariani  spectantes,  Halle 
and  Magdeburg,  1702,  vol.  vi.  obs.  25. 


CHAPTER   VIII.  175 

any  direct  relations  with  Lelio,  who  died  in  1562.  And  as 
regards  Fausto  Sozzini,  the  inheritor  of  his  uncle's  ideas,  he 
did  not  leave  the  court  of  Florence  until  1574  or  1575,  and 
did  not  publish  the  first  book  bearing  his  name,  the  De 
yesH  Christo  Servaiore,  until  1594,  thirty  years  after  the 
death  of  Acontius.'*'^  If,  therefore,  there  are  ideas  in  common 
between  Acontius  and  the  Sozzini,  the  priority  belongs  to 
Queen  Elizabeth's  engineer.  Now,  the  merest  comparison 
of  the  two  systems  proves  that  they  started  from  the  same 
principle,  namely,  that  the  aim  and  end  of  the  Christian 
religion  is  eternal  life ;  and  that  they  followed  the  same 
method,  namely,  to  accept  as  essential  truth  only  that  which 
is  in  conformity  with  Scripture,  and  is  instrumental  in  pro- 
curing this  divine  life.  Both  maintained  the  absolute  pre- 
eminence of  God  the  Father;  the  moral,  not  the  "  essential," 
filiation  of  Jesus  Christ ;  and  the  subordination  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  to  the  Father.  Only  Acontius,  in  denying  the  funda- 
mental importance  of  the  dogma  of  the  miraculous  birth, ■^^ 
lays  more  stress  on  the  real  humanity  of  Christ ;  while 
Fausto  Sozzini,  by  admitting  that  birth  and  rendering  divine 
honours  to  Jesus,  makes  Christ  a  creature  between  heaven 
and  earth. 

Lastly,  Acontius  has  been  reproached  with  having  cherished 
ideas  too  lofty  and  too  liberal  for  his  time.  This  reproach 
we  adopt  as  his  title  of  glory.  Yes,  Acontius  was  of  that 
class  of  minds  so  rare  in  the  sixteenth  century,  who,  without 
abandoning  the  foundation  of  inspired  Scripture,  protested, 
in  the  name  of  the  very  spirit  of  the  gospel,  against  the 
inconsistencies  of  Calvinism  and  of  Lutheranism,  and  the 


■**  [This  is  true ;  but  the  pseudonyms  of  F.  Sozzini  were  very  transpa- 
rent;  he  began  to  pubhsh  in  1562;  and,  through  Betti  (who  sent  for 
F.  Pucci  out  of  England  in  1577,  for  the  express  purpose  of  being  con- 
verted by  Sozzini),  Acontius  must  have  become  acquainted  with  Sozzini's 
position.] 

■*!  [But  see  ante,  p.  135.] 


176         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

use  of  the  secular  arm  against  heretics.  Acontius  is  the 
worthy  compeer  of  CasteUio  and  Koornhert,  of  Curione  and 
Mino  Celsi  and  well  merited  the  laudatory  judgment  which 
Hallam  has  passed  upon  him  as  one  of  those  highly  gifted 
Italians  who  fled  for  religion  to  a  Protestant  country : 

"  Without  openly  assailing  the  authority  of  Aristotle,  he 
endeavoured  to  frame  a  new  discipline  of  the  faculties  for  the 
discovery  of  truth.  In  this  little  treatise  {De  Methodo)  of 
Aconcio,  there  seem  to  be  the  elements  of  a  sounder  philosophy, 
and  a  more  steady  direction  of  the  mind  to  discover  the  reality 
of  things,  than  belonged  to  the  logic  of  the  age,  whether  as 
taught  by  the  Aristotelians  or  by  Ramus.  Acontius  had  developed 
larger  principles  of  toleration  than  Castalio,  Celso  and  Koorn- 
hert, distinguishing  the  fundamental  from  the  accessory  doctrines 
of  the  gospel  ;  which,  by  weakening  the  associations  of  bigotry 
prepared  the  way  for  a  catholic  tolerance.  His  Stratagemata 
treatise  is  perhaps  the  first  wherein  the  limitation  of  fundamental 
articles  of  Christianity  to  a  small  number  is  laid  down  at  con- 
siderable length."'*^ 

Acontius,  finally,  lifts  his  voice  against  the  application  of 
the  death  penalty  in  the  matter  of  heresy ;  but  his  reasoning, 
like  that  of  CasteUio,  is  equally  valid  against  all  the  lesser 
penalties. 

"  There  are  those,"  he  says,  "  who  think  that,  if  the  sword  be 
allowed  to  rest,  it  is  over  with  all  religion ;  but  we  do  a  great 
injury  to  God  if  we  suppose  that  He  sleeps,  that  He  cannot  take 
care  of  His  people,  or  that  He  cannot  preserve  His  gospel  with- 
out the  sword;  as  though  His  word  were  of  no  effect,  but  the 
whole  hope  of  the  Christian  were  placed  in  cold  steel.  Let  us 
be  of  good  cheer ;  the  Lord  is  not  asleep,  but  keepeth  watch.  If 
all  our  hope  be  placed  in  Him,  if  we  do  battle  with  the  Word, 
and  with  the  spirit  of  His  breath  (which  is  to  be  besought  with 
instant  prayers),  yea,  what  we  fear  from  heretics  will  be  as 
nought." 

"  If  ecclesiastics,"  he  continues,  "  once  get  the  upper  hand,  if 

*^  Hallam,  Introd,  to  Lit.  of  Europe,  1839,  ii.  157,  159;  iii.  I02;  ii.  II4. 


CHAPTER   VIII.  177 

it  be  conceded  to  them,  that  the  moment  a  man  shall  dare  to 
open  his  mouth,  the  executioner  must  come  and  cut  all  knots 
with  his  blade,  what  then  will  become  of  the  grand  study  of  the 
Holy  Scriptures  ?  Truly  it  will  be  thought  little  worth  a  man's 
while  to  engage  in  it.  For  men  will  be  able  to  force  all  the 
dreams  of  their  imaginations  on  wretched  groundlings,  and  still 
retain  their  place  of  dignity.  Woe  unto  us,  woe  unto  our 
posterity,  if  we  cast  aside  this  only  weapon,  with  which  we  may 
lawfully  fight,  and  may  always  be  victorious !  We  may  as  well 
give  over  at  once.""*^ 

^'  Stratageiuata,  lib.  iii.  pp.  156,  157,  158  (ed.  i6io).     See  Appendix 
XII. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

Socinianism ;  its  two  authors,  Lelio  and  Fausto  Sozzini ;  stages  of  their 
doctrine,  and  its  introduction  into  England. 

It  was  within  the  Strangers'  Church  in  London  that,  as 
we  have  seen,  arose  the  first  controversies  in  England  on 
the  subject  of  the  Trinity  (1550 — 1575) ;  and  here  appeared, 
as  vanguard  of  the  Unitarian  party,  the  Italians  Ochino  and 
Acontius,  and  the  Spaniard  Corranus.  So  far,  however, 
these  questions  had  scarcely  penetrated  beyond  the  precincts 
of  Austin  Friars  and  the  circle  of  professional  theologians. 
The  engineer  Acontius  was  the  first  layman  who  claimed 
the  right  to  deal  with  ecclesiastical  subjects ;  and,  in  spite 
of  the  excommunication  which  smote  him,  it  appears  that 
his  Stratagemata  exerted  even  more  influence  in  England 
than  Ochino's  Thirty  Dialogues.  Now  it  was  part  of  the 
tactics  of  Acontius  not  directly  to  comliat,  with  arguments 
derived  from  reason,  the  dogmata  of  the  Trinity  and  of  the 
divinity  of  Jesus  Christ,  but  to  relegate  them  to  the  class  of 
questions  not  essential  to  salvation.  The  tendency,  then, 
of  these  "  pseudo-evangeUcals,"  as  Microen  calls  them,  was 
rather  extra-Trinitarian  than  anti-Trinitarian. 

But  Acontius,  in  applying  his  fine  analytical  method  to 
religious  questions,  was  becoming  unawares  the  promoter  of 
a  revolution  in  dogma,  not  less  fruitful  than  the  Cartesian 
revolution  in  philosophy  later  on.  We  speak  of  Socinianism. 
Acontius  and  his  friend  Ochino  stand  towards  Socinianism 
as  Scotism  stands  towards  Ochino.  The  filiation  of  ideas 
and  of  methods  is  evident.     From  the  first  book  of  the 


CHAPTER    IX.  179 

Stratagemata  is  borrowed  the  criterion,  adopted  in  the  Cate- 
chism of  the  Fratres  Poloni,  for  the  purpose  of  distinguishing 
between  truths  essential  to  salvation,  and  those  which  are 
only  useful,  viz.  the  degree  of  their  serviceableness  for  the 
attainment  of  eternal  life.  With  respect  to  the  doctrine  of 
redemption  by  the  grace  of  God,  who  accepts  as  expiatory 
the  merits  of  Jesus  Christ,  Fausto  Sozzini  confesses  that  his 
opinion  {sententia)  had  been  "  openly  expressed  and  incul- 
cated in  the  Dialogi  of  Ochino."^  Thus  it  was  again  to 
Italians  that  the  task  was  reserved  of  applying  the  analytic 
and  critical  method  to  the  theory  of  the  sacraments,  and  the 
dogmata  of  redemption,  of  predestination  and  of  the  resur- 
rection ;  and  of  opening  the  pathway  of  Unitarian  Chris- 
tianity at  both  extremities  of  Europe,  in  Poland  and  Tran- 
sylvania on  the  one  hand,  in  England  and  the  Netherlands 
on  the  other.     But  first  let  us  see  what  the  Sozzini  were. 

The  Sozzini  (diminutive  of  Sozzi)  were  a  very  ancient 
family,  originally  from  Percena,  near  Buonconvento  in  Tus- 
cany, and  established  at  Siena  since  the  beginning  of  the 
fourteenth  century.  After  having  become  enriched  as 
bankers  and  notaries,  they  had  given  themselves  up  to  the 
study  of  law.  Mariano,  the  elder  (1397 — 1467),  was  pro- 
fessor of  Canon  Law  at  Padua  ;  Bartolomeo  was  the  author 
oi  Socini  Solutiones  ;  and  lastly,  Mariano,  the  younger  {1482 
— 1556),  lectured  on  law  with  growing  success  at  Pisa, 
Padua  and  Bologna  (circa  1540),  and  received  from  his 
contemporaries  the  appellation  oi Princeps  y^un'sconsuitoriun. 
This  Mariano  had  thirteen  children,  eleven  sons  and  two 
daughters ;  the  eldest  son,  Alessandro,  became  the  father  of 
Fausto  Sozzini  (born  5  Dec.  1539);  and  the  sixth  son  w-as 

1  Theolog.  Review,  Oct.  1879,  A.  Gordon's  second  article  on  The 
Sozzini  and  their  School,  p.  546.  [It  was  not  the  doctrine  that  Christ's 
merits  were  accepted  as  expiatory  (Sozzini  did  not  beheve  this  in  any 
sense),  but  the  doctrine  that  Christ's  work  was  to  influence  not  God 
but  man,  which  Sozzini  found  in  Ochino.] 

N  2 


l80         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Lelio  Francesco  Maria  Sozzini  (born  29  Jan.  1525).  These 
two  became  the  first  founders  of  Socinianism.-  Several  other 
sons  of  Mariano  the  younger  were  suspected  of  heresy  and 
obhged  to  go  into  exile  ;  Camillo  and  Cornelio,  for  example, 
who  were  younger  than  Lelio,  and  whom  we  have  already 
met  wdth  at  Chiavenna.^  As  to  Celso,  although  at  the  head 
of  the  party  of  freethinkers  and  literary  men  of  Siena,  he 
retained  the  favour  of  the  Medici,  became  a  Count,  and 
gonfaloniere  of  S.  Martino  to  boot.  He  was  the  founder 
of  the  Accademia  dei  Sizienti,  which  had  for  its  emblem  a 
winged  lion  on  the  summit  of  a  mountain  with  the  motto 
Qiiamdiu  sitimt?  Frequently  there  were  several  of  these 
academies  or  literary  societies  in  the  smallest  towns  of  Italy, 
thirty  at  least  in  Siena  ;*  and,  like  the  societies  founded  by 
Conrad  Celtis,  at  Mainz  and  at  Vienna,  by  Wimpheling  at 
Strassburg  and  Schlestadt,  these  academies  very  soon  be- 
came so  many  centres  of  religious  discussions. 

Such  was  the  situation,  on  one  hand  men  of  letters,  on 
the  other  hand  men  of  law,  in  which  young  Lelio  was 
brought  up.  The  religious  element,  however,  was  not 
wanting  in  his  education ;  it  was  represented  by  his  mother, 
Camilla  Salvetti,  a  woman  as  pious  as  she  was  enlightened, 
and  by  his  sister,  Porzia  ;  and  at  the  age  of  fifteen  he 
had  opportunities  of  hearing  Bernardino  Ochino's  sermons, 
already  saturated  with  evangelical  doctrine.  He  was,  more- 
over, gifted  with  a  clear  and  subtle  intellect,  and  a  heart 
open  to  the  noblest  affections,  those  of  friendship  and  the 
religious  sentiment.     Beginning  his  law  studies  at  Bologna 

2  Cantu,  tit  Slip.,  vol.  ii.  discourse  viii.  [The  Antitrinitarians),  and, 
in  appendix,  the  genealogy  of  the  Sozzini. 

3  The  name  of  A.  Socini  (with  five  sons,  not  named)  is  found  in  the 
Registers  of  the  French  Church  at  Basel  for  the  year  1559. 

■*  [There  were  no  less  than  forty-six  at  Siena,  of  which  a  few  still 
exist.  Celtes  was  not  the  founder,  though  the  chief  extender,  of  the 
Rhenish  Academy.] 


CHAPTER   IX.  l8l 

under  his  father's  auspices,  our  student  was  already  full  of 
the  idea  of  seeking  in  the  Divine  Law  the  sources  of  human 
jurisprudence  ;  he  learned  Greek,  Hebrew,  and  even  Arabic, 
with  the  view  of  being  able  to  understand  the  Scriptures  in 
the  original  tongues.  At  twenty-one  he  set  out  on  his  first 
tour  through  Europe,  and,  from  that  moment  till  his  death 
in  May  1562,  it  may  be  said  that,  with  the  exception  of  two 
sojourns  of  three  years  each  at  Zurich  (1555-^1557  '^'"'d 
1559 — 1562),  his  whole  Hfe  was  but  the  journey  of  a  noble 
pilgrim  in  search  of  religious  truth.  As  we  cannot  follow 
him  through  all  his  peregrinations,  we  intend  simply  to  mark 
the  principal  stages  of  his  thought,  as  gathered  from  his  own 
correspondence,  and  that  of  the  Swiss  Reformers. 

Lelio's  halting-place  was  at  Venice,  that  intense  focus  of 
evangelical  ideas,  where  questions  pertaining  to  the  Eucha- 
rist and  the  Trinity  had  already  been  matter  of  study  for 
si.Kteen  years.  Here  he  certainly  made  the  acquaintance  of 
Baldassare  Altieri  (who  is  mentioned  in  several  of  his  letters), 
and  he  frequented  the  conferences  at  Vicenza,  where  the 
dogmata  of  the  Trinity  and  Vicarious  Satisfaction  were  under 
discussion.-^ 

If  we  may  believe  Andrzej  Wiszowaty  (his  nephew's  grand- 
son, who  was  perhaps  a  little  carried  away  by  ancestral  piety 
in  extolling  the  early  deserts  of  his  great  grand-uncle),  Eelio, 
while  reading  the  Scriptures  from  the  standpoint  of  Law, 
"observed  the  discrepancies  between  them  and  the  com- 
monly-received dogmata  of  the  Church,  especially  that  of 
the  Trinity,  and  revived  the  opinion,  then,  as  it  were,  smoul- 
dering in  the  embers,  that  the  Son  of  God,  Jesus  Christ,  had 
no  existence  prior  to  Mary,  his  mother."  Lelio  was  then 
only  twenty-one,  and  some  writers  have  treated  Wiszowaty's 
narrative  as  a  myth,  on  the  ground  of  this  extreme  youth, 


'  Andrzej  Wiszowaty  of  .Szumky,  Narratio  Conipendlosa,  at  p.  209  of 
Sand's  Bibliotheca  Antitrin. 


1 82         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

coupled  with  various  anachronisms.  For  ourselves,  while 
altogether  rejecting,  with  Trechsel  and  A.  Gordon,*^  the  addi- 
tions of  Sand  and  Lubieniecky,  we  believe  in  the  reality  of 
these  secret  re-unions  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Venice.  They 
appear  to  us  quite  natural,  during  a  time  of  religious  perse- 
cution, and  under  such  colours  that  they  escaped  the  search 
of  the  Inquisition  until  about  1562  ;  and  we  are  of  opinion 
that  they  strengthened  Lelio  in  his  doubts. 

Far  more  important  changes  were  produced  in  his  thought 
when  he  had  become  acquainted  with  three  men  whom  we 
have  already  encountered  in  the  Antitrinitarian  controver- 
sies, Camillo  Renato  the  Sicilian,  Matteo  Gribaldo  and  Ber- 
nardino Ochino.  It  was  at  Chiavenna,  in  1547,  that  he  saw 
the  scholarly  tutor  of  the  Pallavicini  family.  Camillo  so 
thoroughly  imbued  him  with  his  own  spiritual  conception 
of  the  sacraments,  that  we  find  it  almost  exactly  reproduced 
in  Lelio's  De  Sacramentis  Disscrtatio.  He  had  already  met 
Gribaldo,  as  well  as  Acontius,  in  his  father's  lecture-room  at 
Bologna,"  and  with  the  former  he  must  have  been  on  pretty 
intimate  terms,  since  we  find  him  staying  several  weeks  at 
his  house  in  Padua  on  his  return  from  a  visit  to  his  family 
(Sept.,  Oct.  1553).  As  regards  Ochino,  Lelio  met  him  for 
the  first  time  in  London  during  his  travels  in  England  in  the 
first  half  of  1548.  He  was  afterwards  much  in  his  company 
from  the  year  1555,  during  his  two  sojourns  at  Zurich.  So 
close  was  the  intimacy,  that  it  has  been  said  that  Lelio  was 
Ochino's  evil  genius,  as  if  a  young  man  of  thirty  could  wield 
any  ascendancy  over  a  man  of  sixty-eight,  and  of  the  calibre 
of  Master  Bernardine.  It  seems  to  us  more  likely  that  the 
contrary  is  the  truth,  and  that  the  dialectic  spirit  of  Ochino, 

^   Theolog.  Kez'.  July,  1879,  ut  sup.,  pp.  300  ff.     Cf.  Trechsel,  vol.  ii. 
app.  i.,  Die  sogenannten  Collegia  Vicentina. 

^  [Gribaldo  was  educated  at  Padua,  where,  indeed,  Mariano  Sozzini 
taught  from  1526  to  1540.     Where  Acontius  studied  is  unknown.] 


CHAPTER   IX.  183 

in  ceaseless  quest  of  arduous  problems,  was  certain  to  ino- 
culate Lelio  with  that  quczrendi  pruritum  for  which  Calvin 
rebuked  him  in  his  celebrated  letter  of  ist  January,  1552. 

In  fact,  from  1548-49,  at  which  time  he  was  on  the  move 
between  Ziirich,  Geneva  and  Basel,  Lelio  had  engaged  to 
correspond  with  Calvin,  Bullinger  and  J.  Wolff.  In  his 
letters  he  discloses  his  thoughts  by  halves.  To  Calvin  he 
submits  cases  of  conscience  relating  to  mixed  marriages,  the 
validity  of  baptism  administered  at  home,  and  the  nature  of 
the  resurrection  body ;  but,  above  all,  he  puts  the  formidable 
objection  of  the  incompatibility  between  salvation  by  free 
grace  and  salvation  acquired  by  the  merits  of  Jesus  Christ.^ 
He  questions  Bullinger  respecting  the  command  which  Jesus 
Christ  laid  on  several  of  his  disciples  not  to  proclaim  him  as 
the  Messiah,  and  to  Bullinger  he  addresses  in  writing  his 
Confession  of  Faith,  by  way  of  self-defence  against  the  de- 
nunciations of  Martinengo  and  Philipp  Saluz.''  But  it  is, 
above  all,  in  his  letters  to  J.  Wolff,  the  successor  to  Bibli- 
ander  in  the  Hebrew  chair,  that  he  propounds  his  doubts 
respecting  the  intrinsic  and  supernatural  value  of  the  sacra- 
ments and  respecting  the  Trinity.  ^'^  At  length,  after  having 
visited  Ochino  in  his  dangerous  illness  of  1560,  and  having 
doubtless  assisted  him  in  the  composition  of  his  Labyrinths 
and  his  Thirty  Dialogues,  Lelio  Sozini  died  at  Zurich  at  the 
age  of  thirty-seven,  protected  by  the  venerable  Bullinger 
against  the  hatred  of  his  accusers,  and  leaving  the  reputation 
of  one  of  the  most  powerful  minds  and  one  of  the  noblest 
hearts  to  which  the  Italian  Reformation  had  given  birth. 

To  sum  up  these  scattered  features  of  his  life,  and  to  give 

«  Calvini  Opera,  tit  stip.,  vol.  xiii.  pp.  II91,  1212,  1231,  1323,  1341, 
1361. 

^  Trechsel,  ut  sup.,  vol.  ii.  app.  vii. 

1"  Fatisti  et  LtFlii  Socim'  item  Ernesti  Soneri  Tractatiis  aliquot  Theo- 
logici,  nunquain  antehac  in  lucem  editi :  Eleutheropolis  (Amsterdam), 
1654,  p.  160. 


184         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UXITARIANISM. 

a  complete  idea  of  Lelio  Sozini  as  a  man,  before  we  address 
ourselves  to  him  as  a  thinker,  we  cannot  do  better  than 
present  in  this  place  the  portrait  of  him  which  his  nephew 
has  traced  with  a  filial  sort  of  piety. 

"  Far  from  being  wanting  in  religious  certitude,  no  man  ever 
entertained  or  expressed  (when  he  judged  it  opportune)  more 
exact  views  on  all  the  dogmata  of  the  Christian  religion.  But 
as  he  perceived  that,  after  so  great  and  so  long  a  darkness, 
scarcely  anything,  save  the  few  essentials  of  salvation,  was  re- 
stored to  pristine  purity  in  the  Churches  that  threw  off  the 
Roman  antichrist,  he  would  not  open  his  mind  to  every  one, 
except  in  some  controversies  of  small  moment.  This  he  did,  for 
fear  of  troubling  the  Churches,  and  lest  the  weak,  for  whom  he 
ever  had  the  greatest  consideration,  should  be  offended,  and 
perhaps  drawn  back  again  froin  the  worship  of  the  true  God  to 
idols  ;  and  lest  the  divine  verity,  proclaiined  by  a  layman,  should, 
to  the  great  detriment  of  the  Christian  world,  be  rejected  and 
spurned,  from  the  lack  of  authority  in  its  publisher. 

"  He  saw  that,  in  some  Churches,  opinions  and  customs  were 
so  strong,  that  even  a  murmur  against  them  was  received  with 
execration.  Therefore  he  thought  it  better  now  and  then  to 
propose  doubts  and  questions  to  men  illustrious  in  the  Church, 
that  in  this  way  by  degrees  an  approach  might  be  made  to  the 
truth. 

"  For  instance,  these  men,  in  consequence  of  his  arguments, 
were  led  in  the  meantime  to  distrust  the  soundness  of  their 
inveterate  opinions',  and  so  they  forbore  from  impressing  them 
on  the  people  as  axioms  of  Christian  religion.  This  he  did,  to 
avoid  all  offence,  under  the  plea  of  a  desire  to  be  taught  (pro- 
bably a  true  plea  in  the  outset),  and  always  professed  himself  a 
learner,  never  a  teacher.  But  he  was  fully  sensible  that  this  plan 
was  not  to  the  whole  extent  approved  by  his  friends,  yet  would  he 
not  comply  with  their  suggestions. 

"  In  removing  this  eminent  man  by  an  untimely  death,  God 
had  a  purpose,  which  was  not  slow  to  appear ;  since,  almost 
directly  after  his  death,  some  part  of  what  he  had  not  himself 
the  courage  to  teach  openly,  began  to  appear  in  print  and  to  be 
made  generally  known,  which,  had  he  lived,  would  never  perhaps 


CHAPTER   IX.  185 

have  happened.  In  fact,  up  to  that  time  his  friends  were  not 
fully  imbued  with  his  ideas,  by  what  he  had  written,  since  he 
kept  it  to  himself;  and  were  not  bold  enough  to  make  public, 
against  their  master's  will,  anj'  one  of  the  things  which  they 
had  learned  from  him.  In  this  way  hath  it  pleased  God  to 
make  manifest  to  all  what  He  had  revealed  to  him  alone ;  to  the 
end  that,  the  darkness  of  ignorance  being  thoroughly  dispelled, 
Christian  people  may  begin  at  length  with  their  whole  mind  to 
render  unto  Him  faith  and  due  obedience,  and  that  outsiders 
may  more  readily  be  drawn  to  the  true  and  saving  knowledge  of 
Him  through  Jesus  Christ."'^ 

If  Lelio  Sozini  only  left  two  or  three  tractates,'^  some 
annotations  on  the  margins  of  his  Bible,  and  about  thirty 
letters  to  friends,  on  the  other  hand  he  had  found  in  his 
nephew  Fausto  not  only  a  worthy  heir,  but  one  gifted  with 
the  firmness  to  carry  out  his  thoughts  and  his  projects.  In 
other  respects,  the  characters  of  the  uncle  and  of  the  nephew 
present  a  curious  contrast.  If  Lelio  was  to  a  certain  extent 
timid  in  practice,  Fausto,  we  shall  find,  was  proportionally 
firm,  and  sometimes  hard,  in  social  intercourse ;  Lelio  was 
an  ardent  and  generous  soul,  Fausto  is  cold  and  reserved 
even  to  dryness  ;  Lelio  is  bold  only  in  his  thought,  but  docile 
to  outside  influences  ;  Fausto  is  a  man  of  statesmanlike  qua- 
lities, who,  while  repudiating  the  headship  of  a  party,  pos- 
sessed every  fitness  for  the  position. 

Born  at  Siena,  fifteen  years  after  Lelio  (5  Dec.  1539), 
Fausto  Paulo  Sozzini  received  the  same  education  as  his 
uncle,  an  education  literary  and  legal.  Losing  his  father  in 
his  second  year,  he  came  under  the  more  direct  influence  of 
his  mother  and  grandmother,  Agnese  Petrucci  and  Camilla 
Salvetti,  his  aunt  and  his  sister ;  and  this  intercourse  with 
women  of  superior  mind  imparted  to  him  a  high  elevation 
of  sentiment,  and  early  inspired  him  with  a  true  veneration 

"  Socini  Opera,  ut  sup.,  vol.  i.  7S2. 

^-  Faiisli  et  Livlii  Socini  .  .  .  .  tractatiis,  1654,  nt  sup. 


1 86         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

for  moral  beauty.  On  the  other  hand,  he  professed  but  a 
mean  opinion  of  the  legal  studies  which  were  the  hereditary 
glory  of  the  Sozzini ;  and  concerning  Bartolo,  Baldo  and  the 
like,  who  were  the  classic  authors  in  this  science  at  this 
epoch,  he  expresses  himself  in  terms  of  contempt  almost 
identical  with  those  of  Acontius  in  his  letter  to  Wolff.^^ 

Accordingly,  following  the  example  of  Lelio,  he  started  in 
his  twenty-second  year  for  a  tour  of  Europe,  hoping  to  find 
abroad  that  liberty  of  thought  and  belief  which  was  wanting 
in  his  own  country.  He  had,  there  is  no  doubt,  entered 
into  relations  with  his  uncle  during  his  last  visit  to  Italy  in 
1559,"  but,  for  what  reason  we  know  not,  he  made  Lyons 
and -Geneva  his  first  two  stopping-places.  At  Lyons  the 
Italian  Protestants  were  very  numerous,  and  had  even  ob- 
tained permission  to  hold  public  worship.  At  Geneva, 
Fausto  gave  in  his  name  as  a  member  of  the  Italian  Church, 
and  contracted  a  friendship  with  Manfredo  Balbani,  the  son 
of  the  Italian  pastor.  It  was  while  at  Lyons  that  he  received 
the  unexpected  news  of  Lelio's  death.  He  at  once^^  set  out 
for  Zlirich,  where  he  was  welcomed  by  Bernardino  Ochino 
and  the  elders  of  the  Locarnese  Church,  and  gathered  up 
his  uncle's  books  and  papers. 

Having  found  amongst  them  a  sort  of  paraphrase  of  the 
Proem  to  St.  John's  Gospel,  which  appeared  to  him  to  offer 
an  entirely  novel  interpretation  of  the  Logos,  he  published  it 


^^  See  his  letter  to  Scipione  Bargagli,  in  Cantii. 

^*  [It  is  not  clear  that  Lelio  reached  Italy  in  1559,  though  he  intended 
to  go  to  Venice.  His  last  known  visit  to  Italy  was  in  1552-53,  which 
fits  better  with  what  Fausto  says  of  his  uncle's  influence  on  him  as  "  a 
young  man,  almost  a  boy."     0pp.  ii.  118.] 

■'^  [So  says  Przypcowski ;  but  J.  Wolff,  writing  on  23  Aug.  1562, 
speaks  of  Fausto  as  returning  from  Italy,  and  says  he  brought  letters 
from  Francesco  Negri.  This  seems  to  show  that,  on  hearing  of  his 
uncle's  death,  he  went  home,  before  proceeding  to  Zurich.  See  Trechsel, 
vol.  ii.  201.] 


CHAPTER    IX.  187 

at  the  request  of  some  of  his  friends,  but  without  affixing  his 
name  (1562).^'' 

Did  the  premature  death  of  LeUo  cause  some  remorse  to 
the  Grand  Duke  Cosimo,  who,  three  years  previously,  had 
refused  him  the  withdrawal  of  the  Inquisition's  sequestration 
of  his  patrimony,  or  must  the  prince's  change  of  mind  be 
attributed  to  the  influence  of  Count  Celso  Sozzini?  It  is  a 
fact  that  in  the  following  year  we  find  Fausto  employed  as 
the  Grand  Duke's  secretary  for  foreign  affairs,  and  enjoying 
the  favour  of  his  daughter  Isabella,  Duchess,  of  Bracciano.^" 
Fausto  remained  in  the  prince's  service  until  his  death 
(1563 — 1574),  and  during  those  eleven  years  made  outward 
profession  of  Catholicism.  Let  us  not  judge  this  attitude 
too  severely ;  we  may  surmise  that  Fausto  was  not  yet  con- 
verted in  his  inmost  conviction,  and  we  may  remember  that 
Valdes  and  many  other  believers,  already  thoroughly  per- 
suaded of  the  truth  of  justification  by  faith,  considered  it 
permissible  to  participate  in  the  exterior  rites  of  the  esta- 
blished Church.  Nevertheless,  the  witness  of  Fausto,  though 
eclipsed,  was  not  entirely  lost  to  the  cause  of  the  gospel. 
At  the  instigation  of  his  patroness,  Isabella  de'  Medici,  he 
composed  in  Italian,  and  afterwards  in  Latin,  an  important 
work  on  the  Authority  of  Holy  Scripture,  which  is  a  remark- 
able defence  of  the  truth  of  the  Bible.  ^^ 

^^  Socini  Opera :  Explicatio  sive  Paraphrasis  in  Prowmhim  Johannis. 
[Fausto  distinctly  says  that  this  Explicatio  was  his  own,  though  suggested 
by  a  few  words  of  his  uncle's  manuscript.      0pp.  i.  497,  ii.  640.] 

^''  [This  paragraph  touches  the  most  obscure  points  in  the  story  of 
Lelio  and  Fausto.  We  gather  from  unpublished  documents  that  Lelio 
came  in  for  nothing  under  his  father's  will,  and  that  any  attempts  of  the 
Inquisition  to  interfere  with  the  disposition  of  the  Sozzini  patrimony 
were  at  that  time  unsuccessful.  Fausto  was  certainly  in  the  service  of 
Isabella,  and  spent  twelve  years  (1563 — 1575)  at  ease  in  Italy,  "partly 
at  court"  {0pp.  i.  490).  That  he  was  ever  in  the  service  of  the  Grand 
Duke  is  not  borne  out  by  his  (unpublished)  letters  to  the  Grand  Dukes 
Francesco  and  Ferdinando.] 

^^  De  Auctoritate  S.  Scriptunc,  in  F.  Soc.  0pp. 


1 88         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

However,  the  word  of  God,  assiduously  pondered  and 
scrutinised  by  Fausto,  effected  in  his  soul  a  hidden  working, 
which  was  sure,  sooner  or  later,  to  issue  in  a  rupture  at  once 
with  the  Roman  tradition  and  with  all  human  authority.  The 
publication  of  Girolamo  Zanchi's  book,  De  tribus  Elo/iim,  a 
learned  defence  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  (in  the  Preface 
to  which  the  anonymous  tract  of  1562  on  the  Proem  of  St. 
John  is  attributed  to  Lelio  Sozini,  and  treated  as  an  "impious 
interpretation,"  "a  Samosatenian  heresy"),  appears  to  have 
been  the  decisive  occasion  of  this  rupture.  From  that  time 
Fausto  had  but  one  thought — to  avenge  the  memory  of  his 
uncle,  which  had  been  undeservedly  outraged,  and  boldly 
to  scatter  the  darkness  of  prejudice  and  error  which  obscured 
the  truth  in  all  quarters,  including  even  the  Protestant 
Churches.  On  the  death  of  the  Grand  L>uke  Cosimo 
(1574),^^  Fausto  refused  all  the  honours  and  riches  which 
were  offered  him,  and,  bound  only  by  the  promise  made 
to  his  benefactress  that  he  would  preserve  the  anonymous 
in  his  publications,  bade  farewell  to  Florence. 

This  time  Fausto  took  up  his  residence  at  Basel,  where 
he  remained  about  three  years,  doubtless  induced  to  stay 
by  the  liberty  which  men  of  letters  there  enjoyed,  by  the 
presence  of  some  members  of  his  family,  and  by  the  attrac- 
tive society  of  several  friends, — Manfredo  Balbani,  Francesco 
Betti,  the  friend  of  Acontius,  Giovanni  Francesco  Castig- 
lione,  and  Girolamo  Marliano.  Here  it  was  that  he  had  the 
good  fortune  to  obtain  possession  of  the  manuscripts  left  by 
Sebastian  Castellio,  some  of  which  he  published  shortly  after 
with  an  important  Preface. 

While  there  he  also  engaged  in  two  controversies  which 
led  to  the  publication  of  two  of  his  works.  The  first  of 
these,  in  which  he  was  engaged  with  Jacques  Couet,  then 
a  divinity  student,  and  afterwards  minister  of  the  French 

^*  [It  was  after  the  death  of  Isabella  in  1576  that  he  wrote  from  Basel, 
courteously  excusing  himself  from  entering  the  service  of  Francesco.] 


CHAPTER   IX.  189 

Church  at  Basel,  gave  him  the  opportunity  of  developing 
his  ideas  on  the  satisfaction  of  Christ  in  his  celebrated  work, 
De  yesu  Christo  Servatore,  which  for  a  long  time  circulated 
as  an  anonymous  manuscript,  before  being  printed  with  his 
name  (1594)- 

He  held  the  second  of  these  controversies  with  Francesco 
Pucci,  a  young  Florentine  refugee,  who  denied  the  utility  of 
any  visible  church,  and  maintained  the  necessity  of  a  new 
revelation,  and  the  natural  immortality  of  the  soul.  On  this 
last  point  Fausto  held  the  opposite  thesis,  and  published  it 
in  his  De  Statu  Primi  Ho  minis  ante  Laps  urn  .'^^ 

Called  (1578)  by  Dr.  Giorgio  Biandrata  to  Kolozsvar  in 
Transylvania,  there  to  defend  the  usage  of  the  invocation  of 
Jesus  Christ  in  prayer,  which  was  being  attacked  by  Bishop 
Ferencz  David,  Fausto  Sozzini  eventually  took  up  his  abode 
at  Krakow,  and  there  married  Elzbieta,  daughter  of  Krzysz- 
tof  Morsztyn.  He  spent  there  nearly  twenty  years,  engaged 
in  his  works  on  the  Bible,  and  in  the  propagation  of  his  ideas 
among  the  churches  of  Poland.  But  the  publication  of  his 
De  yesu  Christo  Servatore  having  given  rise  to  a  popular 
disturbance,  in  which  his  house  was  pillaged  and  himself 
much  maltreated,  he  sought  a  last  asylum  in  the  house  of 
his  friend  Abraham  Blonski  at  Luslawice.  He  died  there  at 
the  age  of  sixty-five  (4  March,  1604),  in  peace  with  God,  and 
in  the  conviction  that  he  had  worked  for  the  advancement 
of  Christ's  kingdom  on  earth. 

The  parallel  which  we  have  instituted  between  the  lives 
of  the  two  founders  of  Socinianism  has  already  brought  into 
relief  the  contrast  of  their  characters.  That  of  their  doctrines 
is  less  marked,  and  for  an  excellent  reason,  namely,  that 
their  point  of  view  is  the  same — to  accept,  as  true,  only  that 
which  is  in  conformity  with  Scripture  when  interpreted  by 


"^^  For  information  about  Pucci,  who  studied  at  Oxford  (1572 — 1574), 
see  Gordon,  Theol.  Rev.  Oct.  1879,  pp.  549—551. 


190         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

sound  reason,  and,  as  essential  to  salvation,  only  that  which 
is  instrumental  in  obtaining  eternal  life.  But  if  they  agree 
in  the  principle,  how  widely  do  they  differ  in  their  methods 
of  propounding  and  disseminating  it  !  Lelio  to  a  large  extent 
practises  the  system  of  accommodation  recommended  by 
his  master,  Ochino,  and  sows  the  seeds  of  his  ideas  in  the 
shape  of  questions,  marks  of  interrogation,  applying  already 
the  Cartesian  doubt.  Fausto,  on  the  contrary,  strikes  full 
in  the  face  of  all  the  orthodox  dogmata,  which  he  considers 
as  so  much  refuse  of  Roman  superstition.  The  ideas  of 
the  former  appear  uncertain  and  incoherent — portcntosa 
(monstrosities)  as  Calvin  calls  them — because  he  gives  them 
out  only  in  fragments,  and  in  the  form  of  antinomies  ;  while 
those  of  Fausto  present  themselves  as  a  system  thoroughly 
digested  and  all  of  a  piece.  Let  us  make  this  difference  clear 
by  a  few  examples. 

In  the  first  place,  with  respect  to  the  dogma  of  expiation, 
Lelio  only  brings  out  the  contradiction  between  these  two 
propositions— ^/^rj-/,  salvation  is  offered  to  us  without  price  by 
the  grace  of  God ;  second,  it  was  necessary  for  Jesus  Christ 
to  expiate  our  sins  by  his  merits,  in  order  to  satisfy  the  justice 
of  God  and  gain  for  us  eternal  salvation.  Calvin  having 
answered  him  that  the  merits  of  Jesus  Christ  are  to  be  viewed 
as  coming  under  the  category  of  God's  good  pleasure,  and  that 
this  unpurchased  character  of  salvation  can  only  be  properly 
opposed  to  our  own  merits,  and  to  all  acts  of  human  righteous- 
ness, Lelio  professed  himself  satisfied  with  this  solution, 
closely  conformed  to  that  of  Duns  Scotus.^^  It  did  not  satisfy 
the  matter-of-fact  and  logical  mind  of  Fausto.  In  his  De 
yesu  Christo  Servatore,  he  utterly  demolishes  the  doctrine 
of  "vicarious  satisfaction."  In  his  view,  Jesus  Christ  came 
to  reconcile,  not  God  to  men,  but  men  to  God.  All  that 
Jesus  said  or  did  which  was  divine,  he  did  in  virtue  of  the 

^1  Calvini  Opera,  vol.  x.  i6o,  Consilia  Dog-mat ica. 


CHAPTER   IX.  191 

grace  conferred  upon  him  by  his  Father.  His  special  func- 
tions were  those  of  a  prophet  and  a  king,  and  not  that  of  a 
high-priest.  If  he  died,  it  was  to  seal  with  his  blood  the 
truth  of  his  revelations,  and  not  to  appease  the  wrath  of  an 
ever  good  and  merciful  Ciod. 

This  leads  us  to  the  second  point  which  engages  our 
attention,  that  of  the  divinity  of  Christ.  Lelio  allows  to 
Jesus  the  titles  of  Messiah  or  Christ ;  Son  of  God,  unique  (but 
not  eternal), ■^'•^  and  Word  of  God,  who  was  incarnate  in  the 
womb  of  the  Virgin  (in  accordance  with  the  Apostles'  Creed). 
But  already  for  Lelio,  Jesus  is,  above  all,  "  our  sweet  cruci- 
fied one"  and  "our  precursor;"  that  is  to  say,  the  one  who 
has  pointed  to  us,  through  suffering,  the  way  which  leads 
to  life  eternal.-^  Fausto  Sozzini  emphasises  still  more  the 
humanity  of  Christ ;  in  his  eyes  Jesus  Christ  is  verus  homo 
(he  does  not  ?,?iy  purus  homo).  He  accords  divinity  to  him, 
in  the  same  sense  in  which  he  also  admits  his  miraculous 
and  immaculate  conception,  and  the  incarnation  of  the  Word 
of  God  in  him,  namely,  to  the  end  that  he  might  be  enabled 
to  fulfil  his  prophetic  and  regal  offices;  but  he  refuses  to 
him  participation  in  essential  and  eternal  deity.  And,  above 
all,  he  insists  on  this,  that  Jesus  was  truly  our  brother,  having 
shared  the  same  evils  and  the  same  death  that  we  do,  in 
order  that,  by  his  passion,  he  might  serve  as  example  to  us, 
and  that,  by  his  resurrection,  he  might  give  evidence  of  the 
life  and  immortality  which  await  us.     Let  us  note,  in  pass- 

"  [It  does  not  appear  that  Lelio  expressly  affirmed  or  denied  the 
eternal  Sonship.  In  his  Confession  of  Faith  (15  July,  1555),  he  calls 
Christ  "our  eternal  God,  Judge,  Deliverer,  Lord  and  King."] 

^^  Trechsel,  vol.  ii.  app.  x.  "iV(7«  dubhitate  piiufo,  die,  se  hora  di 
spine  col  nostra  dolce  crocijisso,  tin  giorno  e  tosto  di  vera  e  trio/nphante 
gloria  saremo  coronati.  .  .  .  In  somina,  viviamo  di  maniera  .  .  .  da  noi 
rendasi  .  .  .  honore  .  .  .  al  nostro  Padre  e  Dio,  per  il  Signor  Christo 
Jesti,  nostro precursore."  Letter  from  Lelio  to  the  Church  at  Locarno 
(1555)- 


192         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

ing,  this  singular  opinion  of  Fausto,  doubtless  borrowed  from 
Pomponazzi's  book,  that  the  soul  is  mortal  in  its  nature,  and 
only  acquires  immortality  by  the  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit, 
effecting  in  us,  through  faith,  a  new  creature. -"* 

Lastly,  let  us  observe  the  attitude  of  the  two  Sozzini  in 
regard  to  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity.  Lelio,  in  his  letter  to 
Wolff,  raises  two  objections  against  the  Trinity.  The  first  is 
directed  against  the  separate  personality  of  the  Holy  Spirit : 
"  In  this  saying  of  Jesus,  '  God  is  a  Spirit,'  the  term  'spirit' 
is  taken  in  the  sense  of  spiritual  essence.  Now  if  God  is 
tripersonal,  this  attribute  must  belong  to  the  three  persons." 
In  that  case,  Lelio  asks  if  the  Holy  Spirit  ought  to  be  other- 
wise conceived  of  than  as  spiritual  essence.  The  second 
objection  is  this  :  Lelio  asks  himself  how  the  expression, 
"Jesus  is  Son  of  God,"  ought  to  be  understood.  If  God  is 
tripersonal,  we  should  have  to  conclude  thence  that  the  man 
Jesus  is  Son  of  the  Trinity;  for  he  is  a  creature,  and  overt 
actions  of  the  Trinity  are  not  distributable  among  the  persons.-^ 

It  even  appears  that  in  his  conversations  with  members  of 
the  Italian  Church  at  Geneva,  Lelio  went  so  far  as  to  treat 
the  Trinity  as  a  sort  of  tripartite  chimera,  and  gloried  in 
being  the  new  giant  who  should  overturn  this  tower.-"  And 
yet,  in  defending  himself  to  Bullinger,  he  declared  that  he 

^*  Faiisti  et  LceIH  Socini  ....  tractatiis,  tit  sup.  ( Suini7ia  Religionis 
CkristiancE,  a  F.  Socino  coiiscripta).  [Sozzini's  exact  doctrine  is  as 
follows.  A  man  is  a  union  of  three  constituents:  body,  anima  (the  force 
by  which  we  live  and  feel),  and  animus  (the  force  by  which  we  think). 
Death  separates  these  constituents,  and,  in  sb  doing,  dissolves  the  man. 
The  body  returns  to  earth ;  the  anima  ceases  to  have  independent  exist- 
ence, and  returns  to  the  Fountain  of  life;  the  animus /^jj/^/j' retains  a 
separate  existence,  but  can  in  no  case  be  called  a  man.  Only  in  the 
case  of  some  will  there  be  that  glorified  re-union  of  the  constituents, 
never  to  be  again  severed,  which  constitutes  immortality.] 

"^  Hottingersche  Saninilung,  at  Zurich,  v.  332.     See  Appendix  XIII. 
-^  Trechsel,  vol.  ii.  180,  n.     (Letter  from  Martinengo  to  Bullinger). 
[The  reference  is  not  to  himself,  but  to  Servetus.] 


CHAPTER   IX.  193 

abhorred  Sabellianism,  Tritheism  and  Arianism,  and  en- 
trenches himself  behind  the  authority  of  the  Scriptures  and 
the  Apostles'  Creed.  ■■^' 

How  much  more  frank  and  unequivocal  is  the  attitude  of 
Fausto  Sozzini !  Pursuing  the  method  of  Acontius,  he  begins 
by  classifying  the  (question  of  the  nature  of  God  among  the 
truths  that  are  profitable,  but  non-essential  to  salvation.  Then 
he  demonstrates  that  the  Trinity  is  contrary  at  once  to 
Scripture  and  to  reason.  To  Scripture,  because  nowhere  is 
the  Holy  Spirit  expressly  called  God,  and  because  the  term 
God,  when  applied  to  the  Son,  is  taken  in  the  sense  of 
holding  his  power  of  the  Almighty  or  participating  in  the 
Divine  majesty,  as  in  several  passages  in  the  Old  Testament. 
Reason,  for  her  part,  repels  the  doctrine  :  r.  Because  the 
divine  unity  and  the  triplicity  of  persons  involve  a  contra- 
diction;  2.  Because  division  of  persons  is  incompatible  with 
the  perfection  of  being ;  3.  Because  the  eternal  generation 
of  the  Son  is  irreconcilable  with  perfect  equality.  And  he 
concludes  that  in  the  essence  of  God  there  is  but  one  sole 
person,  the  Father  of  our  Saviour  Jesus  Christ.-'^ 

Such  is  the  gradation  which  marked  Antitrinitarian  criti- 
cism in  its  passage  from  Lelio  to  Fausto  Sozzini ;  and  when 
we  recall  the  previous  stages  of  this  theological  process, 
which  begins  with  Erasmus  and  Michael  Servetus,  and  pur- 
sues its  course  in  the  Anabaptists  of  the  Low  Countries  and 
the  "pseudo-evangelicals"  of  London,  we  shall  be  able  to 
judge  of  the  ascending  scale  and  victorious  march  of  the 
Unitarian  movement. 

England  was  a  field  fully  prepared  for  receiving  the  Soci- 
nian  ideas.  Ochino  had  broken  the  clods,  Acontius  had 
ploughed  the  furrows,  Corranus  had  watered  the  ground  ; 
nothing  now  was  wanted  but  to  sow  the  seed.    God  confided 

■^  Hottinger,  Ecc.  Hist.  N.  T.  (1667)  vol.  ix.  sec.  xvi.  2,  pp.  417  ff. 
^*  Socini  Opera,  vol.  i.  652.    Cf.  Racovian  Catechism.    See  Appendix 
XIV. 

o 


194         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

this  task  to  agents  of  every  sort,  both  conscious  and  mecha- 
nical. 

The  first  was  Leho  Sozini.  We  do  not  dwell  on  the 
importance  of  his  visit  to  London  in  1548.  In  fact,  he 
was  then  only  twenty-three  years  of  age,  and  made  but  a  stay 
of  a  few  months.  Attended  by  all  the  prestige  which  be- 
longed to  the  name  of  the  Sozzini,  he  was  probably  presented 
by  Ochino  at  the  court  of  Edward  VI.  What  a  charm,  at 
any  rate,  must  he  not  have  exercised  over  his  fellow-country- 
men at  Austin  Friars  !  And  if  we  bear  in  mind  that,  in  the 
following  year.  Hooper  apprises  BuUinger  of  the  appearance 
of  the  first  who  denied  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ,  it  is 
impossible  to  withhold  from  Lelio  Sozini  his  share  in  the 
evolution  of  English  extra-Trinitarian  theology.-*'  This  influ- 
ence was  principally  exerted  through  the  numerous  English 
exiles  at  Geneva  and  Ziirich,  during  the  reign  of  Mary  Tudor, 
who  maintained  relations  with  Lelio.  These  were  the  picked 
men  of  the  English  clergy  and  nobility,  as  we  may  judge 
from  those  who  signed  the  Letter  addressed  to  the  Council 
of  Ziirich.^'^  Among  them  we  may  mention  Sir  Richard 
Morison  and  the  Earl  of  Bedford,  whom  Lelio  doubtless 
met  at  the  house  of  ( )chino,  whose  patrons  they  had  been  ; 
and  especially  a  certain  John  Burcher,  "a  great  lover  of  the 
Ziirichers,''  and  a  bold  antagonist  of  the  Jews  and  the  Jesuits, 
who  appears  in  the  Zurich  letters  as  an  ultra-Puritan,  and 
who  ended  by  taking  orders  in  the  Anglican  Church  and 
obtaining  a  living  near  London.-^^  Perhaps  also  we  should 
place  among  the  first  disciples  of  Socinianism  in  England, 
Dr.  Raphael  Ritter,  a  Londoner  by  birth,  who,  about  1575, 
published  a  Brevis  Demonstration  quod  Christus  11011  sit  ipse 

-^  Trechsel  (Letter  from  Lelio  Sozini  to  Bullinger,  from  Basel,  19  July, 
1549,  on  his  return  from  England),  vol.  ii.  appendix. 
^^  Moerikofer,  ut.  sttp.,  appendix. 
^^  Ziirich  Letters,  3  ser.,  Letters  294  and  333. 


CHAPTER   IX.  195 

Deus  qui  Pater,  nee  ei  cequah's ;  and  Bartholomew  Legate, 
who  was  condemned  to  the  stake  as  an  Arian  by  James  I.  in 
1612. 

But  the  most  powerful  missionary  of  Socinianism  in  En- 
gland was  the  press,  which,  under  cover  of  the  troubles 
which  preceded  and  followed  the  fall  of  Charles  I.,  enjoyed 
an  extraordinary  freedom. ^^  And  even  before  the  English 
press  could  print  Antitrinitarian  books  with  impunity,  the 
printing-presses  of  Zaslaw,  Wilno  and  Rakow,  in  Poland,  and 
later  those  of  Lubeck  and  Amsterdam,  inundated  Great 
Britain  with  Socinian  works,  translated  into  Latin  for  the  use 
of  English  readers.  In  1609  appeared  the  rirst  Latin  edition 
of  the  Catechism  of  the  Unitarian  Churches  of  Poland  and 
Lithuania,  better  known  under  the  name  of  the  Racovian 
CatecJiism,  and  translated  from  the  Polish  by  Jeromos  Mos- 
korzowski  of  Moskorzdw,  with  a  highly  eulogistic  dedication 
to  the  King  of  England,  James  L^^  This  dedication  proves 
that  the  edition  was  especially  intended  for  the  English,  but 
it  did  not  preserve  the  little  duodecimo  from  the  fury  of  the 
guardians  of  English  orthodoxy;  it  was  publicly  burnt  in 
1614. 

Happily  for  the  truth,  governments  cannot  burn  ideas. 
They  rise  anew,  in  stronger  life  than  ever,  even  from  the 
ashes  of  the  books  which  had  first  offered  them  to  the  world's 
view.  The  Unitarian  ideas  made  their  way,  by  channels 
secret  yet  sure,  among  the  enlightened  classes  of  the  English 
nation.-^*  Under  the  reign  of  Charles  L,  they  found  a 
shield  in  the  Latitudinarian  party,  which,  inspired  by  the 

^^  [No  avowedly  Antitrinitarian  books  were  printed  in  England  with 
impunity  before  1687.] 

^^  Catechesis  Ecclesiamm  qtia,  in  Regno  PoloniiE  et  Magna  Ducatii 
Lithuania. .  .  .  ante  annos  qiiatnor  Polonice,  nunc  verb  etiain  Latine  edita: 
Racovise    1609. 

^■*  For  the  remainder  of  this,  and  for  the  following  chapter,  see  Robt. 
Wallace,  ut.  sup.,  vol.  i.  Historical  Introduction. 

O   2 


196         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

principles  of  Acontius,  aimed  at  the  limitation  of  funda- 
mental doctrines  to  those  which  are  strictly  essential.  One 
of  the  three  leaders  of  the  Latitudinarian  party,  Lucius 
Carey,  Lord  Falkland,  having  received  some  writings  of 
Fausto  Sozzini  from  his  chaplain.  Dr.  Hugh  Cressy,  of 
Oxford,  "was  so  extremely  taken  and  satisfied  with  them, 
that,"  notwithstanding  the  opposition  of  his  mother,  who 
was  a  Catholic,  "from  that  time  was  his  conversion"  to 
Socinianism.  Some  years  afterwards,  the  great  champion  of 
the  Trinity,  Francis  Cheynell,  found  an  English  translation 
of  aSocinian  book  in  the  chamber  of  John  Webberley,  B.D., 
Fellow  and  sub-Rector  of  Lincoln  College.  This  discovery 
was  made  in  the  course  of  a  Parliamentary  visitation  of  the 
University,  the  chief  commissioner  being  Viscount  Say  and 
Scale,  to  whom  Cheynell  dedicated  his  work  entitled,  "  The 
Rise,  Growth  and  Danger  of  Socinianisme"  (1643).  John 
Webberley,  who  was  imprisoned  and  expelled  the  University 
for  resisting  the  action  of  the  visitors,  translated  several 
Socinian  works,  among  which  was  a  "  Socinian  Master- 
peece."  He  had  rendered  it  "into  English,  for  the  benefit 
of  this  Nation,  and  prepared  it  for  the  presse."  Webberley, 
seeking  refuge  perhaps  at  Amsterdam,  and  William  Hamil- 
ton, making  his  way  to  Franeker,  continued  to  employ  them- 
selves in  disseminating  their  ideas.  In  1651,  the  second 
Latin  edition  of  the  Racovian  Catechism  was  printed  in 
London,  and  the  first  EngHsh  translation  of  it  was  printed 
at  Amsterdam  in  1652.  A  year  later,  Richard  Moone,  at 
the  Seven  Stars,  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard,  published  English 
translations  of  certain  tracts,  written  by  the  Polish  Socinians  : 
A  Brief  Enquiry  touching  a  better  Way  then  is  commonly 
made  use  of ,  to  refute  Papists,  &c.,  by  Joachim  Stegmann,  the 
elder  f''  The  Life  of  that  Incomparable  Man,  Faustus  Socinus 

^^  [Brevis  Disqitisitio,  an  et  quoniodo  viilgb  died  Evangelici,  Pontificios 
....  solide  atque  evidciiUr  refutare  queant,  1633.] 


CHAPTER    IX.  197 

SiVicvis/s,  described  by  a  Polonian  KnigJit,  i.  e.  Samuel  Przyp- 
cowski ;  and,  lastly,  A  Discourse  touching  the  Peace  &=  Con- 
cord of  the  Church,  <^c.^  by  the  same  author.  These  trans- 
lations are  attributed  to  John  Bidle.  From  this  time  (1653) 
Socinian  publications  had  a  rapid  run  with  the  English  public 
up  to  the  end  of  the  century.  In  1731  the  Rev.  Edward 
Coombe  ventured  to  publish  an  English  translation  of  the 
De  Auctoritate  S.  Scriptures  of  Fausto  Sozzini,  with  a  dedica- 
tion to  Queen  Caroline.     It  was  re-issued  in  1732. 

Moreover,  Unitarian  ideas  began  to  assume  an  organised 
form  in  1644,  and  were  impersonated  in  some  few  knots  of 
religious  separatists.  In  London,  in  1644,  a  preacher  at  a 
religious  society  in  Bell  Alley  declared  that  "though  Christ 
was  a  prophet  and  did  miracles,  yet  he  was  not  God  ;"  and 
near  Coleman  Street  there  was  a  society  denying  the  divinity 
of  Christ,  under  the  leadership  of  a  certain  Welshman.  Four 
years  later,  Rev.  John  Goodwin,  who  had  opened  an  Inde- 
pendent chapel  for  the  setting  forth  of  Arminian  doctrines, 
wrote  these  beautiful  words  in  the  Epistle  prefixed  to  his 
translation  of  the  first  four  books  of  the  Stratagemata  of 
Acontius  : 

"In  vain  do  they  blow  a  trumpet  to  prepare  the  Magistrate  to 
battle  against  Errors  and  Heresies,  whilest  they  leave  the  judg- 
ments and  consciences  of  men  armed  with  confidence  of  truth 
in  them.  If  men  would  call  more  for  light,  and  less  for  fire  from 
heaven,  their  warfare  against  such  enemies  would  be  much  sooner 
accomplished.  For  he  that  denied  the  one,  hath  promised  the 
other  (Prov.  ii.  3,  4,  5  ;  Jam.  i.  5).  And  amongst  all  weapons, 
there  is  none  like  unto  light  to  fight  against  darkness.  But 
whilest  men  arm  themselves  against  Satan  with  the  material 
sword,  they  do  but  insure  his  victory  and  triumph."^" 

Finally,  John  Bidle,  M.A.,  Oxon.,  and  Thomas  Lushing- 
ton,  B.D.,  Oxon.,  did  their  utmost  by  their  writings  to  under- 

^^  Wallace,  vol.  i.  loi. 


198         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

mine  the  popular  belief  in  the  Trinity.  They  digested  the 
Acontian  and  Socinian  ideas,  adapting  them  to  the  practical 
and  philanthropic  character  of  the  Anglo-Saxons,  and  thus 
became  the  first  native  organs  of  Unitarianism  in  England. 


'XX 


CHAPTER  X. 

Influence  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  genius  on  the  development  of  English 
Unitarian  Christianity:  Bidle  and  Firmin. — Relations  with  the  Lati- 
tudinarians,  the  Quakers,  the  New-Arians. — Milton,  Locke  and 
Newton. 

We  now  return  from  the  tour  of  Europe  which  we  under- 
took in  our  search  for  the  sources  of  EngUsh  Unitarianism, 
after  having  estabhshed  the  position  that  it  had  not  its 
original  roots  in  British  soil.  We  have  traversed  all  the 
countries  which  held  relations  with  Great  Britain  •  in  the 
matter  of  religious  ideas,  the  Low  Countries  and  Germany, 
Switzerland  and  Italy,  Spain  and  Poland  ;  we  have  inter- 
rogated in  turn  Anabaptists  and  Quakers,  Episcopalians  and 
Puritans,  and  we  arrive  at  this  conclusion.  The  first  shoots 
of  Unitarian  Christianity  budded  in  Italy,  where  Michael 
Servetus  sowed,  or  whence  perhaps  he  derived,  the  seed. 
Uprooted  by  the  tempest  of  the  Inquisition,  these  plants 
took  fresh  root  in  the  hospitable  valleys  of  Switzerland,  and 
driven  off  once  more  by  the  blast  of  intolerance  which  stirred 
most  of  the  churches,  seeds  were  carried,  some  to  the  coasts 
of  Britain,  others  to  the  steppes  of  Poland  and  the  moun- 
tains of  Transylvania.  It  was  in  the  spring  of  1550  that  the 
/  first  Unitarian  party  made  its  appearance  in  the  Strangers' 
Church  in  London  ;  and  from  that  time,  fostered  by  the 
utterances  of  such  men  as  Ochino,  Acontius,  Corranus  and 
the  Sozzini,  it  did  not  cease  to  grow  until  it  reached  such 
proportions  that  it  could  free  itself  from  all  foreign  influence, 
and  assume  its  proper  and  original  character,  its  idiosyncrasy. 


2O0         SOURCES   OF    ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

SO  to  speak.  At  present,  then,  what  we  have  to  do  is  to 
examine,  first,  the  mode  in  which  the  Anglo-Saxon  genius 
has  assimilated  the  Unitarian  doctrine,  that  completely  Latin 
conception ;  and  next  to  inquire  how  it  has  applied  it  in 
the  practical  work  of  the  Church. 

Let  us  mark,  at  the  outset,  the  transformation  which  the 
Acontian  and  Socinian  ideas  have  undergone,  in  passing 
through  the  medium  of  the  acknowledged  Fathers  of  English 
Unitarianism,  Bidle,  Hamilton,  Firmin,  and  the  like. 

"  With  the  exception  of  a  slender  intermittent  stream  of 
Servetianism,"  says  Mr.  Gordon,  "  which  in  England  at  least 
has  never  attained  the  proportions  or  the  influence  of  a  school 
of  theology,  Liberal  Christianity  has  always  owed  the  largest 

debt  to  the  Socinian  impulse that  exotic  theology 

which,  with  the  necessary  modifications,  the  learned  Bidle, 
and  later  on  the  gentle  Lindsey,  exerted  themselves  to  plant 
on  English  soil  as  a  Unitarian  Church."  ^  This  enterprise  was 
begun  with  translations  ;  but  these  versions  were  not  literal, 
and  bore  already  the  traces  of  doctrinal  modifications,  the 
work  of  the  translators. 

Thus  it  is  that  William  Hamilton,  some  time  Fellow  of 
All  Souls',  Oxford,  the  presumable  translator  of  the  Racovian 
Catechism  (1652),  naively  avows  having  made  changes  from 
the  Latin  original,  to  suit  the  taste  of  the  English  reader.-^ 
Some  time  before,  Thomas  Lushington  (d.  1661),  of  Pem- 
broke College,  Oxford,  chaplain  to  Charles  I.,  had  translated 
the  Commentaries  of  Johann  Krell,  the  elder,  and  of  Jonas 
Schlichting  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  and  that  of  the 
former  on  the  Epistle  to  the  Galatians  (1647 — 1650),  not, 


1  Theol.  Rev.  Oct.  1879,  pp.  532,  533. 

^  [No  such  avowal  appears,  though  the  changes  are  made ;  but  Web- 
berley,  in  his  Epistle  prefixed  to  the  unknown  "Socinian  Master-peece," 
stated,  according  to  Cheynell,  "that  Socinianisme  was  to  be  corrected 
and  chastised  with  respect  to  the  nature  of  our  climate."] 


CHAPTER    X.  20I 

however,  without  additions  and  alterations.-^  It  was  also 
from  the  writings  of  the  learned  divine  of  Rakow  (Krell) 
that  Bidle  drew  his  Unitarian  theories. 

John  ]]idle,  born  at  Wotton-under-PMge,  in  Gloucester- 
shire, 14  Jan.  1616  (d.  1662),  M.A.,  Oxon.,  and  master  of 
the  Free -school  in  the  parish  of  St.  Mary  de  Crypt  at  Glou- 
cester, experienced  his  first  doubts  concerning  the  Trinity 
while  reading  the  Bible,  without  having,  as  yet,  opened  any 
Socinian  book.  Denounced  by  some  false  brethren,  and 
removed  from  his  office,  he  was  cited  before  a  Parhamentary 
Committee  sitting  at  Westminster,  and  openly  denied  the 
Deity  of  the  Holy  Spirit.^ 

After  languishing  in  suspense  for  sixteen  months,  ten  of 
which  he  spent  in  close  custody,  and  being  unable  to  obtain 
either  a  hearing  or  a  discharge,  Bidle  decided  to  make  an 
appeal  to  public  opinion,  and  printed  his  Letter  to  Sir  Henry 
Vane,  along  with  XII  Argmnents  drawn  out  of  the  Scripture : 
wherein  the  commonly  receiz'cd  Opinion  touching  the  Deity  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  is  clearly  and  fully  Refuted  (1647). 

In  his  Letter  to  Vane,  Bidle  declares  that  he  believes 
"  the  Holy  Spirit  to  be  the  chief  of  all  ministering  spirits, 
peculiarly  sent  out  from  heaven  to  minister  on  their  behalf 
that  shall  inherit  salvation.  ...  As  there  is  one  principal 
spirit  among  the  evil  angels,  known  in  Scripture  by  the 
name  of  Satan,  ....  even  so  is  there  one  principal  Spirit 
among  the  good  angels,  called  by  the  name  of  the  ....  Holy 
Spirit."  Parliament  ordered  the  suppression  of  Bidle's  pam- 
phlet, had  it  burnt  by  the  hangman,  and,  the  following  year 
(2  May,  1648),  passed  an  Ordinance  "for  the  punishing  of 
Blasphemies  and  Heresies,"  declaring  the  denial  of  the 
Trinity  equivalent  to  the  crime  of  felony,  and  making  it 
punishable  by  death.  Others  would  have  given  way  to  such 
menaces ;  the  dauntless  prisoner  at  Westminster  issued  from 

^  Wallace,  vol.  iii.  art.  284.  ■*  Ibid.  vol.  iii.  art.  285. 


202         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

his  cell  two  fresh  works  :  A  Confession  of  Faith  touching  the 
Holy  Trinity  according  to  the  Scripture^  and  The  Testimonies 
of  IrencEiis,  J^iistin  Martyr,  TertuUian,  Novatianus,  Theo- 
philus,  Origen  .  ...  as  also  ofArnobius,  Lactantius,  Eiisebius, 
Hilaiy  and  Brightman.,  concerning  that  One  God,  and  the  Persons 
of  the  Holy  Trinity,  &c.  (1648).  We  must  not  mistake  this 
display  of  patristic  authorities  ;  Bidle,  at  the  close,  carefully 
tells  us  that  he  has  only  invoked  the  testimony  of  the  Fathers 
in  order  to  pursue  his  adversaries  on  their  own  ground.  For, 
says  he,  though  they  "  lay  aside  this  plea  when  they  have  to 
do  with  Papists  ....  yet  do  they  take  it  up  again,  in  a  manner 
waving  the  Scripture,  when  they  argue  with  me."  Now  in 
Bidle's  eyes  there  is  no  other  rule  in  matters  of  faith  but 
Holy  Scripture,  and,  in  case  of  controversy  respecting  the 
sense  of  Scripture,  no  other  authorised  interpreter  but  reason. 

For  a  short  period  Bidle  obtained  his  hberty,  only  however 
to  be  cast  into  Newgate  by  President  Bradshaw.  At  length 
set  free,  after  (in  all)  six  years'  imprisonment,  thanks  to  the 
Act  of  Oblivion  of  10  Feb.  1652,  Bidle  began  to  meet  his 
friends  every  Sunday,  and  expounded  the  Scriptures  to  them 
in  the  sense  of  the  Socinian  Commentaries,  translated  in 
part  by  Lushington,  and  the  Racovian  Catechism. 

He  himself  was  not  satisfied  with  all  the  articles  of  this 
Catechism;  for  he  published,  two  years  after  the  appearance 
of  its  English  translation,  a  Twofold  Catechism :  the  One 
simply  called  A  Scriptiire- Catechism  ;  the  Other,  A  brief  Scrip- 
ture-Catechism for  Children.  The  work  was  drawn  up  in  the 
form  of  questions,  with  "  answers  taken  word  for  word  out 
of  the  Scripture,  without  either  consequences  or  comments." 
This  book,  which  also  had  the  honour  of  being  burnt,  cost 
its  author  a  three  years'  banishment  to  the  Scilly  Isles.  On 
being  allowed  to  return,  he  at  once  resumed  his  meetings. 
For  a  short  time  he  was  persuaded  to  retire  into  the  country; 
but,  on  venturing  back,  the  unfortunate  Bidle  was  again 
arrested  at  his  lodgings  in  London,  and  sentenced  to  lie  in 


^ 


CHAPTER   X.  203 

prison  until  he  had  paid  a  fine  of  one  hundred  pounds.  In 
a  few  weeks  he  died  (22  Sept.  1662),  from  want  of  fresh  air 
and  wholesome  nourishment,  a  true  martyr  of  the  Unitarian 
faith. 

Little  did  he  imagine  that  he  would  have  a  leading  con- 
tinuator  of  his  work  in  the  person  of  that  same  Rev.  John 
Cooper''  who  had  been  appointed  in  his  stead  to  the  Master- 
ship of  the  Crypt  Free-school  at  Gloucester.  Cooper  was 
one  of  tlie  two  thousand  Presbyterian  clergymen  ejected  by 
the  Act  of  Uniformity ;  he  became  the  first  minister  of  a 
Unitarian  congregation  at  Cheltenham,  which  he  served 
faithfully  for  twenty  years  (1662 — 1682),  being  a  model  of 
virtue  and  charity  to  his  flock. 

Bidle  also  left  disciples  at  London,  such  as  Rev.  John 
Knowles,''  whose  moral  courage  cost  him  his  liberty ;  and 
young  Nathaniel  Stuckey,"  who  had  translated  into  Latin 
Bidle's  Twofold  Catechism,  publishing  along  with  it  a  short 
piece  of  his  own  on  the  death  of  Christ,  and  was  giving 
tokens  of  the  greatest  promise,  when,  at  sixteen  years  of  age, 
he  was  carried  off  by  the  Great  Plague  of  London  (1665). 

In  that  same  year  appeared  the  translation  of  Johann 
Krell's  principal  work,  De  una  Deo  patre,  with  the  English 
title,  The  Ttao  Books  of  John  Crellius,  Fnincus,  touching 
One  God  the  Father,  &c.  In  this  treatise  the  author  not 
only  affirmed  the  strict  unipersonality  of  God  the  Father, 
but  elucidated  also  the  uncompounded  nature  of  the  Son  of 
God,  and  that  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  Under  the  pseudonym 
of  "Kosmoburg"  we  recognise  the  cosmopolitan  city  of 
London,  and  in  the  "  Sign  of  the  Sunbeams"  we  detect  the 
publisher  Richard  Moone  at  the  "  Seven  Stars,"  who  for 
twenty  years  had  published  nearly  all  the  translations  of 
Socinian  treatises. 

s  Wallace,  vol.  iii.  art.  350.  "  Ibid.  vol.  iii.  art.  287. 

''  Ibid.  vol.  iii.  art.  344. 


204         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

The  English  Unitarians,  at  this  time,  were  in  frequent 
communication  with  the  Polish  lirethren,  and  especially 
with  the  Krell  family.  Christoph,  the  second  son  of  Johann 
Krell,  pastor  of  a  congregation  of  Polish  exiles  at  Fried- 
richsburg  in  Silesia,  twice  visited  England  (1666  and  166S); 
and,  having  become  a  widower,  confided  the  education  of  a 
son  and  a  daughter  to  Nathaniel  Stuckey's  mother,  who  had 
offered  to  take  charge  of  them,  in  memory  of  her  beloved 
son,  cut  off  in  the  flower  of  his  age.  Christoph's  son,  Samuel 
Krell,'^  thus  educated  in  London,  and  subsequently  in  the 
Arminian  Gymnasium  at  Amsterdam,  became  later  on 
minister  at  Koenigswald,  near  Frankfort-onthe-Oder,  but 
revisited  England  several  times,  and  was  in  communication 
with  many  illustrious  men,  including  Tillotson,  the  celebrated 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  and  the  great  Newton.  Thus 
did  the  disciples  of  Bidle,  encouraged  by  that  feeling  of  a 
common  cause  which  united  them  to  the  Unitarians  of 
Prussia  and  the  Arminians  of  Holland,  continue  his  work, 
undeterred  by  the  menaces  of  the  most  terrifying  edicts, 
notably  the  Conventicle  Act. 

But  the  most  active  and  most  successful  advocate  of  the 
Unitarian  cause,  after  Bidle,  was  a  layman,  Thomas  Firmin,'' 
whose  name,  and  sympathies  for  the  victims  of  the  revocation 
of  the  Edict  of  Nantes,  betray  a  French  origin.  He  was  a 
mercer,  and  had  a  large  place  of  business  in  Lombard  Street, 
London.  While  still  quite  young,  he  had  directed  his  good 
offices  to  mitigate  at  least,  if  he  could  not  cut  short,  the  cap- 
tivity of  Bidle.  He  had  been  one  of  the  assiduous  hearers  of 
the  first  Unitarian  minister  in  London,  as  well  as  of  Rev.  John 
Goodwin,  the  Arminian  translator  of  the  Stratagemata ;  and 
during  Bidle's  exile,  he  had  even  begun  to  disseminate  Unita- 
rianism  on  his  own  account.     Nevertheless,  after  the  death 

8  Wallace,  vol.  iii.  art.  358. 

^  Ibid.  vol.  iii.  art.  353.     Cf.  vol.  i.  151. 


CHAPTER    X.  205 

of  Bidle,  Firmin  was  an  attendant  at  the  services  of  the 
Estabhshed  Church,  and  maintained  friendly  relations  with 
several  of  the  clergy  of  that  Church,  including  Dr.  Benjamin 
Whichcote,  Provost  of  King's  College,  Cambridge  ;  Dr.  John 
Worthington,  Master  of  Jesus  College,  Cambridge ;  and,  above 
all,  Dr.  Tillotson,  who  afterwards  became  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury.  Theophilus  Lindsey  has  keenly  reproached 
him  with  this  compromise  between  his  Unitarian  principles 
and  those  of  a  Church  which  had  officially  condemned 
them.^*^  He  views  it  as  a  betrayal  of  principle,  due  to  the 
fear  of  the  penalties  decreed  by  the  Act  of  Uniformity  (1662) 
and  the  Conventicle  Act  (1664).  A  less  severe  judgment 
will  be  passed  on  this  attitude  of  Firmin,  if  allowance  is 
made  for  two  circumstances  :  tirst,  that  Firmin  was  a  layman, 
who  had  not  been  bound  by  any  ecclesiastical  obligation, 
and  who,  like  Acontius,  professed  little  admiration  for  reli- 
gious sects  and  coteries  ;  and,  secondly,  that  most  of  the 
higher  clergy  in  the  Anglican  Church  were  at  that  time 
imbued  with  Arminian  and  Latitudinarian  ideas — witness 
Archbishop  Tillotson,  who  in  his  letter  to  Bishop  Burnet, 
speaking  of  the  Athanasian  Creed,  remarks.  "  I  wish  we 
were  well  rid  of  it."^^  With  bishops  thus  broad-minded, 
our  Unitarian  might  well  feel  at  his  ease,  and  that  without 
sacrificing  an  iota  of  his  principles.  He  employed  in  the 
service  of  this  cause  two  means,  which,  having  no  tinge  of 
ecclesiasticism,  were  so  much  the  more  powerful  in  moving 
public  opinion,  which  in  England  was  prejudiced  already 
against  anything  that  savoured  of  "  clerical  cant."  These 
were,  an  intelligent  and  inclusive  philanthropy,  and  an  in- 
comparable talent  for  public  affairs.  Thomas  Firmin  was 
the  first  to  respond,   in   1662,  to  the  appeal  of  Unitarian 

1"  Theoph.  Lindsey,  An  Hisiorical  View  of  the  State  of  the  Unitarian 
Doctrine  and  Worship,  London,  1783,  8vo,  chap.  v.  295. 
"  Wallace,  vol.  i.  275. 


2o6         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Protestants  of  Poland,  driven  from  their  country  by  the 
intrigues  of  the  Jesuits,  and  abandoned  by  the  cowardice  of 
the  Lutherans  and  Calvinists.  And  when,  in  1 680-81,  the 
interference  with  the  Edict  of  Nantes  cast  hundreds  of  French 
refugees  on  the  shores  of  Great  Britain,  it  was  Firmin  again 
who  headed  the  subscription  hst,  and  who  was  charged,  by 
the  unanimous  confidence  of  the  donors,  with  the  dehcate 
office  of  treasurer. ^^ 

Firmin's  charity,  Uke  that  of  the  good  Samaritan,  was 
extended  to  all,  even  to  his  adversaries  in  religion ;  but  he 
was  at  times  ill  requited  for  his  generosity,  as  is  shown  by 
the  anti-Socinian  pamphlet  of  Lamothe.  This  ingratitude 
did  not  discourage  him,  any  more  than  the  edicts  against 
Antitrinitarian  books  intimidated  him,  and  he  it  was  who 
gave  a  considerable  impulse  to  Unitarian  publications. 

He  had  already,  in  1665,  caused  the  English  version  of 
the  De  uno  Deo  Patre,  by  Johann  Krell,  the  elder,  to  be 
printed  at  his  own  cost,  and  he  had  perhaps  a  hand  in  the 
translation.  In  1689  he  had  to  do  with  the  publication  of 
The  Naked  Gospel,  by  Arthur  Bury,  D.  D.  This  Latitudinarian 
clergyman  propounded  in  the  work  just  named  an  eirenical 
theory,  very  like  that  of  Acontius  and  F.  Sozzini,  respecting 
the  small  number  of  articles  which  are  really  fundamental 
and  universal,  his  aim  being  to  serve  the  project,  attributed 
to  William  III.,  of  uniting  all  the  English  sects  in  one 
Church.  In  1691  was  published,  at  Firmin's  expense,  a 
volume  which  contained  the  first  series  of  Unitarian  Tracts, 
and  in  this  were  reprinted  the  principal  waitings  of  John 
Bidle.  The  second  series,  which  appeared  about  1693,  was 
composed  of  tracts  all  relating  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity 
and  the  questions  which  it  raises.  The  third  was  published 
at  the  end  of  1695,  while  Firmin  was  still  living;  and  the 
fourth  some  years  after  his  death. 

^'  Wallace,  vol.  i.  149,  176,  iii.  376. 


CHAPTER    X.  207 

These  three  or  four  volumes,  known  as  the  old  Unitarian 
Tracts,^'^  played  an  important  part  in  the  celebrated  Trini- 
tarian controversy  engaged  in  by  Drs.  Sherlock,  South  and 
A\'allis,  at  th'=>  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  ;  and  it  may 
be  said  that,  in  the  absence  of  a  constituted  Unitarian 
Church,  they  were  the  means  by  w^hich  Unitarian  ideas 
made  their  way  into  the  bosom  of  the  Anglican  Church. 

In  fact,  as  Mr.  Albert  Reville  justly  remarks,  the  real 
influence  of  Unitarianism  must  not  be  measured  by  the  size 
of  its  churches  or  by  the  number  of  their  members.  Faithfu 
to  the  thought  of  their  Italian  precursors,  Acontius  and 
the  Sozzini,  the  first  English  Unitarians  thought  much  less 
of  founding  new  churches  than  of  completing  within  the 
older  churches  the  unfinished  reformation  of  the  Romish 
dogmatic  system. 

We  have  already  noted  the  friendly  relations  of  Thomas 
Firmin  with  many  high  dignitaries  of  the  Anglican  Church. 
During  several  years  (1668 — 1670)  he  was  on  terms  not  less 
good  with  the  reformers  of  Quakerism,  William  Penn  and 
Robert  Barclay.^'^  In  1668,  William  Penn  published  a  book 
entitled  The  Sandy  Foundation  Shaken.  Relying  on  the  tes- 
timony of  the  Scriptures  and  right  reason,  Penn  refutes  in 
this  work  "  those  so  generally  believed  and  applauded  Doc- 
trines of  One  God,  subsisting  in  three  distinct  and  separate 
Persons  ;  the  Impossibility  of  God's  pardoning  Sinners,  with- 
out a  plenary  Satisfaction  ;  the  Justification  of  impure  Per- 
sons by  an  imputative  Righteousness."  The  book  entailed 
a  seven  months'  imprisonment  on  its  author ;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  it  was  warmly  welcomed  by  the  Unitarians,  who 
found  in  it  many  of  their  cherished  ideas,  including  Bidle's 
two-fold  principle,  the  Scripture  as  interpreted  by  reason. 
Their  delight  was  of  no  long  duration.  The  moment  the 
leaders  of  Quakerism,  William  Penn  and  George  Whitehead 

^^  Wallace,  vol.  i.  219,  331,  &c.  "  Ibid.  vol.  i.  160— 169, 


208         SOURCES   OF    ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

realised  that  they  were  being  taken  for  disciples  of  Sozzini 
and  Bidle,  they  retracted.  Penn,  during  his  imprisonment, 
published  his  pamphlet,  Innocency  with  her  Open  Face  (1669), 
in  which  he  confessed  his  faith  in  God,  who  is  an  eternal 
Spirit ;  in  the  only  Son  of  God,  who  took  upon  him  flesh  ; 
and  in  the  Holy  Spirit,  that  proceeds  from  the  Father  and 
the  Son.  "  He  that  has  one  has  all,  for  '  these  three  are 
one,'  who  is  the  Alpha  and  Omega,  the  first  and  the  last, 
God  over  all,  blessed  for  ever." 

Robert  Barclay,  again,  in  his  famous  Apology  f 07-  the  True 
Christian  Divinity  (1676),  of  which  a  sketch  has  been  given 
(Chap.  I.  pp.  35,  36),  reaches  the  same  result  as  Penn;  that  is, 
a  conception  of  the  Trinity  verging  on  that  of  Sabellius,  and 
the  denial  of  the  imputation  of  Adam's  sin  and  of  predesti- 
nation.   Henceforth  there  was  a  rupture  between  the  Quakers 
and  the  Unitarians,  the  latter  accusing  the  former,  not  with- 
out reason,  of  having  contradicted  themselves  in  the  course 
,    of  a  few  years.    We  have  but  one  point  gained,  namely,  that 
/    both  parties  rejected  the  Athanasian  Creed,  in  which  they 
(    had  Archbishop  Tillotson  as  a  confederate. 

The  relations  of  the  English  Unitarians  with  the  theolo- 
gians who  inclined  to  Arianism  were  more  sympathetic,  but 
still  did  not  amount  to  a  fusion.  Thus  Christoph  Sand, 
the  younger,  in  his  Bibliothcca  Antitrinitariorum  (published 
posthumously  at  Amsterdam,  1684),  erected  a  veritable 
monument  to  the  glory  of  the  unipersonal  God ;  but,  taking 
his  stand  on  the  authority  of  the  Fathers  anterior  to  the 
Council  of  Nicaea,  this  author  professed  faith  in  an  eternal 
and  pre-existent  Christ. 

Dr.  Samuel  Clarke,  again,  coadjutor  and  friend  of  the 

great  Newton,  confided  to  him  his  doubts  as  to  the  aposto- 

licity  of  the  Trinitarian  doctrine,  and  published  his  Scripture 

,    Doctrine  of  the  Ti'inity  in  17 12.      In  it  he  exhibits  a  biblical 

^    erudition  and  a  freedom  of  inquiry  which  greatly  scandalised 

many  of  the  orthodox  (as  may  be  seen  in  Voltaire's  Letters 


CHAPTER   X.  209 

on  the  Efiglis/i) ;  but,  to  Newton's  great  regret,  his  conclu- 
sions were  identical  with  those  of  Sand,  that  is  to  say,  they 
bordered  on  Arianism.  But  what  proves  the  radiating  force 
of  the  Unitarian  idea  in  England  towards  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  still  more  than  the  voluntary  or  invo- 
luntary concessions  of  the  Quakers  and  the  New-Arians,  is 
the  real,  if  not  avowed,  adhesion  given  to  it  by  three  of  the 
greatest  English  geniuses  of  this  epoch,  Milton,  Locke  and 
Newton. 

This  testimony,  however,  is  shorn  of  some  of  its  glory  by 
the  fact  that  these  great  minds  did  not  make  known  their 
religious  opinions  during  their  lives.  Yet,  if  a  posthumous 
avowal  takes  from  the  courage  and  magnanimity  of  the  wit- 
nesses, it  leaves  untouched  the  worth  of  the  testimony.  Nay, 
these  affirmations  of  the  personal  unity  of  God,  which  seem 
to  come  from  beyond  the  tomb,  carry  for  this  very  reason 
all  the  more  weight  and  solemnity. 

Every  one  knows  Milton  the  poet ;  some  few  know  Milton 
the  politician ;  scarcely  any  know  Milton  the  theologian. ^^ 
John  Milton  (1608 — 1674)  was  a  profoundly  religious  soul. 
Trained  by  a  father  who  had  been  disinherited  on  account 
of  his  Protestantism,  and  by  a  mother  rich  in  good  works, 
he  acquired  for  himself  a  faith  resting  on  St.  Paul's  principle, 
"  Where  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  there  is  liberty."  He  is 
supposed  to  have  inspired  Oliver  Cromwell,  whose  Latin 
secretary  he  was,  with  all  the  measures  relating  to  the  liberty 
of  conscience,  of  the  press  and  of  public  worship,  which  were 
carried  into  effect  during  the  Protectorate. 

For  his  own  part,  disgusted  with  the  narrowness  and  the 
disputes  of  most  of  the  Churches,  wh-ether  Established  or 
Nonconformist,  Milton  attended  no  house  of  prayer,  and 
rendered  to  God  a  solitary  worship.      "  Every  morning," 


^*  Wallace,  vol.  iii.  art.  345.     Cf.  Lichtenberger's  Encyclopedie,  art. 
Slroehlin  on  Milton. 


2IO         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

M.  Taine  tells  us,  in  the  beautiful  pages  he  has  devoted  to 
him,  "  Milton  had  a  chapter  read  to  him  from  the  Hebrew 
Bible,  and  remained  some  time  in  grave  silence,  in  order  to 
meditate  on  what  he  had  heard."  That  was  his  prayer.  Was 
not  that  also  a  prayer — and  one  of  the  most  beautiful  that 
ever  issued  from  human  lips — the  magnificent  invocation 
which  is  found  at  the  close  of  his  Reformation  in  Engla7id 
{1641)? 

It  begins  with  these  words  :  "Thou,  therefore,  that  sittest 
in  light  and  glory  unapproachable,  Parent  of  angels  and  men ! 
next,  thee  I  implore,  omnipotent  King,  Redeemer  of  that 
lost  remnant  whose  nature  thou  didst  assume,  ineffable  and 
everlasting  Love  !  and  thou,  the  third  subsistence  of  divine 
infinitude,  illumining  Spirit,  the  joy  and  solace  of  created 
things  !  one  Tripersonal  Godhead  !  look  upon  this  thy  poor 
and  almost  spent  and  expiring  church." 

In  this  hymn,  as  in  his  two  poems,  Paradise  Lost  and 
Paradise  Regained,  Milton  still  preserves  the  Trinitarian 
phraseology,  although  already  with  a  very  pronounced  Arian 
tinge.  But  in  his  posthumous  work,  De  Doctrijia  Christiana, 
ex  Sacris  duntaxat Libris petita,  which  for  a  century  and  a  half 
was  buried  among  the  State  Papers,^*^  the  great  poet  gives 
his  final  word  on  this  question  in  the  following  terms  :  "The 
Israelites  under  the  law  and  the  prophets  always  understood 
that  God  is  numerically  One,  that  beside  Him  there  is  no 

other,  much  less  any  equal Proceeding  to  the  New 

Testament,  we  find  its  testimony  no  less  clear,  ....  inas- 
much as  it  testifies  that  the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
is  that  One  God."^"  His  conception  of  the  Son  is  Arian, 
and  of  the  Holy  Spirit  the  same  as  Bidle's. 

1®  See  the  history  of  the  discovery  of  this  manuscript  in  Wallace,  vol. 
iii.  art.  345.  It  was  discovered  in  1823  by  Mr.  Lemon,  Deputy-Keeper 
of  the  Records,  in  an  envelope  addressed  to  Mr.  Skinner,  merchant,  and 
was  published  by  order  of  George  IV.  in  1825. 

^^  See  Appendix  XV. 


y 


CHAPTER    X.  211 

If  Milton,  that  bold  and  uncompromising  republican  whom 
no  misfortune,  no  menace,  was  able  to  bend,  recoiled  from 
the  publication  of  his  Antitrinitarian  dogmatics,  we  need  feel 
no  astonishment  that  men  of  a  peaceful  disposition,  and  who 
occupied  official  positions,  hesitated  to  avow  opinions  which 
would  have  drawn  them  within  the  calamitous  arena  of  con- 
troversy. Such  was  the  case  with  Locke  and  Newton,  who 
were  united  in  the  bonds  of  a  close  friendship  and  a  Chris- 
tian sympathy.  Nevertheless,^**  in  point  of  courage  in  the 
expression  of  his  opinions,  Locke  stands  above  Newton  ; 
for,  after  much  wavering,  he  ventured  to  publish,  under  the 
veil  of  the  anonymous,  a  treatise  entitled  The  Reasonableness 
of  Christianity  as  delivered  in  tJie  Scriptures  (1695). 

In  this  book,  Locke  (1632 — 1704)  sets  himself  to  prove, 
Bible  in  hand,  that  the  fundamental  truth  preached  by  the 
apostles  was  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  that  every 
man  who  admits  that  has  a  right  to  the  name  of  Christian. 
Beyond  this,  he  says  not  a  word  of  the  Trinity,  or  of  the 
divinity  of  Jesus  Christ.  But  in  his  Adversaria  Theologica, 
the  manuscript  of  which  was  found  among  his  papers  by 
Lord  King,  and  published  long  after  his  death,  Locke  is 
much  more  explicit.  In  it  he  arranges  parallel  columns  of 
passages  for  and  against  the  Trinity,  and  makes  the  balance 
evidently  lean  to  the  side  of  Unitarianism.  Lastly,  the 
author  of  the  Essay  of  Human  Understanding  clearly  betrays 
his  Unitarian  opinions  in  his  letters  to  the  Arminian  Philipp 
vanLimborch,  grand-nephewof  Episcopius,  to  whom  he  avows 
his  doubts  on  the  principal  dogmata  of  orthodoxy,  as  well 
as  in  his  controversy  with  Dr.  John  Edwards,  who,  having 
pierced  the  veil  of  the  anonymous  author,  had  treated  him 
as  a  Socinian.  Locke  repels  this  appellation,  sheltering  him- 
self behind  the  authority  of  the  Apostles'  Creed,  saying  it  is 


'^  Wallace,  vol.  iii.  art.  356. 
P   2 


212         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

"  well  for  the  compilers  of  that  Creed  that  they  lived  not  in 
Mr.  Edwards's  days ;  for  he  would,  no  doubt,  have  found 
them  'all  over  Socinianized.'" 

And  now,  how  is  the  reserve  of  a  Newton ^^  (1642 — 1724) 
to  be  explained?  The  explanation  is,  that  men  differ  in 
assortment  of  qualities  even  more  than  in  mental  rank,  and 
that  character  does  not  always  keep  pace  with  genius.  It  is 
well  known  that  this  great  man  was  as  timid  in  his  actions 
as  he  was  bold  in  his  scientific  conceptions.  In  November, 
1 690,  he  addressed  to  Locke  his  Historical  Account  of  Two 
Notable  Corruptio7is  of  Scripture.  In  this  he  demonstrates, 
by  an  almost  mathematical  process,  that  the  passages  i  John 
v.  7  and  I  Timothy  iii.  16  had  suffered  interpolations  in  the 
interest  of  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity.  His  manuscript  was 
to  have  been  forwarded  anonymously  to  M.  Le  Clerc,  of 
Amsterdam,  to  be  translated  into  French  and  published. 
Scarcely,  however,  had  the  precious  treatise  reached  Hol- 
land, than  poor  Newton  was  seized  with  terror  at  the  thought 
that  the  authorship  would  be  discovered,  and  that  he  would 
thus  be  drawn  into  a  theological  controversy.  He  imme- 
diately countermanded  his  instructions  to  Locke,  and  there- 
fore the  work  was  not  published  until  after  his  death.  Post- 
humous, in  like  manner,  were  his  Observatio7is  ii-pon  the  Pro- 
phecies of  Daniel  and  the  Apocalypse  of  St.  yohn,  in  which 
the  Unitarian  tendency  is  very  marked.  Newton  ought  to 
have  recollected  these  two  passages  of  Scripture  :  "  Nothing 
is  hid  that  shall  not  be  made  manifest,"  and  "  Let  your  light 
shine  before  men."  In  the  very  year  of  Newton's  death, 
Voltaire,  who  had  just  spent  a  year  in  England,  wrote  to  M. 
Theriot:  "The  Arian  party  is  beginning  to  revive  in  England, 
as  well  as  in  Holland  and  in  Poland.  The  great  Newton 
honoured  this  opinion  by  his  approbation.    This  philosopher 

^3  Wallace,  vol.  iii.  art.  357. 


CHAPTER   X.  213 

thought  that  the  Unitarians  reasoned  more  geometrically 
than  \ve."-^ 

Voltaire,  who  did  not  plume  himself  on  being  a  theolo- 
gian, in  his  Letters  confuses  the  Unitarians  with  the  Arians, 
the  Socinians  and  the  Quakers.  He  understands  well  enough 
what  these  various  sects  have  in  common,  namely,  the  denial 
of  the  Athanasian  Trinity  and  the  radical  reformation  of  the 
Church  in  accordance  with  Scripture,  but  he  does  not  seize 
the  shades  of  thought  which  distinguish  them  one  from  the 
other.  Accordingly  it  devolves  upon  us  to  recapitulate  here 
the  resemblances  and  the  differences  between  these  dissent- 
ing sects,  which  played  so  important  a  part  during  the  period 
of  the  English  Commonwealth,  and  in  the  formation  of  the 
great  American  Republic. 

Let  us  first  of  all  put  aside  the  Quakers,  who  in  the  seven- 
teenth century  were,  in  some  sort,  the  heirs  of  Anabaptism. 
We  have  already  remarked  that  William  Penn's  thought 
oscillated  between  Socinianism  and  Trinitarian  orthodoxy, 
and  that  he  ended  by  falling  into  Sabellianism.-^  In  Robert 
Barclay,  the  type  of  doctrine  is  more  orthodox  :  he  declares 
that  the  revelations  of  the  Spirit  can  never  be  in  contradic- 
tion to  Scripture;  yet  he  admits  that  Christ  manifested  him- 
self under  a  two-fold  aspect,  the  man  Jesus,  the  Almighty 
God. 

The  points,  then,  which  separate  the  English  Unitarians 
from  the  Quakers  are  the  following.  First,  the  source  of 
their  faith  is  Holy  Scripture,  interpreted  by  sound  reason, 
y'  and  not  by  the  spontaneous  movements  of  a  Spirit  within, 
very  difficult  to  distinguish  from  the  suggestions  of  our  own 
private  spirit.  In  the  second  place,  agreeing  with  Acontius, 
they  discard  the  complication  of  the  persons  in  the  Divine 

-0  Voltaire,  Letter  vii.  on  the  English.  Cf.  Didionnairc  Philosophique, 
art.  Sociniens. 

-1  See  Penn's  No  Cross,  No  Croivn,  as  quoted  Ijy  Ciuichard,  Histoiredu 
Socinianisjiie,  p.  135. 


v 


214         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

essence,  and  maintain  that  Jesus  was  emphatically  the  Son, 
and  subordinate  to  the  Father.  Lastly,  following  the  tra- 
dition of  St.  Paul,  they  retain  the  two  sacraments  instituted 
V  by  Jesus  Christ,  and  respect  constituted  authorities  as  deriv- 
ing their  power  from  God. 

As  regards  the  New-Arians,  what  we  have  said  respecting 
the  opinions  of  Clarke  and  the  younger  Sand  proves  that 
two  points  clearly  distinguished  them  from  the  Unitarians, — 
the  recognition  of  the  authority  of  the  ante-Nicene  Fathers 
in  matters  of  faith,  and  the  belief  in  the  pre-existence  of 
Christ,  which  makes  him  a  secondary  and  subordinate 
divinity.  Clarke  is  to  Newton  what  Arius  is  to  Paul  of 
Samosata. 

Lastly,  the  important  thing  in  relation  to  our  subject  is 
to  apportion  aright  the  share  of  the  Socinian  elements,  and 
that  of  the  English  or  Anglo-Italian  elements,  in  the  forma- 
tion of  British  Unitarian  Christianity.  In  addition  to  the 
comparison  between  the  Latin  edition  of  the  Racovian  Cate- 
chism on  the  one  hand,  and  the  English  edition  and  Bidle's 
Twofold  Catechism  on  the  other,  we  possess,  for  this  purpose, 
an  almost  contemporary  document,  the  testimony  of  Sir 
Peter  Pett  in  the  preface  to  his  work  on  The  Happy  Future 
State  of  Ejigla?id  (London,  1688). 

His  account  of  the  beliefs  which  bound  together  the  ad- 
herents of  John  Bidle  is  as  follows  : 

"  That  the  fathers  under  the  old  covenant  had  only  temporal 
promises  ;  that  saving  faith  consisted  in  universal  obedience, 
performed  according  to  the  commands  of  God  and  Christ  ;  that 
Christ  rose  again  only  by  the  power  of  the  Father,  and  not  his 
own  ;  that  justifying  faith  is  not  the  pure  gift  of  God,  but  maj' 
be  acquired  by  men's  natural  abilities  ;  that  faith  cannot  believe 
anything  contrary  to,  or  above  reason  ;  that  there  is  no  original 
sin  ;  that  Christ  hath  not  the  same  body  now  in  glory,  in  which 
he  suffered  and  rose  again  ;  that  the  saints  shall  not  have  the 
same  body  in  heaven  which  they  had  on  earth  ;  that  Christ  was 
not  a  Lord  or  King  before  his  resurrection,  or  Priest  before  his 


CHAPTER   X.  215 

ascension  ;  that  the  saints  shall  not,  before  the  day  of  judgment, 
enjoy  the  bliss  of  heaven  ;  that  God  doth  not  certainly  know 
future  contingencies  ;  that  there  is  not  any  authority  of  Fathers 
or  General  Councils  in  determining  matters  of  faith  ;  that  Christ, 
before  his  death,  had  not  any  dominion  over  the  angels  ;  and 
that  Christ,  by  dying,  made  not  satisfaction  for  us."^^ 

From  these  pieces  of  evidence  we   conclude  that  five 
elementary  principles  were  transmitted  from  Socinianism  to 
the  English  Unitarians.     The  first  two  are,  that  there  is  no 
Cy    other  rule  of  faith  but  the  Scripture,  nor  any  other  inter- 
^"■^  preter  but  reason;  and  that  the  aim  of  the  Christian  religion 
u/    is  to  conduct  us  to  eternal  life  (but  as  the  Lord  Jesus  will 
not  have  in  his  glory  the  same  body  as  in  his  suffering,  no 
more  will  the  saints  live  again  in  heaven  with  the  same 
flesh  as  here  below).     The  other  three  elements  are  these : 
Saving  faith  consists  in  obedience  to  the  commandments  of 
God,  and  in  imitation  of  Jesus  Christ ;  whence  it  follows 
that  faith  depends,  in  part,  on  the  free  efforts  of  the  human 
will,  and  that  in  all  the  Churches  salvation  may  be  secured. 
There  is  but  one  sole  person  in  the  Divine  essence,  namely, 
the  God  of  Israel,  the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ ;  and 
this  God  has  no  certain  knowledge  of  future  contingencies 
(thus  predestination  is  rejected).     Lastly,  Jesus  Christ,  the 
iX   only,  but  not  the  eternal.  Son  of  God,  had  not  to  satisfy  by 
his  death  the  justice  of  God  ;  was  not  made  Lord  and  King 
before  his  resurrection,  nor  High  Priest  before  his  ascension. 
But  Bidle  and  the  fathers  of  Anglo-Saxon  Unitarianism 
excluded  two  Socinian  ideas, — the  invocation  of  Jesus  Christ 
with  the  title  of  God,  which  they  (like  Ferencz  David)  con- 
sidered as  an  inconsistency ;  and  the  natural  mortality  of 
man,  and  his  condemnation  to  eternal  death  in  consequence 


^-  Wallace,  vol.  iii.  pp.  186,  187. 


2l6         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

of  Adam's  sin.-^  On  the  other  hand,  they  added  two  new 
ideas,— the  conception  of  the  Holy  Spirit  as  the  Prince  of 
the  angels  of  good  and  truth  ;  and  the  essential  immortality 
of  the  soul,  a  doctrine  which  gives  a  possibility  of  salvation 
for  all.  It  is  this  latter  principle  which  has  enabled  the 
Unitarian  Christianity  of  our  century  to  make  so  much 
progress  among  the  Quakers,  Universalists  and  Baptists  of 
America, 


23  [The  declarations  of  Bidle,  the  practice  of  Firmin,  and  the  language 
of  the  Unitarian  Tracts  (Wallace,  i.  254),  are  all  distinctly  in  favour  of 
the  invocation  of  Christ.  On  the  other  point  there  was  some  variety 
of  opinion  ;  Bidle  was  very  strong  on  the  ultimate  destruction  of  the 
wicked.] 


CONCLUSION. 

We  hope  we  have  estabUshed  our  thesis  that  the  dogma 
of  the  Divine  unipersonahty  is  a  conception  formed  by  certain 
Spanish  and  ItaHan  Protestants,  and  introduced  by  them 
y  into  the  Strangers'  Church  in  London,  towards  the  middle 
of  the  sixteenth  century.  As  regards  the  contrary  opinion, 
we  had  refuted  it,  to  begin  with,  by  showing  that  this  doc- 
trine had  not  had  its  sources  either  in  England  or  in  any 
other  Teutonic  country.  We  have,  in  the  last  place,  endea- 
voured to  explain  how  the  fusion  w\as  effected  between 
Socinianism,  the  last  fruit  of  the  tree  of  Lalian  Protestantism, 
and  the  rational  and  universalist  elements  of  Anglo-Saxon 
Christianity.  This  fusion,  begun  in  the  polemical  writings 
of  Bidle  and  the  old  Unitarian  Tracts,  matured  by  the 
theological  writings  of  Milton,  Locke  and  Newton  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  and  in  the  eighteenth  by  those  of 
Lardner,  Lindsey  and  Priestley,  reaches  its  more  complete 
expression  in  the  Unitarian  Christianity  of  Channing  and  of 
Theodore  Parker. 

Thus,  from  Ochino  to  Channing,  as  from  Servetus  to 
Parker,  there  is  a  filiation  of  doctrines  of  which  we  can 
follow  the  steps,  without  any  break  of  continuity.  The 
eminent  Boston  pastor  has  crowned  the  edifice  whose  first 
stones  were  laid,  two  centuries  and  a  half  before,  by  a  few 
proscribed  Lallans,  exiles  in  London  for  the  cause  of  the 
gospel.  This,  certainly,  is  a  remarkable  phenomenon  of  reli- 
gious acclimatisation  ;  an  additional  instance  in  proof  of  the 
powerlessness  of  brute  force,  the  handmaid  of  intolerance, 
to  put  down  an  idea,  true  or  false.     You  cannot  stifle  an 


2l8         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

idea  by  force  of  burnings  or  of  excommunications  ;  an  idea 
can  be  destroyed  only  by  another  idea ;  or,  to  employ  the 
fine  phrase  of  Edgar  Quinet,  "  In  matter  of  religious  opinion, 
that  alone  is  killed  which  is  replaced."  Free  discussion 
must  be  allowed  to  draw  the  line  between  error  and  truth. 

But,  conversely,  it  does  not  always  follow  that  because 
an  idea  has  been  persecuted  and  coerced,  therefore  it  is 
true.  Its  resistance  to  the  shocks  of  persecution  proves  but 
one  thing,  the  moral  dignity  of  the  heretic,  who  will  not 
yield  to  menace  or  even  torture,  and  who  knows  how  to 
die,  like  John  Hus  and  Servetus,  a  martyr  to  his  idea. 

In  order  that  the  justness  of  a  religious  idea  may  be 
established,  it  is  still  necessary  to  prove  its  conformity  with 
human  reason  and  with  the  Holy  Scripture,  that  is  to  say, 
with  the  highest  revelation  of  the  divine  Reason.  It  now 
remains  for  us  to  show  that  the  Unitarian  idea  fulfils  this 
requirement. 

I.  A  previous  question  which  presents  itself  for  considera- 
tion is,  whether  the  work  begun  by  the  Italian  Protestants 
and  continued  by  the  English  Unitarians  was  a  legitimate 
one.  In  other  words,  had  these  theologians  the  right  to 
apply  the  incisive  edge  of  criticism  to  the  dogma  of  the 
Trinity  as  formulated  in  the  SymbohUn  Qidcuinipie  1  The 
answer  depends  upon  the  point  of  view  at  which  we  take 
our  stand. 

From  the  Catholic  point  of  view,  the  answer  is  not  doubt- 
ful. Bossuet  has  not  been  slow  to  give  it ;  he  declares  in 
his  Variations  that  the  Unitarians  are  blasphemers  of  the 
Trinity,  in  revolt  against  the  Roman  Church  and  against 
God,  justly  hunted  down  by  the  tribunal  of  the  Holy  Office, 
and  who  found  a  refuge  in  Switzerland  and  Poland  in  the 
bosom  of  the  Churches  misnamed  Reformed,  of  the  Geneva 
pattern.^     And  Pere  Anastase  Guichard  does  not  hesitate 


^  Bossuet,  Variations  des  Eglises  pretcndues  Reforiudes,  bk.  xv.  p.  1 2j 


CONCLUSION.  219 

to  say  that  the  Socinians  have  merely  renewed  the  heresies 
of  Artemon,  Theodotus  of  Byzantium,  Paul  of  Samosata, 
and  other  monarchians  of  the  second  and  third  centuries. 
The  moment  we  admit,  outside  the  Bible  and  reason,  a 
principle  of  authority  in  matter  of  dogma  and  interpretation, 
these  condemnations  are  logical. 

But  what  appears  strange  is  to  hear  Protestants  disputing 
the  right  of  other  Protestants  to  touch  the  formula  of  the 
Trinity,  a  formula  promulgated  in  Gaul  during  the  first 
quarter  of  the  ninth  century,  in  the  full  swing  of  Catholicism. 
Is  it  not  singular  to  hear  a  Calvinistic  theologian,  such  as 
Voet,  say,  when  speaking  of  the  Unitarian  tendencies  of 
Acontius,  "  The  snake  in  the  grass  is  soon  to  be  recognised, 
when  we  perceive  that  this  man  has  not  reckoned  among 
fundamental  articles  the  consubstantiality  of  the  three  divine 
persons  ;  and  has  not  condemned  the  heresies  of  Arius, 
Photinus,  Paul  of  Samosata,"  &c.  ?2  For  in  the  name  of 
what  principle  did  the  Reformers  separate  themselves  from 
the  Roman  Church  ?  It  was  in  the  name  of  the  Word  of 
God,  revealed  in  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  and  freely 
examined  in  the  light  of  conscience  and  reason.  And  it  is 
precisely  on  this  principle  that  the  Unitarians  of  all  countries 
and  all  times  have  claimed  the  right  to  reject  the  "  orthodox" 
formula  of  the  Trinity ;  for  it  is  clear  that  there  is  nothing 
Biblical  or  Apostolic  either  in  the  terms  or  in  the  spirit  of 
the  Athanasian  Creed.  But  it  may  be  urged,  if  the  terms 
Trinity,  homoousios,  eternal  generation,  are  not  in  Scripture, 
at  any  rate  the  ideas  corresponding  to  them  are  found  there 
clearly  expressed.  Not  at  all :  we  have  searched  for  them 
in  vain  ;  and  since  the  revision  of  the  text  and  translation 
of  the  New  Testament,  that  dogma  has  lost  its  strongest 
Biblical  evidence. ^     The  dogma  of  the  Trinity  is  only  an 

-  Gisbert  Voet,  Selectis  Disputaliones  TheologiccB,  1648,  vol.  i.  501. 
^  Alex.   Gordon,  Christian  Docti-ine  in  the  Light  of  New  Testament 
Revision:  London,  1882. 


220         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

attempt  on  the  part  of  theologians,  from  the  third  to  the 
\/  ninth  century,  to  explain  the  relations  of  God  to  the  world. 
^  This  dogma  is  not  in  the  Bible ;  such  is  the  first  argument 
which  gives  validity  to  Antitrinitarian  criticism.  Still  further, 
before  the  Council  of  Nicaea,  and  even  till  Augustine,  we  do 
not  find  in  the  writings  of  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  the 
dogmata  of  the  divinity  of  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Trinity 
formulated  in  an  explicit  manner.  At  Rome,  in  the  second 
century,  Theodotus  and  Artemon  openly  professed  Unita- 
rianism ;  and  the  great  doctor  of  Alexandria,  Origen,  while 
admitting  the  pre-existence  of  Jesus,  conceived  of  the  union 
of  the  two  natures  in  Christ  in  a  manner  analogous  to  that 
admitted  by  the  Quakers,  which  is  evidently  not  Trinitarian. 
By  the  confession  of  the  first  author  in  whom  we  meet  with 
the  word  Trinitas^  Tertullian,  the  advocates  of  the  divine 
Monarchia  expressed  the  sentiments  of  the  majority  of 
Christians  in  his  time.  In  the  third  century,  Unitarianism 
found  an  interpreter,  at  once  learned  and  popular,  in  Paul 
of  Samosata,  the  celebrated  bishop  of  Antioch.*  Why  then 
should  the  modern  Unitarians  be  refused  a  right,  exercised 
by  many  Fathers  during  the  first  three  centuries,  the  golden 
age  of  the  Church  ?     Such  is  the  second  argument. 

And  now  for  the  third,  which  is,  that  the  Reformers 
themselves  were  the  first  to  use,  in  regard  to  the  Trinity, 
that  self-same  right  of  free  inquiry  which  they  had  claimed 
in  reference  to  Catholic  dogma  in  general.  Our  Introduc- 
tion has  shown  what  embarrassment  Melanchthon  expe- 
rienced on  the  topic  of  this  dogma,  which  appears  quite 
foreign  to  the  great  question  of  sin  and  redemption,  and 
to  what  tragedies  the  Wittenberg  Reformer  foresaw  that  it 
would  give  rise  in  the  new  Church.  Erasmus,  and  Calvin 
following  his  steps,  are  bolder  in  their  exegesis.    They  upset, 


*  Reville,  History  of  the  Dogma  of  the  Deity  of  Jesus  Christ  (English 
translation):    London,  1878,  p.  92. 


CONCLUSION.  221 

one  by  one,  the  interpretations  which  the  scholastic  doctors 
gave  to  the  passages  quoted  in  favour  of  the  Trinity ;  in 
such  wise  that  this  doctrine  no  longer  holds  its  place  with 
them  except  by  the  thread  of  tradition.  Farel  cuts  this 
slender  tie,  and  the  Trinity  passes  away,  in  his  Summary  of 
truths  essential  to  salvation.  After  all,  however,  the  boldest 
in  his  criticism  of  the  Trinitarian  formula  is  Luther,  who 
suppressed  in  his  liturgy  the  invocation  to  the  Trinity,  and 
confessed,  in  his  blunt  frankness,  that  the  name  Trinity 
never  occurs  in  the  Scripture,  but  was  conceived  and  invented 
by  men  ;  that  every  article  of  faith  must  be  founded  on 
Scripture  sayings ;  and  that  it  would  be  much  better  to  say 
God  than  the  Trinity.'^ 


®  Luther's  A^irtr/ien- Posit ^/e  {Fredigt  am  Sonntag  nach  Pfingsten,  soge- 
nannt  S.  dcr  heiligen  Dreifaltigkeit).  "  Man  diesen  Namen  Dreifaltigkeit 
nirgeiid  findet  in  der  Schrift,  sondern  die  Menschen  haben  ihn  erdacht 
und  erfunden.  Darum  lautet  es  zumal  kalt,  und  viel  besser  sprache  man 
Gott  denn  die  Dreifaltigkeit.  Diess  Wort  bebeutet  aber  dass  Gott  drei- 
faltig  ist  in  den  Personen.  Das  ist  nun  himmlisch  Ding,  das  die  Welt 
nicht  verstehen  kann.  Darum  habe  ich  eurer  Liebe  vor  oft  gesagt,  dass 
man  den  und  einen  jeglichen  Artikel  des  Glaubens  griinden  miisse, 
nicht  auf  die  Vernunft  oder  Gleichniss;  sondern  fasse  und  grunde  sie 
auf  die  Spriiche  in  der  Schrift ;  denn  Gott  vveiss  wohl  wie  es  ist ;  und 
wie  er  von  ihm  selbst  red  en  soli.  Die  hohen  Schulen  haben  mancher- 
lei  Distinctiones,  Traume  und  Erdichtung  erfunden  ;  damit  sie  haben 
wollen  anzeigen  die  heihge  Dreifaltigkeit,  und  sind  dariiber  zu  Narren 
vvorden. "  (Ed.  Walch,  vol.  xi.  1549;  ed.  Erlangen,  vol.  xii.  378;  cf. 
vol.  vi.  230,  et  ix.  i.)  ["This  name  Trinity  is  never  found  in  the  Scrip- 
ture, but  men  have  devised  and  invented  it.  Therefore  it  sounds  some- 
what cold ;  and  it  is  much  better  to  say  God  than  Trinity.  This  word 
denotes,  however,  that  God  is  three-fold  in  person.  Now  that  is  a 
heavenly  matter,  which  the  world  cannot  understand.  Therefore  have 
I  told  you  often  aforetime,  beloved,  that  the  articles  of  the  faith  one  and 
all  must  not  be  grounded  on  reason  and  probability,  but  must  be  fixed 
and  grounded  on  the  sayings  in  the  Scripture ;  for  God  knows  well  how 
it  is,  and  how  to  speak  of  Himself.  The  Schools  have  invented  manifold 
distinctions,  dreams  and  fictions,  wherewith  they  have  set  themselves  to 
show  forth  the  Trinity,  and  thereby  are  become  fools."] 


222         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

After  Luther,  we  will  cite  only  Schleiermacher,  as  a  sample 
of  many  others.  He  relegates  the  examination  of  this 
dogma  to  a  postscript  in  his  Dogmatics,  and  declares  inad- 
missible the  traditional  formula  of  the  Trinity,  which  in  his 
eyes  has  only  the  value  of  an  insoluble  problem.*^ 
^  II.  Criticism  of  the  dogma  of  the  Trinity  is  therefore  legi- 
timate. This  appears  to  us  superabundantly  demonstrated, 
both  by  the  logic  of  the  Protestant  principle,  and  by  the 
example  of  the  Reformers  themselves.  A  second  question 
remains  for  our  examination  :  Is  the  solution  of  the  problem 
of  the  relations  between  God  and  the  human  mind,  proposed 
by  the  Italian  Unitarians,  including  the  Socinians,  a  satisfac- 
tory one  ?  Here  we  do  not  hesitate  to  answer  in  the  nega- 
tive. In  fact,  the  outcome  of  all  the  teachings  of  the  Bible 
is,  that  God  is  no  mere  abstract,  transcendent  Being,  seated 
in  heaven  above  the  visible  world,  but  that  He  is  per- 
petually revealing  himself  in  Creation,  the  work  of  His  wis- 
dom, and  that  He  has  revealed  himself,  in  time,  by  Moses 
and  the  prophets,  by  Jesus  Christ  and  the  apostles.  Such 
is  the  magnificent  thought  which  the  theologians  of  the  first 
three  centuries  have  expressed  in  the  doctrine  of  the  Logos 
or  Word  of  God.'^  The  Son  is  the  Logos  incarnate  in  Jesus 
Christ ;  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the  Logos  immanent  in  the  Church. 
So  that  Wisdom,  Word,  Holy  Spirit,  are  but  synonyms  for 
one  and  the  same  idea — to  wit,  God  manifesting  himself  to 
the  world  under  this  three-fold  form,  Creation,  Jesus  Christ, 
and  the  Christian  Church. 

Thus  far  all  is  clear ;  and,  let  us  carefully  note,  the  formula 
of  baptism  goes  no  further.  It  is  limited  to  the  expression 
of  the  revelation  of  God,  in  the  universe  under  the  name  of 

"  Schleiermacher,  Glazibenslehre,  vol.  ii.  527  —  531.  Cf.  Channing, 
Christianity  a  Rational  Religion,  "I  have  done  with  the  first  objection," 
&c. 

''  Scholten,  De  Leer  der  hei-vorinde  Kerke :  Leyden,  1862,  vol.  ii.  208. 
Cf.  Schleiermacher,  Glaitbenslehre,  Conclusion. 


CONCLUSION.  223 

Father,  in  Jesus  under  the  name  of  Son,  and  in  the  Church 
under  the  name  of  Holy  Spirit,  reserving  to  the  Father  all 
the  same  His  absolute  pre-eminence. 

But  the  Fathers  of  Nicsea  and  the  theologians  of  a  later 
day  have  set  themselves  to  pass  these  limits  imposed  by  the 
very  wisdom  of  the  divine  Master ;  they  have  pretended  to 
know  more  details  of  his  person  and  of  his  relations  with  his 
Father  than  he  has  himself  declared.  They  have  attributed 
to  the  Logos  an  individuality  or  hypostasis  distinct  from  that 
of  God,  and  an  existence  co-eternal  with  His  ;  a  doctrine 
altogether  contrary  to  the  first  conception  of  the  divine  Word, 
and  resulting  from  its  identification  of  it  with  Jesus  Christ. 
After  this,  led  into  error  by  the  use  of  two  different  epithets, 
they  have  made  an  arbitrary  distinction  between  the  Logos  and 
the  Paracletos,  to  which,  under  the  name  of  Holy  Spirit,  they 
have  attributed  a  distinct  personality. 

Lastly,  putting  the  finishing-touch  to  these  distinctions 
and  logomachies,  they  have  placed  these  three  terms  in  juxta- 
position, pretending  that  they  are  three  hypostases,  equal  in 
duration  and  in  power,  of  one  and  the  same  God. 

Ochino  and  Fausto  Sozzini  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and 
Schleiermacher  and  Baur^  in  our  own  time,  have  had  no 
difficulty  in  showing,  i,  that  this  Trinity  in  the  One  Being 
implies  a  contradiction  in  terms,  and  a  change  of  condition 
inadmissible  in  the  Being  pre-eminently  immutable  ;  2,  that 
the  terms  generation  (of  the  Son)  and  procession  (of  the 
Holy  Spirit)  imply  an  idea  of  dependence  incompatible  with 
absolute  equality  among  the  three  hypostases. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Italian  Unitarians,  notably  the 
Socinians,  aiming  at  a  reaction  against  the  Trinity  in  the 
name  of  cool  reason,  and  without  consulting  the  heart  and 
conscience,  fell  into  the  opposite  extreme.  They  confounded 
the  terms  hypostasis  dindpersoji,  and  denied  to  the  Holy  Spirit 

**  F.  C.  Baur,  Die  Christliche  Lehre  der  Dreieinigkcit,  vol.  iii. 


224         SOURCES   OF    ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

all  individuality,  that  is  to  say,  any  separate  mode  of  exist- 
ence. They  employed  the  term  Holy  Spirit  simply  as  the 
specific  term  serving  to  designate  the  special  graces  which 
God  bestows  on  men ;  and,  under  cover  of  combatting  the 
dualism  of  the  natures  in  Christ,  they  went  so  far  as  to  deny 
the  existence  of  any  divine  essence  in  him. 

With  Fausto  Sozzini,  the  conclusion  of  the  matter  was, 
as  we  have  seen,  that  Christ  is  a  veritable  man ;  and  not  a 
mere  man,  in  this  sense,  that  he  has  a  right  to  divine  honours, 
by  reason  of  his  miraculous  birth,  and  of  the  prophetic  mis- 
sion with  which  he  has  been  endowed.  Thus,  for  Socinian- 
ism,  revelation  is  reduced  to  a  sort  of  mechanical  operation, 
redemption  to  a  juridical  process,  all  living  communication 
between  God  and  the  human  soul  is  suppressed.  The  Soci- 
nians  conceived  the  heavenly  Father  as  a  legislator  seated 
far  above  humanity,  or,  according  to  Pascal's  expression,  as 
"a  God  far  off"  {Dieu  de  loin),  who  leaves  us  frigid  and 
dumb,  and  does  not  invite  us  to  prayer. 

These  criticisms  fully  apply  to  the  rationalistic  system  of 
Acontius  and  the  Sozzini,  and  are  equally  applicable  to  the 
religion  of  causality,  represented  by  Bidle,  Locke  and  Priest- 
ley. Nevertheless,  if  we  recollect  the  favourite  idea  of  Ochino, 
Dei  sermo  interior,  and  his  conception  of  God  as  Love,  we 
shall  note  that  his  doctrine  partly  escapes  these  censures, 
and  that  there  was  in  it  a  mystical  element,  of  which,  later 
on,  advantage  might  be  taken  for  the  true  solution  of  the 
relations  of  God  with  humanity. 

In  fact,  that  which  in  Ochino  was  the  result  of  a  skilful 
balance  between  the  reason  and  the  heart,  was  effected  among 
the  Anglo-Saxon  Unitarians  by  a  happy  combination  of 
Italian  rationalism  with  the  mystical  sense  inherent  in  all 
the  Teutonic  races. 

Channing  is,  in  our  eyes,  the  finished  type  of  this  fusion. 
He  corrects  the  dryness  of  the  Socinian  doctrine  by  the  ten- 
derness of  a  heart  which  beats  in  unison  wath  the  whole  of 


CONCLUSION.  225 

sentient  nature.  He  completes  the  idea  of  absolute  causality, 
the  sole  aspect  under  which  Priestley  conceived  of  God,  by 
the  ideas  of  conscience  and  of  moral  freedom.  Doubtless 
for  him,  as  for  Sozzini,  God  is  the  unipersonal  Being,  who 
could  not  share  His  attributes  with  any  other  being  in  the 
universe,  not  even  with  His  Son ;  but  He  is  also  the  Father, 
full  of  love  and  mercy,  who  communicates  His  Holy  Spirit, 
the  Spirit  of  power  and  light,  in  all  time  and  to  all  men. 
Jesus  is  emphatically  the  Son  of  God,  in  this  sense,  that  he 
was  one  with  the  Father  in  affection  and  will ;  and  the  Son 
of  Man,  because  he  partook  of  the  same  circumstances  and 
the  same  trials  that  we  experience,  and  because  he  was  united 
to  mankind  by  the  bonds  of  a  deep  community  and  sympathy. 
With  regard  to  the  relations  between  celestial  spirits  and 
men,  Channing,  without  attempting  to  sound  the  unfathom- 
able, inclines  to  the  belief  that  "  all  minds  are  of  one  family ;" 
that  the  angelic  nature  and  human  nature  are  of  one  and  the 
same  essence ;  in  fine,  that  the  inhabitants  of  the  invisible 
W'orld  are  in  constant  communication  with  our  own.''  By 
this  doctrine  he  bridges  the  gulf  that  Socinianism  had  laid 
open  between  heaven  and  earth.  Channing  acknowledges 
the  principle  of  divine  immanence. 

III.  When  we  consider  that  Unitarian  Christianity  was 
represented  in  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century  by  a 
handful  of  Spaniards  and  Italians,  almost  all  martyrs  to  their 
faith,  whom  the  Roman  Inquisition  had  proscribed  and  the 
Calvinist  and  Zwinglian  Churches  repulsed,  whereas  to-day 
it  counts  many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  adherents  in  all 
the  Protestant  communities,  and  forms  flourishing  Churches 
in  Transylvania,  Great  Britain  and  the  United  States, — when 
we  observe  the  enthusiasm  with  which  the  centennial  of  the 


^  For  the  development  of  Unitarian  Christianity  from  Bidle  and  Locke 
to  Channing  and  Parker,  see  J.  Martineau,  Three  Stages  of  Unitarian 
Tlieology:  London,  1869.     Cf.  R.  Spears,  Historical  Sketch,  iit.  sup. 

Q 


226         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

birth  of  William  Ellery  Channing  was  celebrated  a  few  years 
ago/°  and  the  success  attained  by  the  translations  of  his 
works  with  the  French  Protestant  public,  and  even  in  more 
extensive  Catholic  circles, — it  will  be  impossible  for  us  to 
treat  this  doctrine  with  the  disdain  affected  by  certain  Cal- 
vinist  and  Lutheran  theologians.     This  is  a  proper  case  for 
the  application  of  the  precept  of  the  wise  Gamaliel :    "  If 
this  counsel  or  this  work  be  of  men,  it  will  be  overthrown  ; 
but  if  it  is  of  God,  ye  will  not  be  able  to  overthrow  them." 
r  After  three  centuries  of  furious  conflict  between  the  adver- 
j  saries  and   the  partisans    of  the  Trinity,   the   divine  truth 
1    immanent  in  history  has  pronounced  its  verdict :  the  Atha- 
/    nasian  Creed  is  condemned,  and  will  not  recover  from  the 
^  universal  discredit  into  which  it  has  fallen.     However,  we 
must  not  make  the  mistake  of  thinking  that  the  dogma  of 
the  Divine  unipersonality  is  the  fundamental  idea  of  Unita- 
rian Christianity  ;  it  is  simply  its  distinguishing  characteristic. 
For,  with  Acontius  and  Fausto  Sozzini,  it  did  not  even  form 
one  of  the  articles  of  faith  which  they  judged  essential  to 
salvation ;  their  criterion  in  matters  of  faith  was  what  con- 
duced to  eternal  life. 

But  there  was  a  feeling  common  to  all  these  Unitarians, 
which  was,  as  it  were,  the  ruling  passion  of  their  soul — this 
was  the  sentiment  of  catholicity.  By  tliis  we  are  to  under- 
stand the  consciousness  they  possessed  of  the  universality 
of  the  gospel  of  salvation,  and  of  the  spiritual  bond  which 
should  unite  all  Christians  within  one  Church,  broader  than 
any  of  the  separate  Churches.  This  is  an  eminently  evan- 
gelical thought ;  and  the  Lord  Jesus  has  himself  expressed 
it,  as  a  wish,  in  his  prayer  of  sacrifice,  "  that  they  may  all  be 
one ;  even  as  thou,  Father,  art  in  me,  and  I  in  thee  ;"  and 


1"  See  the  volumes  of  reports  of  the  Centenary  Commemoration  of 
the  Birth  of  W.  E.  Channing  (7  April,  1780),  published  in  England  and 
America  (1880). 


CONCLUSION.  227 

as  a  prophecy,  in  this  saying,  "  they  shall  become  one  flock, 
one  shepherd."  Now  it  is  to  be  remarked  that  this  sen- 
timent appears  much  more  strong  and  deep  among  the 
Protestants  of  Latin  race  than  among  the  Reformers  of  pure 
Germanic  race.  These  latter  take  part  more  readily  in  the 
divisions  and  subdivisions  of  the  Church,  and  do  not  offer 
sufficient  resistance  to  the  exaggeration  of  the  principle  of 
individualism  ;  the  former,  on  the  contrary,  as  if  they  retained 
something  of  that  idea  of  cosmopolitan  centralisation  which 
made  the  greatness  of  the  Roman  people,  feel  a  deep  need 
of  the  approach  and  reunion  of  the  various  Churches,  on  the 
one  foundation  than  which  none  other  can  be  laid.  Thence 
arise  the  eirenical  overtures  put  forth  by  Unitarians  of  every 
age.  As  Mr.  Gordon  well  says,  speaking  of  Servetus  and 
other  Unitarian  leaders,  "  They  left  Rome  not  to  join  Luther. 
They  brushed  aside  the  Trinitarian  dogma  in  their  haste  to 

get  at  Christ Their  idea  was  to  rally  and  re-inspirit 

the  Christian  mind  by  recalling  the  primary  allegiance  of  the 
Christian  heart.  Let  Christ  be  known  in  his  true  self,  and 
neither  the  pure  majesty  of  Christian  truth,  nor  the  sure  bond 
of  Catholic  unity,  could  fail."^^ 

Bernardino  Ochino  is  not  less  straitened  than  Servetus  in 
all  the  separate  Churches,  and  he  aspires  after  the  union  of 
all  Christians  through  the  love  of  God  and  a  living  faith  in 
Christ.  "These  forty  years,"  he  writes  in  1561,  "have  many 
Churches  reformed  themselves,  and  all  think  themselves  most 
perfect,  especially  as  regards  doctrine ;  and  yet  they  herein 
differ  so  much,  that  each  of  them  condemns  as  heretical 
all  the  other  Churches  which  do  not  accept  its  doctrines." 
"  There  is  only  one  way  of  uniting  all  in  Christ,  and  that  is 
to  show  that  man  may  be  loved,  justified  and  saved  by  God, 


"   Theolog.  Review,  April,  1878,  art.  Miguel  Servcto.     Cf.  Tollin,  Das 
Characterbild  M.  Servcts. 

Q  2 


228         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

whether  he  beUeve  in  the  Real  Presence  or  no."^-  A  maxim 
which,  in  his  thought,  was  appHed  to  all  doctrines  which  are 
not  expressly  mentioned  in  the  Bible. 

This  severance  which  Ochino  recommended  between  the 
points  that  are  essential  and  common  to  all  the  Churches 
and  the  accessories  which  divide  them,  Acontius,  his  disciple 
and  friend,  took  pains  to  effect  in  his  fine  book,  the  Strata- 
gemata.  He,  too,  deplores  all  the  party  names,  all  the  hos- 
tile Confessions  of  Faith,  which  the  Protestant  sects  have 
adopted ;  he  sees  the  advantage  which  their  Catholic  oppo- 
nents cleverly  derive  from  this  state  of  things  ;  and  he  would 
fain  re-unite  them  all  in  a  single  Confession  of  Faith,  on  the 
basis  of  Holy  Scripture.     Listen  to  this  eirenical  appeal : 

"  If  there  is  one  God,  one  Christ,  one  Baptism,  one  Faith, 
what  is  the  object  (says  the  adversary)  of  all  these  various 
denominational  confessions?"  "If  the  Churches  among  which 
there  is  agreement  about  those  heads  of  doctrine,  the  knowledge 
of  which  is  essential  to  salvation,  could  hold  these  also  as  one 
common  Confession  of  Faith,  in  order  that,  as  in  fact  they 
belong  to  one  body  as  it  were,  they  might  also  appear  so,  I 
should  not  disapprove.  But  since  this  may  not  be,  I  had  rather 
there  were  no  Confession  than  so  many.  .  .  .  Assuredly  such  an 
accord  of  the  Churches  would  compose  many  verbal  disputes  of 
men,  and  would  remove  many  and  great  obstacles  which  won- 
derfully retard  the  course  of  the  Gospel."  ^^ 

As  regards  Fausto  Sozzini,  the  broadness  of  the  conception 
which  he  had  formed  of  the  Church  is  well  known.  He 
energetically  disclaimed  having  entertained  the  desire  of 
founding  a  new  sect,  and  refused  to  join  any  of  the  separate 
Churches  which  existed  in  Poland  in  his  time,  remarking, 


■'^  Di sputa  di  M.  Bernardino  Ochino  da  Siena  intorno  alia  presenza 
del  Corpo  di  Giesu  Christo  nel  Sacramento  delta  Cena,  quoted  in  Ben- 
rath's  Ochino,  pp.  281  and  278. 

^■*  Stratagemata,  bk.  vii.  pp.  331,  333,  334  (cd.  Grasser). 


CONCLUSION.  229 

'  I  do  not  entirely  belong  to  any  sect."  He  thought,  with 
Ochino  and  Acontius,  that  whoever  believes  and  acts  in 
accordance  with  his  personal  faith  in  the  Christ  of  the 
Gospels,  may  be  saved,  to  whatever  Church  he  belongs. 
Faithful  to  this  catholic  feeling  of  the  Sozzini,  the  Polish 
ISrethren,  even  after  their  exodus  into  Transylvania,  preserved 
to  their  Church  the  name  of  Codiis  Christianoriim  Catho- 
licoriaii,  "  quos  Unitarios  vocant,"  and  set  forth  their  faith 
under  the  title  of  a  Confcssio  Fidei  Exiilum  Christi,  qui  ab 
ejus  sanctissi7iio  nomine  Christiani  tantuni  appellari  amant}^ 

Such  is  the  grand  and  beautiful  idea  of  unity  in  diversity 
with  which  the  Italian  Unitarians,  during  their  exile  in 
London,  inoculated  the  Anglo-Saxon  genius.  It  rightly  indi- 
cates, in  our  opinion,  the  important  part  which  is  reserved  for 
Unitarian  Christianity  in  the  religious  crisis  of  our  time. 

The  Unitarians  are  those  who,  in  virtue  of  their  very 
name  and  of  their  principles,  may  prevent  an  impending 
divorce  between  science  and  the  gospel,-  between  reason 
and  faith.  It  is  for  men  of  their  way  of  thinking,  who  are 
to  be  found  in  all  the  Churches,  to  bring  the  various 
Christian  denominations  nearer  to  each  other,  on  the  basis 
of  the  gospel,  interpreted  by  conscience  and  reason. 

Channing  had  a  vision  of  this  magnificent  ideal  when  he 
wrote  his  beautiful  discourse  on  the  Church  : 

"  There  is  a  grander  Church  than  all  particular  ones,  howe\-er 
extensive — the  Church  Catholic,  or  Universal,  spread  over  all 
lands,  and  one  with  the  Church  in  heaven.    All  Christ's  followers 

form  one  body,  onefold Into  this  Church,  all  who  partake 

the  spirit  of  Christ  are  admitted.  ...  No  man  can  be  excom- 
municated from  it  but  by  himself,  by  the  death  of  goodness  in 
his  own  breast." 

To  this  voice  from  across  the  ocean  respond  the  impres- 
sive tones  of  Alexandre  Vinet,   who  also  is  a  prophet  of 


"  Theolog.  Review,  Oct.  1879,  PP-  568,  569. 


230  SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

unity  in  freedom,  when  he  says,  "  The  Church  of  free  inquiry 
should  never  be  anything  but  a  society  of  consciences. 
Either  it  must  abjure  its  own  principle,  or  else  it  must 
consent  to  liberty.  Its  head  is  either  in  Rome  or  else  in 
Heaven.     Protestantism   for  me  is   but  my  starting-point  ; 

my  religion  is  something  beyond  this I  might,  as  a 

Protestant,  hold  Catholic  opinions,  and  who  shall  say  that  I 
do  not?"*^ 

"To  unity  through  freedom" — this,  in  our  judgment,  is 
the  very  motto  of  Unitarian  Christianity  ;  and  this  idea 
contains  the  whole  future  of  the  Church. 

^5  Esprit  (TAlex.  Vinet,  ed.  Astie,  vol.  i.  304,  389. 


APPENDIX  I. 

(P.  33-) 

Extract  from  Confession  of  John  Tyball  [Theobald],  of  Bumstede-ad- 
Turrim  [Steeple  Bumpstead],  made  and  subscribed  by  the  said  John 
before  the  Reverend  Father  in  Christ,  Cuthbert  [Tonstall],  Lord. 
Bishop  of  London,  in  the  Chapel  belou-  the  Palace  at  London,  28  Aug. 
A.  D.  1528.  (Given  in  Strype,  Eccles.  Memorials,  ed.  1822,  i.,  part  2, 
app.  17.) 

"  Furthermore,  he  saythe,  that,  at  Mychaelmasse  last  past  was 
twelve  monethe,  this  respondent  and  Thomas  Hilles  came  to 
London  to  Frear  Barons,  then  being  at  the  Freers  Augustines 
in  London,  to  buy  a  New  Testament  in  Englishe,  as  he  saythe. 
And  they  found  the  sayd  Freer  Barons  in  his  chamber  ;  wheras 
there  was  a  merchant  man,  reading  in  a  boke,  and  ii.  or  iii.  more 
present.  And  when  they  came  in,  the  Frear  demawnded  them, 
from  whence  they  cam.  And  they  said,  from  Bumstede  ;  and 
so  forth  in  communication  they  desyred  the  sayd  Freer  Barons, 
that  thy  myght  be  aquaynted  with  hym  ;  because  they  had  herd 
that  he  was  a  good  man  ;  and  bycause  they  wold  have  his 
cownsel  in  the  New  Testament,  which  they  desyred  to  have  of 
hym. 

"And  he  saithe,  that  the  sayd  Frear  Barons  did  perseve  ver^^ 
well,  that  Thomas  Hilles  and  this  respondent  were  infected  with 
opinions,  bycause  they  wold  have  the  New  Testament.  And 
then  farther,  they  shewyed  the  sayd  Frear,  that  one  Sir  Richard 
Fox  Curate  of  Bumstede,  by  ther  means,  was  wel  entred  in  ther 
lernyng ;  and  sayd,  that  they  thowghte  to  gett  hym  hole  in  shorte 
space.  Wherfore  they  desyry-d  the  sayd  Frear  Barons  to  make 
a  letter  to  hym,  that  he  wold  continew  in  that  he  had  begon- 


232         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Which  Frear  did  promyse  so  to  wryte  to  hym  a  letter  at  after- 
noone,  and  to  gete  them  a  New  Testament. 

"And  then  after  that  communication,  the  sayd  Thomas  Hilles 
and  this  respondent  shewyd  the  Frear  Barons  of  certayne  old 
bookes  that  they  had  :  as  of  iiii.  Evangelistes,  and  certayne 
Epistles  of  Peter  and  Poule  in  Englishe.  Which  bookes  the 
sayd  Frear  dyd  litle  regard,  and  made  a  twyte  of  it,  and  sayd, 
A  poynt  for  them,  for  they  be  not  to  be  regarded  toward  the 
new  printed  Testament  in  Englishe.  For  it  is  of  more  cleyner 
Englishe.  And  then  the  sayd  Frear  Barons  delyverid  to  them 
the  sayd  New  Testament  in  Englyshe  :  for  which  they  payd  iiii'. 
ud.  and  desyred  them,  that  they  wold  kepe  yt  close.  For  he 
wolde  be  loth  that  it  shold  be  knowen,  as  he  now  remembreth. 
And  after  the  delyverance  of  the  sayd  New  Testament  to  them, 
the  sayd  Frear  Barons  did  lyken  the  New  Testament  in  Latyn 
to  a  cymbal  tynkkling,  and  brasse  sowndyng.  But  what  farther 
exposytion  he  made  uppon  it,  he  cannot  tell. 

"And  then  at  afternone  they  fett  the  sayd  letter  of  the  sayd 
Frear ;  which  he  wrote  to  Sir  Richard  ;  and  red  that  openly 
before  them :  but  he  doth  not  now  remember  what  was  in  the 
same.  And  so  departed  from  hym ;  and  did  never  since  speke 
with  hym,  or  write  to  hym,  as  he  saithe." 


APPENDIX  II. 
(P.  41.) 

Extract  from  the  Preface  of  Erasmus  to  the  Works  of  St.  Hilary; 
addressed  to  Giovanni  Carondileto,  Archbishop  of  Palermo.  {Divi 
Hilarii  Pictauorum  Episcopi  Lucubrationes  per  Desid.  Erasmuvi 
Roterodainum  .  .  .  eine?idatas,  &c.     Basel:  Froben,  1523,  p.  aa6.) 

"  In  his  evolvendis,  illud  obiter  subiit  animum  meum,  for- 
tasse  non  defuturos  qui  mirentur,  quum  tot  libris,  tanto  studio 
tantoque  molimine,  tot  argumentis,  tot  sententiis,  tot  anathe- 
matis  agatur,  ut  credamus  Filium  esse  verum  Deum,  ejusdem 
essentice,  sive,  ut  aliquoties  loquitur  Hilarius,  ejusdem  generis, 
aut  naturae  cum  Patre,  quod  Graeci  vocant  'O/iovo-toj',  potentia, 


APPENDIX   11.  233 

sapientia,  bonitate,  a^ternitate,  immortalitate,  ca:tensque  rebus 
omnibus  parem :  de  Spiritu  Sancto  interim  vix  ulla  fiat  mentio : 
cum  tota  controversia  de  cognomine  veri  Dei,  de  cognomine 
homusii,  de  asqualitate,  non  minus  pertineat  ad  Spiritum  quam 
ad  Filium. 

"  Imo  nusquam  scribit  adorandum  Spiritum  Sanctum,  nus- 
quam  tribuit  Dei  vocabulum,  nisi  quod  uno  aut  altero  loco  in 
Sjnodis  refert  improbatos  eos,  qui  Patrem,  Filium  et  Spiritum 
Sanctum  auderent  dicere  tres  Deos  :  sive  quia  putarit  turn 
magis  patrocinandum  Filio,  cujus  humana  natura  faciebat,  ut 
difficilius  persuaderetur  Deum  esse,  qui  idem  esset  homo  .... 
sive  hfec  veterum  religio  fuit,  ut  licet  Deum  pie  venerarentur, 
nihil  tamen  de  eo  pronunciare  auderent,  quod  non  esset  aperte 
traditum  in  sacris  voluminibus.  In  quibus  ut  aliquoties  Filio 
tribuitur  Dei  cognomen,  ita  Spiritui  Sancto  nusquam  aperte : 
etiam  si  post  orthodoxorum  pia  curiositas  idoneis  argumentis 
comperit  e  sacris  literis,  in  Spiritum  Sanctum  competere  quicquid 
Filio  tribuebatur,  excepta  personarum  proprietate. 

"Sed,  ob  impervestigabilem  rerum  divinarum  obscuritatem,  in 
nominibus  tribuendis  erat  religio :  de  re  divina  nefas  esse  duce- 
bant  aliis  verbis  loqui,  quam  sacrte  Literse  loquerentur.  Spiritum 
Sanctum  legerant,  Spiritum  Dei  legerant,  Spiritum  Christi  lege- 
rant.  Didicerant  ex  Evangelio,  Spiritum  Sanctum  non  seiungi 
a  Patre  et  Filio.  Docentur  enim  apostoli  baptizare  in  nomine 
Patris  et  Filii,  et  Spiritus  Sancti.  Servant  trium  personarum 
consortium  solennes  illee  precute,  ex  antiquissimo  Ecclesias  ritu 
nobis  relictfe,  breves  iuxta  ac  doctje,  in  quibus  Pater  rogatur  per 
Filium,  in  unitate  Spiritus  Sancti.  Pater  frequentissime  Deus 
vocatur,  Filius  aliquoties,  Spiritus  Sanctus  nunquam. 

"Atque  hsec  dixerim,  non  ut  in  dubium  vocem,  quod  nobis  e 
divinis  literis  Patrum  orthodoxorum  tradidit  autoritas ;  sed  ut 
ostendam  quanta  fuerit  antiquis  religio  pronunciandi  de  rebus 
divinis,  quum  sanctius  etiam  eas  colerent  quam  nos,  qui  hue 
audaciaj  prorupimus,  ut  non  vereamur  Filio  prrescribere,  quibus 
modis  debuerit  honorare  matrem  suam.  Audemus  Spiritum 
Sanctum  appellare  Deum  verum,  quod  veteres  ausi  non  sunt : 
sed  iidem  non  veremur  ilium  subinde  nostris  sceleribus  ex  animi 
nostri  templo  deturbare,  perinde  quasi  crederemus  Spiritum 
Sanctum  nihil  aliud  esse,  quam  inane  nomen.     Quemadmodum 


234         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

plerique  veterum,  qui  summa  pietate  colebant  Filium,  tamen 
homusion  dicere  verebantur,  quod  ea  vox  nusquam  in  sacris 
literis  haberetur.  Adeo  prior  fuit  Ecclesise  profectus  in  puritate 
vitse,  quam  in  exacta  cognitione  divinitatis ;  nee  unquam  plus 
accepit  dispendii  quam  quum  in  eruditione  philosophica,  demum 
et  in  opibus  hujus  mundi,  quam  maxime  promovisse  videbatur." 


Translation. 

"  In  the  course  of  this  investigation  it  has  come  into  my 
mind  by  the  way,  that  perhaps  there  will  not  be  wanting  some 
to  wonder,  while  in  so  many  books,  with  so  much  zeal  and 
pains,  by  so  many  arguments,  so  many  opinions,  so  many  ana- 
themas, we  are  urged  to  believe  the  Son  to  be  True  God,  of  the 
same  essence  (or,  as  Hilary  sometimes  speaks,  of  the  same 
genus  or  nature)  with  the  Father,  which  the  Greeks  call  hoino- 
ousws,  equal  [to  Him]  in  power,  wisdom,  goodness,  eternity, 
immortality,  and  all  things  else— meantime  scarce  any  mention 
is  made  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  though  the  whole  controversy  con- 
cerning the  appellation  True  God,  the  appellation  hoinoousios, 
and  the  equality,  relates  not  less  to  the  Spirit  than  to  the  Son. 

"  In  fact  [Hilary]  nowhere  writes  that  the  Holy  Spirit  is  to  be 
adored,  and  nowhere  applies  [to  the  Spirit]  the  word  God  (unless 
that  in  one  or  two  places  in  the  De  Syirodis  he  states  that  those 
were  censured  who  dared  to  call  the  Father,  Son,  and  Holy 
Spirit,  three  Gods) ;  whether  because  he  thought  it  more  neces- 
sary at  that  time  to  protect  the  Son,  whose  human  nature  made 
it  more  difficult  to  persuade  men  that  he  is  God,  who  at  the 
same  time  was  man  ....  or  whether  it  was  a  scruple  with  the 
ancients  that,  albeit  they  piously  venerated  God,  they  yet  dared 
not  pronounce  anything  concerning  H  im,  that  had  not  been  openly 
delivered  in  the  sacred  volumes.  Wherein,  while  sometimes  to 
the  Son  the  appellation  God  is  applied,  still  [it  is]  nowhere  openly 
[given]  to  the  Holy  Spirit ;  although  afterwards  the  pious  inqui- 
sitiveness  of  the  orthodox  ascertained,  by  fitting  arguments  from 
the  sacred  writings,  that  whatever  was  attributed  to  the  Son 
belongs  to  the  Holy  Spirit,  the  individuality  of  the  persons  being 
excepted. 

"  But,  from  the  unsearchable  obscurity  of  divine  things,  there 


APPENDIX   II.  23s 

Mas  a  scruple  in  applying  [certain]  terms  ;  they  judged  it  a  pro- 
fanity to'speak  on  a  divine  matter  in  other  words  than  the  sacred 
writings  spoke.  They  had  read '  Holy  Spirit,'  they  had  read  '  Spirit 
of  God,'  they  had  read  '  Spirit  of  Christ.'  They  had  learned  from 
the  Gospel  that  the  Holy  Spirit  is  not  disjoined  from  the  Father 
and  the  Son.  For  the  Apostles  are  taught  to  baptise  in  the  name 
of  the  Father  and  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  association 
of  the  three  persons  is  maintained  in  those  solemn  prayers,  brief 
and  learned,  which  are  left  to  us  from  the  most  august  rite  of 
the  Church  ;  wherein  the  Father  is  petitioned  '  through  the  Son, 
in  unity  of  the  Holy  Spirit.'  The  Father  is  with  the  utmost 
frequency  called  God,  the  Son  sometimes,  the  Holy  Spirit  never. 
"  And  these  things  I  would  say,  not  to  call  in  question  what 
the  authority  of  the  orthodox  Fathers  has  delivered  to  us  in  the 
divine  writings,  but  to  show  how  great  v/as  the  scruple  of  the 
ancients  about  pronouncing  on  divine  things,  inasmuch  as  they 
reverenced  them  yet  more  religiously  than  we  do,  who  have  run 
out  to  such  a  length  of  audacity  that  we  are  not  afraid  to  dictate 
to  the  Son  in  what  ways  he  ought  to  honour  his  own  mother. 
We  dare  to  call  the  Holy  Spirit  True  God,  which  the  ancients 
did  not  dare  [to  do] ;  but  at  the  same  time  we  are  not  afraid  of 
continually  by  our  wickednesses  thrusting  him  out  of  the  temple 
of  our  mind,  just  as  if  we  thought  the  Holy  Spirit  was  nothing 
else  than  an  empty  name.  In  like  manner,  many  of  the  ancients, 
who  reverenced  the  Son  with  the  highest  degree  of  piety,  were 
yet  afraid  to  call  him  homooiisios  [consubstantial],  because  that 
expression  was  nowhere  employed  in  the  sacred  writings.  Thus 
the  Church's  proficiency  in  purity  of  life  was  earlier  than  [her 
advance]  in  exact  knowledge  of  di\inity  ;  nor  was  she  ever  more 
at  a  discount  [in  character]  than  when  she  seemed  to  have  made 
the  greatest  strides  both  in  philosophic  erudition  and  in  this 
world's  wealth  to  boot." 


236         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

APPENDIX  III. 

(Pp.  61,  121.) 

Letters  Patent  of  Edward  VI.,  constituting  the  Strangers'  Church  in 
London,  1550.  (Taken  from  Utenhove's  Simplex  et  Fidelis  Narratio 
de .  .  .  .  Belgarit7n  aliorwnque  Peregri7iortunhi  Anglia  Ecclesia,  Basel, 
1560,  collated  with  Kuyper's  y^rtww^'j  rt  Lasco,  vol.  ii.  See  also  Burnet, 
ii.  2,  158,  for  a  still  better  text;  and  Collier,  ix.  276,  for  a  French  dupli- 
cate.) 

"Eduardus  Sextus,  Dei  gratia  Anglise,  Francise,  Hibernian 
rex,  fidei  defensor,  et,  in  terra,  Ecclesi^  Anglicanee  et  Hibernicaj 
supremum,  sub  Christo,  caput,  omnibus  ad  quos  praesentes  literee 
pervenerint,  salutem. 

"  Cum  magncB  qusedam  et  graves  considerationes  nos  ad  prse- 
sens  specialiter  impulerunt,  turn  etiam  cogitantes  illud,  quanto 
studio  et  charitate  christianos  principes  in  sacrosanctum  Dei 
evangelium  et  religionem  apostolicam  ab  ipso  Christo  inchoatam, 
institutam  et  traditam,  animatos  et  prepenses  esse  conveniat, 
sine  qua  baud  dubie  politia  et  civile  regnum  neque  consistere 
diu,  neque  nomen  suum  tueri  potest,  nisi  principes,  casterique 
prEepotentes  viri,  quos  Deus  ad  regnorum  gubernacula  sedere 
voluit,  id  imprimis  operam  dent,  ut  per  totum  reipublicae  corpus 
casta  synceraque  religio  diffundatur,  et  ecclesia  in  vere  christianis 
et  apostolicis  opinionibus  et  ritibus  instituta  atque  adulta,  per 
sanctos  ac  carni  et  mundo  mortuos  ministros  conser\'etur. 

"  Pro  eo  quod  christiani  principis  officium  statuimus,  inter  alias 
suas  gravissimas  de  regno  suo  bene  splendideque  administrando 
cogitationes  etiam  religioni,  et  religionis  causa  calamitate  fractis 
et  afflictis  exulibus  consulere,  Sciatis, 

"  (2uod,  non  solum  pra3missa  contemplantes,  et  ecclesiain  a 
Papatus  tyrannide  per  nos  vindicatam  in  pristina  libertate  con- 
servare  cupientes ;  verum  etiam  exulum  ac  peregrinorum  con- 
ditionem  miserantes,  qui  jam  bonis  temporibus  in  regno  nostro 
Anglise  commorati  sunt  voluntario  exilio,  religionis  et  ecclesiaj 
causa  mulctati ;  quia  hospites  et  exteros  homines  propter  Christi 
evangelium  ex  patria  sua  profligatos  et  eiectos,  et  in  regnum 
nostrum  profugos,  proesidiis  ad  vitam  degendam  necessariis  in 
regno  nostro  egere,  non  dignum  esse,  neque  christiano  homine 
neque  principis  magnificentia  duximus,  cuius  liberalitas  nullo 


APPENDIX   III.  237 

modo  in  tali  rerum  statu  restricta  clausave  esse  debet  ;  ac 
quoniam  multi  Germanse  nationis  homines,  ac  alii  peregrini 
(qui  confluxerunt,  et  in  dies  singulos  confluunt  in  regnum 
nostrum  Anglise,  ex  Germania  et  aliis  remotioribus  partibus 
in  quibus  Papatus  dominatur,  evangelii  libertas  labefactari  et 
premi  coepta  est)  non  habent  certam  sedem  et  locum  in  regno 
nostro,  ubi  conventus  sues  celebrare  valeant,  ubi  inter  sure  gentis 
et  modern!  idiomatis  homines  religionis  negocia  et  res  ecclesias- 
ticas  pro  patrioj  ritu  et  more  intelligenter  obire  et  tractare  pos- 
sint ;  idcirco  de  gratia  nostra  speciali,  ac  ex  certa  scientia  et  mero 
motu  nostris,  'necnon  de  advisamento  Consilii  nostri,  volumus, 
concedimus  et   ordinamus  : 

"  Quod  de  c;i3tero  sit  et  erit  unum  templum,  sive  s^cra  oedes 
in  civitate  nostra  Londinensi  quod  vel  quae  vocabitur  '  Templum 
Domini  lesu,'  ubi  congregatio  et  conventus  Germanorum  et 
aliorum  peregrinorum  fieri  et  celebrari  possit,  ea  intentione  et 
proposito  ut  a  Ministris  Ecclesice  Germanorum  aliorumque  Pere- 
grinorum sacrosancti  evangelii  incorrupta  interpretatio,  sacra- 
mentorum  juxta  verbum  Dei  et  apostolicam  observationem 
administratio  fiat :  ac  templum  illud,  sive  sacram  aedem  illam 
de  uno  Superintendente  et  quatuor  verbi  Ministris  erigimus, 
creamus,  ordinamus  et  fundamus  per  praisentes ; 

"  Et  quod  idem  Superintendens  et  Ministri  in  re  et  nomine  sint 
et  erunt  unum  corpus  corporatum  et  politicum  de  se,  per  nomen 
'  Superintendentis  et  Ministrorum  Ecclesia)  Germanorum  et  ali- 
orum Peregrinorum  ex  fundatione  Regis  Eduardi  sexti :'  in  civi- 
tate Londinensi  per  prassentes  incorporamus,  ac  corpus  cor- 
poratum et  politicum,  per  idem  nomen  realiter  et  ad  plenum 
creamus,  erigimus,  ordinamus,  facimus  et  constituimus  per  prae;- 
sentes  ;  et  quod  successionem  habeant. 

"  Et  ulterius  de  gratia  nostra  speciali,  ac  ex  certa  scientia  et 
mero  motu  nostris,  necnon  de  advisamento  Consilii  nostri,  dedi- 
mus  et  concessimus,  ac  per  prsesentes  damus  et  concedimus 
prsefato  Superintendenti  et  Ministris  Ecclesise  Germanorum  et 
aliorum  Peregrinorum  in  civitate  Londinensi,  totum  illud  tem- 
plum sive  ecclesiam,  nuper  Fratrum  Augustinensium  in  civitate 
nostra  Londinensi,  ac  totam  terram,  fundum  et  solum  ecclesi-'e 
prsedictse,  exceptis  toto  choro  dictaj  ecclesice,  terris,  fundo  et  solo 
eiusdem,  habendum  et  gaudendum :  dictum  templum  sive  eccle- 


238         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

siam,  ac  Ccetera  prcemissa,  exceptis  prjeexceptis,  prsefatis  Super- 
intendenti  et  Ministris  et  successoribus  suis,  tenendum  de  nobis, 
hasredibus  et  successoribus  nostris,  in  puram  et  liberam  elee- 
mosynam. 

"  Damus  ulterius  de  advisamento  pra^dicto,  ac  ex  certa  scientia 
et  mero  motu  nostris  prsedictis  per  praesentes  concedimus  pr^e- 
fatis  Superintendenti  et  Ministris,  et  successoribus  suis,  plenam 
facultatem,  potestatem  et  autoritatem  ampliandi  et  maiorem 
faciendi  numerum  ministrorum,  et  nominandi  et  appunctuandi 
de  tempore  in  tempus  tales  et  huius  modi  subministros  ad  ser- 
viendum  in  temple  pra;dicto,  quales  pra^fatis  Superintendenti  et 
Ministris  necessarium  visum  fuerit ;  et  quidem  haec  omnia  iuxta 
beneplacitum  regium. 

"Volumus  prasterea,  quod  loannes  a  Lasco,  natione  Polonus, 
homo  propter  integritatem  et  innocentiam  vitse  ac  morum,  et 
singularem  eruditionem  valde  Celebris,  sit  primus  et  modernus 
Superintendens  dictce  Ecclesi^e  :  et  quod  Gualterus  Deloenus, 
Martinus  Flandrus,  Franciscus  Riverius,  Richardus  Callus,  sint 
quatuor  primi  et  moderni  Ministri. 

"  Damus  prasterea  et  concedimus  prasfatis  Superintendenti  et 
Ministris,  et  successoribus  suis,  facultatem,  autoritatem  et  licen- 
tiam,  post  mortem  vel  vacationem  alicuius  ministri  preedictorum, 
de  tempore  in  tempus  eligendi,  nominandi  et  surrogandi  alium, 
personam  habilem  et  idoneum,  in  locum  suum ;  ita  tamen  quod 
persona  sic  nominatus  et  electus  prtesentetur  et  sistatur  coram 
nobis,  hasredibus  vel  successoribus  nostris,  et  per  nos,  hasredes 
vel  successores  nostros,  instituatur  in  ministerium  prsdictum. 

"  Damus  etiam  et  concedimus  praefatis  Superintendenti,  Minis- 
tris, et  successoribus  suis,  facultatem,  autoritatem  et  licentiam, 
post  mortem  seu  vacationem  Superintendentis  de  tempore  in 
tempus  eligendi,  nominandi  et  surrogandi  alium,  personam 
doctum  et  gravem  in  locum  suum ;  ita  tamen  quod  persona  sic 
nominatus  et  electus  prajsentetur  et  sistatur  coram  nobis,  hasre- 
dibus vel  successoribus  nostris,  et  per  nos,  hseredes  vel  succes- 
sores nostros,  instituatur  in  officium  Superintendentis  pra;dictum. 

"  Mandamus,  et  firmiter  iniungendum  prsecipimus,  tum  Maiori, 
Vicecomitibus  et  Aldermanis  civitatis  nostras  Londinensis,  tum 
Episcopo  Londinensi  et  successoribus  suis,  cum  omnibus  aliis, 
Archiepiscopis,  Episcopis,  justiciariis,  officiariis  et  ministris  nos- 


APPENDIX   III.  239 

tris  quibuscumque,  quod  permittant  praefatis  Superintendenti  et 
Ministris,  et  successoribus  suis  libere  et  quiete  frui,  gaudere,  uti 
et  exercere  ritus  et  ceremonias  suas  proprias,  et  disciplinam 
ecclesiasticam  propriam  et  peuliarem,  non  obstante  quod  non 
conveniant  cum  ritibus  et  ceremoniis  in  regno  nostro  usitatis, 
absque  impeditione,  perturbatione  aut  inquietatione  eorum,  vel 
eorum  alicuius ;  aliquo  statuto,  actu,  proclamatione,  injunctione, 
restrictione,  seu  usu  in  contrarium  inde  antehac  habitis,  factis, 
editis  seu  promulgatis  in  contrarium  non  obstantibus,  eo  quod 
expressa  mentio  de  vero  valore  annuo,  aut  de  certitudine  pras- 
missorum,  sive  eorum  alicuius,  aut  de  aliis  donis  sive  conces- 
sionibus  per  nos  prsefatis  Superintendenti,  Ministris  et  succes- 
soribus suis,  ante  haec  tempora  factis,  in  prassentibus  minime 
facta  existit  ;  aut  aliquo  statuto,  actu,  ordinatione,  provisione, 
sive  restrictione  inde  in  contrarium  factis,  editis,  ordinatis  seu 
provisis,  aut  aliqua  alia  re,  causa  vel  materia  quocumque  in 
aliquo  non  obstante. 

"  In  cuius  rei  testimonium  has  literas  nostras  fieri  fecimus 
patentes. 

"  Teste  me  ipso,  apud  Leighes,  vicesimo  quarto  die  Julii,  anno 
regni  nostri  quarto. 

"  Per  breve  de  privato  sigillo,  et  de  datis  pracdicta  autoritate 
Parliament!. 

"  P.  Southwell.        W.  Harrys." 

Translation. 

"  Edward  the  Sixth,  by  the  grace  of  God  king  of  England, 
France  and  Ireland,  defender  of  the  faith,  and  on  earth  supreme 
head,  under  Christ,  of  the  Church  of  England  and  Ireland,  to  all 
to  whom  these  letters  present  may  come,  sendeth  greeting. 

"  Whereas  certain  great  and  weighty  considerations  have  at 
this  present  especially  moved  us,  moreover  also  thinking  with 
what  zeal  and  love  it  behoveth  Christian  princes  to  be  animated 
and  disposed  towards  the  most  holy  Gospel  of  God,  and  the 
apostolic  religion  begun,  instituted  and  delivered  by  Christ  him- 
self, without  which,  doubtless,  the  state  and  civil  rule  can  neither 
long  hold  together  nor  preserve  its  prestige,  unless  princes,  and 
the  other  powerful  magnates  whom  God  hath  pleased  to  set  at 
the  helms  of  kingdoms,  make  it  their  first  care  that  through  the 


240         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

whole  body  of  the  commonwealth  pure  and  undefiled  religion  be 
diffused,  and  that  the  Church,  instituted  and  matured  in  truly 
Christian  and  apostolic  opinions  and  rites,  be  preserved  by  holy 
ministers,  dead  to  the  flesh  and  the  world  : 

"  Forasmuch  as  we  conclude  that  it  is  the  duty  of  a  Christian 
prince,  among  his  other  most  weighty  designs  for  the  good  and 
illustrious  administration  of  his  kingdom,  also  to  provide  for 
religion,  and  for  exiles  broken  by  calamity  and  afflicted  in  the 
cause  of  religion,  Know  ye, 

"That,  not  only  having  in  view  the  matters  aforesaid,  and 
desiring  to  preserve  in  its  original  freedom  the  Church  which  has 
by  us  been  liberated  from  the  tyranny  of  the  Papacy  ;  but  also 
commiserating  the  condition  of  exiles  and  strangers,  who  have 
sojourned  this  good  while  in  our  kingdom  of  England  in  volun- 
tSLVj'  exile,  punished  in  the  cause  of  religion  and  the  Church  ; 
for,  that  visitors  and  foreigners,  ruined  and  ejected  from  their 
own  country  on  account  of  the  Gospel  of  Christ,  and  coming  as 
fugitives  to  our  kingdom,  are  here  in  want  of  essential  securities 
of  life,  we  have  judged  unworthy  either  of  a  Christian  man,  or 
of  the  magnificence  of  a  prince,  whose  liberality  ought  in  such 
a  state  of  things  to  be  in  no  way  restricted  or  close  ;  and  since 
many  men  of  German  race,  and  other  strangers  (who  have 
flocked,  and  do  every  day  flock,  into  our  kingdom  of  England 
out  of  Germany  and  other  more  distant  parts  in  which  the 
Papacy  hath  sway,  the  freedom  of  the  Gospel  is  begun  to  be 
subverted  and  oppressed)  have  no  fixed  seat  and  locality  in 
our  kingdom,  where  they  are  authorised  to  solemnise  their  own 
assemblies,  where  among  men  of  their  own  nation  and  ordinary 
idiom  they  can  intelligently  execute  and  transact  the  affairs  of 
religion  and  ecclesiastical  concerns  in  accordance  with  the  ritual 
and  usage  of  their  own  country ;  therefore,  of  our  special  grace, 
and  from  our  own  assured  knowledge,  and  of  our  own  mere 
motion,  at  the  same  time  by  the  advice  of  our  Council,  we  do 
will,  grant  and  ordain  : 

"  That  henceforward  there  may  and  shall  be  a  temple  or 
sacred  edifice  in  our  city  of  London,  which  shall  be  called  the 
'  Temple  of  the  Lord  Jesus,'  where  the  congregation  and  assem- 
bly of  Germans  and  other  strangers  may  be  held  and  solemnised, 
with  this  intention  and  purpose,  that  by  the  Ministers  of  the 


APPENDIX    III.  241 

Church  of  Germans  and  other  Strangers  there  may  be  rendered 
an  incorrupt  interpretation  of  the  most  holy  Gospel,  and  an 
administration  of  the  sacraments  according  to  the  word  of  God, 
and  the  apostolic  observance :  and  this  temple  or  sacred  edifice, 
of  one  Superintendent  and  four  Ministers  of  the  word,  we  do 
erect,  create,  ordain  and  found  by  these  presents  ; 

"And  that  the  said  Superintendent  and  Ministers  may  and 
shall  be  in  fact  and  name  a  body  corporate  and  politic  of  them- 
selves, by  the  name  of 'The  Superintendent  and  Ministers  of  the 
Church  of  Germans  and  other  Strangers  on  the  foundation  of 
King  Edward  the  Sixth :'  by  these  presents  we  do  incorporate 
them  in  the  city  of  London,  and  we  do  by  these  presents  really 
and  fully  create,  erect,  ordain,  make  and  constitute  them  a  body 
corporate  and  politic  by  the  said  name  ;  and  that  they  may  have 
succession. 

"And  furthermore  of  our  special  grace  and  from  our  own 
assured  knowledge  and  of  our  own  mere  motion,  at  the  same 
time  with  the  advice  of  our  Council,  we  have  given  and  granted, 
and  by  these  presents  we  do  give  and  grant  to  the  aforesaid 
Superintendent  and  Ministers  of  the  Church  of  Germans  and 
other  Strangers  in  the  city  of  London,  all  that  temple  or  church 
lately  of  the  Austin  Friars  in  the  city  of  London,  and  all  the 
land,  ground  and  soil  of  the  aforesaid  church,  except  all  the 
choir  of  the  said  church,  the  lands,  ground  and  soil  of  the  same, 
to  have  and  to  enjoy :  the  said  temple  or  church  and  the  other 
premises,  except  the  before  excepted,  to  be  holden  by  the  afore- 
said Superintendent  and  Ministers  and  their  successors,  of  us, 
our  heirs  and  successors,  in  pure  frank-almoin. 

"  We  do  furthermore  give,  by  advice  as  aforesaid,  and  from 
our  certain  knowledge  and  of  our  mere  motion,  as  aforesaid,  we 
do  by  these  presents  grant  to  the  aforesaid  Superintendent  and 
Ministers,  and  to  their  successors,  full  faculty,  power  and  autho- 
rity of  enlarging  and  making  greater  the  number  of  Ministers, 
and  of  nominating  and  appointing  from  time  to  time  such  and 
such  sub-ministers  for  serving  in  the  aforesaid  temple,  as  to 
the  aforesaid  Superintendent  and  Ministers  shall  have  seemed 
necessary  ;  and,  moreover,  all  this  with  concurrence  of  the  king's 
good  pleasure. 

"  We  do  will  besides  that  Jan  Laski,  a  native  of  Poland,  a  man 


242         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

of  high  repute  for  integrity  and  innocence  of  Hfe  and  morals, 
and  for  singular  erudition,  be  the  first  and  customary  Superin- 
tendent of  the  said  Church;  and  that  Wouter  Deloen,  Marten 
[Microen]  of  Flanders,  Frangois  La  Riviere  and  Richard  Fran- 
cois, be  the  four  first  and  ordinary  Ministers. 

"  We  do  besides  give  and  grant  to  the  aforesaid  Superinten- 
dent and  Ministers,  and  to  their  successors,  faculty,  authority 
and  licence,  after  the  death  or  demission  of  any  minister  of  the 
aforesaid,  for  choosing,  nominating  and  surrogating  into  his 
place  from  time  to  time  another,  an  able  and  suitable  person ; 
so,  nevertheless,  that  the  person  thus  nominated  and  chosen  be 
presented  and  appear  before  us,  our  heirs  or  successors,  and  by 
us,  our  heirs  or  successors,  be  instituted  into  the  aforesaid 
ministry. 

"  We  do  also  give  and  grant  to  the  aforesaid  Superintendent, 
Ministers,  and  their  successors,  faculty,  authority  and  licence, 
after  the  death  or  demission  of  a  Superintendent,  for  choosing, 
nominating  and  surrogating  into  his  place  from  time  to  time 
another,  a  learned  and  grave  person ;  so,  nevertheless,  that  the 
person  thus  nominated  and  chosen  be  presented  and  appear 
before  us,  our  heirs  or  successors,  and  by  us,  our  heirs  or  succes- 
sors, be  instituted  into  the  aforesaid  office  of  Superintendent. 

"  We  do  command,  and  order  that  it  be  strongly  enjoined  both 
on  the  Mayor,  Sherififs  and  Aldermen  of  our  city  of  London,  and 
on  the  Bishop  of  London  and  his  successors,  with  all  others. 
Archbishops,  Bishops,  justices,  officers  and  ministers  of  ours 
whatsoever,  that  they  permit  the  aforesaid  Superintendent  and 
Ministers  and  their  successors  freely  and  quietly  to  indulge, 
enjoy,  use  and  exercise  their  own  proper  rites  and  ceremonies, 
and  their  proper  and  peculiar  ecclesiastical  discipline,  notwith- 
standing that  these  may  not  agree  with  the  rites  and  ceremonies 
practised  in  our  kingdom,  without  hindrance,  disturbance  or  dis- 
quieting of  them  or  of  any  of  them  ;  any  statute,  act,  proclama- 
tion, injunction,  restriction  or  usage  to  the  contrary  thereof 
aforetime  held,  made,  published  or  promulgated  to  the  contrary 
notwithstanding,  on  the  ground  that  in  these  presents  there 
nowhere  arises  any  express  mention  made  respecting  the  true 
annual  value  or  the  warranty  of  the  premises  or  of  any  of  them, 
or  respecting  other  gifts  or  grants  made  by  us  aforetime  to  the 


APPENDIX   IV.  243 

aforesaid  Superintendent,  Ministers  and  their  successors  ;  or 
any  statute,  act,  ordinance,  provision  or  restriction  to  the  con- 
trary thereof  made,  published,  ordained  or  provided,  or  any 
other  thing,  cause  or  matter  in  any  respect  whatsoever  notwith- 
standing. 

"  In  testimony  of  which  thing  we  have  caused  these  letters 
patent  to  be  made. 

"Witness  myself,  at  Leighes,  the  twenty-fourth  day  of  July  in 
the  fourth  year  of  our  reign. 

"  By  brief  of  the  privy  seal,  and  of  grants  on  the  aforesaid 
authority  of  Parliament. 

"  P.  Southwell.        W.  Harrys." 
[Observe  that  />erso)ia  is  treated  as  a  masculine  noun.] 


APPENDIX  IV. 

(P.  82.) 

Extract  from  a  Letter  of  the  Geneva  Ministers,  forwarded  by  Theodore 
Beza  to  the  Ministers  of  East  Friesland,  2  Sept.  1566.  [Epistolarum 
Theologicartim  Theodori  Bezte  Vezelii,  liber  unus,  Genev.  1573,  Letter 
iv.  pp.  42,  43.) 

Having  enumerated  the  heads  of  accusation  against  a  certain 
Adrianus,  pastor  of  the  French  Church  at  Emden,  the  letter 
proceeds : 

"  Quartum  accusationis  caput  est,  quod  Adrianus,  clam  Emden- 
sibus  ministris,  ....  curauerit  Valdesii  considerationes,  multis 
erroribus,  atque  etiam  blasphemiis  adversus  sacrum  Dei  verbum 
scatentes,  non  tantum  in  Flandricam  linguam  conuertendas,  sed 
etiam  edendas,  et  iis  locis  distribuendas 

"  Scimus,  ex  idoneorum  hominum  testimonio,  quantum  nascenti 
Neapolitanje  ecclesite  liber  ille  detrimenti  attulerit ;  scimus  etiam 
quod  fuerit  de  illo  judicium  D.  Joannis  Caluini ;  scimus  &  illud, 
Ochinum,  infelicis  memoriee  virum,  ex  illis  lacunis  suas  illas  pro- 
fanas  speculationes  hausisse,  et  ita  tandem  sensim  a  verbo  Dei 
abductum,  in  vltimum  illud  exitium  sese  praecipitasse,  in  quo 
miser  interiit :  ac  proinde  librum  ilium  a  spiritu  Anabaptistico 
multis  locis  non  multum  dissidentem,  id  est  a  verbo  Dei  ad 
inanes  quasdam  speculationes,  quas  falso  Spiritum  appellant, 

R  2 


244         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

homines  abducentem,  vel  nunquam  editum,  vel  statim  sepultum 
fuisse  magnopere  cuperemus." 

Translation. 

"  The  fourth  head  of  accusation  is  that  Adrianus,  unbeknown 
to  the  ministers  of  Emden,  ....  caused  the  Considerations  of 
Valdes,  swarming  with  many  errors  and  even  blasphemies  against 
God's  sacred  word,  not  merely  to  be  translated  into  the  Flemish 
tongue,  but  to  be  published  too,  and  distributed  in  that  locality.  .  . 

"  We  know,  on  the  testimony  of  competent  men,  how  much 
injury  that  book  did  to  the  nascent  church  at  Naples  ;  we  know 
too  what  was  the  judgment  of  Master  John  Calvin  respecting 
it ;  we  know  also  this,  that  out  of  these  pits  Ochino,  of  unhappy 
memory,  drew  those  profane  speculations  of  his,  and  so  at  length 
led  off  little  by  little  from  the  word  of  God,  he  precipitated  him- 
self into  that  last  destruction,  wherein  he  miserably  perished : 
and  accordingly  we  should  greatly  wish  that  this  book,  differing 
not  much  from  the  Anabaptist  spirit  in  many  places,  that  is  to 
say,  leading  men  off  from  the  word  of  God  to  certain  empty 
speculations,  which  they  falsely  call  the  Spirit,  had  either  never 
been  published,  or  were  at  once  consigned  to  the  tomb." 


APPENDIX  V. 
(P.  98.) 

Extract  from  Twenty-six  Questions  on  the  Trinity  proposed  by  four 
Grisons  ministers  to  the  Zurich  divines,  24  May,  1561.  (Trechsel,  ii. 
app.  v.,  from  MS.  No.  122  in  the  Bern  Library.) 

"  4.  An  ad  asternam  salutem  consequendam  prasstet  sanctissi- 
mum  Triadis  arcanum  silentio  adorare,  quam  de  ea,  aliter  quam 
sacra2  literse  docent,  et  secundum  varias  hominum  sententias, 
temere  loqui? 

"  5.  An  perspicacior  acutiorve  sanctissimEe  Triadis  intelligentia 
pro  consequenda  vita  a^terna  nobis  necessaria  sit  quam  ea,  quie 
in  divinis  literis  a  Spiritu  S.  nobis  tradita  sit? 

"6.  An  ecclesiarum  Dei  ministri  et  doctores  cogere  simplices 


Ari'ENDIX    VI.  245 

et  imperitos  possint,  constituta  etiam  illis  privationis  coenje  domi- 
nicas  poena,  ut,  de  sanctissima  Triade  disserentes,  aliis  vocibus 
et  nominibus,  ab  istis  minime  intellectis  utantur,  quam  his  quibus 
in  s.  literis  Spiritus  Sanctus  utitur? 

"  20.  An  quis,  tanquam  pertinax  et  convictus  ha;reticus  ob 
simplicem  errorem  in  articulo  Trinitatis,  cujus  arcanum  sacratis- 
simum  vix  ab  Angelis  comprehendi  potest,  debeat  excommuni- 
cari  quomodocumque  in  caeteris  omnibus,  is  doctrina  atque  vita 
sit  inculpabili,  imo  laudatissimis  moribus,  et  summa  erga  pau- 
peres  charitate  sit  prasdit«s  ?" 

[Translated  above,  pp.  97,  98.] 


APPENDIX  VI. 

(P.  105.) 

Confession  of  Faith  imposed  on  the  Italian  Church  at  Geneva,  18  May, 
1558.  [Extracted  by  the  State  Archivist,  M.  Ad.  C.  Grivel,  from  the 
Archives  of  Geneva  {Proces  Crimiiiels,  No.  746).  It  is  printed,  with 
the  Latin  text,  by  H.  Fazy,  Proces  de  V.  Gentilis,  1878.] 

"  Ancor  che  la  confession  de  la  fede,  contenuta  nel  symbolo 
de  gli  Apostoli  doverebbe  bastare  per  la  simplicita  del  popolo 
Christiano,  nondimeno  percioche  alcuni,  essendosi  per  la  loro 
curiosita  disviati  de  la  pura  e  vera  fede,  hanno  turbato  I'unione 
e  Concordia  di  questa  Chiesa,  e  seminato  de  le  opinione  false  et 
erronee  :  Per  ovviare  a  tutte  le  astutie  di  Satano  et  esser  muniti 
e  provisi  contra  quelli  che  ci  volesseno  sedurre,  e  mostrare  che 
noi  crediamo  d'un  cuore,  e  parliamo  d'una  bocca,  e  similimente 
che  noi  rifutiamo  e  detestiamo  tutte  le  heresie  contrarie  k  la  pura 
fede,  la  quale  infino  a  qui  habbiam  tenuta,  e  vogliamo  seguire  in 
sino  k  la  fine,  habbiam  risoluto  di  fare  la  dichiaratione,  che  qui 
appresso  segue,  quanto  a  la  unica  e  semplice  essentia  di  Dio,  e 
la  distintione  de  le  tre  persone. 

"  Noi  dichiariamo  dunque,  che  il  padre  Iddio,  ha  in  tal  mode 
generato  fin  da  ogni  eternitk  la  sua  parola  e  [o?]  sapientia,  che  e  il 
suo  unico  figliuolo,  e  che  lo  Spirito  Santo  h  proceduto  d'amendue; 
che  non  vi  e  se  non  una  sola  et  semplice  essentia  del  padre. 


246         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

del  figliuolo,  et  de  lo  Spirito  Santo :  e  che  questo,  che  il  padre  e 
distinto  dal  figluolo,  lo  Spirito  Santo  da  Tune  e  da  I'altro,  e  per 
rispetto  de  le  persone. 

"  Per  il  che  noi  danniamo  e  detestiamo  I'errore  di  quelli  che 
dicono  che  il  padre,  semplicemente  quanto  alia  sua  essentia,  et 
in  quanto  e  solo  vero  Iddio  (come  esse  dicono)  ha  generato  il 
suo  figliuolo  :  come  se  la  divina  maesta,  imperio,  essentia,  et 
insomma  la  vera  divinitk,  non  appartenesse  se  non  al  padre  solo, 
e  che  Jesu  Christo,  e  lo  Spirito  Santo  fusseno  Iddii  procedenti 
da  lui,  e  che  in  questo  modo  I'unita  de  I'essentia  divina  fusse 
divisa  o  separata. 

"  In  tanto,  confessando  noi  che  non  ci  ^  se  non  un  solo  Iddio, 
riconosciamo  che  tutto  quello  che  s'attribuisce  a  la  divinita,  alia 
sua  gloria  et  essentia,  conviene  tanto  al  figliuolo,  quanto  alio 
Spirito  Santo,  quando  si  parla  semplicemente  di  Dio,  senza  far 
comparatione  da  una  persona  a  I'altra.  Ma  facendosi  la  compa- 
ratione  de  le  persone  de  I'una  k  I'altra,  ci  conviene  osservare 
quello  che  e  proprio  a  ciascuna,  per  fame  tale  distintione,  che  il 
figliuolo  non  sia  il  padre,  ne  lo  Spirito  Santo  sia  il  figliuolo. 

"  Quanto  alia  persona  del  nostro  signor  Jesu  Christo,  oltre  che 
fin  da  ogni  eternita  e  stato  generato  da  Iddio  suo  padre  et  e 
stato  persona  distinta  da  lui,  noi  teniamo  che  nella  sua  natura 
humana,  de  la  quale  egli  si  e  vestito  per  nostra  salute,  egli  e 
ancora  vero  e  naturale  figliuolo  di  Dio,  per  havere  in  tal  modo 
unite  le  due  nature  che  non  e  se  non  un  solo  mediatore,  Iddio 
manifesto  in  carne,  riservando  sempre  le  proprieta  di  ciascuna 
de  le  due  nature. 

"  Hor,  faciendo  questa  dichiaratione,  noi  protestiamo,  e  sopra 
la  fede  che  noi  debbiamo  a  Dio  promettiamo  e  ci  obligliamo  de 
seguir  questa  dottrina,  e  di  perseverar  in  essa,  senza  contra- 
venirvi  ne  direttamente,  ne  obliquamente,  di  certa  scientia,  o 
con  alcuna  malitia,  per  nutrire  alcune  dissentione,  o  differentia, 
che  fusse  per  disviarci  da  tale  accordo.  E  generalmente  per 
chiuder  la  porta  k  tutte  le  discordie  per  I'avvenire,  noi  dichiariamo 
di  voler  vivere  e  morire  nell'obbedientia  de  la  dottrina  di  questa 
Chiesa,  e  quanto  per  noi  si  potra  risistere  k  tutte  le  sette  che  si 
potesseno  levare  all'incontro,  e  cosi  I'approviamo,  accettiamo,  e 
confermiamo  sotto  pena  di  esser  tenuti  pergiuri  e  mancatori  di 
fede. 


APPENDIX    VI.  247 

"  lo  Silvip  Telio  approvo  la  confessione  supra  scritta  et  detesto 
tutto  quello  il  fusse  in  contraria  a  essa. 

"  lo  frano  Porcellino  da  pioue  di  sacco  accetto  et  approvo  la 
sopra  scritta  confessione  come  in  essa  ci  contiene. 

"  lo  Filippo  Rustici  da  Lucia  sottoscriuo  et  accetto  la  confes- 
sione che  di  sopra  si  contiene. 

"  To  Valentino  Gentile  Cosentino  accetto  ut  supra. 

"  lo  Ypolito  Pelerino  da  Carignano  acceto  como  di  sopra. 

"  lo  Nicolao  Gallo  accetto  ut  supra." 

Translation. 

"  Although  the  confession  of  faith  contained  in  the  Apostles' 
creed  should  be  sufficient  for  the  simplicity  of  Christian  people, 
nevertheless  since  some,  led  by  their  curiosity  from  the  path  of 
the  pure  and  true  faith,  have  disturbed  the  union  and  concord 
of  this  Church,  and  disseminated  false  and  erroneous  opinions  : 
To  meet  all  the  wiles  of  Satan,  and  be  protected  and  provided 
against  any  who  would  seduce,  and  to  show  that  we  believe  with 
one  heart  and  speak  with  one  mouth,  and  likewise  that  we  repel 
and  detest  all  heresies  against  the  pure  faith  which  we  have 
held  hitherto,  and  wish  to  follow  even  to  the  end,  We  have 
resolved  to  make  the  declaration  hereinafter  following,  in  regard 
to  the  single  and  simple  essence  of  God,  and  the  distinction  of 
the  three  persons. 

"We  declare  then  that  God,  the  Father,  hath  in  such  wise 
generated  from  all  eternity  his  Word  and  [Lat.  has  "or"  {stve)} 
Wisdom,  which  is  his  only  Son,  and  that  the  Holy  Spirit  hath 
proceeded  [in  such  wise]  from  both,  that  there  is  but  one  sole 
and  simple  essence  of  Father,  Son  and  Holy  Spirit  ;  and  that  it 
is  in  respect  of  the  persons  that  the  Father  is  distinct  from  the 
Son,  and  the  Holy  Spirit  from  the  one  and  the  other. 

"Wherefore  we  damn  and  detest  the  error  of  any  who  say  that 
the  Father,  simply  in  virtue  of  His  own  essence,  and  in  as  much 
as  He  is  the  only  true  God  (as  they  say  He  is),  hath  generated 
His  Son;  as  if  the  divine  majesty,  dominion,  essence,  and  in 
short  the  true  divinity,  belonged  to  the  Father  alone,  and  Jesus 
Christ  and  the  Holy  Spirit  were  Gods  proceeding  from  Him, 
and  in  this  wise  the  unity  of  the  divine  essence  were  divided  or 
separated. 


248         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

"  Howbeit  while  we  confess  that  there  is  but  one  sole  God,  we 
acknowledge  that  whatsoever  is  attributed  to  the  divinity,  to  His 
glory  and  essence,  belongs  equally  to  the  Son  as  to  the  Holy 
Spirit,  when  we  are  speaking  simply  of  God,  without  comparing 
one  person  with  another.  But  when  we  compare  the  persons 
among  themselves,  we  must  obsei"ve  what  is  proper  to  each, 
making  such  distinctions  that  the  Son  be  not  the  Father  nor  the 
Holy  Spirit  the  Son. 

"  As  for  the  person  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  besides  that  he 
hath  from  all  eternity  been  generated  by  God,  his  Father,  and 
been  a  person  distinct  from  Him,  we  hold  that  in  his  human 
nature,  which  he  hath  put  on  for  our  salvation,  he  is  likewise  true 
and  natural  Son  of  God,  through  having  in  such  wise  united  the 
two  natures  that  he  is  one  sole  Mediator,  God  manifest  in  flesh, 
with  reservation  of  the  properties  of  each  of  the  two  natures. 

"  Now  in  making  this  declaration,  we  protest,  and  we  promise 
and  bind  ourselves  by  the  faith  which  we  owe  to  God,  that  we 
will  follow  this  doctrine  and  persevere  in  it,  without  either 
directly  or  indirectly  contravening  it,  knowingly  or  with  any  evil 
intent,  so  as  to  nourish  any  dissension  or  difference  which  might 
lead  us  from  the  path  of  this  accord.  And  in  general,  to  shut 
the  door  on  all  discord  for  the  future,  we  declare  that  we  wish  to 
live  and  die  in  obedience  to  the  doctrine  of  this  Church,  and,  so 
far  as  in  us  lies,  to  resist  all  sects  that  could  rise  in  opposition. 
And  this  we  approve,  accept  and  confirm,  under  penalty  of  being 
held  perjurers  and  faithless. 

"  I,  Silvio  Telio,  approve  the  above-written  confession  and 
detest  everything  opposed  to  it. 

"  I,  Francesco  Porcellino,  of  Piove  di  Sacco,  accept  and  ap- 
prove the  above-written  confession  according  as  is  contained  in  it. 

"  I,  Filippo  Rustici,  of  Lucia,  subscribe  and  accept  the  confes- 
sion which  is  contained  above. 

"  I,  Valentino  Gentile,  of  Cosenza,  accept  as  above. 

"  I,  Ypolito  Pelerino,  of  Carignano,  accept  as  above. 

"  I,  Nicolao  Gallo,  accept  as  above." 


APPENDIX    VII.  249 

APPENDIX  VII. 

(P.  124.) 

Organisation  of  the  Ministry  and  the  Conferences  in  the  Strangers' 
Church,  London,  1550.  {Forvia  ac  Ratio  Ecclesiastici  Ministerii  in 
Peregrinorum  Ecclesia,  Frankf.  May,  1551  ;  reprinted  in  Kuyper's 
Joannes  iX  Lasco,  1866,  ii.  pp.  45  ff.) 

"  De  Ffli-nia  ac  Ratio nc  Ecclesiastici  Ministerii. 

"  Nos  id  quidem  in  nostris  ecclesiis  pro  nostra  virili  conati 
sumus,  sumpto  exeniplo  a  Genevensi  et  Argentinensi  Peregrino- 
rum Ecclesia 

"  Hisce  nimirum  donis  suis  exornat  Dominus  in  sua  ecclesia 
verbi  divini  ministerium,  ad  ejus  tedificationem,  ministrosque 
ipsos  postorum  ac  doctorum  nomine  dignatur.  Ouanquam  autem 
apud  istos  quoque  curam  ac  custodiam  gubernandce  ecclesiae 
prscipuam  esse  voluit,  duo  tamen  adhuc  custodum  prseterea 
genera  illis  in  sua  ecclesia  adjunxit,  peculiaremque  eis  ipsorum 
functionem  consignavit.  Atque  alii  quidem  in  Scripturis  vocantur 
presbyteri,  sive  seniores,  item  episcopi,  praepositi  et  guberna- 
tiones  :  alii  vero  potestates,  prascellentes  ministri,  et  altores 
ecclesiae  Christi,  quos  nos  magistratum  vocamus. 

"  Porro  ad  hunc  presbyterorum  ordinem  ipsi  quoque  pastores 
ac  doctores  omnes  pertinent,  sed  curam  sibi  gubernandce  conser- 
vandaeque  ecclesia;  non  sumunt  soli,  nisi  in  reliquorum  presby- 
terorum coetu,  quem  ut  sibi  adjunctum  habeant  omni  studio  ac 
sollicitudine  adniti  debent.     (Pp.  48,  49.) 

"  De  Modo  ac  Ratione  Propheticr  i?2  Germanorum  Ecclesia  diebiis 
Jovis. 

"  Ratio  prophetic  in  Germanorum  Ecclesia  base  est  visa  fere 
maxime  utilis  toti  ecclesiie,  ut  in  ilia  excuterentur  et  approba- 
rentur  omnia  per  mutuam  locorum  e  Scripturis  collationem,  quae 
in  totius  ejus  hebdomadis  concionibus  videri  poterant  vel  non 
recte,  vel  non  ad  plenum  omnino  fuisse  explicata,  aut  qualem- 
cumque  tandem  in  animis  dubitationem  forte  adhuc  reliquissent. 
Cum  enim  nusquam  aliunde  plus  imminere  posse  periculi  constet 
in  omnibus  ecclesiis,  quam  ex  doctrinas  dissidiis,  nihil  sane  aeque 
etiam  utile  esse  potest  in  omnibus  ecclesiis  quam  ut  unanimus 


250         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

doctrinas  consensus  in  illis  ex  verbo  Dei  retineatur.  Ad  quern 
equidem  retinendum  atque  etiam  alenduni  vix  quidquam  haberi 
excogitarique  potest  aut  melius,  aut  commodius,  aut  etiam  effi- 
cacius  hac  tali  publica  doctriniE  ministrorum  examinatione  atque 
approbatione. 

"  Die  Jovis  igitur,  sub  finem  concionis,  quae  hora  propemodum 
nona  ante  meridiem  habetur,  ecclesiastes  ipse  hortatur  seniores 
ecclesiae  et  omnes  eos  qui  ad  proponendas  objectiones  designati 
sunt,  ad  proferendum  in  medium  aliquid,  cum  omni  modestia  et 
gravitate,  ad  ecclesi^  a;dificationem,  non  autem  ad  vanam  osten- 
tationem.  Ac  tum  ministri  rationem  reddunt  doctrinae  suae,  in 
ejus  hebdomadis  concionibus  tradita?,  si  quid  adversus  illam 
objiciatur.     (Pp.  loi,  102.)" 

Translation. 
"  On  the  Form  and  Plan  of  the  Ministry  of  the  Church. 

"  We  have  indeed  attempted  this  in  our  churches  to  the  best 
of  our  ability,  following  the  example  of  the  Strangers'  Church  at 
Geneva  and  at  Strassburg 

"  With  these  gifts  of  his  in  sooth  the  Lord  adorns  the  ministrj- 
of  the  divine  word  in  his  church,  to  its  edification,  and  the 
ministers  themselves  he  honours  with  the  name  of  pastors  and 
doctors.  Although,  however,  he  willed  that  the  principal  care  and 
charge  of  governing  the  church  be  committed  to  them  also,  never- 
theless he  has  adjoined  to  them  in  his  church  two  other  kinds  of 
custodians  besides,  and  has  assigned  to  these  a  peculiar  function 
of  their  own.  And  of  these  the  one  class  are  called  in  the 
Scriptures  presbyters  or  elders,  also  bishops,  foremen  or  govern- 
ments ;  but  the  others  are  called  powers,  principal  ministers, 
nourishers  of  the  church  of  Christ,  whom  we  call  the  magistracy. 
Further,  to  this  order  of  presbyters  the  pastors  and  doctors 
themselves  also  belong,  but  they  do  not  take  to  themselves  alone 
the  care  of  governing  and  preserving  the  church,  save  in  the 
assembly  of  the  other  presbyters,  and  they  ought  with  all  ear- 
nestness and  anxiety  to  strive  to  have  this  [assistance]  adjoined 
to  themselves. 

"  On  the  Method  and  Plan  of  the  Prophesying  in  the  Gennans' 
Church  on  Thursdays. 
"  This  plan  of  the  prophesying  in  the  Germans'  Church  has 


APPENDIX   VIII.  251 

appeared  of  well-nigh  the  highest  utility  to  the  whole  church,  so 
that  in  it,  by  a  mutual  comparison  of  passages  of  the  Scriptures, 
all  those  points  should  be  thoroughly  discussed  and  approved, 
which  in  the  preachings  of  that  whole  week  might  seem  to  have 
been  explained,  either  incorrectly,  or  not  altogether  fully,  or 
which  had  haply  still  left  any  sort  of  lingering  doubt  in  the 
hearers'  minds.  For  since  it  is  certain  that  in  all  churches  there 
can  from  no  quarter  arise  greater  danger  than  from  discords  of 
doctrine,  so  nothing  truly  can  be  of  equal  utility  in  all  churches, 
as  that  a  unanimous  agreement  of  doctrine  be  retained  in  them 
by  appeal  to  the  word  of  God.  For  retaining  and  even  increasing 
which,  scarcely  anything  can  be  had  or  thought  of,  either  better, 
or  more  convenient,  or  even  more  efficacious  than  this  sort  of 
public  examination  and  approbation  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
ministers. 

"On  Thursday,  then,  at  the  end  of  preaching,  which  is  held 
about  nine  in  the  forenoon,  the  preacher  himself  exhorts  the 
elders  of  the  church,  and  all  those  who  are  assigned  for  proposing 
objections,  to  bring  forward  something,  with  all  modesty  and 
gravity,  for  the  edification  of  the  church,  but  not  for  empty 
ostentation.  And  then  the  ministers  render  an  account  of  their 
doctrine  delivered  in  the  preachings  of  that  week,  if  anything  be 
objected  against  it." 


APPENDIX  VIII. 

(P.  128.) 

Letter  from  Microen  to  BuUinger,  respecting  the  first  Unitarians  of 
London,  1551.  (State  Archives  of  Zurich,  Littene  Angliae,  fol.  103; 
extracted  by  the  kindness  of  the  archivist,  Dr.  Johann  Strickler.) 

"  S.  P.  Quamquam  variis  distringar  negociis,  in  hac  prassertim 
ecclesiae  nostra  infantia  instituenda,  non  possum  tamen  oblatam 
banc  ad  te  scribendi  opportunitatem  praetermittere,  ne  me  tui 
oblitum  putes,  qui  animo  meo  alte  infixus  hseres,  cum  propter 
christianissimas  tuas  quas  audivi  ex  te  conciones,  turn  propter 
Decades  tuas  nuper  editas,  quibus  nos  adulescentiores  ad  exco- 
lendam  ecclesiam  Christi  iuvamur  non  vulgariter.  Subsidiis 
nobis  opus  est  in  tanta  negociorum  difificultate.     Undique  peti- 


252         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

mur  qui  lubenter  sinceram  Dei  doctrinam  ecclesiis  tradercmus. 
Nobis  non  tantum  cum  Papistis  lucta  est,  quos  iam  fere  ubique 
errorum  suorum  pudet,  sed  multo  maxime  cum  sectariis  et  Epi- 
cureeis  ac  pseudo-evangelicis.  Prteter  veteres  errores  de  pccdo- 
baptismo,  de  incarnatione  Christi,  auctoritate  magistratus,  iura- 
mento,  bonorum  proprietate  ac  communitate,  similesque,  novi  in 
dies  oboriuntur  cum  quibus  luctandum  nobis. 

"  Sunt  autem  in  primis  divinitatis  Christi  hostes  Ariani,  qui 
iam  multo  gravius  ecclesias  nostras  quatere  incipiunt  quam 
unquam  fecerunt,  conceptionem  Christi  e  virgine  negantes. 
Praecipua  illorum  argumenta  in  tria  fere  capita  redigi  possunt. 
Unum  est  de  Dei  unitate  per  totam  veterem  ac  novam  Scrip- 
turam  explicata,  Trinitatisque  rem  cum  vocabulo  novam  esse, 
utpote  nullis  Scripturis  proditam.  Alterum,  Scriptura  (inquiunt), 
qui  unum  per  omnia  agnoscit  Deum,  fatetur  ac  profitetur  ilium 
unum  Deum  esse  solum  Patrem  (Joan.  17),  qui  etiam  Paulo 
vocatur  unus  deus  (i  Cor.  8).  Postremo,  loca  qu£e  divinitatem 
Christi  astruere  videntur  sic  illudunt,  ut  dicant  ea  omnia  Christo 
non  ex  se  competere,  sed  aliunde  accepta,  nempe  a  patre  habere 
(Joan.  5,  Math.  28).  Sed  (inquiunt)  Deus  non  accipit  a  Deo. 
Eoque  tantum  nomine  hominum  ciuemvis  excellit,  quod  plura 
dona  acceperit  a  Deo  patre. 

"  His  respondimus  quod  Dominus  dedit,  et,  gratia  sit  Domino, 
adest  nobis  D.  a  Lasco,  unicus  post  Deum  ecclesiee  nostras 
clypeus.  Volui  tamen  ista  humanitati  tuas  exponere,  ut,  si  vacet, 
cjuid  propriissime  ad  hsec  tria  capita  hostium  Christi  responderi 
possit,  scribere  ad  me  digneris  ;  nam  ex  tua  Decade  in  qua 
alioqui  solidissime  stabilis  divinitatem  Christi,  nihil  aut  parum 
elicere  potui,  quod  his  commode  opponatur.  Vos  patres,  prae- 
ceptores  et  duces  nostri  in  reformandis  ecclesiis,  non  gravabimini 
nos  monere  ac  docere,  quo  Dei  ecclesiam  recte  instituamus,  ac 
contra  omnes  haereses  muniamus. 

"Agimusque.  Hue  spectant  omnia,  ac  imprimis  instituta  est 
in  ecclesia  nostra  Germanica  Scripturae  collatio,  in  qua  discu- 
tiuntur  condones  superioris  hebdomadae,  ad  puritatem  doctrinae 
retinendam,  qua;  res  nonnihil  compescit  h^ereticos,  et  iuniores 
confirmat  in  doctrina  Christiana.  Habemus  prseterea  in  nostro 
Germanico  templo  alias  duas  lectiones  latinas,  unam  a  Domino 
a  Lasco,  alteram  a  Domino  Gualtero  Delvino,  post  quas  singuke 


APPENDIX   VIII.  253 

Scripturarum  collationes  de  proximis  lectionibus  habentur,  non 
sine  maxima  ecclesiarum  commoditate.  Tres  itaque  singulis 
hebdomadibus  Scripturarum  collationes  habemus,  cum  principio 
de  duabus  tantum  inter  nos  constitutum  fuisset. 

"  Unum  adhuc  imprimis  in  ecclesia  nostra  requiritur,  usus 
videlicet  baptismi  et  ccenos  dominicas.  Libertas  nobis  regio  pri- 
\ilegio  concessa  est,  sed  per  malevolos  quosdam  stat  quominus 
tanto  beneficio  fruamur.  Laborat  quidem  pro  officio  suo  dili- 
genter  Dominus  a  Lasco  adversus  episcopos,  ut  libertate  facta 
frui  liceat ;  sed  movet  tamen,  nihil  autem  promovet.  Metuo  ne 
nobis  ad  Parlamentum  usque  sit  expectandum,  quod  quando 
futurum  sit,  nescio.  Grassatus  est  Londini,  mense  Julio,  sudor 
anglicus,  quo  correptus  D.  a  Lasco  periculosissime  laboravit, 
adeo  ut  de  eius  vita  actum  esse  putaremus.  Sed  convaluit, 
misertus  enim  est  nostri  Dominus  ;  nam,  eo  sublato,  metuendum, 
ne  sint  peregrinorum  quoque  ecclesia^.  Dominus  est  ecclesia^ 
sua;  propugnator  unicus. 

"Quo  in  statu  sint  res  Domini  Hopri,  episcopi  Glocestriensis, 
ex  ipsius  litteris  rectius  intelliges.  Quantum  ego  sane  intelligere 
possum,  fideliter  suum  talentum  exponit.  Rogo  te,  ut  pro  tua 
auctoritate  ilium  commonefacias  mansuetudinis  ac  benignitatis. 
Uxorem  ejus  D.  Annam  monebis,  ne  se  curis  huius  seculi  in- 
volvat ;  caveat  sibi  a  spinis  quibus  suffocatur  verbum  Dei ;  rem 
periculo  plenam  esse,  sub  Christo,  venari  opes  atque  honores. 
Habent  enim  admonitiones  tu£e  plurimum  ponderis  apud  utrum- 
que.  Discessit  non  ita  pridem  e  terris  episcopus  Lincolniensis, 
evangelicas  doctrinas  fautor.  Abripuit  sudor  anglicus  dominos 
pi-asclarissimos  adolescentes,  ducem  Suffolcis  et  fratrem  ipsius 
Carolum.  Regnum  hac  asstate,  gratias  Deo,  pacatum  habuimus  ; 
nam  tumultus  quorumdam  rusticorum,  principio  eestatis  exortus, 
auctoritate  magistratus  ac  diligentia  celerrime  oppressus  fuit. 

"  Bene  vale,  mi  Domine,  meamque  libertatem  boni  consulas. 
Nostro  nomine  non  graveris  precor,  salutare  observandos  pree- 
ceptores  nostros,  D.  Bibliandrum,  Pellicanum,  Gesnerum  et  Fri- 
sium.  Dominus  vestram  ecclesiam  ab  omni  malo  liberet.  Amen. 
1 55 1,  Augusti  14. 

"  D.  a  Lasco  ruri  est  apud  Episcopum  Cantuariensem  ;  ad  te 
alioqui,  quantum  antea  ex  eius  verbis  colligere  potui,  scripturus. 
Tuus,  quantus  est, 

"  Martinus  Micronius. 


254         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Translation. 

[Revised  from  Dr.  Hastings  Robinson's  version,  in  Zurich  Letters,  3  ser. 

PP-  574—577-] 

"  Very  much  greeting.  Though  I  am  distracted  by  various 
affairs,  especially  in  establishing  this  infancy  of  our  church,  yet 
I  cannot  pass  by  this  offered  opportunity  of  writing  to  you,  lest 
you  think  me  forgetful  of  you,  who  are  deeply  fixed  in  my 
thoughts,  both  on  account  of  your  most  Christian  discourses 
which  I  have  heard  from  your  own  mouth,  and  on  account  of 
your  lately  published  Decades^  whereby  we  younger  men  are 
assisted  in  no  ordinary  degree  to  improve  the  church  of  Christ. 
We  have  need  of  helps  in  this  great  difficulty  of  our  affairs.  On 
every  side  are  we  attacked,  who  would  willingly  deliver  to  the 
churches  the  unmixed  doctrine  of  God.  Our  wrestling  is  not 
only  with  the  Papists,  who  are  almost  everywhere  ashamed  of 
their  errors,  but  by  far  the  most  with  sectaries  and  Epicureans 
and  pseudo-evangelicals.^  Besides  the  ancient  errors  respecting 
pa;do-baptism,  respecting  the  incarnation  of  Christ,  the  authority 
of  the  magistrate,  oath-taking,  the  property  and  community  of 
goods,  and  the  like,  new  ones  are  rising  up  every  day  with  which 
we  have  to  wrestle. 

"  There  are,  however,  in  the  front  rank  as  enemies  of  Christ's 
divinity,  Arians,^  who  now  begin  to  shake  our  churches  much 
more  severely  than  they  ever  did,  as  they  deny  the  conception 
of  Christ  by  a  virgin.  Their  principal  arguments  may  be  reduced 
to  three  heads.  One  is  respecting  the  unity  of  God  as  unfolded 
throughout  the  entire  Old  and  New  Scripture  ;   and  that  the 

^  [By  "pseudo-evangelicals"  Microen  does  not  mean  Unitarians  (as 
is  supposed  pp.  128,  129,  178,  193,  above),  but  the  high  episcopal  party, 
to  which  he  subsequently  refers  as  "  those  enemies  of  Christ,  the 
hypocritical  and  heretical  bishops"  (7  Nov.  1551),  and  as  "the  pseudo- 
bishops"  (18  Feb.  1553).  Ridley  of  London,  and  Goodrich  of  Ely,  are 
especially  named  by  him.     Ziir.  Lett.,  3  ser.  266,  267,  268.] 

2  [As  early  as  20  May,  1550,  Microen,  writing  to  Bullinger,  mentions 
"  Arians  ....  in  great  numbers,"  as  making  it  "of  the  first  importance 
that  the  word  of  God  should  be  preached  here  in  German,  to  guard 
against  the  heresies  which  are  introduced  by  our  countrymen."  Ziir. 
Lett.,  3  ser.  260.] 


APPENDIX   VIII.  255 

Trinity,  both  the  term  and  the  thing,  is  new,  inasmuch  as  it  is 
disclosed  in  no  passages  of  Scripture.  The  second  is,  Scripture 
(say  they)  which  acknowledges  one  God  per\'ading  all  things, 
owns  and  professes  that  this  one  God  is  the  Father  alone  (John 
xvii.  3),  who  is  also  by  Paul  called  the  one  God  (i  Cor.  viii.  6). 
Lastly,  the  passages  which  seem  to  establish  Christ's  divinity 
they  so  trifle  with  as  to  say  that  all  these  things  do  not  belong 
to  Christ  of  himself,  but  as  received  from  another,  namely,  that 
he  has  them  from  the  Father  (John  v.  19,  30;  Matt,  xxviii.  18). 
But  (say  they)  God  does  not  receive  from  God.  And  by  this  sole 
title  does  [Christ]  excel  any  one  of  mankind,  in  that  he  has 
received  more  gifts  from  God  the  Father. 

"To  these  things  we  have  replied  what  the  Lord  hath  given 
[us  to  say],  and,  thanks  be  to  the  Lord,  Master  k  Lasco  is  with 
us,  the  sole  shield  of  our  church,  ne.xt  to  God.  I  have  desired, 
however,  to  lay  these  things  before  your  politeness,  that,  if 
you  have  leisure,  you  may  deign  to  write  me  word  what  may 
most  fitly  be  replied  to  these  three  heads  of  argument  of  the 
enemies  of  Christ  ;  for  from  your  Decade,  wherein  you  most 
solidly  establish  Christ's  divinity  on  other  grounds,  I  have  been 
able  to  elicit  nothing,  or  very  httle,  that  may  be  satisfactorily 
brought  against  these  positions.  You,  who  are  our  fathers,  pre- 
ceptors and  leaders  in  reforming  the  churches,  will  not  grudge 
us  your  advice  and  instruction  how  we  may  rightly  establish  the 
church  of  God,  and  fortify  it  against  all  heresies. 

"And  we  are  busy.  All  things  are  directed  to  this  end,  and, 
in  the  first  place,  there  has  been  established  in  our  German 
church  a  comparison  of  Scripture  in  which  are  discussed  the 
sermons  of  the  preceding  week,  to  preserve  the  purity  of  doctrine, 
a  measure  which  to  some  extent  represses  heretics,  and  confirms 
the  younger  men  in  the  Christian  doctrine.  We  have,  besides, 
in  our  German  place  of  worship  two  other  Latin  lectures,  one  by 
Master  k  Lasco,  the  other  by  Master  Wouter  Deloen,  after  which 
there  are  held  separate  comparisons  of  Scriptures  on  the  subject 
of  the  next  lectures,  not  without  the  greatest  satisfaction  of  the 
churches.  Thus  we  have  three  comparisons  of  Scriptures  every 
week,  whereas  at  first  we  had  made  arrangements  among  our- 
selves for  only  two. 

"  One  thing  of  the  first  importance  is  still  wanting  in  our 
church,   namely,  the  use  of  Baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper. 


256         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Liberty  was  granted  to  us  by  the  royal  patent,  but  through 
certain  ill-disposed  individuals  the  fact  is  that  we  are  prevented 
from  enjoying  this  great  benefit.  Master  k  Lasco  does,  indeed, 
according  to  his  office,  make  diligent  efforts,  in  opposition  to  the 
Bishops,  that  we  may  be  allowed  to  enjoy  the  liberty  given  us  ; 
but  still  he  pushes  on  and  yet  makes  no  way.  I  fear  we  may 
have  to  wait  till  Parliament  meets,  and  when  that  may  probably 
be,  I  know  not.  The  sweating  sickness  raged  in  London  during 
the  month  of  July,  and  Master  k  Lasco  was  seized  with  it,  and 
most  perilously  distressed,  so  that  we  thought  his  time  was  come. 
But  he  recovered,  for  the  Lord  had  mercy  upon  us  ;  for,  had  he 
been  taken  away,  it  is  to  be  feared  that  the  Strangers'  Churches 
would  have  been  taken  too.  The  Lord  is  the  only  champion  of 
his  own  church. 

"  In  what  state  are  the  affairs  of  Master  Hooper,  Bishop  of 
Gloucester,  you  will  more  correctly  understand  from  his  own 
letter.  So  far  as  I  can  well  understand,  he  displays  his  talent 
faithfully.  I  beg  you  that  according  to  your  authority  you 
impress  upon  him  mildness  and  affability.  His  wife.  Mistress 
Anne,  you  will  advise  that  she  do  not  involve  herself  in  the  cares 
of  this  world  ;  that  she  beware  of  thorns,  whereby  the  word  of 
God  is  stifled ;  that  it  is  a  matter  full  of  peril,  under  Christ,  to 
hunt  after  riches  and  honours.  For  your  admonitions  have  the 
greatest  weight  with  them  both.  Not  so  long  ago  departed  this 
life  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln  [Henry  Rands],  a  favourer  of  evan- 
gelical doctrine.  The  sweating  sickness  carried  off  the  most 
noble  young  lords,  the  Duke  of  Suffolk  and  his  brother  Charles. 
We  have  had  the  kingdom,  thank  God,  tranquillised  this  summer ; 
for  a  rising  of  some  rustics,  which  broke  out  at  the  beginning  of 
the  summer,  was  very  quickly  put  down  by  the  authority  and 
diligence  of  the  magistrates. 

"  Farewell,  my  Master,  and  take  my  freedom  in  good  part. 
Refuse  not,  I  pray,  to  greet  in  my  name  my  worshipful  preceptors 
Masters  Bibliander,  Pellican,  Gesner  and  Friese.  The  Lord 
deliver  your  church  from  every  ill.     Amen.     1551,  August  14. 

"  Master  k  Lasco  is  in  the  country  at  the  Bishop  of  Canter- 
bury's ;  otherwise,  so  far  as  I  could  gather  from  what  he  pre- 
viously said,  he  was  going  to  write  to  you. 

"  Yours,  to  the  best  of  his  power, 

"Marten  Microen.' 


APPENDIX   IX.  257 

APPENDIX  IX. 
(P.  136.) 
Formula  of  Retractation  presented  to  Adriaans  van  Hamstede  by  the 
Bishop  of  London,  31  July,  1562.    (Strype's  Grindal,  app.  ii.,  edition 
of  182 1,  p.  469.) 

"Ego  Hadrianus  Hamstedius,  propter  assertiones  quasdam 
meas  et  dogmata  verbo  Dei  repugnantia,  dum  hie  in  ecclesia 
Londino-Germanica  ministrum  agerem,  decreto  Episcopi  Lon- 
dinensis,  ministerio  depositus  atque  excommunicatus,  nunc  post 
sesquiannum  vel  circiter,  rebus  melius  perpensis,  et  ad  verbi 
Dei  regulam  examinatis,  aliter  sentio  :  et  culpam  meam  ex  animo 
agnosco,  doleoque  me  tantas  offensiones  et  scandala  peperisse. 

"  Hi  sunt  autem  articuli,  seu  assertiones,  in  quibus  me  errasse 
fateor. 

"  I.  Primo,  quod  scripto  quodam  meo,  contra  verbum  Dei 
asseruerim,  atque  his  verbis  usus  fuerim,  scil.  '  Quod  Christus 
ex  mulieris  semine  natus  sit,  ac  nostrae  carnis  particeps  factus, 
id  non  fundamentum  esse,  sed  ipsius  fundamenti  circumstantiam 
quandam,  etiam  pueri  primis  literis  imbuti  agnoscent.  Itaque 
qui  Christum  ex  mulieris  semine  natum  esse  negat,  is  non  funda- 
mentum negat,  sed  unam  ex  fundamenti  circumstantiis  negat.' 

"  2.  Quod  Anabaptistas,  Christum  verum  mulieris  semen  esse 
negantes,  si  modo  nos  non  proscindant  et  condemnent,  pro 
fratribus  meis,  membrisque  corporis  Christi  debilioribus,  agno- 
verim :  et,  per  consequens,  salutem  vitse  aeternas  illis  ascripserim. 

"3.  Quod  negantes  hujusmodi  Christi  ex  Virgine  incarna- 
tionem  asseruerim  in  Christo  Domino,  unico  fundamento,  fun- 
datos  esse  ;  eorum  hujusmodi  errorem,  lignum,  stipulam,  et 
foenum  fundamento  supersedificata  appellans  ;  quo  non  obstante, 
ipsi  servandi  veniant,  tanquam  per  ignem ;  de  quibus  testatus 
sum  me  bene  sperare,  quemadmodum  de  omnibus  aliis  meis 
charis  fratribus  in  Christo  fundatis  :  cum  tamen  Spiritus  Sanctus 
per  Joannem  apostolum  manifeste  affirmet  negantes  Christum 
in  carne  venisse  (de  ipsa  carne  loquens  quae  assumpta  erat  ex 
semine  Abrahae  et  ex  semine  Davidis)  esse  seductores  et  anti- 
christos,  et  Deum  non  habere. 

"  4.  Etiam  in  hoc  graviter  me  peccasse  fateor,  quod  constanter 
asseruerim  negantes  Christum  esse  verum  mulieris  semen,  non 

s 


258         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

proinde  necessario  et  consequenter  negare  eum  esse  nostrum 
Emanuelem,  Mediatorem,  Pontificem,  Fratrem :  neque  propterea 
negare  ipsum  verum  hominem  esse,  carnisve  resurrectionem. 
Nam  istam  consequentiam  negantes,  '  Christum  esse  verum 
mulieris  semen,'  eadem  opera  negare  Christum  esse  nostrum 
Mediatorem,  plane  necessarium  esse  agnosco.  Et  non  minus 
quam  illam,  qua  usus  est  divus  Paulus  ad  Corinthios  decimo 
quinto  :  '  Si  resurrectio  mortuorum  non  est,  nee  Christus  quidem 
resurrexit.  Quod  si  Christus  non  resurrexit,  inanis  est  videlicet 
praedicatio  nostra;  inanis  autem  est  et  fides  vestra.' 

"  5.  Quod  aliquoties  in  meis  concionibus,  praeter  officium  pii 
ministri,  usus  fuerim  argumentis,  persuasionibus,  similitudinibus 
et  dicteriis,  ad  istas  assertiones  populo  persuadendas :  videlicet, 
similitudine,  'non  referre  cujus  sit  coloris  vestis  regia;'  et  liti- 
gantes  de  came  Christi  militibus  de  tunica  Christi  alea  luden- 
tibus  comparando :  cseterisque  hujusmodi.  Quae  omnia  eo  ten- 
dunt,  ut  hunc  fundamentalem  fidei  nostree  articulum  extenuarent, 
et  negantibus  salutis  spem  non  prascluderent.  Agnosco  enim 
plurimum  interesse  utrum  Christus  nostram  carnem,  an  aliquam 
aliam  coelestem,  seu  setheream  assumpserit ;  cum  non  nisi  in 
nostra  came  judicio  Dei  satisfieri,  et  pro  peccatis  hostia  Deo 
accepta  offerri  potuisset. 

"6.  Agnosco  etiam  in  eo  culpam  meam,  quod  in  concionibus 
meis  affirmaverim  unicuique  in  Ecclesia  reformata  liberum  esse 
infantem  suum  sine  baptismo  ad  aliquot  annos  reservare  ;  neque 
ullius  fratris  conscientiam,  in  hac  re,  ad  aliquod  certum  tempus 
astringi  posse. 

"7.  Postremo,  quod  horum  pr^scriptorum  errorum  monitores, 
utriusque  ecclesiae  ministros  contempserim :  atque  ipsum  adeo 
reverendum  Episcopum  Londinensen,  utriusque  Peregrinorum 
ecclesiae  superintendentem.  Imo  potius,  contemptis  omnibus 
admonitionibus,  ad  jus  provocarim ;  quo  tamen  convictus,  legi- 
timis  et  fide  dignis  testimoniis,  culpam  agnoscere  renuerim. 
Quodque  praedictos  ecclesiarum  ministros,  et  alios  monitores 
accusarim,  tam  dictis  quam  scriptis,  Londini  et  in  partibus  ultra- 
marinis ;  quasi  non  ordine,  juste  et  debite  ejectus  et  excommu- 
nicatus  fuerim.  Agnosco  enim  me  optimo  jure  hoc  promeruisse  ; 
atque  ordine  a  dicto  Episcopo  mecum  fuisse  actum. 

"  Cui  dictus  Hadrianus  subscribere  recusatP 


APPENDIX   IX.  259 

Translation. 

[Revised  from  Strype's  Grindal,  1822,  p.  67.] 

"  I,  Adriaans  van  Hamstede,  who,  on  the  ground  of  certain 
assertions  of  mine,  and  dogmata  contrary  to  the  word  of  God, 
while  I  acted  here  as  minister  in  the  German  Church  of  London, 
was  deposed  from  the  ministry  and  excommunicated  by  the 
decree  of  the  Bishop  of  London,  now,  after  a  year  and  a  half,  or 
thereabouts,  weighing  things  better,  and  examining  them  by  the 
rule  of  God's  word,  do  think  otherwise  ;  and  from  my  heart  do 
acknowledge  my  fault,  and  am  grieved  that  I  have  given  rise  to 
so  great  offences  and  scandals. 

"  Now  these  are  the  articles  or  assertions  in  which  I  confess 
that  I  have  erred : 

"i.  In  a  certain  writing  of  mine,  I  have  asserted,  contrar)'  to 
the  word  of  God,  and  used  these  words,  viz.  '  That  the  proposi- 
tion, 'Christ  was  born  of  the  seed  of  the  woman  and  made  par- 
taker of  our  flesh,'  is  not  the  foundation  [of  our  faith],  but  a 
certain  circumstance  of  the  actual  foundation,  even  boys  who 
have  learned  the  first  rudiments  will  acknowledge.  Therefore 
he  that  denieth  Christ  to  be  born  of  the  seed  of  the  woman, 
doth  not  deny  the  foundation,  but  one  of  the  circumstances  of 
the  foundation.' 

"  2.  That  the  Anabaptists,  denying  Christ  to  be  the  true  seed 
of  the  woman,  provided  they  do  not  revile  and  condemn  us,  I 
have  acknowledged  as  my  brethren,  and  weaker  members  of  the 
body  of  Christ ;  and  by  consequence,  have  assigned  to  them  the 
salvation  of  life  eternal. 

"3.  That  those  who  deny  the  incarnation  of  Christ  by  the 
Virgin,  I  have  declared  to  be  founded  in  Christ  the  Lord,  the 
one  foundation ;  calling  their  error  of  this  sort  wood,  stubble  and 
hay,  builtupon  the  foundation ;  notwithstandingwhich,  they  them- 
selves come  to  be  saved,  as  through  fire ;  of  whom  I  have  testi- 
fied that  I  hoped  well,  as  of  all  my  other  dear  brethren  who  are 
founded  in  Christ.  Whereas  nevertheless  the  Holy  Spirit  by 
John  the  Apostle  afiirms  that  those  who  deny  that  Christ  has 
come  in  the  flesh  (speaking  of  that  very  flesh  which  was  assumed 
of  the  seed  of  Abraham  and  of  the  seed  of  David)  are  seducers 
and  Antichrist,  and  have  not  God. 

S  2 


260         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 

"4.  Also  in  this  I  confess  that  I  have  gravely  erred,  that  I 
have  constantly  asserted  that  those  who  deny  Christ  to  be  the 
true  seed  of  the  woman,  do  not  forthwith  necessarily  and  by 
consequence  deny  him  to  be  our  Emanuel,  Mediator,  Priest, 
Brother;  nor  therefore  deny  him  to  be  true  man,  or  the  resur- 
rection of  the  flesh.  For  I  acknowledge  that  it  is  plainly 
necessary  that  those  who  deny  this  consequence,  'that  Christ  is 
the  true  seed  of  the  woman,'  do  by  the  same  act  deny  Christ  to 
be  our  Mediator.  And  not  less  [necessary^]  than  that  consequence 
which  St.  Paul  has  drawn  in  i  Cor.  xv. :  'If  there  be  no  resur- 
rection of  the  dead,  neither  is  Christ  risen  ;  and  if  Christ  be  not 
risen,  our  preaching  is  vain,  and  your  faith  is  vain.' 

"  5.  That  sometimes  in  my  sermons,  going  outside  the  duty  of 
a  pious  minister,  I  have  used  arguments,  persuasions,  similitudes 
and  strokes  of  wit,  to  convince  the  people  of  the  above  assertions  : 
viz.  by  the  similitude,  'that  it  is  no  matter  what  colour  the  royal 
robe  is  of;'  and  by  comparing  those  that  contended  concerning 
the  flesh  of  Christ  to  the  soldiers  that  played  with  dice  upon 
Christ's  garment,  and  other  things  of  this  nature.  All  which 
things  tend  to  this,  that  they  would  minimise  this  fundamental 
article  of  our  faith,  and  would  not  shut  out  the  hope  of  salvation 
from  them  that  deny  it.  For  I  acknowledge  that  it  is  of  the 
greatest  importance  whether  Christ  took  our  flesh,  or  some  other 
celestial  or  ethereal  flesh ;  since  except  in  our  flesh  he  could  not 
satisfy  the  judgment  of  God,  and  be  a  sacrifice  accepted  of  God 
for  our  sins. 

"6.  I  acknowledge  also  my  fault  in  this,  that  in  my  sermons 
I  have  afiirmed  that  it  is  free  to  every  one  in  the  Reformed 
Church  to  keep  back  his  child  for  some  years  without  baptism, 
and  that  the  conscience  of  any  brother  cannot  be  tied,  in  this 
matter,  to  any  given  time. 

"7.  Lastly,  that  I  have  contemned  the  ministers  of  both 
Churches,  who  were  my  admonishers  of  these  errors  above 
written  ;  and  even  the  right  reverend  the  Bishop  of  London 
himself,  the  Superintendent  of  both  Churches  of  the  Strangers. 
Yea  rather,  contemning  all  admonitions,  I  have  appealed  to  the 
law  [of  the  Church] ;  whereby  nevertheless  being  convicted,  on 
lawful  testimonies  and  worthy  of  credit,  I  have  refused  to  acknow- 
ledge my  fault.     And  the  aforesaid  ministers  of  the  Churches, 


APPENDIX   X.  261 

and  others  that  admonished  me,  I  have  accused  both  by  words 
and  by  writings,  in  London  and  in  the  parts  beyond  the  sea ;  as 
though  I  were  not  orderly,  justly  and  lawfully  ejected  and  excom- 
municated. For  I  acknowledge  that  I  have  most  justly  deserved 
this,  and  that  the  Bishop  of  London  hath  dealt  orderly  with  me. 
"  IVhereunto  the  said  Adriaans  refuseth  to  subscribeP 

APPENDIX  X. 

(P.  150.) 

Extract  from  Ochino's  De  Purgatorio. 

[A  Dialogue  between  Theodidactus,  Carmelita,  Franciscanus, 
Benedictinus,  Dominicanus,  Augustinianus.] 

"Theodid.  .  .  Moriendo  igitur  non  plus  quam  debuerat  fecit 
[Christus],  sed  solum  quod  debebat  .  .  .  Quinimo  ipse  Scotus  tuus 
dixit,  Christi  merita,  licet  ut  homo,  non  ut  Deus  meruerit,  in 
infinitum  preciosa  esse  ;  non  quidem  quia  opera  ilia  meritoria 
propria  natura  infiniti  meriti  et  excellentise  fuerint,  cum  in  se 
finita  et  determinata  essent,  sicut  et  anima  quae  merebatur  et  a 
qua  proficiscebantur ;  sed  quia  Pater  mera  gratia  sua  ea  pro 
operibus  infiniti  pretii  acceptavit,  licet  in  se,  propriave  natura, 

infinito  preciosa  non  essent Ideo,  si  Deus  ipso  juris  rigore 

causam  nostram  definire,  nee  ulla  in  parte  nobis  gratificari  .... 
voluisset,  et  meritoria  Christi  opera  librasset,  ea  in  se  propriave 
natura,  sublata  omni  divinae  acceptationis  gratia,  adeo  efficacia 
non  reperisset.     (P.  36.)" 

Translation. 

"  Theodid.  .  .  Accordingly,  by  enduring  death  Christ  did  no 
more  than  he  had  been  bound  to  do,  but  simply  what  he  was 

bound In  fact  your  own  Scotus  has  said  that  the  merits  of 

Christ,  though  he  had  merit  as  man,  not  as  God,  are  infinitely 
precious ;  not  indeed  that  those  meritorious  works  were,  of  their 
own  proper  nature,  of  infinite  merit  and  excellence,  since  in  them- 
selves they  were  finite  and  bounded,  as  also  was  the  soul  which 
acquired  the  merit,  and  from  which  the  works  proceeded ;  but 
because  the  Father  of  his  own  mere  grace  accepted  them  as 
works  of  infinite  worth,  although,  in  themselves,  or  of  their  own 
proper  nature,  they  were  not  infinitely  precious Therefore, 


262         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

if  God  had  willed  to  determine  our  cause  by  the  sheer  rigour  of 
legal  right,  and  not  to  indulge  us  in  any  point .  .  .  and  had  weighed 
the  meritorious  works  of  Christ,  he  would  not  have  found  them 
sufficiently  efficacious,  in  themselves  or  of  their  proper  nature, 
when  all  favour  of  divine  acceptation  was  withdrawn." 

Extract  from  Ochino's  Thirty  Dialogues,  vol.  ii.,  dial,  xviii.,  De  Siuniiia 

Trinitate. 

[The  interlocutors  are  Spiritus  and  Ochinus.] 

"Spiritus.  Die  mihi,  credisne  hominem  ilium  lesum,  qui 
Christus  est,  Mariae  Deique  filius,  esse  Dei  filium  unigenitum, 
ideoque  et  primogenitum  ?  Ochinus.  Credo.  Sp.  Qui  fit  autem 
ut  sit  unigenitus,  cum  in  sacris  literis  Dei  filii  nominentur  non 
solum  credentes  omnes,  verum  etiam  qui  aliquo  munere  fungun- 
tur?  OCH.  Christus  ideo  est  unigenitus  quod  inter  electos  solus 
ipse  est  summus  vates,  rex  regum,  summus  sacerdos,  unicus 
magister  et  caput.  Item,  quia  solus  conceptus  est  ex  Spiritu 
Sancto,  soli  dedit  Deus  spiritum  sine  mensura,  in  eo  solo  latent 
omnes  cpes  divinas  sapienti^  et  scientise,  solus  est  innocens, 
plenus  gratias  et  veritatis,  in  quo  est  virtutum  omnium  omnibus 
numeris  absoluta  perfectio,  quique  Deo  unice  charus  est.    (P.  14.) 

"Sp.  Quidnam  igitur  id  est  quo  differunt  [tres  Personas  Tri- 
nitatis]  ?  OCH.  Dicunt  nonnulli  divinas  personas  ideo  re  ipsa 
inter  se  differre,  quia  Pater  non  sit  genitus  ut  Filius,  neque  item 
productus  aut  spiratus,  ut  Spiritus  Sanctus.  Sp.  Sunt  ergo  acci- 
dentia. OcH.  Sunt  quippe  reales  relationes  ....  ejusmodi  sunt 
ut  alteri  impertiri  nequeant.  Sp.  Qui  scis  ?  Si  esset  in  prima 
persona  Paternitas,  eademque  idem  esset  quod  essentia  divina, 
necesse  est  ut  Pater  essentiam  suam  filio  impertiens,  eidem  etiam 
Paternitatem  impertiret  ;  quippe  cum  Paternitas  et  essentia 
divina,  cum  sint  idem,  habeant  idem  esse.  Prseterea  si  Pater- 
nitas est  aeterna,  sicut  et  Filiatio  et  Spiratio,  et  inter  sese  rei 
natura  differunt,  erunt  in  Deo  tres  aeterns  res,  nee  inerit  in  eo 
summa  simplicitas.     (Pp.  31 — 34.) 

"Sp.  In  sacris  literis  memoriae  proditum  est,  missum  a  Deo 
fuisse  ipsius  Filium  in  mundum ;  idemque  de  Spiritu  Sancto 
traditum  est,  misso  a  Patre  et  Filio.  Jam  vero  non  dubium  est, 
quin  qui  mittitur  inferior  sit  mittente.  Non  sunt  ergo  tequales 
tres  divina;  personte ;  non  est  ergo  tua  ista  Trinitas.     (P.  y].) 


APPENDIX   X.  263 

"Sp.  Si  est  Christus  secundum  subjectum  divinum,  quo  pacto 
verum  erit  illud  ejus  dictum  :  '  Pater  major  me  est?'  ....  Si 
verba  ilia  ....  dicta  fuerunt  a  supposito  divino,  necesse  est  ut 
a  Patre  quoque  et  a  Spiritu  Sancto  dicta  fuerint,  quippe  qui 
eamdem  habeant  voluntatem  et  potentiam  et  virtutem  easdemque 
actiones.  Esset  ergo  perinde  ac  si  non  solum  Filius,  verum 
etiam.  Pater  et  Spiritus  Sanctus  dixissent  Patrem  ipsis  esse 
majorem,  et  porro  se  ipso  majorem,  id  quod  fieri  non  potest; 
nee  vere  dici  potest  de  humanitate  Patri  adunata,  cum  ipse  non 
assumpserit  humanam  carnem  sicut  fecit  Filius.     (Pp.  40,  41.)" 

Translation. 

"  Spirit.  Tell  me,  do  you  believe  the  man  Jesus,  who  is 
the  Christ,  the  son  of  Mary  and  of  God,  to  be  God's  only- 
begotten,  and  therefore  also  first-begotten,  son  ?  OCHINO.  I 
do.  Sp.  But  how  does  it  happen  that  he  is  the  only-begotten, 
when  in  the  sacred  writings  not  only  all  believers,  but  also  those 
who  discharge  a  certain  office,  are  called  sons  of  God?  OCH. 
Christ  is  thereby  the  only-begotten,  because  he  alone  among  the 
elect  is  the  highest  prophet,  the  king  of  kings,  the  highest  priest, 
the  sole  master  and  head.  Also  because  he  also  was  conceived 
of  the  Holy  Spirit,  to  him  alone  God  gave  the  spirit  without 
measure,  in  him  alone  are  hid  all  the  treasures  of  divine  wisdom 
and  knowledge,  he  alone  is  guiltless,  full  of  grace  and  truth,  in 
whom  there  is  the  absolute  perfection  of  all  virtues,  and  who  is 
singularly  dear  to  God.     (P.  14.) 

"  Sp.  What  then  is  it  wherein  [the  three  persons  of  the  Trinity] 
differ  ? . .  . .  OCH.  Some  say  that  the  divine  persons  have  thereby 
a  real  difference  among  themselves,  because  the  Father  is  not 
begotten  as  is  the  Son,  nor  again  produced  or  breathed  as  is  the 

Holy  Spirit Sp.  [The  distinctions]  then  are  accidents. 

OcH.  They  are  in  fact  real  relations  ....  they  are  of  that  sort 
that  they  cannot  be  imparted  to  another.  Sp.  How  do  you  know? 
If  in  the  first  person  there  were  Fatherhood,  and  this  same 
quality  were  identical  with  the  divine  essence,  it  would  neces- 
sarily be  that  the  Father,  imparting  his  essence  to  the  Son, 
would  impart  to  him  also  the  Fatherhood ;  inasmuch  as  Father- 
hood and  the  divine  essence,  since  they  are  the  same,  have  the 
same  being.     Besides,  if  the  Fatherhood  is  eternal,  as  also  the 


264         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM.       . 

Filiation  and  the  Spiration,  and  they  differ  from  each  other  in 
real  nature,  there  will  be  in  God  three  eternal  realities,  nor  will 
there  be  in  Him  the  highest  simplicity.     (Pp.  31 — 34.) 

"  Sp.  In  the  sacred  writings  it  is  recorded  for  a  remembrance 
that  God's  own  Son  was  sent  by  Him  into  the  world ;  and  the 
same  thing  is  delivered  concerning  the  Holy  Spirit,  sent  by  the 
Father  and  the  Son.  But  there  is  no  doubt  that  he  who  is  sent 
is  inferior  to  the  sender.  Accordingly  the  three  divine  persons 
are  not  equal  ;  this  is  not  then  that  Trinity  of  yours.     (P.  ^J.) 

"  Sp.  If  he  is  Christ  in  respect  of  the  underlying  divinity,  in 
what  way  will  that  saying  of  his  be  true,  '  The  Father  is  greater 
than  I'.?.  .  .  .  If  those  words  were  spoken  by  the  underlying 
divinity,  they  must  necessarily  have  been  spoken  by  the  Father 
also,  and  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  since  they  have  the  same  will  and 
power  and  virtue,  and  the  same  actions.  It  would  therefore  be 
as  if  not  only  the  Son  but  also  the  Father  and  the  Holy  Spirit 
had  said  that  the  Father  is  greater  than  they,  and  furthermore 
is  greater  than  Himself,  which  cannot  be;  nor  can  it  be  truly 
spoken  of  the  humanity  united  to  the  Father,  since  He  took  not 
upon  Him  human  flesh,  as  the  Son  did.     (Pp.  40,  41.)" 


APPENDIX  XL 

(Pp.  165,  172.) 

Letter  of  Pierre  La  Ramee  to  Acontius,  15  December,  1565.  {Petri  Rami 
Professoris  Regii  ....  collectanece  Pj-efatioties  et  EpistoLi:,  &c.  Paris, 
1577,  p.  203.) 

Jacobo  Acontio  Tridentino.  S. 

"  Jacobi  Acontii  nomen  e  prsclaris  ingenii  monumentis  jam- 
pridem  orbi  notum  atque  illustre  est ;  sed  tamen  Jo.  Lasicii  poloni 
e  Britannia  reditu,  nobis  etiam  jucundum  charumque  factum 
est.  Etenim  cum  doctos  in  ea  insula  et  mathemat[ic]is  praesertim 
deditos  nosse  cuperem,  et  ad  te  forte  fortuna  Lasicius  delatus 
esset,  operae-pretium  nobis  fuit  Lutetiam  reversum,  de  humanitate 
et  gratia,  de  variis  et  reconditis  artibus  Acontii,  narrantem 
audire  :  inter  quas  laudes  cum  Archimedeam  illam  de  machinis 
et  urbium  munitionibus  geometriam  audivissem,  non  putavi  tan- 
tam  docti  et  ingenui  animi  salutandi  occasionem  mihi  prcetermit- 
tendam  esse. 


APPENDIX   XI.  265 

"  Interea  bibliopolse  nostri,  Francoforto  Lutetiam  reversi,  attu- 
lerunt  octo  libros  Stratagematum^  quorum  lectione  non  solum 
recreatus  sum  vehementer,  sed  quibusdam  apud  nos  melioris  et 
note  et  literaturae  theologis  legendos  proposui,  qui  modestiam 
orationis  et  disputationis  prudentiam  mirifice  comprobarunt. 

"  Libellum  autem  de  Mcthodo  multo  jam  antea  legeram,  non 
abhorrentem  quidem  ab  institutis  nostris ;  sed  neque  plane  con- 
venientem.  Equidem  mirifico  desiderio  teneor  tua  omnia  per- 
legendi  ac  cognoscendi,  prEesertim  si  geometricum  aliquid  et 
mechanicum  commentatus  es ;  iis  enim  studiis  modo  totus  dedi- 
tus  sum.  Ea  de  causa  scribo  etiam  ad  Joannem  Dium ;  literas 
nostras  eodem  fascicule  conclusi,  satis  confisus  te  protinus  ei 
redditurum.  Nee  dubio  utrumque  vestrum,  nee  unquam  dubi- 
tabo  quemquam  vestri  similem  provocare  gratia  vel  accipienda, 
vel  etiam  referenda.  Hoc  enim  liberalis  animi  commune  inter 
bonos  et  humanitati  deditos  esse  arbitror.  Vale.  Luteti^,  14 
Cal.  Janu.  1565." 

Translation. 

To  Giacomo  Contio  of  Trienta,  Greeting. 

"  Known  to  the  world  and  illustrious  this  long  time  from  the 
brilliant  monuments  of  his  genius,  is  the  name  of  Giacomo  Con- 
tio ;  but  since  the  return  from  Britain  of  John  k  Lasco,  the 
Pole,  it  has  become  in  addition  delightful  and  dear  to  me.  For 
since  I  desired  to  know  the  learned  men  in  that  island,  and 
especially  those  given  to  mathematics,  and  since  k  Lasco  hap- 
pened fortunately  to  have  been  thrown  in  your  way,  it  was  worth 
our  while  to  listen  to  his  account,  on  his  return  to  Paris,  of  the 
culture  and  grace,  the  various  and  recondite  scientific  acquire- 
ments of  Acontius  ;  and  when  among  these  praises  I  had  listened 
to  that  Archimedean  system  of  surveying  in  reference  to  engines 
of  war  and  the  fortifications  of  cities,  I  considered  that  such  an 
opportunity  of  greeting  a  learned  and  open  mind  was  not  to  be 
passed  over  by  me. 

"  Meanwhile  our  booksellers,  on  their  return  from  Frankfurt 
to  Paris,  brought  back  the  eight  books  of  the  Stratageinata^  with 
the  reading  of  which  I  was  not  merely  extremely  refreshed 
myself,  but  I  placed  them  in  the  hands  of  some  theologians  here 
of  superior  repute  and  literature,  who  approved  to  admiration 
the  modesty  of  the  style  and  the  prudence  of  the  discussion. 


266         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

"  But  long  before  this  I  had  read  the  little  book  on  Method^ 
which  is  not  absolutely  at  variance  with  my  own  principles, 
and  yet  not  wholly  in  accord  with  them.  I  am  in  fact  pos- 
sessed with  a  wonderful  desire  of  perusing  and  becoming 
acquainted  with  all  you  have  written,  especially  if  you  have 
elaborated  anything  of  a  geometrical  and  mechanical  nature, 
for  to  these  studies  I  am  so  to  say  entirely  devoted.  On  that 
account  I  am  writing  also  to  John  Dee ;  I  have  enclosed  my 
letter  in  this  same  packet,  being  confident  enough  that  you  will 
hand  it  over  to  him  forthwith.  With  neither  of  you  do  I  hesitate, 
nor  with  your  like  shall  I  ever  hesitate,  to  make  a  call  upon  you 
by  the  acceptance,  or,  again,  by  the  return  of  a  kindness.  For 
this  proof  of  a  liberal  spirit  1  think  to  be  common  property 
among  the  virtuous  and  those  devoted  to  culture.  Farewell. — 
Paris,  IS  Dec.  1565." 

APPENDIX  XII. 

(Pp.  170,  176.) 

The  inadequacy  of  the  Apostles'  Creed  to  serve  as  a  common  Confession 
of  Faith  among  Protestants,  according  to  Acontius.  {Stratagemata 
SataiicE,  first  edition,  Basel,  1565,  4to,  bk.  vii.  pp.  226 — 230.) 

"At  extat  quidem  vetustissima  ilia  ac  brevissima  confessio 
quae  Symboli  nomine  Apostolis  ascribitur,  quam  nemo  non  ad- 
mittit.  Quid  ita?  Causa  est  minime  obscura.  Non  nisi  summa 
Christianas  pietatis  complectitur  capita,  ac  certissima  quasque,  et 
in  divinis  Uteris  cuique  obvia.  Nullius  ibi  curioste  quaestionis 
est  judicium,  sive  decisio.  Itaque  nemini  scrupulum,  quamobrem 
probet,  relinquit.  Hinc  igitur,  quid  sit,  quod  vix  quisquam 
alterius  malit  subscribere  confessioni,  quam  novam  excogitare, 
palam  est;  quia  nimirum,  praeterquam  quod  nostris  utimur  verbis, 
non  iis  quibus  Spiritus  Sanctus  est  usus,  minutissima  queeque 
complecti  volumus.  Si  constaret  Apostolos  ejus  fuisse  confes- 
sionis  auctores,  quae  eorum  titulo  est  concinnata,  ut  Christian- 
orum  esset  symbolum,  vix  carere  temeritate  posset,  qui  ea  con- 
tentus  non  esset.  Verum  cum  nemini  dubium  sit,  quin  ratio 
jutificationis  nostrae  pra^cipuum  sit  evangelicas  doctrins  caput ; 
atcjue  adeo  ejus  qusdam  summa;  et  id  uno  'remissionis  pecca- 
torum'  verbo  attingatur;    ut  ad  contrarias  videatur  sententias 


APPENDIX   XII.  267 

posse  accommodari,  quid  mihi  persuadeam  vix  habeo.  Non 
enim  aperte  meriti  errorem  longe  maximum  excludit.  Ac  mirari 
etiam  quis  non  possit  neque  baptismi,  neque  coenae  dominicaj 
uUam  fieri  mentionem? 

"  Sed,  ut  se  res  habet,  haec  piis  ingeniis  proponimus  consi- 
deranda ;  si  qua  forte  ratione  concinnari  aliquando  fidei  confessio 
possit  aliqua  talis,  qute  omnibus  piis  ecclesiis  satisfaciat.  Tametsi 
enim  reliquas  essent  controversi?E,  cum  tamen  persuasi  homines 
essent,  inter  quos  illas  intercederent,  communia  esse  nihilominus 
sacrorum  jura,  esse  nihilominus  inter  se  fratres,  spes  aliqua  esset, 
fore  ut  et  ipsas  quoque  controversis  multo  majore  tractarentur 
£equanimitate ;  quin  etiam,  ut,  sublatis  simultatibus,  inter  eos 
tandem  conveniret,  atque  ita  adversariis  omnis  praecideretur 
calumniandi  occasio.  Quod  ut  aliquando  contingat,  summis 
precibus  est  k  Deo  contendendum." 

Translation. 

"It  is  true  there  is  extant  that  very  ancient  and  biief  confes- 
sion, which,  under  the  name  of  The  Creed,  is  ascribed  to  the 
Apostles,  and  this  confession  every  one  admits.  Why  so  ?  The 
reason  is  by  no  means  obscure.  It  embraces  nothing  but  the 
chief  heads  of  Christian  piety,  and  those  which  are  most  certain 
and  obvious  to  every  one.  In  it  there  is  no  judgment  or  decision 
on  any  curious  question.  Therefore  it  leaves  no  one  any  subtlety 
as  a  reason  why  he  approves  it.  Accordingly  it  is  obvious  from 
this  how  it  is  that  hardly  any  one  would  subscribe  another's 
confession  in  preference  to  thinking  out  a  new  one ;  because, 
forsooth,  besides  that  we  employ  [in  preference]  our  own  words, 
not  those  which  the  Holy  Spirit  has  employed,  we  wish  to 
embrace  [in  our  creed]  every  little  minute  particular.  If  it  were 
certain  that  the  Apostles  were  the  authors,  with  a  view  to  its 
being  the  creed  of  Christians,  of  that  confession  which  has  been 
composed  with  their  label,  he  would  hardly  be  free  from  rashness 
who  should  not  be  content  with  it.  Yet,  since  no  one  doubts 
that  the  ground  of  our  justification  is  the  principal  head  of  evan- 
gelical doctrine,  and  thus  a  sort  of  summary  of  it ;  and  since  this 
is  touched  [in  the  Apostles'  Creed]  only  in  the  one  expression 
'  remission  of  sins,'  so  that  it  may  seem  capable  of  being  accom- 
modated to  contrary  opinions,   I   hardly  know  what  to  think. 


268         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

For  it  does  not  openly  exclude  the  very  greatest  error  on  the 
subject  of  merit.  And  who  cannot  be  surprised,  too,  that  not 
any  mention  is  made  either  of  Baptism  or  of  the  Lord's  Supper? 
"  But,  as  the  matter  stands,  we  propose  these  things  for  con- 
sideration by  pious  minds  ;  if  haply  by  any  method  some  confes- 
sion of  faith  may  sometime  be  composed,  such  as  may  satisfy  all 
pious  churches.  For  though  there  should  still  be  controversies 
remaining,  yet  when  men,  between  whom  these  controversies 
should  come,  should  be  persuaded  that  nevertheless  they  have 
laws  in  common  on  sacred  things,  that  nevertheless  they  are 
brothers  among  themselves,  there  might  be  some  hope  that  even 
the  very  controversies  too  might  be  handled  with  much  greater 
calmness ;  nay  even  that,  strifes  being  dismissed,  there  might  at 
length  be  agreement  among  them,  and  so  all  occasion  of  calumny 
from  their  adversaries  might  be  cut  off.  '  That  this  may  some 
time  come  about,  we  must  with  our  utmost  prayers  endeavour  to 
obtain  from  God." 

Protest  of  Acontius  against  the  Church's  use  of  the  secular  arm.     (Sira- 
tageinata  Saiance,  bk.  iii.,  first  ed.,  pp.  95,  96.) 

"  Sunt  quibus  quiescente  gladio  protinus  de  religione  omni 
actum  fore  videatur.  Magna  vero  fiat  Domino  injuria,  si  eum 
dormire  suspicemur,  neque  sui  populi  ullam  eum  curam  tangere  ; 
vel  sine  gladio  Evangelium  eum  suum  conservare  non  posse, 
quasi  Verbi  nulla  esset  vis,  verum  Christianis  omnis  in  ferro 

posita  spes  esse  videatur Bono  simus  animo,  non  dormit 

Dominus,  sed  vigilat.  Si  in  illo  nostra  posita  sit  spes  omnis,  si 
Verbo  pugnaverimus,  sed  ejus  afiflati  spiritu  (qui  assiduis  impe- 
trandus  est  precibus),  nae  quod  ab  haereticis  timeamus  nihil 
fuerit 

"At  vero  si  semel  illud  obtinuerint  pastores,  ut  quisquis  mutire 
quid  ausus  fuerit,  protinus  sit  accersendus  carnifex,  qui  solo 
gladio  omnes  solvat  nodos,  quod  deinceps  magnum  sit  divinarum 
literarum  studium.''  Certe  non  magnopere  sibi  opus  esse  intelli- 
gant.  Poterunt  enim  quidquid  somniaverint  misero  popello 
obtrudere  ;  et  suum  nihilominus  tueri  dignitatis  locum.  Va; 
nobis,  v£e  nostris  posteris,  si  hoc,  quo  uno  et  pugnare  nobis  licet, 
et  vincere  semper  possumus,  abjecerimus  telum.  Actum  sit." 
[Translated  above,  pp.  176,  177.] 


APPENDIX   XIII.  269 

APPENDIX  XIII. 

(P.  192.) 

Letters  of  Lelio  Sozini  to  Johann  Wolff,  1554- — 1555-  (From  the 
Hotthigersche  Saininlung,  vols.  v.  p.  332,  and  vii.  p.  198,  by  the  kind- 
ness of  Prof.  Fritzsche,  of  Zurich.) 

1.  "Si  nomen  Spiritus  commune  est  tribus  Personis  in  hac 
propositione  Dens  est  Spiritus^  quoniam  significat  essentiam 
spiritualem;  ego  scire  velim  an  significet  aliud,  quando  tertiam 
designat  Personam  ?  Quid  tandem  monstret  a  Patre  et  Filio 
discretum?  Quteso  dicas  subiectum  ne  sit  an  pra;dicatum? 
Num  Deo  tunc  nomen  Spiritus  concedatur,  ut  Patris  et  Filii 
nomen  tribuitur.?  Sed  quam  relationem  habeat  simul  indicato. 
An  Spiritus  ille  reperiatur  in  Dei  essentia  ab  eo  distinctus  qui 
est  Deus  Pater  atque  Filius  ?  Postremo  vide  an  Filius  de  ipso 
Deo,  sicut  Pater,  omnino  prsedicetur  :  nam  Jesus  Christus,  illius 
Dei  Filius,  qui  trinus  et  unus  creditur  esse,  non  tamen  Filius 
Trinitatis  dicitur,  quamvis  creatura  sit  et  opera  Trinitatis  ab 
extra  censeantur  indivisa." 

2.  "  Nihil  gratius  mihi  poterat  contingere,  verum  ipse  ad  te 
veniam  et  gratias  agam.  Interea  bene  et  feliciter  vale,  mi  Joanne 
Vulphi,  quem  ego  pluris  facio  et  magis  diligo  atque  colo  quam 
re  ipsa  declaraverim ;  sed  occasio  dabitur  ut  me  vera  loqui  et 
scribere  intelligat. 

"  Laelius,  sive  de  amicitia  vera  et  Christiana  quze  in  ceternum 
durat." 

Translation. 

I.  "If,  in  the  proposition  God  is  Spirit,  the  term  Spirit  is 
common  to  the  three  Persons,  since  it  signifies  spiritual  essence, 
I  would  wish  to  know  whether  it  signifies  something  else  when 
it  designates  the  third  Person  ?  What  in  short  does  it  point  to, 
distinct  from  the  Father  and  the  Son?  Prithee  tell  me,  Is  it 
subject  or  predicate?  Surely  the  name  of  Spirit  is  not  then 
granted  to  God  [in  the  same  way]  as  the  name  of  Father  and 
of  Son  is  applied  ?  But  indicate  at  the  same  time  what  relation 
it  bears.  Can  that  Spirit  be  found  in  the  essence  of  God,  dis- 
tinct from  him  who  is  God  the  Father  and  the  Son  ?  Lastly, 
see  whether  the  word  Son  is  predicated  out  and  out  of  God 


270         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

himself,  like  Father  ;  for  Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  that  God  who 
is  believed  to  be  threefold  and  one,  is  nevertheless  not  called 
Son  of  the  Trinity,  although  he  be  a  creature,  and  the  extra 
works  of  the  Trinity  are  reckoned  indistributable  [among  the 
persons]." 

2.  "Nothing  more  pleasant  could  happen  to  me,  but  I  will 
myself  come  to  you  and  thank  you.  Meantime,  fare  well  and 
happily,  my  John  Wolff,  whom  I  make  more  of,  and  love  and 
reverence  more  than  I  could  really  express ;  but  occasion  will 
be  given  that  he  may  understand  that  I  speak  and  write  what  is 
true. 

"Laslius,  or  Friendship,  true  and  Christian,  which  for  ever 
endures." 


APPENDIX  XIV. 

(P-  I93-) 
Extract  from  the  Racovian  Catechism,  1609,  bk.  ii.  chap.  ii.  quest.  71, 
73i  74?  75'  78)  80.  {Catechesis  Ecclesiarmii  qua:  in  regno  Polonicc  et 
inagno  diuatu  Lithuania  .  .  .  affiinnant:  netuinem  alium  prater  Patrem 
domitii  nostri  Jesu  Christi  esse  ilium  tcriuni  Deuni  Israelis ;  hominem 
autem  ilium  yesum  N^azarenum,  qui  ex  vi}-gine  natus  est,  nee  alium 
prater  aut  ante  ipsuni,  Dei  filium  unigenitum,  et  agnoscutit  et  confi- 
tentur.     Racovias,  1609.) 

"  D.  Exposuisti  qufe  cognitu  ad  salutem  de  essentia  Dei  sunt 
prorsus  necessaria :  expone,  quse  ad  earn  rem  vehementer  utilia 
censeas  ? 

"R.  Id  quidem  est  ut  cognoscamus,  in  essentia  Dei  unam 
tantum  personam  esse. 

"  D.  Quasnam  est  hsec  una  persona  divina  ? 

"  R.  Est  ille  Deus  unus,  Domini  nostri  Jesu  Christi  Pater. 

"  D.  Qui  istud  planum  facis  ? 

"  R.  Testimoniis  Scripturae  evidentissimis,  quae  sunt  :  Htec 
est  vita  seterna  (ait  Jesus)  ut  cognoscant  te  (Pater)  ilium  solum 
verum  Deum,  Jo.  xvii.  3.  Et  ad  Corinthios  Apostolus  scribit : 
Nobis  unus  Deus  (est)  ille  Pater,  ex  quo  omnia,  i  Cor.  viii.  6. 
Et  ad  Ephesios :  Unus  est  Deus  et  pater  omnium,  qui  est  super 
omnia  et  per  omnia  et  in  omnibus,  Eph.  iv.  6. 


APPENDIX    XIV.  271 

"  D.  Verum  Christiani  non  solum  Patrem,  verum  etiam  Filium 
et  Spiritum  Sanctum  personas  esse  in  una  deitate  vulgo  statuunt. 

"R.  Non  me  clam  est;  sed  graviter  in  eo  errant,  argumenta 
ejus  rei  afferentes  e  Scripturis  male  intellectis. 

"  D.  Quid  autem  de  Filio  respondebis  ? 

"  R.  Ea  vox,  Deus,  duobus  potissimum  modis  in  Scripturis 
usurpatur :  Prior  est,  cum  designat  Ilium  qui  in  ccelis  et  in  terra 
omnibus  ita  dominatur  et  prtsest,  ut  neminem  superiorem  agnos- 
cat :  ita  omnium  auctor  est  et  principium,  ut  a  nemine  dependeat. 
Posterior  modus  est,  cum  eum  denotat  cjui  potestatem  aliquam 
sublimem  ab  uno  illo  Deo  habet,  aut  deitatis  unius  illius  Dei 
aliqua  ratione  particeps  est.  Etenim  in  Scripturis,  propterea, 
Deus  ille  unus  Deus  Deorum  vocatur,  Ps.  1.  i.  Atque  ea  quidem 
posteriore  ratione  Filius  Dei  vocatur  Deus  in  quibusdam  Scrip- 
tur?e  locis. 

"  D.  De  Spiritu  autem  Sancto  quid  respondes  ? 

"  R.  Spiritus  Sanctus  nusquam  in  Scripturis  vocatur  expresse 
Deus.  Quia  vero,  quibusdam  locis,  ea  attribuit  ipsi  Scriptura, 
CjUEC  Dei  sunt,  non  eo  facit,  ac  si  ipse  vel  Deus  sit,  vel  persona 
divinitatis  ;  sed  longe  aliam  ob  causam,  quemadmodum  suo  loco 
audies." 

Translation. 

"  Disciple.  You  have  set  forth  the  points  which  are  absolutely 
necessary  to  a  saving  knowledge  of  the  essence  of  God  ;  now  set 
forth  those  which  you  deem  eminently  conducive  to  that  pur- 
pose? 

"Responsor.  It  certainly  is  so,  to  know  that  in  the  essence 
of  God  there  is  but  one  person. 

"  D.  Which  is  this  one  divine  person? 

"  R.   It  is  the  one  God,  the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ. 

"  D.  How  do  you  make  that  plain? 

"  R.  By  the  clearest  testimonies  of  Scripture  ;  which  are  :  This 
is  life  eternal  (said  Jesus)  to  know  thee  (Father)  the  only  true 
God,  Jo.  xvii.  3.  And  the  Apostle  writes  to  the  Corinthians : 
To  us  (there  is)  one  God  the  Father,  from  whom  (are)  all  things, 
I  Cor.  viii.  6.     And  to  the  Ephesians:  There  is  one  God  and 


272         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 

Father  of  all,  who  is  above  all,  and  through  all,  and  in  all, 
Eph.  iv.  6. 

"  D.  But  Christians  commonly  maintain  that  not  the  Father 
alone,  but  also  the  Son  and  the  Holy  Spirit  are  persons  in  the 
one  Godhead. 

"  R.  That  is  no  secret  to  me  ;  but  therein  they  gravely  err, 
producing  arguments  on  this  matter  from  Scriptures  ill  under- 
stood. 

"  D.  But  what  answer  will  you  make  respecting  the  Son  ? 

"  R.  This  word  God  is  employed  in  two  ways  mostly  in  the 
Scripture.  The  former  is  when  it  designates  Him  who  so  rules 
and  presides  over  all  things  in  heaven  and  earth,  that  He  owns 
no  superior,  and  is  so  the  author  and  fountain-head  of  all  things 
as  to  depend  on  none.  The  latter  way  is  when  it  denotes  him 
who  has  some  sublime  power  from  that  one  God,  or  is  in  some 
way  partaker  of  the  Godhead  of  that  one  God.  For  in  the 
Scriptures,  on  this  account,  that  one  God  is  called  God  of  Gods, 
Ps.  1.  I.  And  on  this  latter  ground  the  Son  of  God  is  called  God 
in  some  places  of  Scripture. 

"  D.  But  what  answer  do  you  make  respecting  the  Holy 
Spirit? 

"  R.  The  Holy  Spirit  is  nowhere  expressly  called  God  in  the 
Scriptures.  But  because,  in  some  places,  the  Scripture  attributes 
to  him  those  things  which  belong  to  God,  it  does  not  do  so  on 
the  ground  as  if  he  were  either  God,  or  a  person  of  the  divinity, 
but  for  a  very  different  cause,  as  you  shall  hear  in  its  proper 
place." 

APPENDIX  XV. 

(P.  2IO.) 
John  Milton  on  the  Unity  of  God.     {De  Dodr.  Chr.  i.  2,  pp.  17,  18.) 

Having  cited  several  texts  of  the  Old  Testament  in  favour  of 
the  Divine  Unity,  Milton  thus  proceeds: 

"  Quid  planius,  quid  distinctius,  quid  ad  vulgi  sensum  quoti- 
dianumque  loquendi  usum  accommodatius  dici  potuit,  ut  intelli- 
geret  Dei  populus  esse  unum  numero  Deum,  unum  spiritum,  et 


APPENDIX   XIV.  273 

ut  quidvis  aliud  numerando  unum  esse  intelligebat  ?  yEquum 
enim  erat,  et  rationi  summe  consentaneum,  sic  tradi  primum 
illud  adeoque  maximum  mandatum,  in  quo  Deus  ab  universe 
populo,  etiam  infimo,  religiose  coli  volebat,  ut  ne  quid  in  eo 
ambiguum,  ne  quid  obscurum  suos  cultores  in  errorem  impel- 
leret,  aut  dubitatione  aliqua  suspenses  teneret :  atque  ita  prorsus 
intellexit  semper  populus  ille,  sub  lege  atque  prophetis,  Deum 
nempe  unum  numero  esse,  alium  preeterea  neminem,  nedum 
parem.  Enimvero  nondum  nati  erant  scholastici  qui  acumi- 
nibus  suis,  vel  potius  meris  repugnantiis  confisi,  unitatem  Dei, 
quam  asserere  pra;  se  ferebant,  in  dubium  vocarunt.  Quod 
autem  in  omnipotentia  Dei  merito  excipi  omnes  agnoscant,  non 
ea  posse  Deum  quee  contradictionem,  quod  aiunt,  implicant,  ut 
supra  monuimus,  ita  hie  meminerimus  non  posse  de  uno  Deo 
dici  quae  unitati  ejus  repugnant,  unumque  et  non  unum  faciunt. 

"  Nunc  ad  Novi  Foederis  testimonia  veniamus  non  minus 
clara,  dum  priora  repetunt,  et  hoc  insuper  clariora,  quod  Patrem 
Domini  nostri  Jesu  Christi  unum  ilium  Deum  esse  testantur. 
Marc,  xii.,  interrogatus  Christus  quodnam  esset  primum  omnium 
mandatum,  respondit  (v.  29)  ex  Deut.  vi.  4,  supra  citato,  adeoque 
non  aliter  intellecto  atque  intelligi  solebat,  Audi  Israel^  Dominus 
Dens  ttoster,  Dominus  unus  est^  cui  response  scriba  ille  assensus 
(v.  32)  Bene^  inquit,  prcEceptor,  in  veritate  dixisti:  nam  unus  est 
Deus,  7iec  alius  est  prater  eum " 

Translation. 
"  What  could  be  said  more  plainly,  more  distinctly,  in  a  man- 
ner more  adapted  to  ordinary  capacity  and  the  daily  usage  of 
speech,  so  that  the  people  of  God  might  understand  that  God  is 
one  numerically,  one  spirit,  and  precisely  as  they  understood  any 
other  thing  to  be  one  numerically  ?  For  it  was  just,  and  in  the 
highest  degree  agreeable  to  reason,  that  the  first  and  therefore 
the  greatest  commandment,  wherein  God's  will  was  that  He  be 
religiously  worshipped  by  the  whole  people,  even  the  lowest  of 
them,  should  be  so  delivered  that  nothing  ambiguous  therein 
nothing  obscure,  should  drive  His  worshippers  into  error,  Or 
hold  them  suspended  in  any  doubt :  and  in  that  manner  this 
people  ever  thoroughly  understood  it,  under  the  law  and  the 
prophets,  namely  that  God  is  one  numerically,  and  there  is  none 

T 


274 


SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 


other  besides,  still  less  any  equal.  For  truly  the  Schoolmen  were 
not  yet  born,  who,  relying  on  their  subtleties  or  rather  sheer 
incompatibilities,  cast  a  doubt  upon  the  unity  of  God  which  they 
professed  to  assert.  But  as  we  have  given  warning  above,  that 
all  own  as  a  just  exception  to  the  omnipotence  of  God  that  God 
cannot  do  those  things  which  involve  what  is  called  a  contradic- 
tion, so  here  let  us  remember  that  of  the  one  God  things  cannot 
be  said  which  are  incompatible  with  His  unity,  and  make  Him 
one  and  not  one. 

"  Let  us  now  come  to  the  testimonies  of  the  New  Covenant, 
which  are  not  less  clear  while  they  recapitulate  the  foregoing, 
and  are  in  this  respect  still  clearer,  that  they  testify  that  the 
Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  is  the  one  God.  In  Mark  xii., 
Christ,  being  asked  which  was  the  first  commandment  of  all, 
answered  (verse  29)  from  Deut.  vi.  4,  above  cited,  and  thus  [by 
him]  not  otherwise  understood  than  as  it  was  wont  to  be  under- 
stood, '  Hear,  Israel,  the  Lord  our  God,  the  Lord  is  One,'  to 
which  answer  the  scribe  assenting  said  (verse  32),  '  Teacher, 
thou  hast  spoken  in  truth :  for  one  is  God,  and  there  is  none  but 
He.' " 


INDEX. 


Names  of  authorities  quote.l  are  in  italics. 


Abel,  John,  115  «. 
Accademia  dei  Sizienti,  180. 
Acceptationism,  97,  130,  261 — 262. 
Acontius,  see  Contio. 
Adam,  130,  216. 
Adda,  the,  87,  88,  92. 
Adriaans,  Cornelis,  xii«.,  39,  129. 
Adriaanszoon  van  Hamstede,  Cor- 
nelis, 65,  134,  135—136,  IS9>  161, 

164,  171,  172,  257 — 261. 
Adrianus,  243 — 244. 
Agapa;,  96. 

A  Kempis,  see  Hemerken. 
A  Lasco,  see  Laski. 
Albigenses,  i. 

Alciati,  Gianpaolo,   100,  103 — 105. 
Alessandria,  no. 
Alexandre,  Pierre,  118,  119. 
Alexandria,  220. 
Aliodi,  see  Claude. 
Alps,  86;  Cottian,  72;  Rhaetian,  87. 
Alsace,  49,  54,  70,  99,  118. 
Altieri,  Baldassare,  ix,  68 — 69,  77, 

181. 
Alumbrados,  2. 
American  Repuljlic,  213. 
Amsterdam,   44,   45,   46,   49,    172, 

195,  204,  208,  212. 
Anabaptism — Dutch,   21  ;    35,   40, 

44,  56,  82;  Servetus,   102;   127, 

128,  213,  243,  244. 
Anabaptists,  vi,  xii,  5,  7,  9,  15,  18, 

29,  36,  38,  43,  45,  49,  50,  51,  52, 

56,   60,  61  «.,  64,  67,   135,   164, 

174,  193,  199,  257,  259. 
Ancona,  134. 
Andrea,  Dr.,  134. 
Angels,  225. 


Anglican  Church,  v,  21,  23,  32,  33; 
characteristics,  34 ;  35,  37,  62, 
63,  64 — 65,  119,  205,  207. 

Anglo-Italian  element,  214. 

Anna,  of  Oldenburg,  47. 

Anselm,  144,  150. 

Ante-Nicene  Fathers,  208,214,  220. 

Antichrist,  Roman,  91,  126. 

Antinomianism,  51. 

Antioch,  220. 

Antitrinitarianism,  50,  55  ;  Italy, 
81;  Orisons,  98;  Oeneva,  loi ; 
130,  135,  182,  220. 

Antitrinitarians,  5,  7,  9,  18,  29,  56, 
57,  64. 

Antitrinitarian  tendency  of  the  Re- 
formation, 5,  9,  10,  17,  52;  Italy, 
78 ;  Orisons,  94. 

Antwerp,  33,   58,    133,    155,    156, 

157- 
Apocalypse,  169. 
A  Porta,  Egidio,  105. 
Apostles,  the,  222. 
Apostles'  Creed,  see  Syinbolnni  Ro- 

7)iamtin. 
Apostolate,  the,  28. 
Apostolic  Church,  100,  249 — 251. 
Appiano,  Filippo,  107,  109  n. 
Apulia,  72. 
Aquila,  68. 
Archimedes,  162. 
Arianism,  ix,4i,  131,  152,  193,209, 

210,  212. 
Arians-,    18,    19,   38,    51,    12S,   129, 

195,  213,  252,  254. 
Aristocracy,  English,  30 — 31. 
Aristotle,  79,  162,  176. 
Arius,  214,  219. 


T  2 


2/6 


SOURCES   OF    ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 


Arminianism,  xii,  205. 
Ai'minians,  xiv,  65,  165,  172,   197, 

204,  211. 
Arminius,  see  Hermans. 
Arnoldists,  2. 
Artemon,  219,  220. 
Articles  of  Reformation  (1536),  31. 
Arundel,  Thomas,  58. 
Ashton,  John,  27. 
Assheton,  John,  38. 
Athanasian    Creed,    see   Symboliim 

Quicumqiie. 
Athanasianism,  55,  83,  213. 
Athanasius,  24. 

Atheists,  Unitarians  called,  18. 
Atonement,  see  Redemption. 
Augsburg,  49,   107,   109,   MO,  J 13, 

116,  146. 
Augsburg  Confession,  12,  157. 
Augustinus,  Aurelius,  xi,  4,  24,  1 16, 

220. 
Augustinians,  33,  92,  231 — 232. 
Austin  Friars,  viii,  32,  33,  61,  121 

— 122,  131 — 132,  178,  194,  231, 

237,  241. 
Avignon,  119. 

Babington,  Warden  of  the  Fleet,  64. 
Babington,  Churchill,  211.,  71  n. 
Bacon,  Francis,  ■^'j,  155,  165,  166. 
Bacon,  Sir  Nicholas,  155. 
Baden,  in  Aargau,  106. 
Bailiwicks,  Italian,  87 — 89. 
Baillet,  Adrieti,  16%  n. 
Balbani,  Manfredo,  186,  188. 
Balbani,  Niccolo,  83,  142  n. 
Balbani,  the,  100,  no. 
Baldo,  de  Ubaldis,  162,  186. 
Baldi,  Joachim,  90. 
Baptism,  28,  170. 
Baptism,  private,  183. 
Baptismal  formula,  222,  232,  235. 
Baptists,  American,  216. 
Baixlay,  Robert,  the  Apologist,  36«., 

207,  208,  213. 
Barclay,  Robert,  44,  49. 
Bargagli,  Scipione,  186  «. 
Barlow,  William,  158—159. 
Baron,  a  Spanish  refugee,  133. 
Barons,  Friar,  33,  231 — 232. 


Barrett,  William,  65  ;/. 

Bartolo,  di  Sassoferrato,  162,  1S6. 

Baschi,  Matteo,  139. 

Basel,  V,  3,  52,  53,  72,  84^.,  91,  99, 

loi,  107, 109,  no — 112,  114,  115, 

145,  146,  147,  149,  163,  164,  172, 

180,  183,  188. 
Basel,  Registers  of  French  Church, 

no n.,  in  u. 
Battenburgians,  46. 
Baur,  Ferdinand  Christiaii,  10,  24, 

36,  85  n.,  102  n.,  223. 
Bayle,  Piet-re,  Ii8;z.,  165  «. 
Beccaria,  Giovanni,  93,    106,    107, 

140. 
Bedford,  Earl  of,  n8,  151,  153,  194. 
Bell  Alley,  197. 
Bellerive,  see  Corro. 
Bembo,  Pietro,  137. 
Benedetto,  of  Locarno,  75,  93,  140. 
Benedetto,  of  Mantua,  74,  141  n. 
Benedictus,  of  Nursia,  140. 
Benedictines,  141  n. 
Benefizio  de  Gesii  Crista,  2,  70,  141, 

149,  153- 

Benincasa,  Caterina,  76,  138. 

Benrath,  Karl,  50;/.,  74«.,  75 ''•, 
io3«.,  107 «.,  io8;z..  III;/., 
116 «.,  W]  n.,  130;?.,  137 «., 
138 «.,  139 «.,  140;/.,  144//., 
145 «.,  147;/.,  148;/.,  155 '^, 
163  n.,  228  n. 

Bergamo,  no. 

Bern,  105. 

Bernina  Pass,  91. 

Bcriius,  Auguste,  won..  Ill  n. 

Besozzo,  Antonio  Maria,  93,  109, 
no. 

Besozzo,  Clara,  107. 

Besze,  Theodore,  79,  81,  no,  157, 

243' 
Betti,  Francesco,  104,  107,  161 ;;., 

162 — 164,  169,  171,  175  «.,  18S. 
Betti,  the,  no. 
Belts,  John  Thomas,  73;/. 
Betulejus,  see  Birck. 
Beukelszoon,  Jan,  44. 
Beza,  see  Besze. 
Biandrata.    Giorgio,    7,    103 — 104, 

189. 


I 


INDEX. 


277 


Bil)le,  authority,  21;  contents,  20; 

vernacular  translations,  xv. 
Bible,  English,  xii — xvi. 
Bible,  Italian,  75,  78. 
Bible,  Spanish,  xv,  117. 
Biblemen,  27,  31,  33. 
Bibliander,  see  Buchmann. 
Bidle,  John,  xiv,  xv,  20,  21,  37,  197, 

200,  201 — 204,  207,  20S,  210,  214 

— 215,  216  «.,  217,  224,  225  «. 
Binningen,  Johann  von,  47. 
Birck,  Sixt,  146. 

Bisschop,  Simon,  165  «.,  172,  211. 
Biveroni,  Giaconio,  90,  92. 
Bivio,  94  71. 
Bizarri,   Pietro,   70,   no,   114,   1 1 7, 

118,  161  n. 
Blasphemy,  201. 
Blonski,  Abraham,  189. 
Boccaccio,  Giovanni,  68. 
Bocher,  Joan,  38. 

Boehmer, Edward,  73«.,83;;.,  i  \']n. 
Bologna,  71,  74,  79,  80,  84,  180, 

182. 
Bolsec,  Jerome  Hermas,  no. 
Bomberg,  Daniel,  So. 
Bonaventura,  see  Fidenza. 
Bondo,  94  n. 
Bonifacio  VIII.,  147. 
Boimet,  Jules,  77,  loi  ;z. 
Borgarucci,  Giulio,  134. 
Borgo  d'Oltramontani,  72. 
Bormio,  88. 

Borrhaus,  Martin,  6,  44,  56. 
Bossnet,  Jacques  Benigne,  218. 
Boston,  217. 
Bourchier,  Thomas,  29. 
Braccietti,  the,  77. 
Bradshaw,  John,  202. 
Brandon,  Charles,  253,  256. 
Brandt,  Gerard,  39,  43  «.,  133 'Z- 
Brescia,  69,  loi. 
Bruccioli,  Antonio,  75. 
Bruccioli,  the,  77,  78. 
Bruges,  xii«. ;  Convention  of,  30 ; 

39,  129. 
Briigge,  Johann  von,  47. 
Brully,  Pierre,  118. 
Brunetti,  the,  70. 
Brusio,  94  «. 


Brussels,  117,  118. 

Bucer,  see  Kuhhorn. 

Buchlein,  Paul,  33,  52,  58;/.,  70, 
113,  118,  119. 

Buchmann,  Theodor,  52,  163,  1S3, 
253.  256. 

Buckholdt,  Conference,  46. 

Budny,  Szymon,  19. 

Bugenhagen,  Johann,  3. 

Bullinger,  Heinrich,  36,  50 ;/.,  52, 
54.  55.  59,  63,  64,  65,  69,  93,  95, 
99«.,  106,  113  «.,  114 «..  117, 
118  «.,  121  «.,  122  «.,  123;/., 
124;/.,  125,  128,  129,  143,  i53»., 
159  «.,  183,  192,  194,  251,  254  «. 

Buonconvento,  179. 

Burcher,  John,  194. 

Burgos,  117. 

Burlamacchi,  the,  100. 

Bzirlaniacchi,   Vincentio,  lOI. 

Burleigh,  Baron,  61,  120,  126,  127, 

133.  153,  156- 

Burn,  John  Southernden,  122;/. 
Burnet,  Gilbert,  236. 
Burrows,  Montagu,  30. 
Bury,  Arthur,  206. 
Butler,  John,  53. 

Calabria,  72,  84. 

Calais,  119. 

Calvary,  xi. 

Calvin,  Jehan,  4  ;  Institutio,  5  j  6 ; 
Trinity,  15 — 17;  37,41,52,53 — 
54,  56,  59,  6o«.,63,  65,  77,  78, 
82,  84,  86,  96,  99,  IOC;  Serveto, 
102 — 103;  1 10,  112,  113,  ii9«., 
125,  129—130,  137;  138,  143  n., 
144,  145,  147;/.,  148,  149"-,  157, 
163,  183,  190,  220;  Valdes,  243, 
244. 

Calvinism,  v,  175. 

Calvinists,  142,  206,  225,  226. 

Cambridge  University,  33,  113,  117, 

"9,  133- 
Camerarius,  see  Kammermeister. 
Camillo  (called  Renato),  84,  86,  92, 

95 — 97,  103,  104,  182. 
Campanus,  John,  6. 
Canterbury,    116,     118,    1 19,    127, 

134,  153- 


2/8 


SOURCES    OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 


Cantii,  Cesare,  76;/.,  180  «.,  186  «. 

Capito,  see  Kopfel. 

Capo  d'Istria,  91,  142;/. 

Capuchins,  94,  139,  140. 

Caracciolo,  Galeazzo,  74,  lOO,  loi. 

Caraffa,  Giampietro,  68,  143. 

Cardoini,  the,  71. 

Carignano,  72. 

Cadisle,  118. 

Carnesecchi,  Pietro,  74j  75- 

Caroli,  Pierre,  16. 

Caroline,  Queen,  197. 

Carondileto,  Giovanni,  232. 

Casaccia,  94  n. 

Caserta,  Francesco,  74. 

Caspan,  95. 

Cassiodoro,  Juan,  de  Reyna,   lOl, 

133- 
Castasegna,  94  «. 
Castellio,  see  Chateillon. 
Castelvetro,  Lodovico,  92,  100. 
Castiglione,  Giovanni  Battista,  134, 

161,  165,  172. 
Castiglione,    Giovanni    Francesco, 

iiiw.,  188. 
Castiglione,  Varnerio,  93,  106. 
Cataneis,  Albertus  de,  72. 
Catherine,  St.,  see  Benincasa. 
Catherine  II.,  72. 
Catholicity,  226 — 230. 
Cavour,  72. 

Cecil,  William,  see  Burleigh. 
Cecilia,  St.,  126. 
Celiljacy,  clerical,  58. 
Cellarius,  see  Borrhaus. 
Celsi,  Mino,  76,  no,  112,  176. 
Celtis,  Conrad,  180. 
Champel,  102. 
Channing,  William  Ellery,  xiv,  xvi, 

20,  21,  26,  217,  222  ;/.,  224 — 226, 

229. 
Charles  I.,  195,  200. 
Charles  V.,  71,  73,  74,  84,  137,  141, 

146. 
Chastellain,  Pierre,  134. 
Chateillon,  Sebastien,  1 10, 1 1 1,  1 12, 

113;/.,  145,  146,  151 «.,  158—159, 

176,  188. 
Chatham,  Earl  of,  35  n. 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  67. 


Cheke,  John,  61,  62,  in,  113,  120, 

147,  153- 
Cheltenham,  203. 
Cheynell,  Francis,  17 1,  173,  174  «., 

196,  200  n. 
Chiaja,  the,  74. 
Chiavenna,  v,  88,  90,  91,  92 — 93,  96, 

97,  98,  III  «.,  114,  143,  149,  182. 
Chieri,  72. 

Chillingworth,  William,  xii,  37,  174. 
Christ,    two    natures,    4,    55,    80 ; 

images  of,  5;  hypostasis,  10;  23; 

truly  man,  38  ;  man-God,  51 ;  56, 

57,  85,  94;  fallible,  96;  98,  104, 

128,130—131,  135,  139,  151,  177, 

178,  191,  192,  211,  222,  225,  261 

— 264. 
Christian,  preference  of  Socinians 

for  this  name,  22S — 229. 
Christiern  III.,  131. 
Christology,  xi,  138. 
Chur,  88,. 90,  94,  95,  97,  98. 
Church,  Christian,  222. 
Cibo,  Caterina,  143. 
Cicero,  Marcus  Tullius,  80. 
Circulation  of  the  blood,  84. 
Citolini,  the,  114. 
Clarke,  Samuel,  208,  214. 
Claude,  of  Savoy,  15- 
Clemente  VII.,  53,  73. 
Colchester,  48,  134. 
Coleman  Street,  197. 
Colet,  John,  41. 
Colli,  the,  no. 
Collier,  Jeremy,  24  n. 

66;;.,  132;?.,  236. 
Colonna  family,  68. 
Colonna,    Vittoria,    73>    ^37' 

162  n. 
Comander,  see  Dorfmann. 
Comenius,  see  Kommensky. 
Commonwealth,  English,  213. 
Communism — Apostolic,     5  ; 

252,  254. 
Como,  bishopric  of,  87,  88. 
Compagni,  Bartolommeo,  159. 
Comprehension,  173 ''• 
Compromise,  35. 
Conception,   supernatural,    the,  ix, 

50,  224,  252,  254. 


61  n.,  62  «. 


143. 


3S. 


INDEX. 


279 


Confession,  auricular,  xiii,  58. 
Confessionsof  Faith,  169 — 170,228. 
Constantine,  Donation  of,  xiv,  79. 
Constanz,  3,  7,  146. 
Consubstantiality,  6,  233,  234. 
Contarini,  Gasparo,  68,  143. 
Contio,  Giacomo,  65,  71,  81,  107, 

134.  135—136,   155'   159—177. 

178,182,  186,  188,193,  196,  197 — 

198,  199,  200,  205,  206,  207,  213, 

224,  226,  228,  229,  264 — 268. 
Conventicle  Act,  204,  205. 
Conversion,  50. 
Cooke,  Anne,  153,  155. 
Cooke,  Sir  Anthony,  153,  155  n. 
Cooke,  Lady,  155  «. 
Coombe,  Edward,  197. 
Cooper,  John,  203. 
Coquerels,  the,  xiv. 
Cordeliers,  140. 
Corranus,  see  Corro. 
Corro,  Antonio  de,  65,  133,  155 — 

160,  172,  178,  193,  199. 
Cosenza,  84. 
Cosmopolitanism,  227. 
Costa,  Andrea,  1 1 1  «. 
Couet,  Jacques,  188. 
Cousin,  Jean,  134,  136,  157. 
Coverdale,  Miles,  58,  59,  62. 
Cox,  Richard,  62. 
Cranmer,  Thomas,  4,  31,   32,   33, 

52,  54,  58,  60—62,  70,  112— 113, 

115— 121,    127,    147,    148,    253, 

256. 
Creation,  11,  222,  269 — 270. 
Creeds,  the,  xiii,  31. 
Crell,  see  Krell. 
Cremona,  91. 
Crenius,  see  C?-iisi'us. 
Cressy,  Hugh  Paulin,  196. 
Cromwell,  Oliver,  209. 
Cromwell,  Thomas,  31,  54. 
Crusius,  Thomas  Theodoriis,  l69«., 

I'jon. 
Cuen9a,  73. 
Culdees,  24. 
Curione,  Celio  Secondo,  69,  76,  81, 

95,96,  III — 112,  113,  116;  119, 

145,  147,  164. 
Curioni,  the,  iio. 


Cyprianus,  Thascius,  116;?. 

Dammartin,  Madlle,  116. 

D'Annoni,  the,  no. 

Dante  Alighieri,  76. 

Dardier,  CliarJes,  84  n. 

D'Avalos,  Costanza,  74. 

D'Avalos  family,  162. 

David,  Ferencz,  19,  82  «.,  189,  215. 

Davos,  88,  89,  92. 

Day,  John,  153. 

De  Brez,  Guy,  133. 

Dee,  John,  265,  266. 

Deism,  19,  222. 

De  la  Palma,  Marco,  133. 

Delft,  vi,  45,  48,  49. 

Delia  Riva  family,  99. 

Deloen,  Pieter,  134. 

Deloen,  Wouter,  122,  124,  23S,  242, 
252,  255. 

Denk,  Johann,  44,  56. 

Denmark,  131. 

De  Ponchell,  Antoine,  134. 

De  Questa,  a  Spanish  refugee,  133. 

De  Salis,  Ercole,  92. 

De  Salis,  the,  92. 

Descartes,  Rene,  165, 166, 167 — 168, 
172,  178,  190. 

De  Trye,  Guillaume  Henri  Cathe- 
rin,  102. 

Diaz,  Juan,  lOl. 

Diodati,  the,  no. 

Dominicans,  87,  91. 

Domo  d'Ossola,  88. 

Dordrecht,  39. 

Dorfmann,  Johann,  90,  92. 

Drain,  Mdise,  133  «.,  142  «. 

Dryander,  see  Enzina. 

Duno,  Taddeo,  93,  107,  150;/. 

Duns,  John,  139,  150,  190. 

Durie,  John,  173. 

Dutch  Church,  London;  see  Ger- 
mans' Church,  Strangers' Church. 

Dtitch  Church,  Registers,  122  «. 

Dutch  refugees  in  England,  122, 
131- 

Ebionites,  95. 
Eclecticism,  80. 
Edward  HL,  30. 


28o         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 


Edward  VI.,  32,  36,  49,  55,  59,  6otz., 
61,  62,  63,  70,  113,  114,  115,  117, 
119,  120,  123,  127,  131,  147,  153, 
194,  236—243. 

Edwards,  John,  211 — 212. 

Egidio,  di  Viterbo,  71,  80. 

Egli.ses  plantees,  79. 

Eldon,  Lord,  134. 

Eliot,  Nicolas,  53,  54;/. 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  35,  36,  49,  63, 
108,  131,  148,  153—154,  161,  164, 

175- 
Elsinore  (Helsingor),  131  n. 
Emanuele  Filiberto,  72. 
Emden,  v,  46,  48,  49,  81,  113,  120, 

123,  131,  243,  244. 
Engadine,  the,  90,  91,  94,  99,  ill  n. 
English    Reformation,   aristocratic, 

.  3?— 31- 
Enzina,    Francisco    de,    1 17,    119, 

122  «.,  153. 
Epicureans,  252,  254. 
Epiphanius,  116  n.,  118. 
Episcopacy,  35,  62,  131. 
Episcopalians,  199. 
Episcopius,  see  Bisschop. 
Erasmus,  Desiderius,  vi,  xi,  2  «.,  39, 

40,  41—43,  52,  55,  56,  67,  82,  83, 

no.  III,  113,  120,  129,  158,  193, 

220,  232 — 235. 
Ercole  II.,  76. 
Jirichson,  Alfred,  55  «. 
Eschatology,  x. 

Eternal  Sonship,  191,  193,  219. 
Evangelicals,  131. 
Extratrinitarian  position,  178,  194. 

Fabriz,  Andreas,  90. 

Fagius,  see  Buchlein. 

Faith  and  Reason,  xiv,  80. 

Falkland,  Viscount,  196. 

P'amily  of  Love,  ix,  48,  49. 

Farel,  Guillaume,  xi,  15,  507?.,  54, 

221. 
Farges,  103. 
Fatherhood  of  God,  xiii,  222,  223, 

225,  262,  263,  269,  270,  271,  273, 

274. 
Fatio  family,  1 1 1  «. 
Fazy,  Henri,  105  n.,  245. 


Felice,  of  Prato,  80. 

Ferrara,  68,  72,  76 — 77,  117. 

Fettan,  94. 

Fick,  Jtiles  Guillaume,  1 5  n. 

Fidenza,  Giovanni  (or  Pietro),  139. 

Fieri,  Lodovico,  92,  97,  98. 

Filiberto  VI.,  72. 

Fiorenzio,  120,  12^11. 

Fileno,  Lisia,  see  Ricci. 

Firmin,    Thomas,    200,    204 — 207, 

216  u. 
Fitzwilliam,  Lady,  155  «. 
Fitzwilliam,  Sir  William,  155  «. 
Flacio  Illyrico,  see  Francowitz. 
Flaminio,  Marcantonio,  68,  74,  77, 

141  n. 
Flanders,  see  Low  Countries. 
Fleet  Prison,  64. 
Flekwijk,  Herman  van,  xii;;.,  39, 

128. 
Flemish  Church  in  London,  124— 

125,  134. 
Flemish  refugees  in  England,  122 — 

123,  131- 
Florence,  91  n.,  149,  175,  188. 
Florio,    Michel-Angelo,    97,     114, 

125—127,  129—130,  134,  158. 
Fontana,  Baldassare,  105. 
Foreigners'  Church,  see  Strangers'. 
Forty-two  Articles,  60. 
Fox,  George,  35. 
Fox,  Richard,  231 — 232. 
Foxe,John,  28,  54,  62,  63,  1 14. 
France,  xv,  I,  88,  118. 
Francesco,  of  Calabria,  84,  94. 
Francesco,  of  Padua,  104. 
Franciscans,   87,  93,  106,  139,  140, 

ISO- 
Franco- Helvetic   Protestantism,  4, 

14. 
Francois,    Richard,    65,    122,    238, 

242. 
Francowitz,  Mattia  Flach,  77,  156. 
Frankfurt-a-M.,  62,  265. 
Fratres  Poloni,  10,  16,  204. 
French  Church,  Basel,  188  ;  Emden, 

243;  London,  123 — 124,130,171. 
French  refugees  in  England,    118, 

122,  206. 
Friedrich  III.  of  Saxony,  71. 


INDEX. 


281 


Friedrichsburg,  204. 
Friese,  Johann,  163.  253,  256. 
Friesland,  47,  49,  81,  120,  243. 
Froben,  Johann,  no. 
Fugger  family,  113. 

Galiffe,  Jacques  August  in,  99  11., 
loi  ;?.,  134;;. 

Gallo,  Nicolao,  104,  247,  248. 

Gamaliel,  226. 

Gansfort,  Johan  Wessel,  142. 

tjarnier,  Jean,  119. 

Gaskeil,  IVilliaiit,  20. 

Gaul,  219. 

Geelen,  Jan  van,  38,  44 — 45,  49. 

Geiler,  Johann,  142. 

Geishauser,  Oswald,  52, 55, 1 10, 145. 

Geldenhauer,  Gerard,  131  n. 

Generation,  of  the  Son,  6,  222,  223. 

Geneva,  5,  7,  52,  56,  63,  84,  99— 
105,  107,  109,  no,  114,  124,  142, 
143 — 145,  148,  150,  183,  186, 
194,  218,  243,  245,  249,  250. 

Geneva,  Council  Registej-s,  100  n. 

Genoa,  126,  143. 

(Jentile,  Alberico,  134. 

Gentile,  Giovanni  Valentino,  16, 
81,  84,  104 — 105,  247,  248. 

Gentile,  Matteo,  134. 

Gentile,  Scipione,  134. 

Gentili,  the,  71. 

George  IV.,  210  «. 

Germanic  Reformers,  227. 

Germans'  Church,  London,  61,  249 
—250,  252—253,  255—256,  259. 

Germany,  xv,  49,  88,  91,  174,  199. 

Gessner,  Georg,  253,  256. 

Gex,  103,  105. 

Girolamo,  di  Melfi,  loi. 

Giulio,  di  Milano,  91,  100. 

Glarus,  90. 

Glastonbury,  127. 

Gloucester,  201,  203. 

Gniezno,  120. 

Gonzaga,  Giulia,  74. 

Goodrich,  Thomas,  254  w. 

Goodwin,  John,  173,  197,  204. 

Gordon,  Alexander,  37, 102 ;/.,  1 24  n., 
135  «.,  139,  153".,  154'?--  179  «•, 
182,  i89«.,  200,219;/.,  227, 229«. 


Grasser,JohannJakob,  165;/.,  i^on., 

171  «.,  172. 
Grataroli,  the,  no. 
Gravesend,  131  n. 
Grenoble,  105. 
Grey,  Jane,  127. 
Grey  Leagues,  88 — 90. 
Gribaldo,  Matteo,  78,  81,  86,  103— 

105,  182. 

Grindal,    Edmund,    62,    n4,    132, 

134.  135.  157,  159.  164,  171,  257, 

259. 
Grison  dialects,  90. 
Grisons,   the,   85,   88 — 99,   in  ;/., 

244. 
Grivel,  Ad.  C.,  245. 
Grosart,  Alexander  Balloch,  155  n. 
Grynseus,  see  Gryner. 
Gryner,  Simon,  52,  53,  55. 
Guardia,  72. 
Guicliard,  Louis  Anastasc,  21 «.,  38, 

152,  213  n.,  218. 
Guidaccerio,  Agattia,  80. 
Guizot,  F7'ancois  Pierre  Gtdllauiue, 

31—32. 

Haag,  Eugene  and  Einile,  n  8  ;?. 
Haarlem,  44,  46. 
Ilagenau,  56,  84. 
Hague,  the,  44,  5o«.,  136. 
Hales,  John,  xii,  174. 
Hallam,  Henry,  165  «.,  1 76. 
Hamilton,  William,  196,  200. 
Hamstede,  van,  see  Adriaanszoon. 
Hardenberg,  Albrecht,  120. 
Hardwick,  Charles,  34;/.,  60  n. 
Harrys,  W.,  239,  243. 
Hartlib,  .Samuel,  173. 
Hatzer,  Ludwig,  7,  44,  56. 
Hausschein,  Johann,  52,  53,  55  «., 

106,  no. 
Heidelberg,  118. 

Helvetic  Confession,  first,  55. 

Helvidius,  95. 

Hemerken,  Thomas,  142. 

Henri  II.  of  France,  72. 

Henry  VIII.,  30,  32,    53,   54,    58, 

68,  n5,  147. 
Henry,  an  Englishman,  46. 
Heracles,  vii. 


282 


SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 


Herbert,  Baron,  of  Cherbury,  29, 37. 

Herbst,  Johann,  no. 

Hereford,  Nicholas,  26. 

Heresy,  201. 

Hermans,  Jakob,  172. 

Heriiiinjard,  Aime  Louis,  15,  16. 

Herzog,  Johann  Jakob,  63;?.,  83  «. 

Hesdin,  133. 

Hierarchy,  50. 

High  Churchism,  30 — 31,  59,  62 — 

63,  254. 
Hilarius,  of  Poitiers,  232. 
Hilles,  Thomas,  231,  232. 
HispanoTtalian  Protestantism,  4. 
Hofmann,  Melchior,  44,  51. 
Hofmannites,  46,  47. 
Holland,  vi,  xii,  xv,  37,   168,  204, 

212. 
Holy  Spirit,  6,  13,   19,  35,  51,  57, 

82, 84,  95 — 96,  100,  131,  144,  192, 

193,  201,  210,  213,  216,  222,  223, 

224,    225,    233—235,    262—264, 

271,  272. 
Homoousia,  6. 

Homoousios,  13,  219,  233,  234. 
Hooper,  Anne,  253,  256. 
Hooper,  John,  36,   50  «.,   58  —  59, 

63—64,  120,  127,  194,  253,  256. 
Hosmann,  Andreas,  32. 
Hottinger,  Joliann  Heinrich,  193  n. 
Hottingasche  Samtiilmig,  192 ;;.. 
Hiilner,  168,  172. 
Humanitarianism,  ix,  38,  128,  191. 
Humphrey,  Laurence,  62,  63,  64. 
Hus,  Jan,  27,  138,  218. 
Hypostasis,  10,  223. 

Ignatius,  of  Antioch,  104,  118. 

Ilanz,  88,  89. 

Images,  5- 

Lnitatione  Christi,  De,  11. 

Immortality,  96,  192  «.,  216. 

Incarnation,  ix,  11,  38,  50,  128,  135, 

252,  254,  257,  259. 
Indifferentism,  174. 
Individualism,  227. 
Indulgences,  xiii. 
Inn,  the,  94  «. 
Inner  voice,  51,  160,  213,  224,  243, 

244. 


Inquisition,  Flanders,  117;  France, 

102 ;  Italy,  70,  86,  88,  90,  91,  99, 

113,  137,  143,  182,  199,218,225; 

Spain,  73. 
Interim,  the,  49,  60,  70,  113,  116, 

119,  120. 
Invocation  of  Christ,  18 — 19,  215, 

216;/.;  Calvin  rejects,  17. 
Invocation  of  Saints,  142. 
Irenceus,  118. 
Isis,  vii. 
Istria,  78,  126. 
Italian    Church,   Basel,    no — 112; 

Geneva,  99 — 105,  186,  192,  245; 

London,  70,  71,  125 — 127,  129 — 

131.    133—134,    156,    161,   164; 

Zurich,  105 — 109,  163 — 164. 
Italian  Protestants,  3,  217 — 218. 
Italian  Reformation,  71 — 78. 
Italian  refugees,  England,  70 — 71, 

112 — 114;  Orisons,  90 — 99 
Italian  Unitarians,  ix,  225,  229. 
Italy,  vi,  I,  5,  67,  81,  88,  102,  140, 

143,  147,  186,  199. 
James  I.,  195. 
Jamet,  Lyon,  77. 
Jerlito,  Oirolamo,   134,   136,  156 — ■ 

157- 
Jerome,  of  Prag,  27. 
Jerusalem,  5. 
Jesuits,  194,  206. 

Jewel,John,  62,  153,  159,  161,  164. 
Jews,  monotheistic  influence,  80 — 

81  ;   194. 
Joachim,  of  Flora,  2,  47. 
Johann  Friedrichj  Elector  of  Saxony, 

69. 
John,  King  of  England,  24. 
John,  St.  (I  Jo.  V.  7),  14. 
Joris,   David,   44,   45 — 47,  48,  49, 

no. 
Jud,  Leo,  52. 
JudiTe,  see  Jud. 
Julier-Alp,  90. 
Julius  II.,  71. 
Jundt,  Aiiguste,  142;?. 
Justification,    Socinian  view,    19; 

170. 

Kammermeister,  Joachim,  12,  18. 


\ 


\ 


INDEX. 


283 


Kepler,  Johann,  vi. 

King,  Baron,  21 1. 

Knowen  men,  28,  31. 

Knowles,  John,  203. 

Knox,  John,  37,  63. 

Kolozsvar,  i8g. 

Konigswald,  204. 

Kommensky,  Jan  Amos,  172. 

Koornhert,  Dirk,  176. 

Kopfel,   Wolfgang   Fabricius,    52, 

,  54,  56-57- 
Kosmoburg,  203. 
Krakow,  109,  189. 
Krell,  Christoph,  204. 
Krell,  Johann,  xiv,  200,  201,  203, 

204,  206. 
Krell,  Samuel,  204. 
Kuhhorn,    Martin,    3,    33,    52,    54, 

58«.,  60,  113,  119,  121  w.,  146. 
Knyper,  Abraham,    123 «.,    li/^n., 

125  «.,  236,  249. 

Lahoulaye,  Emile,  21,  23. 

Lacisio,  Paolo,  76,  114. 

Lactantius,  L.  C.  Firmianus,  146. 

Lago  di  Como,  87,  92. 

Lago  Maggiore,  87. 

Lambeth,  112,  115,  119. 

Lamothe,  Charles  Ci.,  206. 

Landolfi,  Rodolfo,  92. 

Languet,  Hubert,  77. 

La    Ramee,    Pierre   de,    165,    172, 

176,  264—265. 
Lardner,  Nathaniel,  217. 
La  Riviere,  Fran9ois  Martoret,  122, 

238,  242. 
La  Roche,  Michel  de,  39. 
Laski,  Jan,    46,    49,    60,   65,    1 13, 

119— 126,    129— 131,    135,    153, 

156,  238,  241,  252—253,  255— 

256,  264,  265. 
Lateran  Council  (1512),  71. 
Latimer,  Hugh.  33,  54,  58,  120. 
Latin  Protestants,  227. 
Latin  races,  vi,  xv,  i. 
Latitudinarians,  xii,  xiv,  174,  195 — 

196,  205,  206. 
Latomus,  see  Masson. 
Lavin,  94. 
Law,  study  of,  80. 


Lechler,     Gott/iard    Victor,    23  ii., 

26  n.,  27  n.,  31  «.,  37  n. 
Lecky,  Win.  Edw.  Hai-tpole,  jgn. 
Le  Clerc,  Jean,  212. 
Leeuwaarden,  46. 
Legate,  Bartholomew,  195. 
Legate,  Robert,  120. 
Leicester,  Earl  of,  134,  156. 
Leiden,  44,  46,  133. 
Leith,  173;/. 
Leighes,  239,  243. 
Lemon,  Robert,  210  «. 
Leone,  Pietro,  97,  98. 
Leonistas,  2,  88. 

Leti,  Gregorio,  "Jon.,  131;/.,  135". 
Liberalism,  174. 
Lichtenhergcr,  Frederic,  2  «.,  55 '^., 

146?;.,  209  n. 
Lifforti,  the,  99. 
Lille,  118. 

Limborch,  Philipp  van,  211. 
Lindsey,  Theophilus,  20,  200,  205, 

217. 
Lismanini,  Francesco,  7,  140,  150. 
Litany,  of  the  Virgin,  14;  Luther's, 

14;  Anglican,  xiii,  34. 
Lithuania,  19,  195. 
Liturgy,  Ed.  VL,  58. 
Locarno,  88,  91,  93,  106 — 107,  109, 

149,  163,  186,  191  71. 
Locke,  John,  xii,  20,  26,  209,  21 1  — 

212,  217,  224,  225  «. 
Logos,  17,  25,  102,  222 — 223. 
Lollards,  26,  31,  33,  67. 
London,  v,  7,  91  n.,  97,   107,  109, 

147,   149,   162,  164,   165 «.,   182, 

194,  217,  231. 
Long,  Paul,  2  11. 
Lord's  Supper,  xiii,  4,  64,  1 1 5,  1 16, 

146,  156,  170. 
Lorimer,  Peter,  23. 
Loudun,  155. 
Louis  Xn.,  71,  76. 
Low  Countries,  49,    70,    118,   120, 

I33>  179.  199- 
Liibeck,  195. 

Lubieniecky,  Stanislaw,  182. 
Lucca,  76,  100,  loi,  no,  118. 
Lugano,  88. 
Lupetino,  Baldo,  T],  140. 


284         SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 


Lushington,  Thomas,  197,  20Q,  202. 

Luslawice,  189. 

Luther,  Martin,  xi,  3,  4,  9 ;  Trinity, 

12—14;  32,  33,  4I1  55  «•)  69,  72, 

73,  77«-.  78,  82,  105,  138,  139, 

221,  227. 
Lutheranism,  v,  4,  92,  143,  175. 
Lutherans,    131 «.,   156,    157,   206, 

226. 
LiUteroth,  Henri,  146  n. 
Lyons,  2,  84  «,  88,  102,  105,  1S6. 

Magistracy,    an    order    of    church 

officers,  249,  250. 
Magistrates,  authority,  38. 
Magna  Charta,  25. 
Maidstone,  134. 
Mainardo,  Agostino,  92 — 93,  96,  97, 

114. 
Mainz,  49,  180. 
Malherbi,  see  Mallermi. 
Mallermi,  Nicolo  di,  75  71. 
Manrico,  Alfonso,  42. 
Manriquez,  Isabella,  74,  108. 
Mantua,  85,  146. 
Marburg,  confession  of,  55  n. 
Marguerite,  de  Valois,  76 — 77. 
Marignano,  88. 
Mariolatry,  xiii. 
Marliano,  Girolamo,  94,  188. 
Marot,  Clement,  77. 
Marriages,  mixed,  183. 
Martin,  Jacques,  127  n. 
Martineau,  James,  20,  225  «. 
Martineau  family,  134. 
Martinengo,    Celso    Massimiliano, 

76,  100,  loi,  104,  114,  183,  192  «. 
Martini,  Rudolph,  48,  67. 
Mary,  mother  of  David  Joris,  46. 
Mary,  Queen,  37,  62,  114,  126,  131, 

134,  148,  194- 
Mary,  Queen  of  Hungary,  118. 
Mary,  Virgin,  50,  95,  129,  130,  171, 

181,  233,  235. 
Mass,  the,  xiii,  126. 
Massario,  Girolamo,  114,  164. 
Masserano,  Filiberto  di,  93. 
Masson,  Jacques,  13. 
Matthijszoon,    Jan,     of    Haarlem, 

44. 


iNlatthijszoon,  Jan,  of  Middelburg, 

46. 
Maturo,  Bartolommeo,  91. 
M'Crie,  Thomas,  68  «.,  6gn.,  71  ti., 

72  71.,     76  «.,  81  71.,     89  71.,     92  71. 
104  «.,   125  71.,       133  «.,   134  71; 

12,7  ^i-,  161,  164  «. 

Medici,  Cosimo  de',  75,  187,  188. 
Medici,  Ferdinando  de',  187  71. 
Medici,  Francesco  de',  187  «.,  188. 
Medici,  Isabella  de',  187,  188. 
Melanchthon,  Philipp,    3,  9  ;  Loci 

Communes,  10,  ii;  12,  18,  32,  52, 

55«.,  60  71.,  72,  82,  83,  84,  113, 

117,  120,  148,  220. 
Melander,  Dionysius,  57. 
Menno,  see  Simons. 
Mennonites,  46,  47. 
Mera,  the,  92. 
Mersenne,  Marin,  168. 
Messiah,  the  Hebrew,  vii. 
Messiahship,  64,  108,  128,  183,  211. 
Meyer,  Fe7-di)iaiid,  68«.,  69;;.,  91 «., 

93«.,  105;/.,  io6;?.,  107 «.,  I09«., 

II4«. 
Micheli,  the,  1 10. 
Microen,  Marten,  50;;.,  51  11.,  S4"-y 

59«.,  121 «.,  122,  123,  124;/.,  128 

— 129,  178,  238,  242,  251 — 256. 
Middelburg,  46. 
Milan,  75;  Duchy  of,  87,  105;  126, 

162. 
Military  service,  35,  50. 
Millenarianism,  51,  67,  102. 
Milton,  John,   20,  169;;.,  174,  209 

— 211,  217,  272 — 274. 
Ministry,  orders  of  the,  249,  250. 
Mirandola,  see  Pico. 
Modena,  75,  142. 
Moerikofei',  Joha/i/i  Caspar,  76  /i. 

no;/.,  194;/. 
Mollio,  Giovanni,  74,  75. 
Monachism,  29. 
Monarchia,  220. 
Monotheism,  Jewish,  80. 
Montalcino,  74. 
Montpellier,  84;?. 
Moone,  Richard,  196,  203. 
Morata,  Olympia  Fulvia,  77. 
'  Morato,  Fulvio  Pellegrinoj  77. 


INDEX. 


285 


Moravia,  109,  149. 
Morison,  Sir  Richard,  148,  153,  194. 
Morone,  Giovanni,  68,  143. 
Morsztyn,  Krzysztof,  189. 
Mortality,  liuman,  192  «.,  215. 
Mosel,  Wolfgang,  49;?.,  1 16,  119, 

122  n.,  146,  147  n. 
Moses,  126,  222. 
Moskorzowski,  Jeromos,  195. 
Miihlhausen,  109. 
Miinster,  44. 
Miinsterians,  46. 
Mural  to,  Giovanni,  93. 
Muralto,  Martino,  93,  106,  107,  149. 
Musculus,  see  Mosel. 
Aluston.  Alexis,  72  «. 
Muzio,  Girolamo,  142  «. 
Myconius,  see  Geishauser. 
Mysticism,  51,  100,  143,  224. 
Mystics,  36. 
Mythology,  comparative,  vii. 

Naked  Gospel,  xv,  206. 

Nantes,  Edict  of,  204,  206. 

Nardi,  Jacopo,  75. 

Naples,  72,  73— 75>  83,  loi,   141, 

142,  143,  243,  244. 
Negri,  Francesco,  92,  96,  186;/. 
Neo-Arians,  129,  252,  254. 
New-Arians,  209,  214. 
Newton,  Isaac,  20,  204,  208 — 209, 

211,  212,  214,  217. 
Niccea,  208,  220,  223. 
Nicrean  doctrine,  63  ?i. 
Niclaes,  Hendrik,  48 — 49. 
Nippold,  Friedrich,  30,  46 11.,  47  n., 

49  «• 
Nonconformists,  32. 
Nonconformity,  30. 
Norwich,  124;?.,  134 — 135,  156. 
Noviomagus,  see  Geldenhauer. 
Niirnberg,  109. 

Oaths,  35,  38,  50,  59,  252,  254. 
Oberland,  the,  142  «. 
Ochino,  see  Tomassini. 
Odoni,  the,  114,  164. 
Gicolampadius,  see  Hausschein. 
Oporinus,  see  Herbst. 
Oratory  of  Divine  Love,  68. 


Orelli,  Bartolommeo,  107. 
Origen,  118,  165,  220. 
Original  sin,  xiii,  96,  208. 
Osiander,  see  Ilosmann. 
Osiris,  vii. 

Osservanza,  convent  of  the,  139. 
Oxford,  53,  165  «.,  172. 
Oxford   University,  33,  70,  72,  80, 
113,  118,  133,  140,  157. 

Padua,   72,  78,  79,  So,  81,  85,  103, 

III  «.,  182. 
Pa^dobaptism,  38,  50,  129,  135,  252, 

254- 
Paget,  William,  69. 
Paglia,  Antonio  della,  68,  76,  78, 

99>  137- 
Paleario,  Aonio,  see  Paglia. 
Palermo,  75. 

Pallavicini,  Gianandrea,  96,  104. 
Pallavicini,  the,  95,  iii  n.,  182. 
Palmer,  Herbert,  155  «. 
Pantheism,  56,  67. 
Pantheists,  18. 
Paolo  III.,  68,  141. 
Papists,  252,  254. 
Paraclete,  223. 
Paris,  84,  264,  265. 
Parker,  Matthew,  62,  156. 
Parker,  Theodore,  xiv,  20,  21,  217, 

225  ?^. 
Parris,  Georgvan,  ix,  7,49,  65,  129, 

135.  136. 
Partridge,  Nicolas,  53,  54;/. 
Pascal,  IJlaise,  224. 
Pastor,  Adam,  .s-t'6'  Martini. 
Paul,   St.,  4,    II,  26,  73,   143,  2or 

232,  252,  255,  258,  260. 
Paul,  of  Samosata,   12,   214,    219, 

220. 
Paul's  Cross,  29. 
Pavia,  72. 
Pecock,  Reginald,  26,  27 — 29,  31, 

152. 
Pelagianism,  43. 
Pelermo,  Ypolito,  104,  247,  248. 
Pellican,  Conrad,  52,  93,  106,  107, 

145,  163,  253,  256. 
Penance,  xiii. 
Penn,  William,  207,  213. 


286 


SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 


Percena,   179. 

Perez,  Juan,  de  Pineda,  loi. 

Perna,  Pietro,  no,  164,  172. 

Perucell,  see  La  Riviere. 

Perugia,  no,  114,  118. 

Pescaro,  Marchese  di,  161  11.,  162. 

Pestalozzi,  the,  92. 

Peter,  St.,  232. 

Peter  Martyr,  see  Vermigli. 

Peter's  pence,  24. 

Petrarca,  Francesco,  68. 

Petrucci,  Agnese,  185. 

Pett,  Peter,  214. 

Philip  IL,  35,  133. 

Philipp,    Landgraf  of  Hesse,    46, 

69. 
Philips,  Dirk,  46. 
Philips,  Obbe,  45,  46. 
Photinus,  219. 
Piacenza,  in  n. 
Pico,    della    Mirandola,    Gianfran- 

cesco,  71,  80. 
Pico,  della  Mirandola,  Giovanni,  2, 

80. 
Piedmont,  72,  100,  no. 
Pirckheimer,  Wilibald,  42. 
Pisa,  Council,  3,  71. 
Planitz,  Johann,  71. 
Plato — Trinity,  26;  79,  162. 
Platonism,  of  Wiclif,  24. 
Poitiers,  W2.71. 
Poland,  V,  xii,  7,  19,  48,  105,  150, 

174,  179,  195,  199,  206,  212,  218, 

229. 
Pole,  Reginald,  68. 
Polish  Socinians,  229. 
Pomponazzi,  Pietro,  79,  165,  192. 
Ponet,  John,  62,  114,  153,  155. 
Poor  Men  of  Lyons,  2,  88. 
Pope,  the,  (Antichrist,)  91,  126. 
Porcellino,    Francesco,    104,    247, 

248. 
Porta,  Petro Dominico Rosi da,  88  7^., 

94«.,  95  «. 
Poschiavo,  91,  92,  94;?. 
Poullain,    Valerand,     118,    \\<^n., 

127. 
Pragela,  72. 
Prayer-book,    Common,     33,    34 ; 

in  French,  127  n. 


Predestination,  65,  108,   n2,   130, 

136,  139,  145,  148,  179,  208. 
Pre-existence  of  Christ,  ix,  214. 
Presbyterianism,  93. 
Presbyterians,  37,  66. 
Price,  Richard,  xiv. 
Priestley,  Joseph,  xiv,  20,  217,  224, 

225. 
Priuli,  Luigi,  68. 
Procession  of  the  Holy  .Spirit,  223, 

245,  247. 
Prophesyings,   124,  249,   251,  252, 

253.  255,  256. 
Prophets,  the,  222. 
Protestantism,    i  ;    three  types,   3 ; 

170,  219. 
Protestant  Synod,  60. 
Prussia,  204. 

Przypcovvski,  Samuel,  i86;?.,  197. 
Pseudo-evangelicals,  128,  129,  178, 

193,  252,  254. 
Pucci,  Francesco,  175  «.,  189. 
Puritanism,  35,  36,  59,  63,66,  131. 
Puritans,  37,  62,  64,  199. 
Purvey,  John,  27. 
Pusey,  Edward  Bouverie,  21. 

Quakers,  35,  36,  199,  208,  209,  213, 

216,  220. 
Qui  net,  Edgar,  218. 
Quintana,  Juan,  84. 

Racovian  Catechism,  193  n.,  195, 
200,  202,  214,  270 — 272. 

Radziwill,  Mikolaj,  6,  16,  108,  151. 

Ragnone,  Lattanzio,  74, 76,  loi,  104. 

Rakow,  195,  201. 

Ramus,  see  La  Ramee. 

Rands,  Henry,  253,  256. 

Rationalism,  xv,  51. 

Rauchlin,  Johann,  106. 

Real  Presence,  228. 

Reason,  25,  51,  84. 

Reason  and  Faith,  xiv,  79 — So. 

Redemption,  x,  xi,  xiv,  80,  95,  96, 
97,  109 «.,  130,  144,  150,  179, 
181,  183,  190 — 191,  207,  215, 
224,  261 — 262. 

ReformatioLegtiniEcclesiasticaruJii, 

33- 


I 


INDEX. 


287 


Reformation,  i ;  radical,  6,  50 ;  in- 
complete, 57;  English,  30 — 31; 
Italian,  71 — 78. 

Refugees,  Protestant,  32. 

Renan,  Ernest^  1 71. 

Renascence,  40,  72. 

Renee,  of  Ferrara,  72,  75,  76 — 77, 

99.  143- 
Resurrection,  179,  183,  25S,  260. 
Reuss,  Rtidoif,  114;;.,  Il8«.,  119;?. 
Revelation,  x,  xi,  xiv,  20,  23,  25, 

224. 
Reville,  Albert,  5,  207,  220  «. 
Rhaetic  Confession,  94. 
Rhenish  Academy,  180. 
Rhenish  Provinces,  49. 
Rhine,  the,  90,  131. 
Ricci,  Paolo,  75- 
Ridley,    Nicholas,    t^t^,    121,    132, 

254  «. 
Ritter,  Raphael,  194. 
Robinson,  Hastings,  254. 
Rogers,  John,  58,  59. 
Romani  language,  90,  92. 
Rome,  78,  80,  1 10,  227. 
Romulus,  vii. 

Ronco,  Lodovico,  93,  107. 
Rosalino  family,  109  it. 
Rosary,  xiii. 
Rosso,  Giovanni,  "J^n. 
Rosso,  Gregorio,  74. 
Rotterdam,  vi,  46. 
Ritchat,  Abraham,  55  n. 
Rustici,  Filippo,  104,  247,  248. 

Sabellianism,  17,  83,  102,  193,  213. 

Sabellius,  171,  208. 

Sacraments,  xiii,  60,  95 — 96,  124, 

179,  214,  253,  255—256. 
Saintonge,  155. 

-Saluz,  Philipp,  90,  94,  95,  183. 
.Saluzzo,  104. 
Salvation,  without  knowing  Christ, 

130. 
Salvetti,  Camilla,  180,  185. 
Samosatenianism,  188. 
Sampson,  Thomas,  62,  64,  114,  153, 

154,  164. 
Sand,   Chri staph  von  den,  82,   147, 

181  n.,  182,  208,  209,  214. 


Sandwich,  134. 

Sandys,  Edwin,  157. 

San  Frediano,  convent  of,   76,  loi, 

118. 
Saragossa,  84  «. 
Sarravia,  Adriano  de,  133. 
Satan,  147,  201,  245,  247. 
Savonarola,   Girolamo,   2,   71,   75, 

137,  138,  143. 
Savoy,  99. 
Saxony,  vi. 
Saxo-Scandinavian    Protestantism, 

3-  4- 
Say  and  Seale,  Viscount,  196. 
Sayoits,  Edouard,  yj  n. 
Schelhorn,  Johann    Georg,    99  ;/., 

146  «. 
Schleiermacher,    Friedrich   Daniel 

Ernst,  222,  223. 
Schlestadt,  180. 
Schlichting,  Jonas,  200. 
Schmidt,  Charles,  44. 
Scholl,  Carl  Wilhelm,  36,63;;.,  65  w. 
Scholten,  Jan  Hendrik,  4  «.,  17  «., 

222  n. 
Sch-ivalb,  Maurice,  13. 
Schweitzer,  Alexander,  i^on. 
Scilly  Isles,  202. 
Scotism,  139,  150,  178. 
Scripture,   xv,  35,   50,   59,  64,  82, 

135,  218. 
Seez,  the,  90. 

Sepp,  Christiaan,  136,  157 «.,  158;/. 
Servetans,  15. 
Serveto  y  Reves,  Miguel,  ix,  2,  4, 

6,  7,  10,    12,  16;  introduced  the 

word  Trinitarian,   I'jn.;  56,81, 

84 — 86,   95,  97,    102 — 103,    108, 

109,  133  «•,  138,  148,  171,  192  «., 

193,  199,  217,  218,  227. 
vServetus,  see  Serveto  y  Reves. 
Setzer,  Johann,  84. 
Seville,  133-. 155; 
.Sforza,  Massimiliano,  88. 
Sherlock,  William,  207. 
Sicily,  84,  141  n. 
Siena,  76,  no,  138 — 139,  142,  179, 

180. 
Sigismundus  Augustus,  of  Poland, 

6«. 


288 


SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH    UNITARIANISM. 


Silesia,  204. 

Simler,  Josiah,  159,  163. 

Simons,  Menno,  36,  47,  51. 

Six  Articles,  32,  58. 

Sisto  v.,  35. 

Skinner,  Daniel,  210  ;^. 

Slavkov,  109. 

Smithfield,  ix,  49,  129. 

Socini,  A.,  no,  180. 

Socinianism,  ix,  xii,  4,  18 — 19,  21, 
38,  85,  96,  130,  150,  174,  178— 
198,  200,  211 — 212,  213,  214, 
215,  217,  219,  222,  223  —  224, 
225,  270 — 272. 

Soglio,  94«.,  97,  114,  130. 

Somerset,  Lord  Protector,  120, 
I52«. 

Soncinati,  the,  80. 

Soubise,  Michelle  de,  77. 

South,  Robert,  207. 

Southampton,  134. 

Southern  races,  i  ;  refugees,  x. 

Southwell,  P.,  239,  243. 

Sozini,  Lelio  Francesco  Maria,  ix, 
56,  69,  70,  86,  92,  96,  103,  106, 
107,  112, 114,  149, 163 — 164,  174 
— 175,  178 — 198,  269 — 270. 

Sozzi,  the,  179. 

Sozzini,  Alessandro,  179. 

Sozzini,  Bartolomeo,  179. 

Sozzini,  Camillo,  92,  97,  180. 

Sozzini,  Celso  Ascanio  Pietro  Maria, 
180,  187. 

Sozzini,  Cornelio,  180. 

Sozzini,  Elzbieta,  189. 

Sozzini,  Fausto  Paulo,  10,  17,  18, 
19,  85?;.,  150,  163 — 164,  175, 
178 — 198,  206,  208,  223,  224, 
225,  226,  228 — 229. 

Sozzini,  Mariano,  il  vecchio,  179. 

Sozzini,  Mariano,  il  giovane,  179 — 

180,  182  «. 
Sozzini,  Porzia,  180. 
Sozzini,   the,    4,   76,   81,    97,    136, 

199,  207,  224. 
Spain,  vi,  i,  2.  162,  199. 
Spanish  Church,  London,  127,  132 

—133.  156. 
Spanish  Protestants,  3,  217. 
Spanish  Reformers,  2. 


Spanish  refugees,  Italy,  loi — 102. 

Spanish  Unitarians,  ix,  225. 

Spears,  Robert,  26«.,  225  n. 

Spiritus  Belga,  see  Martini. 

Stafford,  Lady,  156. 

Stampa,  94  n. 

Stancaro,  Francesco,  7,  16,  81,  95, 

96,  146. 
State  Papers,  Calendar  of, Ed.  VI., 'JO. 
Steeple  Bumpstead,  33,  231. 
Stegmann,  Joachim,  196. 
St.  Paul's,  133,  157. 
Strangers'  Church,  Geneva,  249 — 

250. 
Strangers'  Church,  London,  viii,  49, 

50,  60,  61—62,  63,  65 — 66,  67, 

115  — 136,    157,   164,    172,   178, 
199,  217,  236—243,  249—251. 

Strangers'  Church,  Strassburg,  249 

— 250. 
Strassburg,  47,  53,  54,  56,  57,  58, 

62,  72,  84;;.,  91  n.,  99,  loi,  no, 

113 — 114,   116,    118 — 119,    146, 

164,  180,  249,  250. 
Strickler,  yoha?m,  25 1. 
Strdhlin,  Ernest,  209  n. 
Struve,  Burckhardt  Gotthelf,  1 74  n. 
Strype,  John,   2,%  38,   Son.,  don., 

116  n.,    117  «.,    118  w.,    120;/., 
125  ;?.,    126  «.,    127  n.,    129  n., 

132  «•,    133  «•>    134  «•-    136  /'; 

156 «.,  171,  172,  231,  257,  259. 
Stuckey,  Nathaniel,  203,  204. 
Stuppani,  the,  in  n. 
Sturm,  Johann,  52,  n8. 
Subordinationism,  '  94,    130,     148, 

150.  214. 
Suffolk,  Duke  of,  253,  256. 
Sulzer,  Simon,  no. 
Siis,  94. 
Swiss  Reformers,   xi,    22,  52 — 53, 

55,  58,  63,  n2,  181. 
Swiss,  the,  88. 
Switzerland,  70,  83,  99,   102,   103, 

131,    137,    140,    148,    168,    174, 

199,  218. 
Syinbolum   QtiiaiDiqiie,  8  ;    origin, 

9;  authority,  16;   17,  24,  31,  33, 

39.   63 — 64,  67,    108,   205,  208, 

218,  219,  226. 


INDEX. 


289 


Syinhohim  Romamun,  31,  34«.,  79, 

106,     191,     193,     211,    245,    247, 
266—268. 

Taine,    Hippolyte    Adolphe,    I  n., 
148;;.,  210. 

Tait,  Archibald  Campbell,  127  «. 

Tauler,  Johann,  142  «. 

Teglio,  92. 

Telio,  Silvestro,  104,  164,  247,  248. 

Temple  Church,  133,  157. 

Terenziano,  Giulio,  70,  76,  91  ii., 
114,  116,  119,  125. 

Tertullianus,  Quint.  Sept.  Flor.,  24, 
220. 

Teutonic  nations,  vi,  i,  217. 

Theobald,  John,  23. 

Theodicy,  138. 

Theodotus,  219,  220. 

Theofilo,  Massimo,  75. 

Theologia  Gennanica,  50  «■ 

Theriot,  212. 

Thirty-nine  Articles,  33,  34,  65. 

Thorpe,  William,  27. 

Thurgau,  56. 

Ticino,  the,  87,  88. 

Tillotson,  John,  204,  205,  208. 

Tirano,  92,  95. 

Tiziano,   of  Val  Tellina,    94 — 95, 
96. 

Toledo,  Pedro  de,  141. 

Toleration,  51,  97. 

Toll  in,  Henri,  84;/.,  133  «.,  227  w. 

Tomassini,  Bernardino,  ix,  xi,  2,  4, 
33,  48;/.,  49«.,  60,  70,  74,  75, 
78,  Si,  82,91,  94,  97,  100 — loi, 
103,  106,  107 — 109,  III,  113 — 
117,  119,  121  «.,  125,  126,  130, 
^^36, 137 — 160, 161, 163, 171, 173, 
178,  179,  180,  182,  1S3,  186,  190, 
193,  194,  199,  217,  223,  224,  227 
— 228,    229,    243 — 244,    261 — 
264. 
Toniola,  Giovanni,  1 1 1 «. 
Toniola,  Giovanni  (the  son),  112  n. 
Tonstall,  Cuthbert,  231. 
Torriani,  the,  70. 

ToJilinin,  Joshua,  39  «. 

Toulouse,  84  «. 

Tradition,  xiv,  25;  Papal,  50. 


Traheron,  Bartholomew,  53. 

Transylvania,  229. 

Transylvanian  Unitarians,  19,  I73«., 

179,  189,  199,  225. 
Traona,  96. 

Trechscl,  Friedrich,  6  n.,  7,  48  «., 
56  ;^,  57«.,  79«.,  81  «.,  86«., 
94  n.,  95  «.,  96  «.,  97  «.,  98  «., 
103  «.,  104  «.,  109  «.,  182,  183  w., 
186 «.,  191  «.,  I94«.,  244. 
Tremellio,   Emanuele,   70,    76,   80, 

117,  118,  119. 
Treviso,  77  «.,  78. 
Trienta,  78,  162,  264,  265. 
Trijpmaaker,  Jan,  44. 
Trinitas,  first  use  of  word,  220. 
Trinitarian,  name,  rejected  by  Cal- 
vin, ij  n.;  worship,  viii. 
Trinity,  6,  7,  24,  34,  37,  51,  57,  6y, 
80,97 — 98,    112,128 — 131,   135, 
171,  178,  181,  196,  218,  219,  220, 
223,226,  227,244 — 245,  252,  254, 
255;  Bidle,  201;  Calvin,  16 — 17, 
22;  Castellio,  145;  Clarke,  208; 
Corranus,  158;  Erasmus,  41 — 43, 
220 — 221,   232 — 235;   Farel,   15, 
221;  Gribaldo,l03;  first  Helvetic 
Confession,   55 ;  Italian  Church, 
Geneva,    245 — 248  ;    Joris,    47  ; 
Laski,  123  ;  Locke,  21 1 ;  Luther, 
12 — 14,  221 ;  Melanchthon,  10 — 
12;  Milton,  272 — 274;  Niclaes, 
48;  Ochino,  144,  152,262 — 264; 
Penn,  207 — 208;  Racovian  Cate- 
chism,   271 — 272;     Schleierma- 
cher,   222 ;    Scripture,  xiii — xiv ; 
Serveto,  84 — 85  ;  L.  Sozini,  269 
— 270;    F.    Sozzini,    192 — 193  ; 
Tiziano,  94;  Valdes,  83. 
Tritheism,  103,  193. 
Tubingen,  91,  103. 
Tudela,  84  n. 
Turin,  33,  72. 
Turner,  William,  120. 
Tuscany,  100,  126. 
Turriano,  Girolamo,  97. 
Tyndal,  William,  58. 

Ulmis,  Johannes  ab,  55  ;/. 
Uniformity  Act,  203,  205. 


U 


290 


SOURCES   OF   ENGLISH   UNITARIANISM. 


Unipersonality  of  God,  viii,  xiii, 
90,  193,  208,  209,  215,  217,  225, 
226,  270 — 274. 

Unitarian  Cliristianity,v,  xii;  essen- 
tial principles,  23;  44,  112,  171, 
179,  214,  217,  225,  226,  230. 

Unitarianism,  English,  vi;  several 
sources,  vii;  19 — 20;  possible 
sources,  21  ;  57,  63,  65,  138, 
195,  198,  199 — 216. 

Unitarian  name,  229. 

Unitarians,  6 ;  English,  19 — 20;  35, 
50,  51  ;  in  Strangers'  Church, 
127 — 129;  229. 

Unitarian  Tracts,  the,  206 — 207, 
216  «.,  217. 

United  States,  225. 

Universalists,  216. 

Usoz  i  Rio,  Lids,  2  n. 

Utenhove,  Jan,  61?/.,  65,  II9  «., 
131  n.,  236. 

Vadian,  Joachim,  l^n.,  99 «.,   106 

71.,  143;;. 
Val  Bregaglia,  85,  87,  90,  91,  92, 

99,  114. 
Val  di  Lugano,  87. 
Val  di  Poschiavo,  85,  91,  94,  95. 
Val  Maggia,  87. 
Val  Tellina,  83,  85,  87,  88,  91,  92, 

95,  99,  109,  114,  127,  130. 
Valdes,  Alfonso  de,  73. 
Valdes,  Juan  de,  ix,  xi,  2,  73 — 75, 

81 — 84,    91,    108,    117  «.,    139, 

141— 142,  14s,  149,  243,  244. 
Valentinianism,  51  «.,  135 «.,  257, 

259- 
Valera,  Cipriano  de,  133. 
Valla,  Lorenzo,  71,  79. 
Vane,  Sir  Henry,  201. 
Va7-illas,  Antoine,  \^2n. 
Vauville,  see  Fran9ois. 
Velsius,  Justus,  5o«.,  136. 
Venice,  heresy  at,  \2;  69,  72,  75  "•> 

77 — 78,  81,  84,  85,  91,  100,  126, 

137,  142,  150,  iSi,  182,  186 «. 
Vergerio,  Giambattista,  77. 
Vergerio,    Pierpaolo,    "Jly   91,   96, 

114,  147. 
Vermigli,  Pietro  Martire,  60,  70, 


74,    75,    76,    78,    81,    91  «.,    lOT, 

106,  107, 113,  115 — 119, 125, 130, 
132,  143,  144,  146,  147,  148, 
I53".;  154,  i59>  163. 

Vermigli,  Stefano,  75. 

Versasca  family,  109  n. 

Vestments,  59. 

Vicenza,  77;/.,  78,  81,85,  no;  Con- 
ferences, 86,  147,  181 — 182. 

Vicosoprano,  91,  94  «. 

Vienna,  180. 

Vienne,  102. 

Vinet,  Alexandre,  229. 

Viret,  Pierre,  143  «. 

Vitells,  Christopher,  48 — 49. 

Voet,  Gisbert,  219. 

Voltaire,  Francois  Marie  Arouet  de, 
208,  212,  213. 

Voltatura,  72. 

Waaden,  Jan,  44. 

Waddiiighm,  Charles,  162,  165  «. 

Waldenses,  I,  2,  24,  72,  88. 

Wallace,  Robert,  20,  38  n.,  39  n., 
48  n.,  57  «.,  173  n.,  195  n.,  197  ;;., 
201  «.,  203  «.,  204  n.,  205  n., 
206  «.,  207  «.,  209  «.,  211  «., 
212  n.,  215  n.,  216  «. 

Wallis,  John,  207. 

Walloon  Church,  Antwerp,  1 56 ; 
Canterbury,  127  ;  Glastonbury, 
127;  London,  125,  134;  Low 
Countries,  133;  Norwich,  124;/., 

134—135- 
Walloon  refugees  in  England,  118, 

122. 
Warszaw,  120. 

Webberley,  John,  196,  loon. 
Werdmiiller,  Jakob,  90. 
Westminster  Assembly,  173 — 174. 
W^estphal,  Joachim,  108. 
Whichcote,  Benjamin,  205, 
Whitehead,  George,  207. 
Whittington  College,  28. 
Wiclif,  John,  xiv,  23,  24 — 26,  30, 

31,  33,  67,  152. 
IVifen,  Beniaiiiin  Barron,  2n.,'j'^n. 
Will,  doctrine  of  the,  32. 
William  HL,  206. 
Wilno,  195. 


INDEX. 


291 


Wimpheling,  Jakob,  180. 
Wiszowaty,  Andrzej,  181. 
Wittenberg  University,  72,  220. 
Wolff,  Johann,    162,    166,    167  «., 
168  «.,  185,  186,  192,  269 — 270. 
Wolsey,  Thomas,  52. 
Worship,  simplicity  of,  59. 
Worthington,  John,  205. 
Wotton-under-Edge,  201. 
Wyngins,  Go  vert,  134. 

Yarmouth,  120. 

Zanchi,  Girolamo,  58,  93,  114,  132, 

164,  188. 
Zannoni,  the,  IIO. 
Zaslaw,  195. 
Zeus,  \'ii. 
Zimmern,  Helen,  75  ?e.,  138  «. 


Zurich,  43,  52,  S3,  54,  56,  58,  62, 
90,  91,  97,  98,  99,  105—109,  no, 
114,  117,  143,  146,  149,  150,  151, 
154,  158,  163,  164,  181,  182,  183, 
186,  194,  244. 

Zurich  Letters,  /\f)7i.,  50«.,  53/-'., 
54M.,  55  «.,  59«.,  60;/.,  63  «., 
64;/.,  114;/.,  ii6«.,  117//.,  ii8«., 
119//.,  121;?.,  123;^,  i24«.,  128 «., 
131 ;;.,  I53«.,  154//.,  157 «.,  I59«., 
164  «.,  194;/.,  254. 

Zwick,  Johann,  15. 

Zwingli,  Ilulderich,  4;  Sabellian, 
17;  43.  52,  53,54,  55,63,72,7^, 
93,  105. 

Zwiligli,  Hulderich  (son  of  the  Re- 
former), 108. 

Zwinglians,  225. 

Zwinglio-CalvinianProtestantism.4. 


Errata. 

P.  65,  line  ig,for  Utenhoven  r^a(/ Utenhove. 
P.  88  n.,  for  Rosio  de  Porta  read  Rosi  da  Porta. 
P.  122,  line  i?>,for  du  Rivier  read  La  Riviere. 
P.  122  n.,for  Kerkraad's  read  Kerkraad's. 


C.  Green  &  Son,  Printers,  178,  Strand. 


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