The record of the last half-century is, accordingly, that of a witness, not an annalist. It does not give so full a register of events as I wished; but it aims to include all the data and the personalities which are essential to the understanding of this period in the denominational life. It is supplemented, from my own point of view, by a more extended study, written out during the time of my service in the Harvard Divinity School, and published under the title "Our Liberal Movement in Theology" (Boston, Roberts Brothers). In this connection special attention should be called to Dr. G. E. Ellis's "Half-Century of the Unitarian Controversy" (Boston, 1857), and to the biographies of Channing, Parker, and Gannett, by W. H. Channing, John Weiss, O. B. Frothingham, and W. C. Gannett. For the remoter period I would especially refer to Professor Bonet-Maury's "Early Sources" (London, 1884), and to articles in the "Theological Review" and the Encyclopædia Britannica," by Rev. 66 Alexander Gordon. CAMBRIDGE, MASS., J. H. ALLEN. January, 1894. CONTENTS. CHAP. I.-ITALIAN REFORMERS.-Waldenses; Anabaptists.-Reform in Italy. The Brothers Valdes.-Valdes in Naples.-Circle of the Reformers."The Benefit of Christ."-Doctrine of Good Works.— Ochino. Queen Mary's Prisons.-Ochino's Later Life.-Doctrine CHAP. II. SERVETUS.-The Reformers on Servetus.-Servetus and Melanchthon.-Conferences at Augsburg.-Melanchthon's "Top- ics."-" De Trinitatis Erroribus."-Servetus in France.-The Pagnini Bible.-" Christianismi Restitutio."-Arrest and Trial of Servetus. His Martyrdom.-Its Motive.-The Doctrine of Serve- CHAP. III.-SOCINUS.-Lælius Socinus.-Faustus Socinus.-The Task of Socinus.-The Situation in Switzerland.-The Name "Unitarian."-Socinus in Poland.-The Last Days of Socinus.- The Writings of Socinus.-The Doctrine of Socinus CHAP. IV.—THE POLISH BRETHREN.-The Reformation in Poland. -Antitrinitarian Confession in Poland.-The House of Jagello. -Polish Diet of 1573.-Henry of Valois.—Socinus in Poland.— The Socinians.-The Jesuit Policy.-Cossack Revolt.-Death or Exile (1658-60).-Last of the Polish Brethren.-The "Racovian CHAP. V.-TRANSYLVANIA.-Magyars, Saxons, Wallachs.-The Szek- lers. Reformation in Transylvania.-John Sigismund.-Francis David -Edict of Religious Freedom, 1658.-Death of John Sigis- mund, 1571.-David and Blandrata.-Political Changes.-Austrian Barbarities.-Bethlen Gabor; Sabbatarian Controversy.—Michael St. Abraham.-Restoration of 1791.-The Present Situation. . . . . . CHAP. VI.-ENGLISH PIONEERS.-Persecution in England.-William Chillingworth.-Attack on Independency.-Cromwell's "Arti- cles."-Baxter's "Essentials."-John Biddle.-Thomas Firmin.— William Penn.-Toleration Act.-Bull, Bury, Wallis.-William PAGE CHAP. VII.-UNITARIAN DISSENT IN ENGLAND.-Presbyterian, In- dependent, Baptist.-Theophilus Lindsey.-Lindsey in London.- The Earlier Unitarian Dissent.-Joseph Priestley.-Priestley's Materialism.-Priestley in America.-Thomas Belsham.-Lant CHAP. VIII.-ANTECEDENTS IN NEW ENGLAND.-Early Covenants. -Confession of 1680.-Unitarians of the Eighteenth Century.- Whitefield and Chauncy.-The Mayhews.-Jonathan Mayhew.- Liberals in Salem.-William Bentley.-King's Chapel, Boston. -Henry Ware at Harvard College. -John Sherman.-Abiel Abbot. -The "Monthly Anthology."—John Lowell.-W. E. Channing.. 170 CHAP. IX. PERIOD OF CONTROVERSY AND EXPANSION.--Chan- ning's Baltimore Sermon.-Channing Unitarianism.-Lyman Beecher in Boston.-Representative Names.-Emerson's Resigna- tion.-Emerson's Divinity School Address.-Norton and Ripley. -Theodore Parker.-The Boston Association.-The Berry Street Conference.-Anniversary Week.-The Autumnal Convention.- CHAP. X.-THE NEW UNITARIANISM.-The Civil War: King, Eliot, THE UNITARIANS. CHAPTER I. ITALIAN REFORMERS. UNITARIANISM as now held is a late growth out of the general movement of thought that brought about the Protestant Reformation and has been working out ever since. It is wholly independent of the controversies or the heresies which appeared during the long process that developed the creed of Catholic Christendom. These may be regarded as having come to an end with the recantation of the Adoptian theory by Felix of Urgel in Catalonia in 799. The Reformers of the sixteenth century came slowly and reluctantly into conflict with the dogmatic system which for more than a thousand years had been accepted by the general consent of Christians. We have no dif ference with Rome on a single point of doctrine," said Melanchthon at Augsburg, in 1530.1 Though they had assailed the logical method of the Scholastics and avoided their doctrinal terms and distinctions as long as they could, yet, when they came to the formal defense of their own theology, they adopted and eagerly maintained (against Servetus, for example) the very forms and phrases invented 1 Dogma nullum habemus diversum ab ecclesid romaná.—“Opera," ed. Bretschneider, vol. ii., p. 170. by the medieval schools and thence grafted upon the Catholic creed. But there had been all along an undercurrent of hostility against the doctrine as well as the discipline of Rome, and the form it took was sometimes very radical. One splendid and heroic example is that of the Waldenses, "Protestants of the Alps," known in history as a distinct religious body for something more than seven hundred years, suffering through most of these years under a persecution whose unrelenting ferocity cannot be paralleled elsewhere in religious history, without the slightest approach to submission or compromise. Their own tradition connects their secession from Rome with the zeal of Claudius (Claude), the reforming bishop of Turin, a Spaniard by birth, a pupil of the heretic Felix, placed in the see of Piedmont by Louis the Pious, about 820, to contend there against superstitious practices, who showed such iconoclastic vigor as to call down the censures of the church, and to win the ill name of "Arian." (Baronius, Anno 825, lviii.) If this be so, Claudius may be taken as the connecting link between ancient and modern forms of Unitarian belief. And it is not impossible that this earliest protest against the autocracy of the Empire Church may have left a line of living descent sheltered among the southern valleys of the Alps, and have become part of the celebrated "Leonine" tradition that runs back to the days of Constantine, asserting a "gospel according to Paul" that maintained itself there independent of the hierarchy, and emerged in the general stir of thought promoted by the Crusades, when first we hear of the Albigenses and Waldenses.1 The great and premature revolt of free thought in the twelfth century—which led to the formal adoption of the 1 See my "Christian History in its Three Great Periods," vol. ii., pp. 165-167. |