Unitarianism | Page 5

translated into different languages, and early found its way into England. James I promptly had it burned, despite the fact that the Latin version was dedicated to himself! Other books and pamphlets followed, and even if we abate something as due to the exaggerating fears and suspicions of the authorities, there would seem to have been no time as the seventeenth century went on when Socinian literature was not widely circulated here, albeit at first in secret.
Into the details of this literature there is no need to go; it is sufficient to observe its outstanding features. They correspond in the main to the temper of the master mind, Socinus, a man who in the absence of imaginative genius displayed remarkable talent as a reasoner, and a liberal disposition considerably in advance of his times. The later Socinian writings, preserved in eight large volumes issued by the 'Polish Brethren' (Amsterdam, 1666), exhibit in addition the results of much diligent research and scholarship, in which the wide variety of opinion actually held by the Fathers and later Church authorities is proved, and the moral is drawn. In the presence of so much fluctuating teaching upon the abstruser points of the creeds was it not desirable to abandon the pretence of a rounded system complete in every detail? Would it not he better to simplify the faith--in other and familiar words, to reduce the number of 'essentials'? In order to discover these essentials, surely the inquirer must turn to the Bible, the record of that miraculous revelation which was given to deliver man's unassisted reason from the perils of ignorance and doubt. At the same time, man's reason itself was a divine gift, and the Bible should be carefully and rationally studied in order to gather its real message. As the fruit of such study the Socinians not only propounded an Anti-trinitarian doctrine derived from Scripture, but in particular emphasized the arguments against the substitutionary atonement as presented in the popular Augustinian scheme and philosophically expounded in Anselm's Cur Deus Homo. Socinus himself must be credited with whatever force belongs to these criticisms on the usual doctrine of the death of Christ, and it may be fairly said that most of the objections advanced in modern works on that subject are practically identical with those of three centuries ago.
Now there is good reason for believing that towards the end of the seventeenth century this Socinian literature really attracted much attention in England, and probably with considerable effect. But as a matter of fact no English translation of any part of it was made before John Bidle's propagandist activity in the middle of the century, and we have the explicit testimony of Bidle himself and most of the earlier Unitarians that they were not led into their heresy by foreign books. It was the Bible alone that made them unorthodox.
A famous illustration of this is the case of John Milton (1608-74). In 1823 a long-forgotten MS. of his was found in a State office at Westminster, and two years later it was published under the editorship of Dr. Sumner, afterwards Bishop of Winchester. The work is entitled A Treatise of Christian Doctrine. It was a late study by the poet, laboriously comparing texts and pondering them with a mind prepared to receive the verdict of Scripture as final, whether in agreement with orthodoxy or not.
The most ardent of Milton's admirers, and even the most eager Unitarian, must find the book a trial; but the latter can at least claim the author of Paradise Lost as an Anti-trinitarian, and the former may solace himself by noticing that here, as in all the rest, Milton's soul 'dwelt apart.' He emphatically denies that it was the works of 'heretics, so called,' that directed and influenced his mind on the subject. We may notice here the interesting fact that another great mind of that age, Sir Isaac Newton, has left evidence of his own defection from the orthodox view; and his correspondent John Locke, whose views appear to have been even more decided, is only less conspicuous on this point because his general services to breadth and liberality of religious fellowship are more brilliantly striking.
Locke's Plea for Toleration is widely recognized as the deciding influence, on the literary side, which secured the passage of the Toleration Act in 1689. Deferring for the moment further allusion to the position created by this Act, we must at once observe the scope of one of Locke's works which is not so popularly known. This is his Reasonableness of Christianity, which with his rejoinders to critics makes a considerable bulk in his writings. In pursuance of the aim to 'reduce the number of essentials' and to discover that in the Christian religion which is available for simple people--the majority of mankind--Locke examines