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But his enemies got him into prison again at last, and there a blameless and pious life fell a victim to the power of bigotry. One may regret a life thus spent and sacrificed; but only so has the cause of free thought been gradually won. Bidle has also been thought to have been the translator of the famous Racovian Catechism, first published in Polish at Racow in 1605, and in Latin in 1609.
But these Christians, who preferred their religion to their sect, Bidle should have known were too few to count. Far inferior writers to Bidle were Ebiezer Coppe and Laurence Clarkson: nor, if religious madness could be so stamped out, can we complain of the House of Commons for condemning their works to the flames.
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.
For this he was brought before the magistrates at Gloucester on the charge of heresy ; and from that time till his death from gaol-fever in 1662, at the age of forty-two, Bidle seldom knew what liberty was. It was soon after his first imprisonment that he published his Twelve Arguments. Though the House had this burnt by the hangman, it was so popular that it was reprinted the same year.
Happily, Oliver Cromwell and his Independents were conscious of considerable variety of opinion in their own ranks, and apparently the Protector secured Best's liberation. It was certainly he who saved another and more memorable Unitarian from the extreme penalty. This man was John Bidle, a clergyman and schoolmaster of Gloucester.
Bidle, a tailor's son, must take high rank among the martyrs of learning.
There are six volumes, containing under this title a large number of pamphlets and treatises, for and against the new views, published about this period. It is the first considerable body of Unitarian literature. Its promoter was Thomas Firmin, a disciple of John Bidle, on whose behalf he interceded with Oliver Cromwell, though himself but a youth at the time.
Whether Bidle was the translator or not, he must have been actuated by good intentions in what he wrote; for he says of the Twofold Catechism, that it "was composed for their sakes that would fain be mere Christians, and not of this or that sect, inasmuch as all the sects of Christians, by what names soever distinguished, have either more or less departed from the simplicity and truth of the Scripture."
The year following the House passed an ordinance making a denial of the Trinity a capital offence; in spite of which Bidle published his Confession of Faith touching the Holy Trinity, according to Scripture, and his Testimonies of Different Fathers regarding the same, the last of which manifests considerable learning.
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