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Updated: May 4, 2025
The whole delusion of the Anti-Trinitarians arises out of this, that they apply the property of imaginable matter in which A. is, that is, can only be imagined, by exclusion of B. as the universal predicate of all substantial being. Ib. p. 357. And our English Unitarians have been still refining upon the Socinian scheme, and have brought it still nearer to Sabellianism.
It is probable, however, that under any circumstances the discussion would have arisen. Before the publication of Bishop Bull's first great work in 1685, no controversial treatise on either side of the question none, at least, of any importance was published in this country, though there had of course been individual anti-Trinitarians in England long before that time.
The outrageous cruelty of Calvin towards the Anti-trinitarian Servetus, whom he caused to be burned at Geneva in 1553, affords a glaring instance of this inconsistency. But a sad proof is given that, about that time, even Anti-trinitarians themselves were not always tolerant. Among the countries where the orthodox dogma was most freely questioned was Transylvania, adjacent to Hungary proper.
As plausible as this project seems, there may a dangerous design lurk under it: Nothing can be more notorious, than that the Atheists, Deists, Socinians, Anti-trinitarians, and other subdivisions of freethinkers, are persons of little zeal for the present ecclesiastical establishment: Their declared opinion is for repealing the Sacramental Test; they are very indifferent with regard to ceremonies; nor do they hold the jus divinum of Episcopacy.
Therefore they cannot for a moment allow to disbelievers in the Trinity the title of Unitarians, so as to imply that the latter monopolise the grand truth that 'the Lord our God is one Lord. They consent reluctantly to adopt the term Unitarian because no other name has been invented to describe the stage at which anti-Trinitarians had arrived before the close of the eighteenth century.
One day my attention was arrested by a sentence in his defence of the doctrine of the Trinity. He complained that Anti-Trinitarians unjustly charged Trinitarians with self-contradiction. It crossed my mind very forcibly, that, if that was all, the Athanasian Creed had gratuitously invented an enigma.
In England a number of Anti-trinitarians suffered burning in the sixteenth century, being usually, but loosely, described as 'Arians. The last two in England who died by fire as heretics were men of this class. In March, 1612, Bartholomew Legate was burned at Smithfield, and a month later Edward Wightman had the same fate at Lichfield.
This is partly owing to the nature of the topic discussed, but partly also to the difference between the mental calibre of the disputants in this and the other controversies. We have at least to thank the Deists and the Anti-Trinitarians for giving occasion for the publication of some literary masterpieces.
In England, the Trinitarian question began to be agitated in the later half of the seventeenth century. Possibly the interest in the subject may have been stimulated by the migration into England of many anti-Trinitarians from Poland, who had been banished from the country by an Order of Council in 1660. At any rate, the date synchronises with the re-opening of the question in this country.
But a few general remarks in conclusion seem requisite. And first as to the nomenclature. The name claimed by the anti-Trinitarians has, for want of a better, been perforce adopted in the foregoing pages. But in calling them Unitarians, we must do so under protest.
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