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These latter, of course, differed essentially from the Arians of the earlier part of the century. Neither can they be properly termed Socinians, for Socinus, as Horsley justly remarks, 'though he denied the original divinity of Our Lord, was nevertheless a worshipper of Christ, and a strenuous asserter of his right to worship.
It was left to others, he adds, 'to build upon the foundation which Socinus laid, and to bring the Unitarian doctrine to the goodly form in which the present age beholds it. Indeed, the early Socinians would have denied to Dr. Priestley and his friends the title of Christians, and would have excommunicated them from their Society.
This work is specially noteworthy as one of the first English books to use the name 'Unitarian, though the use is here so free and without apology or explanation that we must suppose it had already attained a certain vogue before 1687, the date of the book. The title is A Brief History of the Unitarians, called also Socinians.
Self-preservation compelled him to be suspicious and despotic, and also to prohibit the exercise of the Catholic worship, and to curtail the religious rights of the Quakers, Socinians, and Jews. The continual plottings and political disaffections of these parties forced him to rule on a system to which he was not at first inclined.
It is probable that, at another time, his work would have been hailed by good Churchmen as a triumphant answer to the Socinians and Sabellians. But, unhappily, in his zeal against Socinians and Sabellians, he used expressions which might be construed into Tritheism.
On this ground Whitaker might have erected a most formidable battery, that would have played on the very camp and battle-array of the Socinians, that is, of those who consider Christ only as a teacher of important truths.
Williams, who is now an aged man, more than fourscore, was the founder of the Province, and is held in great esteem by the people, who be of all sects and persuasions, as the Government doth not molest any in worshipping according to conscience; and hence you will see in the same neighborhood Anabaptists, Quakers, New Lights, Brownists, Antinomians, and Socinians, nay, I am told there be Papists also.
Though constantly engaged in theological controversy with Deists, Jews, Socinians, Presbyterians, Papists, and Quakers, he found time to be one of the most voluminous political writers of his age. Of all the nonjuring clergy he was the best qualified to discuss constitutional questions.
Hawker says, and I say, that this is not, cannot be, what Christ means by faith, which, to the misfortune of the Socinians, he always demands as the condition of a miracle, instead of looking forward to it as the natural effect of a miracle. How came it that Peter saw miracles countless, and yet was without faith till the Holy Ghost descended on him?
The alternative was now clearly set before English Churchmen 'Choose ye whom ye will serve; if Christ be God, follow him; if not, be prepared to give up all notions of a creature worship. The Unitarians at the close of the eighteenth century all took their stand on this issue. Such rhapsodies as those which were indulged in by early Socinians as well as Arians were now unheard.
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