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Updated: June 14, 2025
As to religion in Poland, they deny Christ to be the Messiah, or that the Messiah has come in the flesh. And as to their Protestants, they are the followers of Laelius Socinus, who denied our Saviour's divinity; and have no concern about the divine inspiration of the Holy Ghost.
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.
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.
On the other hand, many were called Socinians who really believed far less than Socinus and the foreign Socinians did.
Socinus thought that this principle could be realized without abolishing the State Church. He contemplated a close union between the State and the prevailing Church, combined with complete toleration for other sects. But there is another and simpler method, that of separating Church from State and placing all religions on an equality.
And truly, when I compare the former enemies to Christianity, such as Socinus, Hobbes, and Spinosa, with such of their successors, as Toland, Asgil, Coward, Gildon, this author of the "Rights," and some others; the church appeareth to me like the sick old lion in the fable, who, after having his person outraged by the bull, the elephant, the horse, and the bear, took nothing so much to heart, as to find himself at last insulted by the spurn of an ass.
In fine, he shews that the opinion of Socinus is repugnant to Scripture, which tells us that Christ's death has reconciled us to God, according to the expressions of St. Paul, that he died for us, and that by his death our sins are expiated.
Socinus joined this group, and during the latter half of the sixteenth century effected much improvement among them, organizing their congregations, establishing schools, promoting a Unitarian literature. The educational work thus begun achieved great success; but in his own lifetime Socinus met with fierce opposition and even personal violence.
The Barrister has just as much right to call his religion Christianity, as to call flour and water plum pudding: yet we all admit that in plum pudding both flour and water do exist. Ib. p. 7. Socinus can have no claim upon my veneration: I have never concerned myself with what he believed nor with what he taught &c.
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.
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