Reason and Religion in late seventeenth-century England: The Politics and Theology of Radical Dissent 9780755621286, 9780755627851

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‘I apprehend a marveilous bewtie, benefit, and blessing in such a frame of spirit, which makes a man able, and willing and joyfull to cast away even long-endeered and professed opinions, when once the light has shone upon them, and discovered them to be but darknesse.’

John Goodwin, Imputatio fidei (1642), ‘to his deare brethren’1 ‘ ‘Tis not true, that we prefer our Reason before Revelation: On the contrary, Revelation being what GOD himself hath said, either immediately, or by inspired Persons; ‘tis to be preferred before the clearest Demonstration of our Reason. But because we cannot suppose, without disrespect and Injury to GOD, to his Goodness and Veracity, that he has so made us that our Faculties should be deceived, in what they clearly and distinctly perceive; and because GOD hath in Revelation frequently appealed to our Faculties, to our Understanding and Reason; therefore we conclude, that what is clearly and distinctly discerned by Reason as true or false, is so. And from thence we infer; that what is false in Reason, can never be true in Revelation, or by Revelation. So that whatsoever in Revelation doth seem to contradict Reason, can be nothing but our Blunder; our unskilful injudicious and too close Adherence to the mere Letter and Words of Revelation.’

Revd Stephen Nye, Rector of Little Hormead, Herts., A Letter of Resolution ... (?1693)2 ‘The true apostles of toleration are not those who sought protection for their own beliefs, or who had none to protect; but men to whom, irrespective of their cause, it was a political, a moral, and a theological dogma, a question of conscience involving both religion and policy. Such a man was Socinus ...’

Lord Acton, Inaugural lecture, ‘The Study of History’3

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Preface

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he origin of this study of reason and religion is twofold. In the first place, in the course of researching the study of Armenian history and language for a seminar paper for Theo van Lint, I came across William Whiston, who, together with his talented sons, produced a bilingual edition of an important late-antique Armenian text, which was printed in 1736. Whiston was Isaac Newton’s successor as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University. However, he lost his chair in 1710, and was expelled from the university, for disbelieving in the Trinity. The matter was clearly worth exploring further, and led me naturally back a couple of decades to the controversy concerning the Trinity which became acute in England in the 1690s. Interest was further awakened by two books discovered by a kind of guided chance on the shelves of the London Library: Joshua Toulmin’s History of the Protestant Dissenters (1814), with its useful chapter on the controversy, and John McLachlan’s Socinianism in Seventeenth-century England, a study of 1951 which, in the sources it covered, and the limpid clarity of its style, has not been bettered. Secondly, I became increasingly aware, in the public discussion throughout the Western world in the opening decade of the twenty-first century, of the unilateral emphasis on the value of faith: faith schools, faith communities, people of faith, a Faith Foundation. There has been little mention of reason in this (continuing) discussion, yet in previous centuries, on and off since the time of Erasmus (1466–1536), it was widely accepted that faith and reason could and maybe should coexist. Reason was seen as a concomitant of faith, giving it dignity, order, and constructive criticism. It also enabled a dialogue to take place between different faiths. By contrast, the current emphasis on the primacy and value of particular forms of belief, and dismissal of historical or comparative study, seems to spring not from genuine devotion but rather from a kind of obdurate narcissism, with a potential for violent conflict.

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After briefly examining the use and meaning of ‘reason’, I begin my history of the controversy concerning the Trinity by looking at the growth and development of rational theology and its frequent correlative, questioning the Trinity, in the early Christian centuries and, more significantly, in the years following the Protestant Reformation, when religious thought throughout Europe found new freedoms. I continue my analysis into the 1690s, when criticism of the Athanasian Trinity and open denial of it became a major source of controversy in England. However, English attitudes to religion at the time of this dispute cannot be understood without the background of anti-Trinitarian dissent, which came to the surface at the time of the English Civil War and Commonwealth; and this dissent has itself to be given a historical context which includes consideration of prominent thinkers such as Michael Servetus (1511– 53) and Faustus Socinus (1539–1604). These were not, of course, isolated figures. They existed alongside lesser-known intrepid spirits who likewise deserve some account of their actions and ideas in order to clarify and enrich the picture of radical dissent at this time. A study of the development of reason alongside religion, and of the consequent dispute within the Anglican Church over the Trinity, may seem remote and irrelevant in the twenty-first century. But those who adopted an independent line of thought were almost without exception men and women who made society more tolerant and humane, not only by insisting on the compatibility of reason and faith, but also by openly opposing persecution and compulsion on the grounds that they were contrary to the fundamentals of religious belief. They were driven by several impulses. Self-interest was one, since they were minority dissenters, and radical ones in a world that insisted on conformity. But idealism and a desire to go back to first principles were other equally powerful motivating forces. They knew that in the early days of the Christian Church there had been no inquisitions or burnings; on the contrary, a variety of beliefs and practices had been permitted around a core of essentials. They were also convinced that persecution and compulsion, besides being against the true principles of Christianity, encouraged hypocrisy and deceit, which were alien to religious values. In addition, some of them, if not all, had a deep moral impulse towards toleration and accommodation. They also rejected the concepts of predestination and original sin and thereby prepared the ground for a more gentle and nuanced view of humanity’s relation with the unseen world to emerge.

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Acknowledgements

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owe a debt of gratitude to several institutions and individuals. First I must thank the librarians of the London Library, Dr Williams’s Library, the British Library, the Bodleian Library and Harris-Manchester College (Oxford) for their constant assistance. I would like to add my local Hammersmith Public Library, but since, in the course of writing this book, an operation was being carried out to remove books from the shelves of the Reference Department, a word of sorrow would be more appropriate than a word of gratitude. I also owe a debt of gratitude to London’s two main antiquarian booksellers, for some outstanding catalogues, and to two well-known firms of auctioneers. Individuals I must thank include the late Patrick Trevor-Roper, Roger Lockyer, John Waś, John Dancy, and also my former colleague, the late Peter Croft, who conveyed his enthusiasm for the seventeenth century to me some decades ago. I am also grateful to my editor Alex Wright for advice and support, and to Andy Derkacz for invaluable technical help.

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eason has had an uncertain position within the Christian faith. Tertullian, in the third century ad, held that a religious tenet was to be believed ‘because it is absurd’. ‘What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?’ he asked.1 Augustine of Hippo held that reason had merit as a path to faith, but otherwise was of limited value, and could undermine humanity’s ability to approach God, in which case it should be discouraged: ‘the knowledge of the creature [i.e. humankind] is a kind of twilight’. He complained of those ‘who are deceived by a crude and perverse love of reason’.2 Augustine’s theological theories, of predestination and original sin, created a spirit of religious powerlessness which was not conducive to reason. Six hundred years later, Anselm felt able to grant intellect a subsidiary place: ‘I believe so that I may understand.’ Thomas Aquinas was confronted by the resurgence of Aristotle’s rational and scientific writings; his texts, of the thirteenth century, carried a message of, ‘I understand and I believe.’ Descartes, in the early seventeenth century, viewed the relationship between knowledge and faith in terms of: ‘I understand, therefore I believe.’ The England of the mid-nineteenth century witnessed a partial reversion to the spirit of earlier times. John Henry Newman declared that ‘Religion is to be approached with a submission of the understanding.’3 In seventeenth-century England reason had come to mean, most usually, a spirit of free enquiry: the exercise of human intelligence upon some form of truth or supposed truth, either religious or scientific. It indicated a preparedness not simply to accept what was given and dogmatic, but to dig deeper. Reason was seldom exalted; it was not yet seen as an unassailable high plateau of knowledge. Ultimate things were not judged as within its range. A method rather than an achievement, it owed much to Aristotle, and it was open; as William Chillingworth well expressed it, a ‘public and certain thing’. It could belong to everybody; it edged towards the status of democracy. Its importance is obvious in

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the development of science. But in religion, and the social organization and laws which were fashioned, or influenced, by faith, the implications of reasonable enquiry were significant too. It questioned dogmas, and in the context of the seventeenth century, that meant the severe Protestant doctrines, inherited from St Augustine, of predestination (which divided humanity into two absolute classes, the Elect, who would go to heaven, and the Reprobate, who would go to hell, however they conducted their lives), original sin, and the notion that good deeds are not really good without the operancy of God’s irresistible grace. The Protestant reversion to St Augustine had, despite the spirit of individual intellectual autonomy created by the Reformation, damaged the theoretical balance between reason and faith which had been Thomas Aquinas’ achievement. Luther had no time for Aquinas. The context of the word ‘reason’ has to be borne in mind. When Francis Cheynell, an extreme Calvinist Puritan, declared, ‘Deny your reason, and submit to faith: Reason tells you that there are things above reason’,4 he was voicing a return to the enveloping faith of Augustine, and using it in an attempt to smother his opponents’ views. Moreover he was using the word ‘reason’ in two different ways. ‘Reason tells you’ meant ‘enquiry tells you’. ‘Things above reason’ saw reason less as a guide than as a threatening mountain peak, possibly emerging from the clouds; it was his way of warning against the unholiness of straying from faith, reflecting the hard-line Puritan view that God’s law was not necessarily compatible with human reason. Differing views were held on the status, and even of the origin, of reason. The issue was complex: was reason created by God, or did it exist independently of the Deity? The matter had been disputed in the Middle Ages, with Fulbert of Chartres holding that God’s wisdom was independent of reason, since he had created reason along with the rest of his creation. If he so willed, could he create a world of unreason? (What would it be like?) His pupil Berengarius of Tours, however, argued that God could not act except according to the recognized methods of reason.5 Here, reason could appear as the instrument for criticizing ideas concerning divinity. The dispute resurfaced in England in the sixteenth century. In The King’s Book, Henry VIII’s key text on the Church of England, ‘natural knowledge, which is by reason’, is spoken of disparagingly, in contrast to ‘knowledge attained by faith’.6 Reason did not appear here as a department of God’s revelation. ‘Natural reason’ was held to be a lesser species. On occasion it could appear as the devil’s work. At best it was viewed as an uneasy fellow-traveller with the Deity. But the Basle-based Christian humanist Sebastian Castellio, writing in 1554, saw reason as a benevolent

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partner to the divine; it was, metaphorically speaking, God’s daughter, existing before letters and ceremonies, before the world was ... and after the world is changed and renewed she will endure and can no more be abolished than God himself ... she is ... a kind of superior and eternal word of truth always speaking.7

This language seems to look forward to John Locke. A more Platonic view appeared from the pen of Richard Hooker; in his important work, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1594), reason appeared as an emanation of the Divine Spirit; though the author seemed to be less than totally committed to this view since he cited reason as one of the methods of questioning the Divine. Leaving aside its origin – if it had one – there was a further, lesser, meaning of ‘reason’. Its primary meaning was a method of enquiry by which conclusions about the world might be drawn by valid argument from facts: a universal logical process. Its secondary, less common, meaning at the time denoted, in a curiously contradictory manner, the inner light of nature; the private apprehension of rightness which might uniquely come upon an individual. This differed from the primary meaning since it was not universal, and could not be generalized or confirmed by the deductive conclusions of others. Being private, it could not receive assent from a general agreement. ‘Reason’ was most usually used in the first, universal sense, in the context of the struggles for supremacy of reason or revelation; but examples of the second can be found in a number of cases (notably in Quaker writings), so that in discussion of reason in the seventeenth century one has to be aware of the manner in which the term is being used.8 Erasmus of Rotterdam was the exceptional theologian whose learning and approach to questions of faith created a revolution in assessing the major issues of belief of the time, and the nature of the Church itself. His life’s work was a consistent and humane criticism of dogmatism and Augustinian rigour. His wit and irony, his ability to project reasonableness and humanity within a devout context, and his determination to create fresh translations of key sacred texts, were challenges to the dry, legalistic authority of monkish ecclesiastics. Erasmus never left the Roman Church, and remained a believer in sacred mysteries, but his determination to read the New Testament in its original Greek, and to look with a clear and witty eye at worldly priests, barren self-serving institutions, and the tendency of arid spiritual laws and rigid traditions to destroy spirituality, brought about a new atmosphere, in which the opinions of the informed and of

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the creatively critical, projected in a scholarly and skilful manner, began to deflate the hitherto unchallenged authority of the religious hierarchy. In 1516 he published his version of the Greek New Testament. This was a landmark publication, but not because it was a good text. In fact, the version was often inaccurate. But it challenged the accepted Catholic text known as the Vulgate, originally translated into Latin by St Jerome. It showed that this latter was a second-hand document, not a divinely inspired direct revelation, and it opened the way to better texts. Erasmus’ work also showed up an interesting law of scholarship and religion: that careful textual criticism is a method of challenging absolutist religious authority. In effect, he was asking, ‘What is the Bible?’ Is there a balance to be discovered, between inspiration from God and the fallible writing of men?9 He showed that scriptural writings owed something to human work. This led to another question: how far were they historically determined and relative to their times? By showing that sacred texts – whether of the Hebrew Bible, or the Greek New Testament or any other religious text – have at least an element of human manufacture, the power exercised by men in the name of religion was loosened. The Trinity, in which Erasmus believed, was a key to the idea of reason in religion. Augustine had inveighed against those who disdain to start with faith, and are deceived by a love of reason; he also declared, with some anxiety, that ‘some limit must be put to the discussion’ of the topic, hoping that God would ‘take away the inclination of disputing’.10 One hundred years later, in about ad 500, Pseudo-Dionysius had declared that it could not be talked of in a context of reasonable discussion or analysis: belief in the Trinity was purely a matter of faith.11 Medieval theologians tried to find justifications, or analogies from real life, to account for it. The Reformation brought about a closer reading of Christian origins, which led to a renewed scrutiny of the doctrine. For the most part it survived (partly due to the fact that the reformers sensed that if they abandoned it the entire reform movement might lose credibility). But at the time of the Reformation there emerged a substantial number of critics and even some disbelievers in the Trinity, who based their claims on a careful reading of the Bible and the use of reason in interpreting its text. Erasmus’ work exemplified the notion of reasonable enquiry within a devout but creatively critical context. His legacy, compounded from rational scholarship, humanity, and wit, re-energized faith and led to the questioning of deference to the clergy and of automatic acceptance of half-believed doctrine. By his straightforward, simple yet intelligent faith, he created the ideal of the Christian humanist. Hugo Grotius, the great Dutch lawyer and theologian of the following century, called him ‘the

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master and teacher of the whole human race’.12 Erasmus made possible the early flowering of reason in England. When he paid his three visits to the country, and enjoyed the unique friendship of Thomas More, John Colet, William Grocyn and Thomas Linacre, rational enquiry seemed set fair, sailing on the balmy breeze of humanist scholarship. Here was a Renaissance ideal of reason: a spiritual search for better meanings, and better understanding of languages and texts within a critical but devout atmosphere, held together by friendship; a preparedness to look enquiringly at monkishness and clerical high-handedness, as well as at Christian origins and texts. Learning, friendship and a sense of spiritual values seemed set to overturn crabbed and arid dogma, enforced belief, dead religious forms, barbaric and punitive theology and mechanical devotions. But this was not to be – at least, not yet. Erasmus’ model for spiritual humanity vanished from Europe for almost a century following his death, owing to the religious wars and the locked spirit which prevailed in the wake of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. But it was too strong to vanish entirely, and the humane individuals who greeted its re-emergence in the early seventeenth century paid homage to the man of Rotterdam. The insecurities of the Reformation had brought in the spirit of defensiveness. The language which appeared in The King’s Book (correctly known as A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition of any Christen Man) indicated a virtual exclusion of reason, which forced Erasmus’ theology of enquiry into a lengthy hiding: ‘Here man leaneth not to his natural knowledge which is by reason, but leaneth to the knowledge of faith, as Isaiah saith – “Unless ye believe ye shall not understand.”’13 Natural knowledge, and its method, reasonable enquiry, were at this time considered irrelevant to faith. Thomas Cartwright, ‘the progenitor of English Presbyterianism’ and sometime Professor of Divinity at Cambridge University, before falling foul of the university’s complex statutes, declared in Queen Elizabeth I’s reign that the Bible was an infallible book, not dependent on Church authority or the reason of mankind, but manifest, shining by its own light. It did not ask for an enquiry by human reason, but ‘humble submission to its laws’.14 The religious spirit that elevated faith above reason, and looked for straightforward obedience to laws, was strengthened by the Protestant genius of John Calvin at Geneva. Calvin’s Geneva became driven by fierce and militant faith; the regime appeared secular, but Calvin’s unbending will, out of touch with the concept of love found in the Gospels, was at the heart of all decisions that counted. The laws against simple pleasures were bizarre, and the machinery against dissidents such as Jacques Gruet,

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who sketched an unflattering picture of the leader and displayed it, and was beheaded after torture as a result, and Michael Servetus, who denied the Trinity and was burned at the stake, was as intolerant and barbaric as the Inquisition. Calvin’s theology was centred around the Augustinian notion of predestination: that one class of human beings were for all time chosen for heaven – they were the Elect – and that nothing that they did, however bad, would set them on the path for hell. The other and much larger group, the Reprobate, were by the same token chosen since the beginning of time for hell, and nothing that they could do – no life of blameless Christian virtue – could alter that ineluctable fact. At the same time Calvinism stressed humanity’s unrelieved sinfulness, focusing on the notion of the pervasiveness of original sin, and the entire dependence of humanity, wallowing in the mud of wickedness, on the steady and predetermined will of the Almighty. Despite its uncompromising severity and even inhumanity, and (in Sir John Neale’s phrase) its ‘inquisitorial moral and religious discipline’, Calvin’s form of Protestantism had the capacity to create fervent belief in the hearts of men and women; so that, when the Roman Catholic Church would seek to employ crushing military countermeasures, Protestants found that they had the power within themselves to withstand whatever assault or blandishment was proffered. Gradually in England, however, the picture changed, even before the crises of the 1580s. In the universities, the defensive and driven spirit of Calvinism started to weaken in the 1570s. A Spanish Protestant, with Erasmian leanings and an open mind, Antonio del Corro, appeared in Oxford in 1576, through the patronage of the Earl of Leicester. At the time the intellectual establishment followed the Genevan line, with its prime belief in predestination. Del Corro opposed predestination, and as a lecturer in Divinity he was able to weaken the Calvinist establishment. Despite his opposition to punitive and severe theology, he was burdened with a somewhat harsh temperament, which put him at odds with his colleagues, and he appears to have left the university in 1585 – but not without sowing a seed of reform. In Cambridge, a similar challenge to Calvinism appeared in the form of Peter Baro, a French Huguenot who had escaped the massacre of St Bartholomew. Through his patron, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, he became a professor of Divinity, and by 1581 was being accused of introducing ‘new doctrines’. He believed that the human will might refuse divine grace, a view which was seen as an affront to the omnipotence of God. His teaching led to turbulent times in his university, which came to a crisis in 1595. Baro was eventually defeated by Cambridge’s entrenched Puritanism, but he left disciples, who included Lancelot Andrewes. Slowly, as at Oxford, the religious spirit of the age

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began to lose its fierce and absolutist tint, and become coloured with a richer humanity.15 Attitudes to belief were moving away from the positioning of faith above knowledge (a stance known as fideism) to the idea that reason had a place alongside, and supportive to, faith. Protestantism has always had a problem with asserting the subjection of enquiry to faith, since it was founded in a rejection of the unquestioned. The Augustinian idea of fides quaerens intellectum – of faith seeking intellect – was hard to maintain after Luther’s challenge. If the authority of Rome could be challenged, why not that of the Church fathers? The challenge to fideism did not, however, result in atheism. The Christian world-view still maintained its paramountcy, because it was most likely to be true, and could not be disproved. Some theologians have called the change as that from fiducia, or implicit trust, to assensus, or common agreement or assent. Devotion was the same, but the mental clamp of compulsion to believe was lifted.16 The fact that both del Corro and Baro were from the European Continent shows that a tendency towards reason was tentatively developing in continental Europe, which was destined to play a part in England. In Holland, Jacob Harmensen, or Arminius, had, from about 1590, been declaring that predestination was a mistaken doctrine; he too affirmed that anyone – not just the elect – might enter heaven. Good deeds, too, he further proposed, were good with or without the grace of God. Further east, in Poland, Faustus Socinus, an Italian, had become a dominant and gently authoritative figure among a community of rational Christians, who held that reason was a gift of God, human free will was real, Jesus had been only a man (although one sent by God) and that the accepted Christian Trinity, as set forth in the Athanasian Creed, was unsupported by the Bible and against reason. The words ‘Trinity’, ‘substance’ and ‘persons’ did not appear in the Bible, they pointed out. The views of Arminius, and to a lesser extent Socinus, were to spread to England throughout the seventeenth century.17 Even further east, in Transylvania, where the Reformation had been received with thunderous acclamation, the popular spirit was to go beyond the bounds placed by Luther and Calvin: religion became twinned with reason, and the 1568 Edict of Torda, reaching out beyond the boundaries of sectarianism, proclaimed toleration, anticipating a law on equality of standing between believers in four accepted faiths, Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism and Unitarianism. This was the first official endorsement in Europe of toleration since Constantine’s Edict of Toleration of 313. (The Augsburg formula of 1555 has been summarized as cuius regio eius religio, a tag which indicated that the ruler decreed his people’s faith. Thus that conclusion had little to do with toleration.)

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Towards the end of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I the theological climate in England showed more evidence of a return of the Erasmian spirit, despite the marked Calvinism of her archbishops of Canterbury. In 1595 by her own will Her Majesty distanced herself from the severe doctrines – predestination, justification, grace – which had been strained in to the Christian faith by the early Protestant reformers. In that year Archbishop Whitgift sought to introduce Calvinist predestination into the Anglican Church, in the form of the ‘Lambeth Articles’, a move which could have led England in the direction of the Genevan model. The country might then have become held in subjection to faith as preached in Geneva, rather than left free to breathe the triumph of art and magnificence which was the brilliant heart of Elizabethan England. The text of the articles is unmitigatedly sombre, depressing, and even hopeless: ‘God has from eternity predestined some for life and reprobated others for death.’ ‘No faith, perseverance or good deed has any effect, only the goodwill and pleasure of God.’ ‘The number of the predestined is pre-established and certain, and can neither be increased nor diminished.’ ‘Those who are not predestined to salvation will of necessity be damned on account of their sins.’ ‘It is not set in the will or power of any man to be saved.’ The Queen herself objected to the articles and threw them out, in part it seems because she divined that they were part of a factional plot against Baro at Cambridge. Her initial objection shows her typical wisdom, moderation, reason and humanity, and demonstrates the manner in which she belonged to the confident cultured Renaissance rather than to a jejune, starved-crow era of Augustinian penitence.18 Despite Elizabeth I’s move against Genevan Protestantism, James VI and I came to the English throne as a convinced Scottish Calvinist. But he showed an ambivalence to that faith throughout his reign. In terms of the public expression of belief, as indicated by the dynastic marriages arranged for his children, and in his foreign policy (which had a constituent of belief ), he aimed to create a balance, seeking peace where possible between warring devout factions. In theology, the king favoured the Greek Orthodox fathers of late antiquity, whose writings stood in contrast to the fierce notions of the Latin-speaking St Augustine, whose texts and ideas, unknown to the Greeks, had been subsumed into the Calvinism of his own upbringing.19 Doubts and anxieties had pervaded the spiritual lives of many thoughtful people in the 1620s. What if faith were all untrue? This question, modern in its expression, troubled a stratum of believers, in what is known as the Pyrrhonist crisis – Pyrrho of Elis having been the first systematic philosophical sceptic. The faithful were driven into doubt

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and depression.20 They conceived ways out by re-forming faith on more secure foundations. There were two main strategies. One was to seek refuge in the antiquity and authority of the Roman Catholic Church. Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland, thought hard about taking that route, one that his able and intelligent mother had taken; his verdict, in opposition to her, was that ‘we can never infallibly know that the Church is infallible’.21 Catholicism was receiving a new lease of life, with the marriage of Charles I to Henrietta Maria. Others – and this was Falkland’s choice too – brought in reason as a partner to faith. They did not become rationalists or unbelievers: rather, they accepted reason as an element to be balanced with revelation. At Great Tew, Falkland’s scholarly and hospitable house near Oxford, religion and reason came to be seen as the twin strands of truth. Here, in the 1630s and early 1640s, it was given a scrutiny by the members of the Great Tew Circle, an elevated and fearless reading party which searched the borderland between faith and reason, hosted by Lord Falkland and memorably praised by Clarendon. Great Tew can be seen as Erasmus’ circle, of More, Linacre and Grocyn, re-born, indicating a characteristically English penchant for reason alongside faith. The 1620s also saw the emergence of a group of spiritual mystics, who also had a rational outlook, which was perhaps surprising for mystics. Although the cast of mind of almost all people was still devotional – the Bible was held by the great majority to be a literally true text – at this time we encounter spiritual thinkers such as John Everard, and perhaps Giles Randall, who tended to the view that the Bible text, or the Old Testament at least, was allegorical and not literally true: the sacred books related to human personal spiritual transformation, and not to events of history, or God’s intervention therein. They held that end-timers, prominent at the time of the Commonwealth, such as the Fifth Monarchy Men, who took the Bible literally, seeing prophecies concerning the end of the world as relating to political issues of the time, misunderstood Christianity and the nature of its primal text. Spiritual and sacred written texts pertained to the inward and individual aspects of the life of human beings, not to political, let alone military, matters.22 Within England, a further nudge towards reason, of a different hue, developed in the early to mid-seventeenth century. From about 1620 to 1670 the Cambridge Platonists sought to introduce reason, moderation and humanity in religion, within an undogmatic context of Neoplatonic philosophy. Cambridge had for decades been the centre of Calvinistic Puritanism. The school of Platonists did not specifically oppose Calvinism, or question the doctrine of the Trinity, in the manner of the rationalizing Continental movements. It is remarkable that most of them were based

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at Emmanuel College, the bastion of Puritanism, and were able, through their writings, to mollify the university’s fervent temper in the direction of reason and tolerance. They sought a gentle, mellow and inward understanding of the Christian faith. Their opponent was not any fellow Puritan, but Thomas Hobbes, whom they accused of being devoid of the religious spirit, seeing him as having stripped out the guts and inner meaning of faith and of seeking its subjection to the whim of political tyranny, reducing it to a position of an appendix to the state. Besides their keenness to re-energize faith with what they saw as its spiritual essentials, the Cambridge Platonists were men (and one woman, Anne Conway) of broad sympathies, and a broad spirit meant a love of reason, and opposition to narrowness and to shrill, hard, self-righteous exclusive dogmatism. One of their number, John Smith, declared that ‘to follow reason is to follow God’.23 The Platonism of their outlook, suggestive of mysteries and other-worldliness, seems hardly to have operated except in their opposition to Hobbes, and with the exception of a work by Ralph Cudworth – a vast and complex book entitled Of the True Intellectual System of the Universe, which, in its attack on Hobbes and his atheistic materialism (seen as having originated in Democritus’ atomic theory), sought to reinstate a lofty Platonic narrative. The book is so full of asides and diversions that it could be called Shandyesque. Earlier in his career, Cudworth had expressed a view more commonly found within the group: ‘Nothing is truly ours, but what lives in our spirits.’ The Discourse before the House of Commons, of March 1647, where this sentence appears, was typical of the Cambridge Platonists in being open, reasonable, connected to daily life, welcoming, inclusive, out of sympathy with philosopher-kings as much as with the withdrawn contemplativeness of the leading spirit of Neoplatonism, Plotinus: showing a faith focused on the personal and the here-and-now.24 Their leader was arguably Benjamin Whichcote, who became Provost of King’s College in 1644. He held that religion was intrinsically rational, and that essential religious beliefs should be kept to a minimum – an echo of the Italian reformer Jacobo Acontius, who had come to England during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign as an engineer and theologian, and who had helped shape the English Church in the way of moderation and simplicity. Religious disputes should be solved with the use of reason, Whichcote further declared. He supported the freedom of belief for all believers, and added that his own faith was a matter of illumination, affection and choice, which he retained ‘as a welcome guest’. Such views were far from the hard superior self-assurance of the Elect found in Calvinism and in the deliberations of the Westminster Assembly, the advisory body set up

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by the Long Parliament in 1643 to reform the Church. The Cambridge group was guided by a spirit of open enquiry. It is as though, using their opposition to Hobbes and his materialism as a vehicle, they found a way to question the dominant Puritanism of their city and university. Revelation, a term often used alongside reason at this date, indicated the divine scheme or purpose within which human existence was situated. The central source of revelation, since the Reformation, had been the Bible. Its authority had succeeded that of the Roman Catholic Church as the source of knowledge and wisdom: the Bible, to the Church of Rome, had a lesser authority. Before Erasmus, only the Latin Bible version of Jerome’s Vulgate had been permitted. A brutal fate awaited those such as Jan Hus in Bohemia and John Wycliffe in England, and later William Tyndale, who had translated the text into the vernacular. They were considered heretics and had suffered accordingly – though Wycliffe escaped the stake, since the law on burning heretics had not yet been passed in England. (After his death his body was exhumed and burnt.) Despite its divisions, the Church, following the Reformation, continued to be seen as a source of revelation: the Reformed accepted the testimony of the early Church fathers in the manner of the Catholics, although a radical spirit of dismissal could sometimes be found, summed up in the following century in the extreme dissent of John Milton, who mocked the texts of late antiquity, holding them to be made up of ‘whatsoever either time or the heedless hand of blind chance has drawn down to the present, in her huge drag-net, whether fish or seaweed, shells or shrubs, unpickt, unchosen, those are the Fathers’.25 Critics of tradition who were less stridently original held that there was some place for the authority of the past, alongside scripture and its clear interpretation. Ministers had the power to elucidate, or provide evidence of, revelation to the faithful. The revelation provided by the text of the Bible had inspired Luther and Calvin. At the same time it was the source and origin of the more radical Protestant sects – notably those who were drawn to anti-Trinitarianism, who pointed out that there was no reference to the Trinity in the sacred text. One of those who knew the Bible with great thoroughness, and was prepared to quote from it, was John Bidle, the father of English Unitarianism.26 The zealous strife which had seemed to be part of Puritanism was quietened in 1660 by the Restoration. It appeared that religion could be had in excess. Puritan enthusiasm, with its vivid and sometimes violent language, was less colourfully present. The beasts of the book of Revelation had not appeared. Prophecy, the Saints, the Millennium, the end of time: these notions were of lesser significance now. With

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the return of familiar, hierarchical life, headed by the monarchy and the House of Lords, prophetic declamations, characteristic of the time of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, were muted. There was a realization, following the drama of Puritan revolutionary fervour, and its exciting but violent prophetic outpourings, that faith should be contained within the bounds of order, that belief in the imminence of the end of the world and the Second Coming was not only mistaken but in many ways destructive of civil society. End-time prophecy, the most anti-rational aspect of faith, had been one of the constituents of Puritan belief and ideology, and had shown a tendency towards destabilizing the state. The pervasive sense of final Biblical truth which had been current in the mid-century was, to many people (including the members of the turbulent Cavalier Parliament, which Charles II had to contend with), not only mistaken, but subversive too, although it was still vividly present among a powerful minority, which numbered John Bunyan among them. Revelation and spiritual ecstasy had weakened the bonds of society. Reason was a way of easing away the Puritan threat of disruption; it was starting to mean more than enquiry; it was now beginning to look like an ordered garden of good sense, which would enable religion to become stable, curb inclinations towards extremism, and, like a disinterested chairman or benign headmaster, encourage the milder aspects of faith, beneficial alike to people and institutions. It would also assure the advances of science. Reason was, in John Locke’s phrase, natural – meaning non-divine – revelation; revelation was natural reason enlarged by God and confirmed by human reason.27 The definition is not circular. It does not define each in terms of the other. Despite showing an interrelation between reason and revelation, it highlighted the step difference between the two. The Tory/Whig coup of 1688 against James II’s illegal measures not only delivered the country from Catholicism and Stuart Divine Right, it was evidence of efficient political plotting. Both the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution saw divine providence and grace losing ground to reason. Reason itself came to be seen even by some members of the clergy as the gift, and even the voice, of God himself. By this date, the tension between rational knowledge and religious belief had developed to something approaching a cautious parity. It had been a time of struggle: severe Puritans had seen faith as distinct from, and superior to, natural knowledge. In 1644 Cheynell had demanded that reason be denied and replaced by a submission to faith. Forty years later the militant devotion of the Puritans was less appealing, and reason was becoming more widely accepted. Moreover, leading spirits who were

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making outstanding scientific discoveries believed that they were also producing a purer and more admirable religious faith – something hard to imagine today. Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle saw their own discoveries as both reasonable and religious. They did not see a conflict between natural philosophy (science) and religion. The harmonious partnership that, in the 1690s, reason and revelation seemed set to achieve within the Anglican faith had developed largely from the steadier political situation seen after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Science and philosophy as they grew and changed did not lead men and women away from belief in God, but gave religion a new and broader dimension. In the newly created Royal Society the bounds of science and reason were being expanded on an almost daily basis; and most of its leaders were devout men. John Wilkins, Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1648, Master of Trinity, Cambridge, from 1659, and bishop of Chester from 1668, was in effect the founder of the Royal Society: a clergyman who balanced his faith (which was broad, humane and inclusive) with a love of scientific advancement: he was the author of the first book on mechanics to be printed in English, in 1648. He also theorized about the possibility of travel to the moon. Besides Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, other believing scientists included Seth Ward, John Wallis, Henry Savile, Thomas Sprat, and Henry Oldenburg. There was little division between faith and science at this time, except among some querulous and severe theologians whose views tended towards bigotry. (The prickly but witty Robert South, of whom more anon, was one; he declared of Royal Society members, ‘Mirantur nihil nisi pulices, pediculos, et seipsos’ – they admire nothing except fleas, lice and themselves.28) In 1667 Bishop Sprat wrote the first history of the Royal Society, and declared that early Christianity had been a friend of philosophy, which had been used to refute paganism. However, philosophy had (he said) later come to divide a straightforward faith into ‘a thousand intricate questions’, which benefited neither piety nor good manners.29 The era of the schoolmen was past, declared the bishop: the realm of nature must now be explored. Science studies visible things; it has no place in enquiring into revelation, so there could be no contradiction with religion – although visible things lead to the verge of the invisible. Experimental philosophy – what we call the scientific method – declared Sprat, was not dangerous to Christianity; the objects of the Royal Society were, on the contrary, in special harmony with the Church of England. ‘We cannot make war against reason without undermining our own strength.’30 Both the English Church and the Royal Society were rooted in the Reformation (he declared), when people learnt liberty of judgement, enquiry and reason. ‘The Church of

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England therefore may justly be styled the mother of this sort of knowledge.’31 One of the pillars of Anglicanism was reason, enabling it to stand up against blind, inwrought faith or ranting enthusiasm. Implicit in the bishop’s statement was the sentiment that the English Church had only a very qualified place for the sense of Augustinian sin which Luther and Calvin had positioned centrally in religion. Robert Boyle himself went on to write Some Considerations about the Reconcilableness of Reason and Religion in 1675. Critical, or reasoned, belief, was a better guide than unquestioning acceptance of authority to the complexities of faith and human existence. Faith by itself might create a personal sense of certainty for an individual, but it was hard to explain its rightness to those outside the glass box of an individual faith. Moreover, faith alone without a commentator or interpreter to guide could end in uncertainty, obscurity, or even contradiction. This is the weakness of the fiduciarist attitude. Faith laid out a number of competing claims, which reason helped to simplify and order. Reason has been characterized by its opponents as a dressing of cold selfishness, an exaltation of the ideas and attitudes of elite metropolitan cynics above the humble voice of godly faith. This was not how it appeared at the time. The enquiring voice of reason was found among all classes. The individual conscience had always been an integral part of Protestantism; now, when conscience compelled an individual to question, or rebel against, what he or she was being as a Protestant ordered to believe, should the voice of conscience be disregarded? Many of the clergy themselves sought to integrate a sense of enquiry into faith. Philosophers and men of reason (such as liberal clergymen) recognized that reason was limited and fallible. Nevertheless, it was a better guide than blind faith, extreme belief or the dumb-beast acceptance of the authority of imperfect institutions or texts. Reason, in the opinion of a growing number, went together with religion, as a partner. Reason was not only explored by the scholars and high-born of Great Tew; it was found among ordinary people too. Rational religion had been, as early as 1655, winning supporters in almost all towns and villages of England, according to the testimony of Dr John Owen, Oxford’s Puritan Vice-Chancellor, and no friend of reason in religion. Rational investigation appears, from Owen’s evidence, to have been popular with many classes and communities and not just to have been the domain of intellectuals and semi-sceptics. Towards the end of the seventeenth century its popularity increased, modifying – and arguably reviving – the spiritual lives of many believers across the spectrum of devotion. Differing religious and ethical systems competed for believers or adherents. Rational choice was understood to lie beneath the decision to

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belong to one branch of faith rather than another; and to distinguish faith from superstition. In the early Christian centuries reason had not been absent: it had led to the exclusion from the Bible, the fount of revelation, of certain devout books such as the Epistles of Clement, or the Shepherd of Hermas. (These books by contrast are part of the canon of scripture of the Ethiopian Church.) The Bible of the Syrian Church omits the book of Revelation, or Apocalypse, and the same book had no place in the Armenian Bible until the twelfth century. The fact that there are apocryphal books of the Bible indicates the use of the faculty of human reason, employed here in order to exclude them from the canon of scripture of the Western and Orthodox Churches. It was widely accepted that difficult passages of scripture could only be interpreted by using the faculty of rational sense. Evangelical Christians have characterized reason as a ‘cult’ within religion.32 But this was not the view of either the Cambridge Platonists, the guests at Great Tew or the group around John Wilkins who founded the Royal Society. They all, in their different ways, saw the need to integrate reason into religion. And indeed one can ask: What is left of faith once reason is cut from it? Not much beyond that which is handed down by authority, or is experienced in prayer, ecstasy or enthusiasm. One cannot, except in extreme cases of insistent, burgeoning, semi-dionysiac faith, edging into mania, entirely exclude reason from belief. Just as the need for reason had been seen, if not perceived, in the early, formative centuries of Christianity – in deciding which books to include in the Biblical canon – so reason came to the fore again when Erasmus introduced textual criticism into biblical studies, accepting some parts of the text and rejecting others. The Masoretic scholars, of the sixth to ninth centuries ad, had introduced it into Old Testament studies when they made a distinction between the kethibh (the text as written) and the qeri (the marginal corrections), terms which indicate the fallibility of the handed-down. This distinction was regretted by the textual fundamentalist John Owen, who sternly asserted in the 1650s that a godly text could not be corrupt.33 If reason is held to be a mere cult, and is driven from faith, then anything which is taught, or immediately felt or apprehended, may be considered a manifestation of the sacred, a holy sign, or a devout experience; any apparition may be theophanic, and any text in a holy context may be considered sacred. Without reason, anything can be believed: religious frauds like the Donation of Constantine pass unnoticed, and religion dwindles to an enacted form of mental tyranny, a localized cult, a holy solipsism or a new age craze. G.K. Chesterton is said to have declared that when people cease to believe in God they believe

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not in nothing but in anything. A more accurate observation might be that when they cease to place rational enquiry and careful criticism alongside belief, the door is opened to belief in anything. Reason became associated with a liberal outlook. In this context, liberal meant, in the first place, a desire to interpret scriptural texts with freedom, not to rely only on the interpretation of Church authority. In this manner reason operated as a deepening of religious belief, abandoning surface certainties for the profounder insights gained through textual examination and historical context, both of which use rational processes. This approach could mean ceasing to believe that God himself wrote, or personally inspired, all the text of the Bible. It also came to represent a willingness to allow each person to worship freely as he or she wished. The proponents of religious toleration were persuaded by the idea that forcing a person to believe a religion held by the believer to be false was to enact a grave hypocrisy. In the Netherlands there was a line of liberal faith – interrupted – from Erasmus to Arminius to Hugo Grotius. It influenced a parallel succession in England. Here, in a different political situation, we saw an Anglican sequence, consisting of Lord Falkland and his guests (who were critical of the rigid clericalism of Archbishop Laud), and the eloquent Jeremy Taylor (nicknamed ‘Chrysostom’ – golden-mouthed – by Coleridge), and a Puritan, dissenting sequence, made up of the Cambridge Platonists, and some individual Puritans whose theology was liberal, such as John Dury and John Goodwin. These men were opposed to the narrow self-righteousness of predestination and the Elect: they were people of broad faith, usually radical Independents, seeking an alliance with reason, moving in the direction of toleration and humane faith. Occasionally their toleration was broad enough for them to welcome as fellow-devout those who rejected the Trinity as an article of faith. Anti-Trinitarianism began in modern terms with the execution of Michael Servetus in Geneva in 1553 for rejecting the Athanasian view of the Holy Three, and with the establishment of the Socinians – early Unitarians – as the Minor Church in Poland in the 1570s. The Trinity, as proposed by Athanasius, came under attack for several reasons. In the first place it was not scriptural: the ‘Trinitarian proof text’, also known as the ‘Johannine comma’ – of 1 John v, 7 – was shown by Erasmus to be inauthentic.34 Secondly, the Trinity, by proposing three persons, could be seen as subverting the idea of the unity of God. It was also opposed by a number of biblical texts in the Old and New Testaments. Even its devotees acknowledged that it belonged solely to faith, not reason. The Trinitarian position proposed that Father, Son and Holy Spirit were each persons of the Godhead – the word ‘person’ was not defined. And that at the same

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time each of the three persons was God in his own right, even though God the Son was begotten of the Father, and God the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son (or, for the Eastern Orthodox Church, from the Father only). The connection between the Holy Three was defined by a mysterious theological term – in Greek, perichoresis, usually translated as ‘circumincession’. The ideas which had driven Athanasius were Neoplatonic, a manner of thinking not found in the scriptures except in the Fourth Gospel; and even the renowned opening to St John’s Gospel, ‘In the beginning was the Word’, the most intractable passage for antiTrinitarians, showed, if not a mis-translation, an error in emphasis: the Greek original of ‘And the Word was God’ shows no definite article for ‘God’, indicating a meaning closer to ‘godly’, or ‘God’s’. The entire 14-verse passage was declared by St Jerome to be a later addition, put in at the request of the Churches of Asia, who were alarmed at the nonTrinitarian beliefs of Jewish Christians: a view challenged by modern scholars.35 Anti-Trinitarians opposed the Trinity on the grounds also that it derived from non-Christian ideas, and even tended towards atheism in its substitution of ‘persons’ for the one God. One of the most succinct criticisms of the Athanasian Trinity came from the Irish bishop Patrick Blair. The doctrine, he noted, had decreed that the divine being should be composed of three Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, each distinct from the other, and each separately to be God eternal; and yet, that they should not; for that the three together should make but One God: that the second Person was begotten by the first, and that the third proceeded from the other two; and yet that they did not; for all the three were co-eternal, which can admit neither of begetting, nor proceeding. But that this, nevertheless, should be the true faith.36

It was accepted that reason, in its primary sense, was a universal discipline, and did not vary from country to country, or from empire to empire, since Aristotle’s principles of logic had universal validity. This had been recognized both in the Middle Ages and in the early modern period. Nevertheless some matters – of birth, and death, and the hereafter – were arguably beyond human reason. Human reason was of course fallible. God’s reason could, it was hypothesized, be said to be beyond man’s reason; though whether God was subject to the laws of logic and physics was a debated topic. God was recognized (at least until the scepticism of David Hume) as, through Jesus, able to perform miracles, such as turning water into wine, and to raise men and women from the dead. Belief in these matters might be hard, but was not impossible. The Trinity was another matter. In the formulation of the homoousian dogma (‘of the

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same substance’) at the Council of Nicaea, later given unstinting advocacy by Athanasius, the formula for the Trinity became something which was not just hard to believe, but which contained an inherent contradiction. It is not as though, to use the analogy of St Patrick, the three smaller leafsections of a clover (or shamrock) leaf were at the same time one whole leaf. Three whole leaves had at the same time to be considered identical to one leaf. The doctrine sought not explanation but obedient belief. It only makes sense if one submits entirely to faith and becomes absorbed into the non-rational Neoplatonic conceptual world of Plotinus and Proclus. That is clear from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, who, in his fervent and devoted writings on the Trinity, rejected any idea that the Holy Three should be discussed seriously, analysed, or made comprehensible. They should only be bowed down before. This view was echoed by Thomas a Kempis, who declared that ‘the Trinity is better pleased by adoration than by speculation’.37 (The same writer deprecated serious study.) Liberal religion led comparatively easily – but not inevitably – to a more liberal political outlook. The dogmas of Western Christianity, which derived from St Augustine and dominated both the Catholic and Protestant outlook, were forbiddingly bleak, and useful for upholding a rigid conservative authoritarianism. St Augustine had been a Manichaean before his conversion to Christianity. Manichaeans held austere views concerning the flesh and the spirit. Their faith originated east of Christian lands. Despite his apparently wholehearted commitment to Christianity, Augustine’s thinking is coloured by a penumbra of Manichaean thinking, showing less concern with the positive morality of New Testament (such as the Good Samaritan and Sabbath-questioning), than with personal sin. Humanity seemed grimmer from Augustine’s belief in original sin, which had devolved from Adam, the first man, by descent, upon every man and woman. Predestination was also firmly upheld by Augustine; this derived from a reading of St Paul’s epistles. He asserted that good deeds were not good without the grace of God. To believe otherwise – for instance, that good deeds voluntarily performed might be good on their own merit – was Pelagianism, and this was condemned as a heresy throughout the Christian centuries, while Augustinianism was upheld. This distinction was the basis for the condemnation in the Netherlands of Arminius ( Jacob Harmensen), who had opposed Calvinism, and declared against predestination, proposing that all people (not just the Elect) might enter heaven. It may be disconcerting to realize that the rule-of-thumb by which most Western Christians have lived – that human beings are free to choose between doing good or evil, and that good deeds are rewarded by entry into heaven – has long been considered heretical, and that real,

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orthodox, non-heretical, Christianity as taught in the Western tradition, whether by Augustine or Luther or Calvin, has consisted in believing in divine predestination, that good deeds without divine grace avail a human being nothing, and that the majority of human beings are, whether they live saintly or evil lives, born destined for the eternal fires of hell. In the words of H. B. Wilson, a contributor to the Victorian (1860) collection of critical theological Essays and Reviews, Calvinism and Augustinianism ‘comprehend [the rest] in one mass of perdition’.38 Calvinism, and its offshoot Presbyterianism, disliked rational enquiry and any kind of liberal spirit. Campaigning Puritans like Francis Cheynell or John Vicars wrote diatribes which mixed scripture and political events into a unique narrative barely accessible to reason. But they represented only part of the theological spectrum. Some strands of belief made an approach to reason possible: the Great Tew Circle numbered among its members several of the post-1660 bishops of the Anglican Church; the Cambridge Platonists had found a place for philosophy in faith; and the rational Arminianism that Archbishop Laud had promoted made it possible that, with the reemergence of the Anglican Church in 1660, revelation and reason might achieve some sort of balance in the spiritual outlook of England. Laud’s inheritance made it likely that at that time the theology of the Anglican Church would for the most part reject Calvinism – although with its wide tolerance it would allow individual clergymen and others who held to Calvinist beliefs to remain as Anglicans. There is an irony here: that Laud is remembered for his harsh treatment of clerical malcontents, and as a fierce and even brutal repressor of Puritans and their forms of religious worship. The Puritans, for their part, are hailed as the men (and some women) who, in the form of groups like the Independents, originated the idea of political freedom, and moved towards the idea of universal human rights. But it is sometimes overlooked that the theology of Laud and the royalist party was reasonable and Arminian, flexible and open. (Laud sought an opening to the Eastern Orthodox Church, which did not revere St Augustine or his notions, inherited by Calvin.) The Laudians also allowed an influx of reason in a manner abhorrent to the Presbyterians. The Presbyterians emphasized the emotional power, or ‘enthusiasm’, of an individual’s belief, at the expense of reason; so that notions such as the toleration of others’ beliefs, and similar issues which require a broader understanding of the nature of faith and the manner in which it was held, were largely absent from them. The Laudians, despite their angry and high-handed manner with religious transgressors, held a theology which would lead to the future development of toleration and calm, if stern, faith, rather than emotional enthusiasm. This part of

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their legacy was at odds with the approach of their keen, near-fundamentalist successors, notably the Nonjurors and the Tractarians, both of whom stressed obedience, devoutness, and not asking questions.

Devout Endorsements of Reason The spirit of Erasmus had returned to the English Church towards the end of the sixteenth century. The humane notion of reason as a partner to faith began again to stimulate English religion. In the turmoils associated with the establishment of Protestantism, and the need to set up a fortress faith against a resurgence of Catholicism, reason had been driven underground. Following its tentative emergence in the universities in the 1570s, by the end of the century it was showing a secure if unobtrusive place as a strand of Anglicanism. Richard Hooker wrote of the need for reason to underlie persuasion in his Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie (1594–98), a key text of Anglicanism. In his words: Forasmuch as persuasions grounded upon reason are either weaker or stronger according to the force of those reasons whereupon the same are grounded, they must every of them from the greatest to the least be able for every several article to shew some special reason as strong as their persuasion therein is earnest. Otherwise how can it be but that some other sinews there are from which that overplus of strength in persuasion doth arise?39

Hooker was here using the word ‘reason’ in the public and certain sense, since he mentions grades of reasons, terminology which is inapplicable to inner light. Secondly, despite the severity of his clerical impositions, Archbishop Laud’s moderate theology is highlighted by his declaration that ‘reason by her own light can discover how firmly the principles of religion are true’.40 Was Laud using the term ‘reason’ in the secondary, Quakerish meaning of inner light? Possibly; but the implication of a general discovery of the truth indicates the primary, universal, sense. Thirdly, William Chillingworth’s assertion of its centrality appeared in his defining work, The Religion of Protestants (1637); in the absence of reason, he declared, humankind is exposed to ‘chance and passion and prejudice’ in matters of religion.41 To him, reason was ‘a public and certain thing, and exposed to all men’s trial and examination.’42 Reason was balanced by revelation; and by this Chillingworth meant the other pillar of the reformed Church: ‘The Bible, I say, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants!’43 It may seem strange to define the Bible as a rational document; but in comparison with the doctrines which had been

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loaded upon the sacred text, from either Catholicism or Calvinism, it was simplicity, and Chillingworth was stressing the centrality of the rightness of private interpretation. Fourthly, Benjamin Whichcote, the leading Cambridge Platonist and Provost of King’s College, Cambridge, until 1660, is remembered for his aphorisms – a treasury of humane and rational faith. These sentences demonstrate a powerful and creative inner spirit. ‘To go against reason is to go against God ... reason is the divine governor of man’s life; it is the very voice of God.’44 ‘Nothing can give peace to him, who is at enmity with his own reason.’45 ‘In the use of reason, and the exercise of virtue, we enjoy God.’46 ‘There is nothing so intrinsically Rational, as Religion is.’47 ‘The good nature of an heathen is more God-like, than the furious zeal of a Christian.’48 Elsewhere, Whichcote wrote that religion had been received by him ‘in way of illumination, affection and choice … I retain it as a welcome guest.’49 ‘Every Christian must think and believe as he finds cause.’50 Whichcote seemed to signal a way forward for the Anglican Church, inspired by broadness of temper, inner goodness, and calmness of mind. An aphorism of his which summed up much of what the Cambridge Platonists stood for ran, ‘God hath set up two lights to enlighten us in our way: the light of reason, which is the light of his creation; and the light of scripture, which is after-revelation from him. Let us make use of these two lights; and suffer neither to be put out.’51 Like his fellow Platonists, he sought to solve religious disputes by the use of reason, and to keep the essential doctrines of Christianity to a minimum. ‘Vitals in religion are few’ was another of his sayings – an echo of the Italian reformer Jacobo Acontius.52 Fifthly, Charles I’s Eikon Basilike (1648), the King’s own defence of his policies and actions during the Civil War, also finds a place for reason. Much of this text may have been written by John Gauden, but in a passage where the King gives advice to the Prince of Wales – the future Charles II – we can probably hear the authentic royal voice in his instruction: Above all, I would have you, as I hope you are already, well grounded and settled in your religion, the best profession of which I have ever esteemed [to be] that of the Church of England, in which you have been educated; yet I would have your own judgment and reason now seal to that sacred bond which education hath written, that it may be judiciously your own religion, and not other men’s custom or tradition that which you profess.53

Reason is used here according to its primary meaning, and the sentiment is a clear and precise expression of the pairing of reason and revelation to which rational theologians aspired. The phrase ‘that it may be judiciously

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your own religion’ sums up an important aspect of what rational theologians were seeking – that faith should be personal, not imposed. There is an irony in the fact that this moving text, written by (or attributed to) the English monarch whose status, in the eyes of his followers, closely approached that of martyred saint, contains sentiments praising reason and disdaining custom or tradition. Royalists who after 1649 venerated copies of the book as devotional holy relics, icons of royal prayerfulness – above all the stubborn, conservative and waspish Nonjurors of the post-1688 generation – were actually in part endorsing the placing of reason and personal choice above custom, tradition and authority in the matter of individual belief. A reader of those royal words was paying homage to the rational process, and not to the arcane mysticism of Stuart Divine Right. The moderate Puritan Nathanael Culverwel had been educated at the Cambridge temple of Puritanism, Emmanuel College. Writing in 1652, he recalled that reason was, according to the Book of Proverbs, ‘the Candle of the Lord’. ‘It do’s not shine so clearly as was wont, must it therefore be extinguisht presently?’, he asked.54 He was concerned about the sad fate of reason when assaulted by the prophetic outpourings of enthusiastic Puritanism. Reason, when awakened, he considered, had strengths: ‘it feels her own wounds, it hears her own jarrings, she sees the dimnesse of her own sight’,55 Culverwel’s insight into the reflexive and self-critical notion of reason shows that he understood it in the universal and shared primary manner, not in the secondary sense of an inner and unique personal spiritual light. The term ‘the candle of the Lord’ became an accepted view of reason among the Cambridge Platonists; and the notion was taken over by John Locke at the end of the century. (Locke had a personal fondness for the Cambridge group, derived from his affection for Whichcote’s daughter, Lady Masham, at whose country house, Oates, in Essex, he lived for some time. His interest in the group derived from shared theological views of broadness and spiritual charity, rather than their philosophical views.) Henry Hammond, one of the guests at Great Tew, became one of King Charles I’s chaplains and a canon of Christ Church, Oxford. He helped steer the Anglican Church to success in 1660, and was much admired by the Tractarians of the 1830s, a group who held that the use of reason was almost profane. He wondered ‘whether it be not very equal and reasonable to believe [in] God’, and proposed that reason should be employed to search ‘which is that word of God, which contains these revelations, which reason tells them they must believe, without further reasoning’.56 Jeremy Taylor, Coleridge’s ‘Chrysostom’, also a chaplain of Charles I,

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wrote in 1647 a defence of toleration and the free interpretation of scripture: here, he saw reason as a transcendent that runs through all topicks; for reason, like logick, is instrument of all things else, and when revelation, and philosophie, and publick experience, and all other grounds of probability or demonstration have supplyed us with matter, then reason does but make use of them; that is, in plain terms, there being so many wayes of arguing, so many sects, such differing interests, such variety of authority, so many pretences, and so many false beliefes, it concernes every wise man to consider which is the best argument, which proposition relies on the truest grounds: & if this were not his only way, why doe men dispute and urge arguments... to contrary purposes? If we must judge, then we must use our reason.57

Finally, Abraham Cowley wrote an ‘Ode to Reason’, subtitled ‘Reason: the use of it in divine matters’, probably in the 1640s or 1650s. In the poem we find the following stanza. (By the ‘eight sphere’, Cowley means the night sky as conceived by Aristotle, where the fixed stars glitter forth eternal messages.58) The holy book, like the eighth sphere, does shine With thousand lights of truth divine. So numberless the stars, that to the eye, It makes but all one galaxy. Yet Reason must assist too, for in seas So vast and treacherous as these, Our course by stars above we cannot know Without the compass too below.

Cowley, as a member of the Great Tew Circle in the 1630s, was naturally familiar with the pairing of reason (in its primary, public sense) and religion.

The Development of Reason in England Reason had entered the dialogue of English religion through several routes. There was in the first place a seam of disdain in England for metaphysics; a resistance on the part of many English to windy, indistinct philosophy, a scepticism apparent in the thought of William of Ockham, whose formulation – Ockham’s razor – put forward the notion that, in discussing weighty or philosophical matters, inessentials should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Wyclif and the Lollards had worked

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to cut through what they viewed as the thick web of Church obscurantism, seeking to discover the clearer light of actual biblical teachings. Rational faith – which usually meant criticism of the doctrine of the Athanasian Trinity, since that doctrine is furthest from reason – appeared in the sixteenth century, noticeably in the Eastern counties, as a result of developing trade links with the Netherlands. In London, the Strangers’ Church (Ecclesia Peregrinorum), which Edward VI had initially established for foreign Protestant devotions in Austin Friars, was a lesser link with thoughtful Continental believers. Some of these were Protestant humanists, opposed both intellectually and morally to Luther and Calvin. Their fellow believers had either congregated in safe cities like Basle or Strassburg, or in tolerant countries like Poland. (In Poland the Reformation had taken hold with considerable force. Sixteenth-century Poland was a diverse country, Protestant in large part, and developing into the most tolerant and religiously varied country in Europe. The idea of Poland as for ever Catholic and intellectually obedient is a fiction.) The underlying belief of the Christian humanist thinkers of these times was that the Reformation was incomplete until unscriptural doctrines like the Trinity and original sin had been abandoned. They found some response in the tolerant and pragmatic laws and temper of the English – although the nature of the Elizabethan Settlement was such that radical dissenters could only stay out of trouble if they kept quiet. Reason in its second sense, as the operation of God on an individual human spirit, developed amid the vibrant heterodoxy of the Commonwealth period. Gerrard Winstanley, famous as the leader of the Diggers in 1649, and acclaimed as an early socialist by Christopher Hill and others, saw ‘reason’ as the spirit of God active within the heart of mankind, similar to the Quaker view of the Inner Light. But his understanding of ‘reason’ still partook, to some extent, of the first sense, since his view of God was of a practical and interventionist being, given to aiding and assisting humankind, not as a remote and jealous punisher. Winstanley, who was a man of deep spirituality, saw God as active and transformative, on the side of those seeking justice. Reason was the natural language of the Deity, and of social change.59 Unquestioning devotion had largely lost its attraction by the late seventeenth century. God was seen as a god of rationality and order, who had arranged the universe and given human beings the faculty of reasoning to study the world and work out his plan for them. God seen as infinite prophetic power without reason had been the mistaken concept which had led to the Civil War, the execution of the King and the religious turbulence of the Commonwealth and Protectorate. The rational

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God of the Restoration could not be a party to disorder and contradictions. He might well perform acts which went beyond the state of current knowledge; but he could not subvert his own system of logic and order. Or, as a logician might express it: miracles might overturn factual contingencies, but not logical necessity.

Reason in Practice Opposition to the doctrine of the Trinity has been characterized as a turbulent, disruptive, near-revolutionary belief, even something that tended towards atheism. But there is no evidence for this, and most anti-Trinitarians, who read their Bibles, and found no reference to the Trinity there, lived quietly. Religion, though, was a public as well as a private activity, so unless they were entirely silent and secretive dissenters, this course could bring them into conflict with the authorities: although there was a tension here since the Anglican Church, taking its lead from Queen Elizabeth I, has never believed much in ‘looking into men’s souls’. Private beliefs have usually been held to be private, except when those who held them forced them upon public attention. A heterodox believer had to be fairly outspoken in beliefs before action was taken – although Anglicans on occasion could be persecutory. There was a de facto acceptance that a disbeliever in the Trinity might attend church, but keep quiet, worshipping silently as he or she thought fit. Disbelievers in the Trinity were in no way anti-Christian, or wreckers of the patient and firm beliefs of the majority population. They believed in one God – in the spirit of the First Commandment – but not in what they saw as the metaphysical construction of the Trinity, which could even be said to have the appearance of polytheism, since it had dissolved the notion of one God into three persons, and had been brought into Christian doctrine under the influence of Neoplatonism. Moreover, since ‘person’ could not be defined, the overall effect of belief in the Trinity was to tend towards a mysticism, which may have been agreeable and aesthetic, but which did not reflect the spirit of the synoptic gospels. Unitarian beliefs had the power to go deeper than those of unthinking Trinitarian Calvinists, who, convinced of their own Elect status, were busy in their lives ‘seeking assurance’ (searching for signs of God’s approval) of their Election. But to government, disbelief in the Trinity was unsettling since belief in the Trinity had been an established Church doctrine, orthodox and catholic, from the late fourth century ad onwards. It became not difficult to cast

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anti-Trinitarians as something like an alien tribe: not our faithful people, not really Christian, not us; other.

The Significance of Reason within Religion Many of the political liberties in Britain today, and its hard-won freedoms and rights, derive from the Puritans and Puritan – and especially Independent – thought and action. The Putney Debates foreshadow the emergence of democratic principles. Puritanism challenged the autocracy of the king, and after a long process Britain has today gained a monarch with splendour but no power, since the people are sovereign. Liberties were won by the scrupulous attention to the rule of law shown by moderate parliamentarians such as John Selden, acting against the trampling autocracy of the King, Strafford and Laud. But at the same time the point has to be made that Puritanism, as a theological phenomenon, and especially in its manifestation of Presbyterianism, was often narrow, intolerant, shrill, bigoted, even murderous. By contrast the theology of the Anglicans, who were closely intertwined with, but not identical to, the Royalists, was usually milder and more moderate, and more open to reason and tolerance: to accepting new ideas which might lead to greater humanity rather than rejecting them; to softening, rather than hardening, the boundaries of belief. Laud’s clericalism, with its disastrous aim of total conformity of Church practice, backed up by severe punishments, has to be distinguished from his theology, which was for its time open-spirited, being historically aware, reaching out towards the East and bordering on the enlightened. Laud’s attempt to seek an association for the Anglican Church with the Greek Orthodox Church indicated that he was prepared to sideline St Augustine of Hippo, who has no real status in any Eastern Church, and is inclined to be regarded as a heretic. Hence Laud would be making a definite break with the strongly Augustinian Puritans on issues such as original sin and predestination. These were hard and scrupulously defended dogmas, and with the lonely (but outstanding) exception of Roger Williams of Rhode Island, they led their supporters to view religious toleration with horror. Theology and politics had a tendency to move in opposite directions.

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he idea that reason had a place alongside, or even within, religion, gained a currency gradually in the Christian centuries of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, at the same time as questions were being asked about the Trinity. The interconnection between these two themes came more clearly in focus in the disputes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The New Testament Texts There is no reference in any of the reliable gospel or epistle texts to the doctrine that God the Father and Jesus shared the same substance. The close connection between Father, Son and (later) Holy Ghost can at best only be inferred from what is written. Often, by contrast, the reader is given an indication that Jesus was distinct from, but close to, God the Father, and that the Holy Ghost was sent by God – something like an angel, but more powerful. Scripture was and remains problematic; it is occasionally contradictory, while at the same time its text was taken almost universally in the Christian world to be axiomatically correct. Only in the seventeenth century did it become subject to anything like modern critical analysis. Even within the four Gospels, the prime texts of Christian faith, there were issues. There was no real difficulty with the first three – Matthew, Mark and Luke. Known as the ‘synoptic gospels’, they set out the life of Jesus largely as a record, and a plain guide to life. There was little metaphysics. The humanity of Jesus’ life, and his moral teaching, were the dominant themes. Here was a life of elevated and challenging morality, which one could look to without troubling much about matters of doctrine, creeds and so forth. The emphasis was on doing and now. In terms of doctrine, Mark x, 18, was typical; here Jesus says ‘Why callest thou me good? There is none good, save the Father.’ In Luke’s Gospel (ii,

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52) we read that ‘Jesus increased in wisdom with his years, and in favour with God and man.’1 This passage is difficult to reconcile with the idea of a pre-existent substance, in unity with God from eternity. The mood was different within most of the gospel of John (known to theologians as the ‘fourth gospel’); here one finds spiritual quiet and consolation – though theologically it continues many of the views of the other three. But here too was, at the very beginning, the source of many difficulties: ‘In the beginning was the logos [or word].’ The term logos has been given different meanings and interpretations. Those fourteen verses have led to deep divisions, and even warfare. Elsewhere in the fourth gospel one finds a distinction, as in Mark, made between Jesus and God. In John vi, 38, we find, ‘I came down from heaven not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.’ In John viii, 54, the text reads, ‘If I honour myself, my honour is nothing; it is my Father than honoureth me.’ Two chapters later there is a passage which might seem to indicate a unity of ‘substance’, but which turns out on investigation to be no such thing. John x, 30 and 38, contain these words: ‘I and the Father are One ... and the Father is in Me and I in him.’ This has been understood to mean unity of essence and nature: that Christ was identifying himself with God. But in the 35th and 36th verses, Jesus says, ‘I whom the Father has sanctified,’ not ‘I whom the Father has begotten from all eternity.’ Jesus was the Son of God in the sense of consecration and mission, not in terms of unity of substance. The ‘one’ related to his office: the job to be done. The text does not justify later expositions which use words such as ‘consubstantial’ and ‘coeternal’. Further on too in the fourth gospel, another passage seems to challenge the opening of chapter i: ‘This is life eternal, that they might know thee [the Father] the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’ ( John xvii, 3). Here a distinction between the Father and the Son is hard to dispute, and is difficult to reconcile with the idea of Jesus as pre-existent word. Similarly, in the Epistles – and all these texts matter, in view of the widely held inerrancy of the Bible – we find in II Timothy ii, 5: ‘There is one God, and one Mediator of God and Men, the Man Christ Jesus.’ In I Corinthians viii, 5–6, there is the text, ‘To us there is but one God, the Father ... and one Lord Jesus Christ.’2 Later in I Corinthians we find (xv, 21), ‘Since by man came death, by man came also the Resurrection from the dead.’ The issue is further complicated by the nature of the Holy Ghost. Jesus said too that he would send the Holy Spirit, and (if we accept the testimony of the Acts of the Apostles) it made itself powerfully known in the times of the early Christians. Yet the Holy Ghost cannot be called a new god. Was the third member of the Trinity coterminous with the ‘Spirit

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of God’ which moved across the face of the waters, in Genesis i, 3–4? Part of God, or a delegated power? It is hard to decide. John Assheton, a Unitarian priest of 1548, who when threatened with punishment reversed his views, called the Holy Spirit ‘only a certeyn power of the Father’.3 In the same decade Adam Pastor, a Frisian, declared that the Holy Spirit was the power or operating energy of God.4 Christians do not as a rule pray to the Holy Ghost, neither do they, in the matter of private devotions, see the third person of the Trinity as equal to God the Father. In the Christian narrative, the Holy Spirit most often appears as a power of God; something like a superior angel. In view of the importance placed on the opening verses of the fourth gospel, one should look at the meaning of logos. Its meaning had changed down the centuries. In classical times it meant reason and organization. It was not a mystical or poetic word. But the author of the gospel did not in any way intend to say, ‘In the beginning was rationality’ or ‘In the beginning was rational organization.’ Language had become altered in the last two centuries bc, partly under the influence of Stoic thought, and partly due to mystical themes in Eastern Mediterranean, especially Jewish Neoplatonic, notions. Stoic thought had developed a tendency towards rational pantheism – seeing all as God, though divided into two categories of creator and created. The distinction, and yet unity, of God and logos as expressed in the opening words of John’s Gospel is ‘thoroughly Stoic’.5 In Hebrew, the word for logos is davar – a word which had come to carry the meaning of the mysterious expression of God’s approach to humankind: davar ‘comes’, ‘goes’, ‘runs’, ‘appears’.6 (The corresponding word in Aramaic, the majority language of the land of the gospels, also held a mystical connotation: memra.) In essence, logos had come to signify an emanation from God himself. As the sun emits rays of warmth, so God expresses himself in logos. It was in a way an illuminative notion, an expression of – or perhaps a hope for – shaped and articulate communication after the long silence of God. Perhaps too it appears thus when heard from King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, in the chill failing light of Christmas Eve, when the words seem to float seamlessly, hovering between poetry and devotion. In the seventeenth century, some radical theological thinkers declared that ‘the gospels were rational documents’. This may seem strange in the twenty-first century. It is important to look at the context. The meaning of ‘rational’ here was probably ‘non-contradictory’, that is, not like the provisions of the Athanasian Creed, with its problem of consistency between the numbers ‘one’ and ‘three’. Miracles, as described in the Gospels, did not contain any prima facie contradiction. Neither did the idea of resurrection.

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By contrast the principles of Trinitarianism, worked out at a time when sequential, rational thought was not uppermost as an intellectual fashion, were not troubled by contradiction, but allowed it. Nor did Trinitarianism occur after long and hard thought. Athanasianism was established as orthodox, in apparent defiance of all careful methods of reasoning. The Greek notion of substance intensified the problems of the Gospels when it was grafted on to the language of the written lives of Jesus. Substance (in Greek, ousia) was a primal notion of Aristotle. The original meaning was: something which has a quality. (‘Socrates’ – a substance – has a quality, ‘being musical’.) This proved unsatisfactory, when people noticed that qualities themselves appeared substance-like: the quality of musicality was a non-material substance. Substances were then divided into prior substances (‘Socrates’) and those substances (‘musicality’) which could only inhere in already existing ones. A further distinction separated them into particular substances (‘Socrates’) or general substances (‘the genus man’).7 It did not take long for ‘substance’ to acquire about six distinctive meanings: a concrete thing; something that could be differentiated from something else; what lies beneath the perceivable surface of a material object; a logical subject; that which is capable of independent existence; and a centre of change. Substance lost favour, most notably with John Locke, who found that there was little use for the concept except as a kind of abbreviation needed to hold together a description of material objects. Bishop Berkeley declared that substance did not exist at all, and that nothing existed unless it was perceived: perception was the necessary condition of existence (‘Esse est percipi’). Berkeley was not being a foolish philosophical idealist, blithely translating material objects into phantoms of the mind; he just wanted to abolish a redundant metaphysical concept. The necessity for substance in ordinary, Trinitarian Christianity lay in the fact that the Trinity was defined as ‘three persons [or hypostases] in one God’. Substance was what connected, first, the Father with the Son; the term homoousios (uniting the Father and the Son) emerged in the fourth century ad. Later the need was recognized for the Holy Ghost to be viewed as equally divine. If there were no substance, there could be no such connection. The three divine persons would remain as three. Substance was needed as a concept for the Trinity to fulfil its nature in accordance with its formulation by Athanasius and his later supporters. The problem of the nature of substance brings into focus one of the major issues which circled around the theological and philosophical disputes, both of the early Church fathers and of the theologians with their fierce disagreements in the 1690s: were the disputes which revolved around the topics of substance, essence, hypostasis and, later,

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circumincession (English for the term which none could with any degree of precision or certainty determine, allegedly descriptive of the dynamic structure of the Trinity), about anything at all, beyond the energy, fluency, power and versatility of the Greek language (with the Latin language panting after it, like a novice jogger with fitness problems) to create exciting abstract concepts? Aristotle himself invented the word entelecheia, a central concept in his philosophy, meaning something like ‘the finished article’, ‘the perfection’, ‘being’, and opposed to dunamis, ‘becoming’, ‘not yet complete’. With a command of Greek it is possible to steer the human mind into remote and arcane regions of metaphysical space. If you need a word to express the incomprehensible nature of the relationship among the three divine persons of the Trinity, Greek hands it to you: perichoresis. With this term St John of Damascus defined the nature of the relationship of the three persons, or ‘hypostases’, of the Trinity. The word literally means ‘a walking-around’. Once the relationship has been identified and named, by the minting of the new word, we start to think, well, yes, it might be true and correct; it could be a description of an actual state of affairs. But is it? Is it not rather the enchantment of thought by a brilliant abstract language? Has not the idea, and the human assent to the idea’s apparent validity, originated in a creation by a linguistic root (choresis – a going-ness) and a prepositional function (peri – around), purely to satisfy a requirement of a theological dispute, which today we would call ideological? It seems possible that the language might not so much embody, or reflect, or communicate an idea, as actually create one. No one would use the word perichoresis, or its English translation ‘circumincession’, unless either compelled to invent it for doctrinal (or ideological) reasons – to fit into a schema of thought – or if one had been taught to use it. Ordinary language, ordinary usage and everyday life do not suffer for being devoid of it. The word was arguably created to embody – or perhaps even to compel – a certain viewpoint of religious ideology.

Reason among early Christians As regards reason, even in the early Christian centuries, before the council of Nicaea, and when the doctrine of the Trinity was still unformulated, a tension existed between reasonable and less reasonable Christians. Celsus was a pagan author of the second century ad; none of his texts survives, although fragments can be found in Christian rebuttals. The rebuttals came from the pen of Origen of Alexandria, a well-educated father of the Church, who lived from 185 to 253. His Contra Celsum is a lengthy

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defence of Christianity and monotheism against the attacks of this intelligent pagan. Origen did however declare that he was willing to accept the need for reason in Christianity, since he understood passages in the Bible to be allegorical and not open to literal interpretation.8 In a discussion of the story of the creation of woman from Adam’s rib, Origen declared that the story was allegorical, and berated Celsus for taking it literally, while also criticizing the pagan’s comment that ‘the more reasonable Jews and Christians are ashamed of these things and try somehow to allegorize them’.9 (Elsewhere Origen declared that the Son was inferior to the Father, and though he said that the Son had preexisted, he declared that this was in the Father not with the Father, thus opposing what came to be the Athanasian view.10) Indeed Origen made a distinction between the only true supreme God, and Jesus Christ whom he had sent.11 This occurred in a discussion of the parallels made by Celsus of the honour paid by Christians to Jesus, and that paid by the inhabitants of Upper Egypt to Antinous, Hadrian’s favourite. Nevertheless it becomes clear that reason was seen as low on the list of Christian priorities at this time. How low, can be seen by references to Christians in a work of Lucian of Samosata. Writing in the second century ad, he gave a picture of Christians in his Peri Tes Peregrinou Teleutes (‘On the Death of Peregrinus’). They are pictured as simple people, well intentioned and kind, but gullible, and too prepared to give away all their wealth or to acclaim a charlatan as a religious teacher.12 Faith, he noted, had squeezed out reason from the way they lived. Pliny was less sympathetic. Writing to the Emperor in 112, he held Christians to be superstitious and tiresome. As a governor he found them obdurate. He was, however, merely looking for a manner of asserting imperial rule over them, not seeking to understand the nature of their beliefs.

A Trinity before Christianity? Plato, Logos and Substance Vague hints, or adumbrations, of the Christian Trinity collected from Platonic and Neoplatonic texts were, in earlier, strongly devout, centuries, cited by its supporters in favour of the antiquity of the doctrine; but the texts identified are so distantly related to the Athanasian concept as to be almost risible. In Plato’s Second Letter there is an obscure reference to a threefold divine power, which the devout believed offered an inkling of, or a shadowed reference to, the Christian Trinity: ‘Related to the king of all are all things, and for his sake they are, and of all things fair he is the cause. And related to the second are the second things (įİȣIJİȡȠȞ įİ ʌİȡȚ IJĮ

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įİȣIJİȡĮ) and related to the third the third (țĮȚIJȡȚIJȠȞʌİȡȚIJĮIJȡȚIJĮ).’13 If that passage means anything at all (beyond the fact that the text might be corrupt) it can hardly be said to foreshadow Athanasius’ great idea. Within the writings of the pagan philosopher Plotinus (who lived about a hundred years before the Church formulated the doctrine of shared substance of the Father and the Son, which later became that of the Trinity) there is also a reference to something which approximates to shared substance between intellect and soul: ‘Intellect (nous) therefore makes soul still more divine by being its father and by being present in it (țĮȚIJȦȚʌĮIJİȡİȚȞĮȚțĮȚIJȦȚ ʌĮȡİȚȞĮȚ), for there is nothing between but the fact that they are different, soul as next in order and as the recipient, intellect as the form.’14 Thus both Plato and Plotinus may have had some slight influence on the doctrine of the Trinity, by outlining a reference to a threefold power. But their main legacy was an impress – an aesthetic cloud-like quality – on the mystery and inaccessibility to rationality of the doctrine. Plotinus especially held that substances might merge one with another, and that identities might dissolve and reconfigure in accordance with a grand metaphysical design. The classical foreshadowings of Christian Trinitarian doctrine are, however, so sparse and insubstantial that one can only say that those who affirm that there was a Trinity before the Christian dogma was set out in the fourth century ad have been sighting mermaids from the seashore. Neither Plato nor Plotinus came near to the idea of three divine beings, complete in themselves, yet constituting one divine being, complete in itself, which was at the same time one of the three beings, from which one of the other two was begotten and the other proceeded. Plato’s philosophy, as it was understood in the early centuries ad, exercised a strong influence on the understanding of many early Christian theologians – the ‘Fathers of the Church’. St Paul may have declared that the faith of Christ crucified was ‘folly to the Greeks’, (I Cor. i, 23), indicating the spiritual superiority of devout faith to analysis or moral dialectic. But Christianity took on board a range of Greek notions, sometimes of a rich and questionable nature, in the early centuries ad. Whatever St Paul had said, the Fathers, and their successors, felt that they could not keep Christianity whole and together without adopting ideas derived from the Greek masters. And the words that St Paul in the Acts is reported as saying, ‘In him [God] we live and move and have our being’, are a direct quotation from the Stoic poet Aratus.15 In his writings of the fourth century bc, Plato had proposed that the world as we perceive it is insubstantial and unreal. The only real is the hidden world of eternal archetypes – the Forms – which exist beyond our apprehension, and of which our everyday world – ‘mundane’ – is only a

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poor and insubstantial copy. Platonism was criticized by Aristotle, who refuted Plato’s otherworldly metaphysics, and proposed that it was the world around us which was real. Aristotle created a path for the development of the physical sciences, mathematics, technology and especially biology, none of which played any real part in Plato’s grand system, and none of which was distinguished from the others. Stoicism battled with Epicureanism for the position of dominant philosophical and ethical system from about 200 bc onwards: the latter seeking ataraxia, or release from trouble and anxiety, and the former drawing up a programme, edged with pantheistic ideas, of human endurance and promotion of the public good, or virtue. But public virtue went out of fashion in the Roman Imperial centuries, and in the second and third centuries ad the enveloping system of thought grew to be a re-emergent Platonism, without the sensuous, tactile, limpid and lucid language and style of the fourth-century bc Athenian master, but with a mystical and idealist colouring in its place. The sonorous and haunting language of the leading Neoplatonist Plotinus told of a peace to be found in lofty abstract ideas. To the distracted, insecure and divided world of the time, menaced by poverty, war and barbarian invasions, Neoplatonic theoretical edifices brought calm and consolation. They were fountains of cool rose-water edging the burning plains of real life. Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics had looked outward to civic virtue; Neoplatonism looked inward and created a me-philosophy, recognizable from our own times. It was proffered as the true reality of the universe; the vision of something ultimate and elevated beyond the shabby curtain of day-to-day existence. Its doctrines were like pictures of Hollywood stars’ homes stuck on the walls of a run-down trailer: images of a world forever out of reach, but consoling since they offered distraction from the void and parched dissatisfaction of the present. Neoplatonism was seldom Christian, although it exercised a strong influence on Christianity; serious Neoplatonism established its own trinity, of Mind, Soul and The One. These three qualities were not, as in the Christian Athanasian Trinity, of equal and reversionary weight. Mind was the lowest rung of this trinity, from which one ascended to Soul, before reaching the calm plateau of The One, the union of all things.

Before Nicaea: Early Theologians Christian theologians in the early centuries ad had wrestled with the relationship between God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy

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Ghost, as well as the relationship between faith and reason. Their difficulties reflected the fact that nothing is made entirely clear in the New Testament. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyon, died probably in 202; he put forward what he considered a satisfactory solution; he simply advanced the notions of one God the Father, a Son of God, and one Holy Spirit. ‘The Father is above all things’ was central to his theology.16 There was no sharing or mingling of anything called ‘substance’ here. Irenaeus professed a doctrine known as Monarchianism. This doctrine developed two versions, dynamic and modalistic. In both, God remained supreme as father, but in the former, Jesus was an ordinary man but with an extra power (dunamis) given by the Father. In modalistic Monarchianism, God the Father might change his aspect (or mode) into that of the Son or of the Holy Ghost, while remaining one God.17 It is from this modalistic theology that another perplexing word in the theological dictionary arose: the person, or personality, of God. ‘Person’ is a straight translation of the Latin persona, which in turn is a translation of the Greek hypostasis (literally, ‘a standing under’. There is a further confusion in that hypostasis could also mean underlying substance, nature or essence: something quite different from the individuated person). The actual words person and persona in turn probably derive from the Greek prosopon, meaning a face or a visage, a look, a countenance; later, an actor’s mask. God the Father might be seen as taking on a new identity, in the manner of one actor taking on a different mask when playing the parts of Agamemnon, Cassandra or Aegisthus in the same play. (However, in another derivation, which seems less likely, since it is not in accordance with the principles of philology, it has been suggested that ‘person’ originates in per-sonare – ‘to sound through’.) But it should be stressed here that the personality of God indicated no more than the possibility of a change in attributes (or as we say today, predicates): God remained one; no attempt had yet been made to introduce a doctrine which divided the Godhead into persons, each of whom was God in his own right. Monarchianism was later condemned as a heresy, since, in trying to strike a balance between Unitarianism (in which Jesus and the Holy Ghost ceased to be part of the Godhead) and tritheism (belief in three gods), Irenaeus was judged to have strayed too closely towards Unitarianism.18 The dispute on the nature of a person did not end there. What indeed is a person in a theological context? Is it anything like persons we might know, such as Julie or Darren or Dave? Is it an attribute, a posture? Or do we just cease to attempt any analysis and call a person a ‘somewhat’? Even

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in everyday human life the concept of a person is hard to pin down, and has been so ever since David Hume declared that, when looking for his self, he only stumbled upon certain perceptions. Justin Martyr, from Nablus in Palestine, gained a training in Greek philosophy, and became a dedicated Platonist. He lived from about ad 120 to 170, and was notable for stopping a persecution of Christians which erupted in 151 by writing a persuasive tract on their behalf. In his theological writings he too stressed the unity of God, opposing the worship of angels.19 He wrote of the ‘immutable and eternal God’, maintaining that Jesus, created by God, was necessarily subordinate. He also declared that Jesus did not exist from all eternity; he was a man born of humankind, and only the Christ by election.20 Justin Martyr held that it was impossible for the Holy Ghost to be God, ranking the Spirit third, after Jesus. Tertullian, from north Africa, who flourished at the time of the Emperors Severus and Caracalla, 190–214, also stressed that God and Jesus were not co-eternal or co-equal: he declared the Father the whole substance, the Son a derivation and portion.21 He called the Holy Spirit tertium numen divinitatis, et tertium nomen majestatis (the third divine power of the Godhead, and the third name of majesty). He interpreted logos as reason or sense or understanding, and held that the text that the logos was with God from the beginning indicated that God had always been a principle of (unconfutable) Reason.22 One of his memorable sayings was, ‘There was a time when sin and the Son were not.’23 Theodotus of Byzantium, who was a near-contemporary of Irenaeus, also brought reason into focus within Christian belief. He was essentially a straightforward and rational believer in the Gospels: the message he took to heart, but kept the metaphysics to a minimum. His stance, on the subject of the relationship of Jesus to God, was both dynamic and modalistic: the son of God being an aspect of the Father, with the Father’s power. Other theologians, Praxeas and Noetus, adopted a similar approach; and Sabellius, from north Africa, of about the same date, took up the theme so persuasively that dynamic modalism became known as Sabellianism thereafter. God, in his view, could take on different modes of existence: at one time creator of the world, at another Jesus the teacher who suffered on the cross, and again as the Holy Spirit inspiriting the apostles. His followers held a ‘modalist’ view of the activities of the Deity: that is, that the Father could exchange his mode, or identity, at various critical times; and since they believed that one of those modes that God might take on was that of the suffering Jesus, they were also known as Patripassians – believers in the suffering of the Father. The underlying rationale for their beliefs was the need to maintain the unity of God. Their views were

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echoed by the Muggletonians (originating in England in the seventeenth century), who held that God, and entirely and uniquely God, had suffered and died on the cross, and, in the days of his absence following the events of Good Friday, the prophet Elijah had taken over, as a kind of acting God. William Blake was perhaps the most famous Muggletonian. The idea that the three persons were the changing attributes of one infinite God was a judicious and reasonable notion: in the manner that one and the same garden may be said to be green at midday, grey at twilight, and black at midnight. (The example that they gave was that one man could be husband, father and master.) Although this is far from the Nicaean doctrine propounded over 100 years later, it is perhaps close to the view of the Trinity held by most Christians today.24

Nicaea, Alexander, Athanasius, Arius Following his Edict of Toleration of 313, Constantine was faced with the conflict of views over the relationship between God the Father and Jesus the Son. The Emperor, appearing as a wise ruler, summoned a conference of bishops at Nicaea in 325, and in the resultant Nicene Creed the doctrine of the Father and the Son having the same substance was proposed and declared orthodox. (The position of the Holy Ghost was not clarified until later.) Constantine’s intention was to streamline belief, for the sake of the peace of the Empire, since monks and bishops at that time were turbulent, scheming, and driven to rage by dogmatic niceties. The Emperor’s action roused those who opposed the formula to a measure of resistance, which was finally futile. The issue had been a contentious one for many years. Within the Christian Church, as there was initially none but the haziest outline – and often not even that – of the doctrine of same substance, which became the Trinity, so too the notion of the eternal pre-existence of Jesus Christ was absent – a doctrine which is necessarily part of belief in the idea that God the Father and Jesus the Son were ‘of the same substance’, as propounded first by Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, and then by his deacon and follower, Athanasius. The elder bishop formulated the idea that the Father and Son were both members of the Godhead; each was fully God, yet God was still one, and not divided. Christ had existed from eternity, before time, and was not simply born in Bethlehem. The divine substance was a concept flexible enough to embrace being a unity and being not a unity. The idea was difficult, and it is not surprising that it was resisted. There is always difficulty when theories are proposed about more than one infinity. John

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Locke declared that it did not make sense to speak of adding together two infinities. We can ask today: is there any sense to be found in multiplying the largest prime number by two? Or in trebling the number of digits after the decimal point of π? These were the types of question raised by the notion of the shared infinite substance found in the concept of both the Father and the Son (and later the Holy Ghost) belonging to the Godhead – even before one has further elaborated the point that each of the allegedly larger identities is equivalent to the first one. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria from 326, was a fervent follower of Alexander. He was also the most energetic propagator of the ‘one-substance’ view of God and Christ. His theological opponent was another fourth-century bishop of Alexandria, Arius, whose name is more correctly spelt ‘Areius’. The followers of Arius preferred the designation ‘of like substance’. Arius’ beliefs developed organically from the faith of the early Church: that the Father preceded the Son, and that the Holy Ghost was sent later as an energy of God, comparable to an angel. His faith, based on an approach to the understandable rather than on intangible idealist philosophy, did not seek to console the people with mysteries. Jesus, to Arius, was not eternally pre-existent, although he was pre-existent. Arius said that Jesus was defined above all by being human, and by having been created by God the Father. (To an Athanasian, Jesus was not a created being.) We can see depictions of Jesus’ youthful, developing humanity in mosaics in Ravenna, both in the Arian Baptistery and at the church of S. Apollinare Nuovo: fine examples of Arian, Unitarian art. The essential nature – an easier term than essence, or substance – of Jesus was not the same as that of God the Father. This was most likely to have been the view of the earliest Christian Church.25 Only gradually did the Church abandon its tendency to Unitarianism and adopt the notion that God the Father and Jesus the Son were ‘of the same substance’, or ‘consubstantial’ (homoousios). This was an area where sense and reasonableness find it difficult to enter. It was doctrinal and axiomatic, and given lasting form by Augustine and St John of Damascus, both of whom adhered to Platonic thinking. Platonism, in its form of Middle and Neo-platonism, is not a system of argument, of pro and con, or of analysis, but a species of oracular distillation. In this it differs from the sociable argumentativeness of Plato’s Dialogues. Like the theology of Karl Barth in the twentieth century, Neoplatonism only makes sense if you are already a believer, and you become a believer by acceptance, or by a transformative moment, not by intellectual conviction. It is immanent, illuminational, personal, hieratic and non-rational, rather than a dynamic system with a positive relationship to rationality

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and universality. Neoplatonism is, in its closed anti-rationality, a step away from Gnosticism: a chant of comfort to the sound of a soft drumbeat, but not a way to knowledge, or a clear and manifest path to, if you are looking for it, salvation. Modern equivalents could be found in T. E. Hulme or F. H. Bradley. The Arians also posed a serious philosophical objection to the idea of ‘one substance’. If the Father was ungenerated, but the Son generated, this necessarily meant that there had to be more than one substance. In response, Augustine later posited that substance was not a relevant category for generation. Later still, in the Middle Ages, this idea was finessed by the considered opinion that substance neither generates nor is generated. This only led to a further objection that substance (which could not easily be sidelined, since it was needed for the Trinity) would have to be a fourth divine entity: in other words, the Trinity would have to be a Quaternity. The only way out of this conundrum was to accept either tritheism – that Father, Son and Holy Ghost were three separate Gods – or Unitarianism. This argument was still creating difficulties in the sixteenth century. The procession of the Holy Spirit was a notion, absent from the Gospels but present in the Nicene Creed, which held other seeds of dispute. Initially it had stated that the Holy Spirit ‘proceeded from the Father’. But in 589 a synod in Spain added ‘and the Son’ – filioque. Thereafter, the somewhat doctrinaire Western Church, not interested in enquiry or rational belief, being keen to minimize thought in favour of faith, declared that the third member of the Trinity proceeded from both the Father and the Son. Did it make sense to speak of something having two beginnings? The Greeks, displaying something of a continuing tradition of asking questions and employing logical thought, held that less offence was done to common sense by declaring that the Spirit proceeded from the God the Father only. When in the eleventh century the Great Schism occurred between the Eastern Orthodox Church and that of Rome, this was a major point at issue. Athanasius, determined to propagate the ‘same-substance’ formula, was active and unscrupulous. Prepared to override all accepted manner of established ecclesiastical organizations and procedure, he appealed directly to the Emperor if he was expelled or barred from any conclave, and with his communication skills was almost always at once re-instated by imperial decree. Despite three exilings, he managed to return, and eventually died in Alexandria in 373. Christians today applaud the orthodoxy of Athanasius, but it has to be said that the Creed named after him has turned out to be an

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embarrassment. It is not found in the use of the Greek Church. The Athanasian Creed is in fact a devout forgery, since it is nothing to do with Athanasius. Its language is Latin, while Athanasius’ tongue was Greek. It is not a creed, but rather a sacred poem. It seems to have emerged in southern France in the sixth or seventh century. The poem emphasizes that the Three really are One, and the One really is Three – ‘neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance’. There is no attempt to look for a rational basis, or to speak anything like the language of ordinary life, where three is three, and one is one. Its stand against common sense and rationality has limited its appeal, and it is recited in few if any churches today. Its reputation has not been enhanced by its hellthreatening language. Unlike the other two Christian creeds, the hymn contains ‘damnatory clauses’, which declare that ‘except every one do keep [the Faith] whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly … the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped. He therefore that will be saved: must think thus of the Trinity.’ Everlasting damnation threatened those who did not declare that, for the point of view of worship, one holy infinite being must of necessity be equivalent to three, and three equivalent to one. Moreover, despite the antiintellectualism of its provisions, and its unwillingness to come to terms with sense, it still expects the reciter to understand difficult philosophical terms like ‘person’ and ‘substance’. It is hard not to sympathize with the statement made in 1694 by the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Tillotson: ‘I wish we were well rid of it.’26 At the Council of Nicaea, Athanasian Christianity was confirmed as the faith of the empire; Arius was anathematized. Despite Athanasius’ strenuous fight for his view to predominate, there were times when his views were considered unacceptable. His very turbulence may have counted against him. The Emperor, in his latter years, inclined towards the Arian view, and at the time of his death in 337 Constantine was not a believer in the same-substance formula. The first Christian emperor was baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia, an opponent of the Nicaean doctrine. St Jerome declared in the years after 360: ‘The whole world groaned and wondered to find itself Arian.’ But opinions changed again. The understandable, practical and anti-mysterious interpretation of the faith was suppressed by Emperor Theodosius in the East, and later by Clovis in the West, and by Justinian in Africa and Italy. The most notable Arian was the Gothic emperor Theodoric, who ruled much of Italy and died in 526, and was considered for the most part a wise and just ruler, extending toleration to Athanasian Christians. (The one blot on his career was the murder in prison of Boethius.) The Christian world thereafter was, apart from

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the Alpine Waldenses, set fair for nine centuries of almost unchallenged Trinitarian belief. The mystical language of Neoplatonism, found in the Nicene and in the later Athanasian Creeds, drew Christianity into towers of esoteric abstraction, and, except in eastern localities which eschewed Plato, knowledge and speculation were downgraded or disappeared.

Heresy In the early centuries ad Christian orthodox belief had not yet been formulated in a final form. It was still possible to be a Christian and hold views different from those formalized at the early Church councils. The unfortunate result of a council and its subsequent orthodoxy was that the emperors who followed Constantine felt that they had to force one view on their people, and anathematize the others. This was a characteristic of both same-substance and like-substance believers. Of Constantine’s sons, Constans ruling in the West declared for the Nicene formula of the same substance, whereas Constantius in the East declared for like substance. The situation was similar about 50 years later, with Valentinian ruling the West and again showing support for the Nicaean viewpoint, and Valens in the East favouring the Arian. Theodosius, on coming to the throne in 375, energetically fought Arianism everywhere, especially among the newly Christian (but Arian) Germanic tribes. His wars, and internal policy, gave the Roman Empire a uniform belief; owing to his actions, the term ‘orthodox’ is used for the views he upheld. Probably no one in the history of Christianity did more to turn the faith of Jesus into an enforced monopoly. The Christian world was made to believe in Trinitarianism. The pacific message of the Gospels mutated into a mandatory belief. The concept of ‘heresy’ entered the Church seriously in ad 381, at the Second Council of Constantinople, which declared the Nicaean formula to be the only one acceptable. The word ‘heresy’ had appeared in Paul’s epistles, but denoted the remnant of animism rather than variety of Christian belief. ‘Heresy’, understood as opposition to uniformity in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, had a temporal beginning. The pagan Roman Empire knew nothing of heresy, or the imposition of one set of beliefs as the faith. It is noteworthy that the etymological origin of the word ‘heresy’ is ‘choice’; it derives, via old French, from the Greek word hairesis, choice. The toleration enunciated by name in Constantine’s edict of 313 thus vanished from the Church and the empire less than 70 years after its promulgation – though Constantine, probably with good reason, had

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not shown latitude towards the Donatists, the north African theological rigorists who, like extreme English Puritans 13 centuries later, insisted that all who called themselves Christians must be unsullied ‘saints’, and behaved with comprehensive violence to those who were not so gifted. With the ending of a wide measure of toleration, and the imposition of a single form of belief 44 years after his death, the concept of religious toleration in the West was shut down in favour of exclusive salvation, and it remained closed until the slow emergence of respect for others’ faiths in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It also had the collateral effect of ending intellectual activity in the West: in ad 529 Justinian closed down the Lyceum in Athens, and the leading philosophers were forced to set off in exile to Sasanid Persia.27 Though they did not stay long, the message was clear: in contrast to the intellectual habits of the Sasanian empire, Christian orthodoxy did not tolerate intellectual enquiry and the development of the physical sciences. Speculation was equivalent to heresy, and the study of nature was viewed as Satanic magic. That the philosophers were not put to death on their return to Byzantium was due to a request for toleration from the Sasanid shah, not to the concern or respect of the Christian emperor for knowledge or spiritual latitude. Is it possible to argue that absolutism against heresy re-paganized Christianity, returning it to tribal wars (‘holy’ warfare) and human sacrifice (the burning of heretics and witches)? Perhaps. From the time of Theodosius, the nature of the Christian empire, in its persecution of heretics, reverted to something like a diluted version of the persecution undertaken by Diocletian or Decius; armed with authority, the oncepersecuted Christians became the persecutors – though the Eastern, or Byzantine, Empire instigated measures against heretics only infrequently, and tended to burn objects rather than people. Religion became a streamlined dogma; with difference closed off, it dovetailed to imperial authority. It could also inspire mob violence at terrifying moments of hysteria, as seen in the murder of the Alexandrian mathematician Hypatia. Armies fought against Christian variety. Individual belief was watched, with penalties enforced for differing. The ‘sin of error’ became a major issue within the system. What of the Church fathers and variety of theological belief? Augustine had opposed the extreme demands of Donatism, with its belief in an Elect of the faithful. The measures pronounced by the early fathers on heresy, in which they cited Old Testament punishments, hung like threats: words rather then deeds. Augustine’s maxim was credere non potest homo nisi volens: a man cannot believe against his will. Only later, in medieval and early modern Europe were the opinions and laws dusted

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down, and put cruelly into force. Scripturally, there were two passages which were frequently quoted on the topic of tolerating or crushing differing opinions. One was the parable of the sower and the tares (Matthew xiii, 24–30), in which Jesus declared that the good grain should not be separated from the weeds until the harvest, with the implication that it was wrong for humans to concern themselves with heresy and disbelief in anticipation of Judgement Day. (Theological rigorists, however, declared that some tares were so visible, that they should be pulled up at once, and not wait for the harvest.) The other was the opinion of Gamaliel in the synagogue, in Acts v, 38–9, in which that Jewish authority had said that the apostles should be left alone, since if their work was of men, it would come to nothing, but if of God, it could not be overthrown. The homoousian, or same-substance, formula, and the consequent doctrine of the Trinity, went on to become central for Christianity, but seldom straightforwardly. Pre-Nicene ideas and solutions were swept aside, and the fathers of the Church, from Athanasius to John of Damascus, were insistent in promoting the belief in one substance and three persons. The difficulty and complexity of the belief gave strength to a mood of dissidence, especially in the East, one of the results of which was the rise of Islam in the seventh century, since the Quran declares emphatically that God is one and undivided. In contrast to the mental exertions required for belief in the Athanasian Creed, the straightforward belief in one God proclaimed by the Quran quickly gained popular assent. The emperor Justinian’s fierce attempt to impose ‘orthodoxy’ on Syria also rebounded spectacularly, since the Empress Theodora secretly supported the heterodox and helped build their ecclesiastical structure; hence the local disaffection with Byzantinism when Islam appeared. The ‘same-substance’ idea was opposed on the grounds of reason, common sense and intelligibility. It seemed to contradict the Bible, since there is little or no indication of eternal pre-existence, and the term ‘substance’ does not appear. (‘Before Abraham was, I am’ indicates pre-existence, but not eternal pre-existence.) At the time that the notion of shared infinite substance emerged, a variant of Platonic philosophy had become predominant, notably with the devout text known as the ‘Wisdom of Solomon’, written in the first century bc and found today in the Apocrypha. The philosophy was not quite Neoplatonism. It did not yet have the soothing, almost narcotic, interplay of word and reverie that was the characteristic of Neoplatonism. It is most frequently called ‘Middle Platonism’. Aristotle’s ‘substance’, which had been an analytical term used to comprehend the nature of reality and to make a point about what remains as a core when a living thing changes, became adopted by

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Middle Platonism as a representation of an inner quality which could be judged as common to two or more disparate and distinct entities. Those able to give clear and definite assent to the notion of the Trinity have tended to be few: most likely those with a strong metaphysical sense, or a belief in the duty of obediently undertaking grand and systematized thinking, probably for the sake of the preservation of traditional society and its beliefs, as though elevated abstractions formed the fabric of society, which might at any moment be subverted by tendencies towards reason, common sense, or day-to-day reality. Moreover, a proof of the Trinity can lead to a suspicion of mere cleverness. In the fourteenth century Etienne de Tournay declared he was able to prove the Trinity ‘lucidly, elegantly and catholically’, but then declared that he could just as easily demolish his own proof. * * * Despite the imposition of one form of belief, in the street the natural, day-to-day world of the Gospels, with their parables and ordinary folk, found a resonance. Although paganism was ceasing to be a popular religion, pagan philosophy subtly found its way into the new faith of sin and redemption. Many classes of people became adept at discussing, if not necessarily understanding, the difficult philosophical points which the Church fathers were beginning to declare underpinned the faith. The discussion of obscure points of theology became a formidable way of passing the time. The mysterious, non-rational, metaphysical belief of the Trinity might appear to be conceptually different from the new earthy, moral and lived day-to-day religion of Christianity, with its human elements and recognizable people; but abstract philosophizing came close to dominating the performance of good deeds. Had Christianity turned into a kind of conceptual and philosophical game, with a new version of the Eleusinian Mysteries inserted into the Sermon on the Mount? The populace became excited by the game of metaphysics; obscure mysteries became things of delight, even the gossip of the streets and the baths; and the practical faith of the gospels became coloured by inconsequential discussions of unprovable and undemonstrable theological abstractions.28 In the hinterland of thought, Platonism, with its emphasis on a hidden world of unseen ideals, and its turning away from the realities of existence, exhibited a subtle grip. The people did not stop to consider Aristotle’s criticism of Plato’s metaphysical Forms; rather, they contrived to work out a formula to comprehend how three could be one, and to dispute whether the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Son as well as from the Father. Often

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it appears to have been more agreeable to speculate on the nature of the Trinity till the mind was exhausted than to live a Christian life. Only on one topic did Aristotle’s thought survive within Christianity: in the belief in substance. The word substance echoes down the centuries. In this context a point should be made about those who say that the doctrine of the Athanasian Trinity confuted the philosophers, and showed the triumph of true faith over the wranglings of the philosophers. Athanasius, it is said, was someone ready ‘to free them [the churches] from their bondage to philosophy’.29 This is far from the truth. The Athanasian doctrine was deeply dependent on philosophical concepts, notably substance and person. Philosophy had not been conquered by simple, natural, popular belief at the Council of Nicaea. Faith after 325 was given a structure by philosophy and this structure was enforced. Philosophy surrounded the Trinity as a glass house envelops tender plants, with the glass defended by the weaponry of the state. A further point needs to be made. The Council of Nicaea and the Council of Chalcedon (of 451) were the two most important councils of the early Church: the first leading to the doctrine of the Trinity, and the second declaring that Jesus Christ was both fully God and fully human. Following both these Councils there were dissidents: the former being known as Arians, and the latter as simply non-Chalcedonians. (They include the Armenians, Egyptian Copts, Ethiopians and Syrian Jacobites.) Both councils were equally significant on Church doctrine. Yet the anti-Chalcedonians were never, in later years, stigmatized as heretics and blasphemers, as were the dissenters from Nicaea. No Christian forces of orthodoxy would ever attack the Armenians, or the Copts, in the manner that Jesuits in Poland coordinated extremely violent mob attacks on non-Trinitarian communities in the years following 1655. Yet the dissent of both groups of dissidents was almost equally venerable, and certainly equally honourable. It would appear that it is a strange aspect of the human herd instinct that the topic of the Trinity excites a more destructive passion than the topic of the nature of Christ.

Augustine and Pelagius St Augustine, Western Christianity’s sternest and most enduring thinker, accepted by both Roman Catholics and Protestants as authoritative, recognized that the notion of the Trinity was inevitably puzzling. He believed that it could be inferred negatively, from the Gospels themselves, just as one infers the presence of an animal from its footprints. It was

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implicit in scripture. It was, he accepted, a puzzle which was insoluble by rational methods; it could only be accepted by faith. We can get glimpses of its meaning by analogy. Central aspects of Trinitarian belief, such as that the Son was generated (or ‘begotten’) by the Father, and the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, were beyond us. Augustine, who was never keen on pursuing intellectual arguments, said that it was better just to accept belief, rather than to try to work out any overlap between faith and reason. Not until Aquinas was a Catholic thinker brave enough to create a system of thought which embraced both faith and reason. The ideas of St Augustine also lay to some extent in the background of the Reformation challenge of Luther, Calvin and to a lesser degree Zwingli. The reformers held to his negative ideas about the human condition, as much as to his need to maintain faith in the Trinity. Augustine’s theology was centred on humanity’s unremitting propensity for wickedness. Alongside original sin, the fourth/fifth-century theologian insisted as a foundational belief on predestination: a notion strongly supported by Luther and Calvin. Christ died for the Elect only, not for all of humankind. Moreover good deeds are not good, but rather valueless, in the moral scheme of God and humanity, unless they are infused with the grace of God. Good deeds are by themselves empty, and lead to hell, without the predestined will of God. This theology, perhaps reflecting Augustine’s negative views, formed in his pre-Christian days, concerning the physical lives of men and women, became and remained a dominant religious ideology of the West. Paradoxically, it could mean that ‘the West’ has some elements in it which are not really Western, since, in its narrow and dualistic attitude to humankind, and its belief that humanity is naturally irremediably wicked, Augustine’s doctrines rely on a religious ideology formulated in second- to third-century Iran. (Augustine is not a father in the Russian, Greek or Syrian Churches.) Against Augustine was ranged the Welshman Pelagius. His name means ‘seafarer’, which is a direct translation into Greek of his Welsh name Morgan. Although he has been held to be a heretic, his views reflect those of perhaps the majority of ordinary Christians down the ages. He believed in human freedom, and, by challenging predestination, held that anyone, through virtuous action, could get into heaven. Moral actions, he declared, had virtue, even if they were carried out without the infused grace of God: a life of goodness could be achieved, was worth striving for, and would lead to heaven. He rejected St Augustine’s view that some people are born destined for hell and everlasting torment, which became such a significant orthodox theology. The dispute between Augustine and Pelagius was re-played in the conflict between the Calvinists to the Arminians in the

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seventeenth century. A harsh and telling confrontational moment of this conflict occurred at the Synod of Dort, in the Netherlands, in 1618–19, when the dominant and uncompromising Calvinist–Augustinians, known as ‘Precisians’, crushed and silenced the moderate Arminian–Pelagians, employing the sinister tactics of silencing opponents, packing the meeting and managing the agenda in a manner which on occasion recalls the totalitarian techniques of ideological political parties of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.30

Syria and Arabia In the West, the theological complexities on the subjects of reason and the Trinity were not again brought into light until the time of the Reformation. But to the eastern and southern edges of the Byzantine Empire there existed a world of thought where a more rational Unitarian view of God was often expressed seriously. In the academies of Syria, in Edessa and Nisibis, Aristotle remained supreme, and mystical Neoplatonism found little response. The theology of the Syriac-speaking Christians of the East – known popularly as Nestorians – comes close to believing that Jesus was only a man, though they remained Trinitarian. The rationality of this environment was signalled by the fact that, in Syrian Christianity, Mary was (and is) called Christotokos, the begetter of Christ; she is denied the mystical appellation of Theotokos, the begetter of God.31 In Arabia, Muhammad’s message, preached in 610–623, was above all anti-Trinitarian – although the Quran states that Jesus is the logos (in Arabic, kalima) of God.32 God is a unity and needs no son: this was and is the heart of the message of Islam. In the years before Islam the Christian disputes about the Trinity, and about the human and divine natures of Christ, were an integral part of the political and social life of Greater Syria, to which Arabia was the neighbouring country. In his youth Muhammad worked as a camel-trader, travelling into Syria, with the rich widow who became his first wife, Khadija. While pausing on these journeys he is said to have conversed with a Nestorian monk called Sergius (Bahira in Arab tradition), who instructed him in sacred matters.33 The Nestorian tradition, not sympathetic to Plato, was on life as lived, and less on mystical abstraction. In Arabia too there were a number of Jewish tribes, who may either have been resident there since the dispersion of ad 135, or have converted to Judaism subsequently. There was a strong Jewish presence too in South Arabia, whose king Abkarib Asad seems to have converted to Judaism

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in the mid-fifth century. His successor Dhu Nuwas (who came to power in 510) was definitely Jewish in faith, and established good diplomatic relations with Persia. Opposing this alliance were the Christians in Dhu Nuwas’ kingdom, who came under heavy and sustained pressure. The Byzantines and their Ethiopian allies thereupon took fierce revenge, destroying the power of Dhu Nuwas. But the presence of Jews and their converts remained throughout the region.34 Christianity has, in contrast to Islam, often been classed as more elevated, on the grounds that it spread its word meekly, by word of mouth, and by its spiritual and ethical power, whereas Islam was spread by the sword. However, this view fails to take into account that, after 381, under Theodosius I, Christianity became an integral part of the late Roman or Byzantine Empire state system, the armies of which were often employed in promoting Christian faith and suppressing what was seen as heresy. Christianity under Theodosius, and also under Clovis and Justinian, was a militant religion of the sword. In the seventh century, and in a largely but not entirely defensive manner, Heraclius was to engage in a lengthy and hard-fought war with the Sasanid Persians. The struggle was so fierce that at different times each empire was on the brink of annihilating the other. For the Christian Byzantines, inspiration was drawn from the fate of the relic of the ‘True Cross’, which generated the propaganda of holy war. When a decade or so later the Arab armies under Muhammad’s successors – for the Prophet himself never engaged in battle beyond the Arabian peninsula – spread out, they were acting by standards quite similar to those set by Christian Byzantium and Sasanid Persia. The sword has played a general, and sometimes major, part in the spreading of faiths in the region. The pacificism of Christianity looks doubtful in the light of the careers of Justinian, Clovis and Heraclius. Islam, itself Unitarian, offering, outside the Arabian peninsula, toleration to the People of the Book, had no problem with the rejection by Syrian Christians of the formulations imposed by Byzantium. It has been argued that the Byzantines insisted on doctrines such as the Athanasian Trinity in order to crush heresy. Heresy (to Byzantines who styled themselves as orthodox) was satanic, and, in the quest to secure eternal life, the endless future state promised to right believers after a precarious and short life on earth, heresy had at all time to be avoided. Nevertheless, amid the discussion by the ordinary people in the streets of serious theological issues – a kind of intrigued levity – devout formulations shifted only slightly so it is possible to argue that orthodox dogma became the brand image of the Empire, and was insisted on in order to strengthen its definition – to clarify the identity of the Empire.

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Some Christian heterodox circles initially offered Islam a qualified welcome. In places it was not seen as a radically new faith; although any welcome afforded to it was apt to be brief. This is seen in the account of the Armenian historian Sebeos, who was most likely a bishop in eastern Armenia. His history was probably written in ad 661, and gives a vivid description of the wars raging between the Persians and the Byzantines in the years before the Islamic conquests.35 On Muhammad (‘Mahmet’) himself, the author declares, in terms of approbation, that the appearance of the monotheist prophet was the accomplishment of the will of God. Mahmet is described, correctly, as a merchant. But Sebeos soon changes his tone. When he relates the Muslim attacks on Christian Byzantium, he declares that, far from accomplishing God’s will, the new faith is wicked. So: the origin of Islam was seen to be godly. Muhammad was not castigated as an ‘imposter’ or ‘satanic Antichrist’ as became the fashion in much Western theological literature; his monotheism was praised, and his mission seen as sacred. But when Islam became associated with political and military power, and specifically a power which assaulted Byzantium, it became, in the opinion of Sebeos, something sinful. Its wickedness was contingent rather than necessary. In the West there could be a similar ambiguity – although, being further away from Arabia, the tendency to be negative about Islam was more easily adopted. In Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne (perhaps written in about 832), the ambassadors from Harun al-Rashid are described as ‘Persian’ not as Arab; they are described without hostility. The appellation perhaps indicates a cousinage with actual Persia, Rome’s historic enemy – respected, and held to be to some extent civilized. The East was still the East, Einhard could be indicating, and the new rulers had solidified their realm into a separate and oppositional faith, with leaders who behaved in accordance with the norms of inter-state relations then current. This was far from the myth-making current at the time of the First Crusade, an episode boosted by the rancorous Song of Roland. Within the Christian West the Athanasian version of Christianity became almost entirely prevalent, although disbelief in the formula for the Trinity continued to be standard in some of the Swiss valleys (around Chur) and in the Vendée in France. Elsewhere Athanasian religion predominated, although the Eastern and the Western Churches came to differ in a subtle but significant way in their manner of viewing the Trinity. The Eastern held to the notion that God the Father was the prime instrument or maker of the universe, and that from and into the Father all theological identity of the Son and the Holy Spirit both issued and was contained. In the West the ultimate theoretical unifier of the divine

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was not God the Father but the metaphysical entity known as substance. Substance united the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In this way the Eastern Church arguably gained greater internal strength, by not introducing a new concept. In the West when the very notion of substance came to be disputed in the seventeenth century, so too did the Trinity; and Christian faith itself fell weaker. This was not the case in the East, where the predominant notion was that the Father, not substance, was the prime element in the Godhead.

Reason and the Trinity in the Middle Ages The scope of reason was an issue of debate in the early Middle Ages. Fulbert of Chartres was perhaps the most outstanding intellectual innovator of the early Middle Ages, opening an academy in 990 to further Gerbert’s teaching. Gerbert – Pope Sylvester II – had travelled to Spain to investigate the new knowledge from the Islamic world, and Chartres remained a centre for the diffusion of Arab science after its founder’s death.36 Fulbert, as mentioned above, held that God was beyond the bounds of reason, and could not be confined within a logical structure. But his pupil Berengarius disagreed. God was amenable to dialectic, he held, and, using critical reasoning, found himself denying transubstantiation. This led to a condemnation in 1050. With the opening of the possibility of dialectic, medieval thinkers could apply their intellectual faculties to the Trinity.37 Thus reason, in the sense of enquiry, played a part within the thought of the Middle Ages. The period grew rich in dialectic, controversy and fierce disputations. The Athanasian Trinity seems to have brought about a philosophical discomfort to the Age of Faith, as it grew in philosophical speculation. Abelard, in the eleventh century, introduced the idea of Nominalism, which became pitted against Realism – the philosophical theory that class-words (such as the empire, the Church) are really just names, and do not denote any real, existent entities. Realists hold that terms of classification of organizations – the Church, the State (and in our times, the Party) have a real existence. Nominalism holds that no real existence adheres to such entities. Church and State are just names, signifying no more than groups of worshippers or the institutions relevant to the people living in a certain territory.38 Two centuries later Aristotle was re-discovered, and, after a struggle, his writings came to hold an importance only a little below that of holy writ. But reason was frowned upon if it showed any likelihood of undermining faith. The Trinity remained

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well-defended, although it was threatened by Nominalism, which, if applied to it, is apt to make the indivisible three dissolve into three persons, which might be seen as three gods. However impassioned the disputes in the European Middle Ages, in calm times of intellectual coasting scholasticism came to dominate all assumptions of the nature and extent of reasoning, operating in an inflexible and rule-bound manner, deferential, despite conflicts such as that between Realism and Nominalism, to authority, and an example of what has recently become known as ‘thinking within the box’. It was based on a few texts of the classical writers (or commentaries on them such as Boethius on Aristotle’s Analytics).39 Except when characterized by brave and radical leaps, reason in the Middle Ages was thus caged, though its confinement could be broad; its main job was to act as a handmaid to religious truth and the authority of the Church. Except on rare occasions faith had the last word.40 Logic was steered into the task of clarifying sacred notions. Faith was the first rule of thought. Only when the word and world of the sacred had been ordered and established, was the entry of reason permitted, which then was used to support faith.41 Nevertheless faith was recognized to be inadequate without the support of reason. There was at the same time tension between the two, despite the subordinate position of reason. A possible parallel might be that found in the political events of the time: the visible tension between the Pope and the Emperor, yet necessity for both. In the later Middle Ages an attempt was made to explain the Trinity through a pictorial representation, the Scutum Fidei, or shield of faith. This was a shield-like design with three points or vertices, and a central device. It indicated that, while the Father was not the Son, and the Son not the Holy Spirit, yet each of them was God. The reasoning seems to have been that if an A is a D, and a B is a D and a C is a D, it of course does not follow that an A is a B, or an A a C. However, in the dogma propounded by Athanasius and his followers, ‘God’ is not a predicated class, like D (which, for instance, a tree is: a beech is a tree, and an oak is a tree, but a beech is not an oak). The implication of the Athanasian Creed is that for something to be God, God will, in some mysterious way, be that thing. If the Father was God, then God was the Father, and if the Son was God, then it was hard to avoid the conclusion that the Son, being God, was the Father too. Only if, in discussion of the Trinity, the term ‘God’ were a kind of hyper-predicate, which did not operate in the manner of other predicates, could the Scutum Fidei have any power of illustration. It is not supportable as an analogy for the Athanasian Trinity.

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The few theologians who raised doubts about the Trinity were viewed as treating the issue more in the manner of an academic exercise, or disputation, than as promoting pervasive heresy. Peter Lombard (d. 1164), ‘The Master of the Sentences’, is often held to be a definitive exponent of the doctrine of the Trinity. Not a serious original thinker, he was heavily dependent upon St Augustine. Although he asserted that the Trinity pervaded scripture,42 he nevertheless posed uncomfortable questions.43 He also declared that substance had been present as a notion from the beginning. But, his opponents queried, if the three members of the Trinity are united in substance, might that not make substance itself a kind of fourth member of the Godhead, making the latter a Quaternity? The solution, propounded by Joachim of Fiore in the early thirteenth century, was to reduce the notion of substance to a very weak structure. But thereby the three persons became in effect three gods.44 The medieval Church upheld Peter Lombard’s view, while ignoring the point about substance, and condemned the opinions of Joachim of Fiore at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The possibility of a Quaternity remained, and was to prove fatal to Valentino Gentile in 1566. Other medieval theologians grappled with the notion of the Trinity. Besides Abelard, the father of Nominalism, the anonymous author of the Theologica Germanica expressed reservations or doubts about the doctrine. Richard of St Victor, abandoning metaphysics, declared that there had to be three persons because God was love, and love must have an object, but perfect love had to be devoid of jealousy, and three represented a perfect sharing. Henri of Gand (Ghent) held that the creation of the world necessitated the crafts of the Son and the Spirit, since God alone was too remote and ineffable to participate in such mundane pursuits as the creation and engineering of a supremely complex world structure.45 Even at this date, theologians felt restless at the idea, known as Fideism, of total submission to the authority of the Church over such matters as the Trinity. Fideism was fuelled by fiducia, or the unquestioning faith in the opinion of spiritual authority. The term returned to relevance in early modern times. Opposing the Fideists were the Moderni, led by William of Ockham (or Occam). The notions of the Fideists and the Moderni overlap with the philosophical ideas of Realism versus Nominalism. The attitude of the Moderni to the Trinity was one of uncompromising Nominalism. Ockham, a leading Nominalist, opposed to the real existence of universals, could only accept that substance was a classificatory name, not a kind of universal abstract glue. The members of the Trinity were each identified by name as persons: no more. The only thing that kept them together was a name, Trinity. The conclusion

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seems to lead to the view that the three are three gods. Ockham circumvented this position by declaring that in the Godhead there were three absolutes. He realized that the Trinity could not be supported by any form of rational or analogous argument: it could only be accepted as an item of faith. Ockham’s followers included Robert Holcot (d. 1349), Gregory of Rimini, Pierre D’Ailly and John Major (1469–1550), a Scot living partly in France. They all grappled with the question: three persons or three gods?46 Robert Holcot said that if the three can be distinguished finitely there will be finitude to God, and if infinitely, the three will differ as much as God from Satan. John Major declared that Christian theologians realized that there were indeed a plurality of Gods, but they kept a discreet silence on the matter so as not to give comfort to the infidels. Transparency would hand a victory in disputes to the Jews and Muslims. Even Erasmus declared that ‘According to dialectical logic it is possible to say that there are three gods. But to say this to the untutored would give offence.’47 Erasmus and John Major lie at the threshold of the Reformation, in which the issues of reason in faith, and belief in the Trinity, would continue to play a part, though peripherally. During the sixteenth century, a number of theologians, including Calvin, expressed the regret that criticism of the Athanasian Trinity had suddenly re-emerged, having lain dormant for 1,200 years since the Council of Nicaea. The criticism was seen to be deeply shocking, hacking away at the tap-root of the Christian faith. However, the antiTrinitarianism which reappeared in the writings of Michael Servetus and of some Anabaptists could better be seen as a continuation of the themes enunciated by the medieval disputants named above. The criticism of the Trinity voiced after 1520 was a louder and clearer continuation of the dispute, given publicity through the printing press, on account of the movement of change which the Reformation embodied, and above all on account of the ending of total Roman Catholic spiritual authority throughout Western Europe.

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3

Radical Reformers: ‘He who loves is greater than he who believes’

T

he Reformation brought about a radically new way of viewing religion, with political, social, intellectual and military consequences. Luther and Calvin – and to some extent Zwingli – have usually been accounted the main agents of change; but there were at the same time a number of lesser figures, several of whom have bequeathed communities living today (such as the Mennonites and the Schwenckfeldians). Many of these saw no need to maintain political and social respectability. The public face of the Reformation had been a matter of concern to Luther and Calvin, since they saw a need to hold on to a political structure, to prevent the possibility of the collapse of the reform. Their reformation, in Luther’s case backed by the German princes against the Emperor, is often known as the ‘magisterial reformation’.1 In the context of the region, here was a reformation which was succeeding. In the previous 300 years or so there had been outbreaks of disorder which had at their heart discontent with the greed of the magnates, or with the excess and avarice of the clergy. Several of these violent stirrings had taken on a millennial aspect, and manifested the kind of extreme devotion which re-appeared among some of the Anabaptists. All of the uprisings had failed. Now, in a new way, Luther might be succeeding. It is possible that his achievement triggered the last such popular, part-millennial, manifestation, the Peasants’ War of 1525–27 – a war which Luther, who had princely protection, condemned. The new truth appeared as both revelation and revolution to the Anabaptists, with their tendency to spiritual anarchism. They held that, since there was no mention of infant baptism in the Gospels, there should be no baptism until a mature age had been reached. Infant baptism was seen by them as akin to sorcery or magic. They practised a Gospel-based ‘believers’ baptism’, undertaken as a mature adult. The Catholic Church

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of the time enacted extremely cruel torments for those who dared to be baptized at the age at which John the Baptist had baptized his followers, employing sanctions which dated from the Code of Justinian, but which in those times had seldom if ever been put into practice. On the side of the Reform, the adviser to Duke Christoph of Württemberg, Johann Brenz, contended that the law against re-baptism in the Code referred only when it was undertaken by Catholic ministers, and applied only to those caught in the very act of baptizing; and that the law survived in an incomplete form. Now though the measures were fiercely enforced. The more fortunate Anabaptists were thrown into the Swiss lakes, bound to a stone; many were burnt at the stake, some, like Michael Sattler, after enduring horrific tortures. Anabaptists in the Netherlands, Switzerland and in parts of Germany, in the face of persecution, developed radical, anarchical tendencies; they had no protectors, nor did they look for any; and they appeared to threaten the stability of the Reformation where it relied on princely authority and good order. A number of them were Spiritualists: that is, they believed that Christianity was an internal, largely private matter, and that external manifestations (such as the sacraments and ceremonies of the Church) were against the spirit of the Gospels. The basis of the northern Reformation had been conscience, which especially challenged the sale of indulgences and the complex notion of transubstantiation, seen as mistaken and wrong – almost a kind of pagan magic. By contrast in Italy, where the Reformation developed strongly until about 1540, when the Roman Inquisition crushed it, the Christian reformers approached the issue from a different viewpoint, since they inclined to a view of Christianity as a philosophy of life, and viewed its tenets as reasonable and confirmable by experience. The basis of the Italian Reformation was not conscience but reason.2 Its leaders were less troubled by guilt, more concerned with argument, analysis and the classical heritage. There were exceptions, and special cases, notably the Waldenses, who were descendants of the disciples of Peter Waldo, a twelfth-century preacher, and whose land lay under the hereditary control of the duke of Savoy. (It is possible that the community dated from a considerably earlier period, since they revere the memory of Claude, the iconoclastic bishop of Turin of about 820–39.) The doctrine of the Waldenses (or ‘Poor Men of Lyon’) was a simple Christianity, rejecting most sacraments and the authority of priests. Overwhelmingly poor subsistence farmers, they were tenacious of their beliefs – which did not include that of the Trinity. They held instead to a straightforward, earthy, Bible-based Protestantism. The

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movement developed in the region between Lyon and Geneva known as the Dauphiné, throughout the eastern Swiss lands of the Grisons and in the Italian Alps, before papal or imperial persecution reduced them to scattered communities in Italian Switzerland, situated about 30 miles west of Turin, where they held to their independent beliefs throughout the centuries, despite the violence offered.3 Even the respectable Swiss and German reformers, who largely avoided the extremes of theological and social radicalism seen among Anabaptists, held views in their youth which they later repudiated. Some had once posed questions concerning the doctrine of the Trinity which they passed over while piloting the Reformation. Luther himself disliked the term Trinitas, preferring to refer just to God. He was averse to the word homoousios (the substance word). In his translation of the Bible he omitted the controversial verse of 1 John v, 7, and in the Litany he cut out an invocation to the Trinity.4 Philip Melanchthon, Guillaume Farel and John Calvin, later to become dogmatic upholders of Trinitarian doctrine, all held reservations about it, the latter declaring that Trinitas and homoousios were barbarous and scholastic terms.5 The magisterial reformers were, however, hesitant to abandon the Athanasian Creed (the Quicunque Vult), the defining document of the Trinity. To abandon that Creed might make them no better than the Anabaptists, seen as agents of revolt and anarchy.6 John Calvin, who was later to declare himself a fierce Trinitarian, had initially believed that the Athanasian Creed should be scrapped.7 Zwingli held that Jesus should not be worshipped. The radicals, unconstrained by any political need to show a public and acceptable face of devout worship, appeared first in Germany. Their names are less known today; their lives were characterized by impermanence, since, unless they kept moving from city to city, they risked a charge of heresy, which frequently meant death. The sixteenth century, as well as being the bravest for theological seekers, was also the most punitive. The bravery and the perils of the time are perhaps best shown by looking at the lives of some of the radical reformers of the time, mostly in brief, one somewhat longer, and the last one, in view of his lasting influence on radical theology, at length.

German Spiritual Humanists: Denck, Haetzer and Franck Hans Denck, an early radical theological thinker, was born in about 1500. After university he found his way to Basle, where he worked as a printer and attended further lectures. A recommendation from Johannes

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Oecolampadius (Hausschein), a learned and largely moderate reformation leader, found him a teaching job in Nuremberg. Here he came into conflict with the strict and formal Lutheran Andreas Osiander, who disliked the medieval mystical notions he sensed in the background of Denck’s thought (derived from the powerful mystical piety of Johann Tauler, a fourteenth-century preacher in Strassburg who used the German rather than the Latin language). Denck, though, was more focused on the future than the past: the main thrust of his ideas was in the direction of Renaissance humanism. He dismissed the notion of the Athanasian Trinity, and declared that Christ was a human example, not a part of the Godhead.8 Nuremberg had its history of radical dissent: Jan Hus had spoken there, and Waldensian peasants gathered in the city’s hinterland. It was also the home of Albrecht Dürer. Despite the support of Dürer (who remained Catholic) and others of the artistic community of Nuremberg, in January 1525 Denck was, after an intense and profound religious disputation, banished from the city. Travelling to Augsburg, he met Ludwig Haetzer, who was on the point of being expelled for his antiLutheranism. Religion in Denck’s opinion was a matter of continuous revelation from God, not something that related to a single event in the past; inner experience was integral to faith for him. He published a book on the contradictions found within scripture, not in order to discredit the Bible text, but to show the folly of sticking fast to ‘proof texts’, a course which lead to haggling over words and bitter disputes.9 Let the spirit guide you, was his belief. Denck abandoned Augsburg, following pressure from the Lutheran pastors, this time for Strassburg (1526). Again, pressure from leading Lutherans drove him on, to Worms, and then back in Augsburg before moving on to Ulm and Nuremberg.10 He found untroubled residence only in Basle, a city most often defined by toleration. Here the failure of the anarchic Anabaptist experiment at Münster of 1535 made him modify his position, in favour of a spiritual version of ordinary Protestantism. His inner religious pilgrimage was cut short by his death. To the last he continued to press that the Church was not an external organization, but rather a spiritual fellowship. In opposition to Luther, he rejected predestination and asserted the freedom of the will.11 His piety was mystical – which in the sixteenth century often, somewhat paradoxically, coexisted with rationality. Ludwig Haetzer, Denck’s fellow Anabaptist, was a lesser figure: born in Switzerland in about 1500, and driven from place to place among German and Swiss cities on account of his radical theology and anarchically personal faith, he had collaborated with Denck in Worms and Augsburg. He was executed by the magistrates of Constance in February

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1529 on account of having a relationship with a woman who was not his wife;12 but the underlying charge was his free expression of theological opinions. A book of his arguing that Christ was not divine was suppressed by Zwingli,13 and his entire religious temperament led him to reject the doctrine of the Trinity. A verse by him, put in the mouth of God, declared: Ich bin allein der einig Gott, Der ohn gehylff alle Dinge beschaffen hat: Fragstu, wie veil meiner sey? Ich bin’s allein, meiner sind nit Drey. (I am alone, the only God, Who without help created all; You ask, how many of me are there? I am alone, no Three are mine.)14

Sebastian Franck was another reformer who combined a passion for the free expression of theological opinions with an inner spiritual mysticism. Born in Bavaria in about 1499, he joined the Lutherans at Nuremberg in 1525, but, finding them too dogmatic, discovered instead spiritual companionship among Hans Denck’s followers. Moving on to Strassburg, he became acquainted with Caspar Schwenckfeld, a fellow believer in the inner life, who was rejecting human-derived ecclesiastical institutions. (In 1526 Schwenckfeld instituted a Stillstand, or suspension, of Holy Communion, until the warring communities of Christians could come to an agreement and cease fighting.) The life of Christ was to Franck an allegory for the inner, spiritual experience of living humankind today.15 He also discovered the ideas of Michael Servetus, the Spanish antiTrinitarian (see below). An interesting point about Franck’s ideas, developing from his lack of interest in Christ’s actual life in the first century ad, is that he did not seek to return the Church to its pristine, New Testament original. He did not want to scrape off the theological encrustations of centuries. Rather, he saw religious instruction and observances as relevant only to children and young people. When childhood was over, humanity should fly, not crawl. People should resist the institutions of oppressive religiosity. We should ignore the human-generated, external set-up of the Church, in favour of inner spirituality; seeing ourselves as members of the ecclesia spiritualis, which included the pagans from before and after Christ, a community which in his eyes included good Muslims today.16 Here he echoed Schwenckfeld, and indeed to some extent the brilliant and enigmatic French orientalist Guillaume Postel, a man of luminous and passionate Catholic humanism, whose life was transformed in 1546

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by meeting a Venetian virgin, Joanna, at a hospice for the dying.17 Franck’s heterodoxy, and his written support (in the three-volume Chronica of 1531) of dissidents, meant that he too was driven from place to place, and often had to live on his wits. Perhaps the most remarkable quality of his Chronica is its pervasive spirit of ironic compassion. The ‘chronicle of heretics’ contained in that work was based on a text assembled by the Dominican Bernard of Luxemburg, and had been dutifully prepared by that monk for the use of the Inquisitors: to simplify their onerous task, so that they could swiftly get on with the job.18 But Franck set the catalogue to a diametrically opposite use to that of the Dominican, integral to the Inquisition. The free-spirited Bavarian, focusing on the brave and devout opinions of people named in the list, used it to highlight the sincerity and steadfastness of those cruelly persecuted for their beliefs. Even Erasmus found himself named as one of the heretics, a listing that troubled him. With others, he called for, and obtained, the expulsion of Franck from Strassburg.19 Franck, like other radicals and theological renegades, grew used to expulsions. At one stage, desperate for employment, he became a soapboiler; though he also found work at Ulm as a printer. His German translation of Erasmus’ Praise of Folly appeared in 1534, despite the unfriendly action of its author. In 1539 Franck compiled a biblical index, Das verbutschierte mit siben Sigeln verscholsßene Buch, which, as Haetzer had done, showed up the contradictions found in scripture, making such points as that the sins of one person cannot implicate another, but Adam’s guilt condemns everyone; or that Christ brings both peace and a sword.20 He concluded that the Bible was a veiled, as much as a revealed, spiritual text.21 To the Anabaptist leader Johannes Campanus he said in his final letter, ‘Maintain freedom of thought’ – although he was opposed to Anabaptist extremism, calling it ‘a new monkery’.22 In other texts, Franck placed the words of those whom he knew as the classical pagans, but who were most often Renaissance versions of pagans, alongside Christian authorities, setting the words of Augustine against Hermes Trismegistus, Thomas Aquinas and Orpheus, and Johann Tauler and Plato.23 Elsewhere in the Chronica he said that Christians could learn from the Muslim Turks things which the Christian nations ignored. Holding war and crusades to be in principle wicked, he expressed sympathy for the pagan Saxons whom Charlemagne had attempted to convert by force.24 He thus laid down a challenge to the superior and accepted narrative of European militaristic ‘godly history’ in favour of the harder way of peace and toleration, riven with set-backs. Franck’s rejection of dogma, sects and institutions in favour of inner spirituality and

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rationality shows him to have been a brave, strong and free man, in advance of his times. In the main, the second rank of Reformation leaders adhered to the line of the ‘magisterial’, rather than ‘radical’, reformers: there was Luther’s confidant Melanchthon – cool, calm and classical, the author of the Augsburg Confession – with him in Wittenberg; Oecolampadius in Basle; Butzer (Bucer) and Capito in Strassburg.25 But among the Reformation thinkers in Germany and Switzerland theology was still fluid and in the process of being remade, and until the 1550s the spiritual radicals had some influence on it. Two points can be made about the German radical reformers. The first is in their tumultuous variety of belief and thought, and to some extent in their millenarianism, they foreshadowed the many sects which roamed England at the time of the Puritan Revolution. Related to this, one notes that a number of their ideas influenced the Quakers in England and America – as well as bequeathing some Anabaptist communities to the USA.

A Dutch Catholic Spiritual Humanist: Dirk Coornheert In the sixteenth century enlightened humanism was not found only on the side of the reformed. Some individuals who decided to remain as Catholics showed a spirit of humanity and freedom: most notable of all was Erasmus. Indeed, the boundaries between Catholicism and Protestantism could be fluid. The Dutch word used was onpartijdigen – in German it appears as unparteiisch – meaning those with/without party allegiance. The image of fierce opposition encountered in England in the antagonistic stances of Queen Elizabeth and the two Marys is not the only one available. Dirk Coornheert (1520–90) was a bold supporter of religious liberty. An engraver from Haarlem, with no priestly or monkish background, or training in theology, he never left the Roman Catholic Church, though he wrote fearlessly of ‘Roman idolatry’.26 His wide reading included many of the works of the reformers, being especially drawn to the writings of Sebastian Franck, and even more to the liberal, nonpersecutory ideas of Sebastian Castellio, the patient and quiet originator of toleration in Western Europe and steady advocate of the end of religious enforcement and violence. Coornheert’s most lengthy disputes were with Calvinist preachers. Liberty in faith was what he supported above all; he loathed equally the Spanish Inquisition and Genevan

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Calvinism. When Catholicism was outlawed in Holland (then known as the United Provinces) in 1581, he naturally opposed the move, to no avail, making at the same time the significant point, that Catholicism could not be identified with total support for Philip II’s Spain; local Catholics had joined with Protestants in defence against Spanish imperialism. This distinction was new at the time. Coornheert published an imaginary dialogue the following year in which he put forward many of the ideas of the radical reformation, questioning the value of tradition, and of religious ceremonies not founded upon the Bible, asking who should judge in matters of doctrine, and what part, if any, magistrates should play in theological matters. He further wondered who should judge heretics, and whether they should be put to death or endure harsh punishments. His main conclusion, expressed in mild language, was that no judgement should be given by mere human beings; and that earthly judgements upon doctrine and heresy were wrong.27 ‘Use the sword God has given you to establish the rule of peace.’28 Coornheert also gave an approving mention to Germany and Poland, pointing out that their religious freedom had not created political chaos. Public worship should be free and undisturbed, he recommended. At the end of his life he had a public dispute with Justus Lipsius, of the University of Leiden, who had shown some moderation. But Lipsius now proposed death for those who propagated heresy (qui publice peccant). Coornheert responded that religion was protected by God with the word of his truth, and not by the ruler with the steel sword.29 Lipsius’ way was that of Augustus and Nero. A temporal ruler could not be head of the Church or of its secular arm. Along with his other humane qualities, Coornheert was also prepared to tolerate atheists, something rare for the time. His example has influenced the mild and tolerant nature of Dutch Catholicism to this day.

Italian–Spanish Protesting Humanists: Lorenzo Valla and Juan de Valdes The new ideas made a powerful impact upon Italy. Since the fourteenth century the notion of some sort of return to the values of the Roman Republic had been gaining in strength. Catholic authority was not pervasive. The Papacy was less than enthusiastic about Rome, having abandoned its hot dust for the gentler climate of Avignon between 1309 and 1377. In the late-medieval undevout Eternal City, Rienzi and Petrarch had – briefly – recovered the republican values of virtuous

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society, formulated by Cicero, Tacitus and Vergil, and re-discovered civic freedom. Lorenzo Valla, a forerunner of Erasmus, was born in Rome in the following century. Using methods of proper historical enquiry he proved the falsity of the ‘Donation of Constantine’, the alleged letter (said to date from 315, but actually forged in about 750) from the Emperor Constantine to the Pope, vesting in the papacy ecclesiastical and temporal supremacy of the whole of Western Europe, as well as authority over the other leading Christian sees of the eastern Mediterranean.30 By placing reason above tradition, he shook scholasticism. Even before Valla’s death in 1457 the educated classes, especially those in medicine and the law, had inclined towards questioning accepted Christian theology, since the nature of their professions compelled them to think for themselves. Valla’s work inspired and enriched the process, by offering them new theological perspectives. The process laid the foundations for the short-lived but brightly hued Italian Reformation. This movement, with its philosophical leanings, touched a wide conspectus of people, even if it was ultimately crushed by the Counter-Reformation and the Roman Inquisition. Southern Italy, a Spanish possession at this time, was the home of the reformer Juan de Valdes. There were no Jesuit spies yet to instil fear, and the Inquisition was then absent from Naples, only turning up to persecute his followers two years after his death. In about 1530, Valdes had set up a circle of devout thinkers and refashioners of faith in that southern city, which explored central issues of devotion and authority. The group foreshadowed the Great Tew Circle in England of almost exactly 100 years later. Valdes’ group included the high-born, cultured and beautiful women Vittoria Colonna (the friend of Michelangelo) and Giulia Gonzaga. Giulia Gonzaga’s correspondence with Pietro Carnesecchi, a humanist inclined towards Lutheranism, was held to be heretical after her death, and he was beheaded by the Roman Inquisition. Another member of his circle was Pietro Martire Vermigli, who came to England at the time of Edward VI, where he was known as Peter Martyr. Juan de Valdes’ book, One Hundred and Ten Considerations, was translated into English in the seventeenth century by Nicholas Ferrar, the founder of the Little Gidding community. It is a fit text for a Protestant monastic community. Despite being somewhat hard and Lutheran in sentiment (though Valdes never formally left the Roman Church), the author makes the point that faith is something inward, a tensile principle of life, not a dead form imposed upon a living person.31 This idea was typical of the Italian Reformation: spiritual, humanistic, yet at the same time unequivocally devout.

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Curione Coelius Secundus Curione (or Curio; he also spelt his name ‘Curioni’) was another radical and brave challenger of the devout status quo. He was born in San Chirico, Piedmont, in 1503. After a careful and thorough education, at around the age of 20 he caught the student buzz of Reformation ideas, and brimming with youthful ardour sought to explore the notions of Luther and Zwingli. He refused to join the authorities’ condemnation of them, seeking instead to read the original texts for himself. He and two colleagues resolved to visit the German cities. Their plans were reported to a Catholic bishop, who had them caught and held in prison. Curione was separated from the others, taken to the castle of Capriano, but freed after two months through the intervention of powerful friends. The bishop liked the intelligent young man, and, hoping to take him under his wing, sent him to study in the monastery of St Benigno. The young man’s views on Catholicism had not changed. The monastery held the relics of a saint; these he removed one quiet day, and placed there instead a copy of the Bible, with a note saying that here was held the true relics of the saints. On the eve of the saint’s day, when the bones and skin would have been put on display, Curione set off hot-foot to Neapolitan territory.32 He then spent some years in Milan, then occupied by Emperor Charles V. He worked to persuade the Church authorities to grant Church revenues to relief of the poor. After marriage to Margherita Isacchi, who bore him nine children, he went to live in Casale, near Montferrat. A dispute with a Dominican over Luther led him to declare his allegiance to the reformer, as well as to win the argument and compel the friar to retreat rapidly to Turin, where he immediately contacted the chief inquisitor, who arranged for the arrest of the young heretic. The charge of the removal of the relics was renewed. Curione was placed in fetters, in a room of a castle which he had known since boyhood. The constriction of the iron made his feet swell up. Might a fetter be removed from one ankle, he asked his captors, and after its return to health, could the same be done for the other ankle? This request was granted. With one fetter off, he managed to construct a false leg out of a stocking and some rags, and when the time came for the iron to be fixed on the alternate limb, he substituted this false leg. Now he was almost free. One stormy night, when his watchers were asleep, he slipped out, and made his escape though a rain-lashed window. His guard, astonished the next morning to find him gone, ascribed his disappearance to magic and necromancy; Curione heard of this, and under the title of ‘Probus’ published a ridiculing account, which offered a true narrative of his escape.33

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A declared enemy of the Church, he now made his way to a town near Milan, where he was invited to become a professor at the University of Pavia. All this was done under the impotent observation of the Inquisitors. The entire senate of Pavia was threatened with excommunication unless it handed Curione over; he escaped again, first to Venice and then, under the protection of Renata, Duchess of Ferrara – Renée of France, the daughter of Louis XII, King of France – to Lucca, where a professorship was prepared for him. But the Catholic Church did not give up, and demanded his presence in Rome. Renata again offered assistance, this time to get him to Lausanne, where another academic post was waiting, and whither he went. But he missed his family, and secretly returned to Italy. In Pisa, one evening in the middle of dinner, the Bargello, or local Inquisition enforcer, made a sudden appearance, having previously secured the house with guards. He came face to face with Curione, and declared that he was arresting him in the name of the Pope and the Holy Office. Curione rose, half minded to submit; but the Bargello caught sight of a table knife glinting in his hand, and collapsed terrified in a faint. Curione seized the moment; fled past the ineffectual guards without being recognized, reached the stables, mounted his horse and rode off. A storm made impossible the pursuit of his enemies.34 After returning to Lausanne, he took up residence in tolerant Basle, where he was appointed Professor of Eloquence and Belles-Lettres. Here he became a friend of Castellio, Ochino, Laelio Sozini and other leaders of the movement for tolerance and reason in religion. He lived in Basle till his death in 1569. The Pope made silken offers for his return to Italy, as did the duke of Savoy, and the emperor in Vienna. Even the voivode, or prince, of Transylvania – at the time a revolutionary, largely Unitarian, Hungarian-speaking state – offered him a post at the University of Weissenberg (Alba Iulia; Gyulafehervar). He spurned all offers. Following the trial and death of Michael Servetus in 1553, he assisted Castellio with the production of his 1554 text on whether heretics should be persecuted, writing some passages of that book. He may also have written a defence of Servetus, using the pen-name Alfonso Lyncurius.35 In his 1549 book, Christianae Religionis Institutio (The Institution of the Christian Religion), Curione had omitted any reference to the necessity of belief in the Trinity or the Deity of Christ for salvation.36 A later book challenged the Calvinist doctrine of predestination and election, pointing out that these ideas were inimical to scripture and reason. The book also declared that humankind could obtain salvation by doing things which were naturally right, without conversion.

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Acontius Giacomo Aconzio, or Jacobo Acontius, was probably born at the very end of the fifteenth century, at Trento, Italy.37 His early years are obscure; he appears to have studied law and theology, and learnt the profession of an engineer. In terms of faith he inclined to liberal Protestantism, and he left Italy first for Strassburg and then, in 1557, for Basle, whither he returned in 1564. Here he met, as well as Curione, Minos Celsus, a Sienese refugee from the Inquisition who, after living in Protestant lands, had grown equally wary of Protestant intolerance.38 Able and perceptive, Acontius moved to England in 1559, and received letters of naturalization in 1561. In return for an annual grant of 60 he was employed as a civil engineer, working to reclaim land from the Thames at Erith and Plumstead, moving to Berwick-upon-Tweed in 1564 to help strengthen the fortifications there. In religious matters Acontius was not a sceptic or a scoffer: he was, like all the questioners of the time, a serious man who set out to distinguish truth from falsehood, and to rid the faith of dogmatic or superstitious accretions. In 1565 he published a book (dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I) which declared that it was not necessary to believe in the Trinity. Strategemata Satanae (‘Satan’s Stratagems’) called for religious belief to be scaled down to a few tenets. In London he prayed at the ‘Strangers’ Church’, where foreign adherents of the reformed religion held services, led by Cornelis Adrian van Hamstede. Both he and Hamstede were excommunicated by Archbishop Grindal for incorrect beliefs, but he continued to attend, and Hamstede to officiate. Acontius held firmly to his faith of minimal dogma, and his relations with Queen Elizabeth did not suffer in consequence – an example of the monarch’s broad religious tolerance and high intelligence. His book was influential among those who sought to think and examine rather than meekly to accept. The basic gist of the argument is that excess of beliefs had driven Christians to wage war against each other, and since war was inherently evil, especially a war of Christians against Christians, it was necessary to slim down the faith to essentials. Christian peace would break out when people believed only a few central items of faith. Intellectual humility was necessary: ‘No one person that is but a meer man ought to be so confident as to perswade himself he cannot err ... none so excels in wisdom but he may be subject to human frailty when he least suspects himself.’39 True holiness is therefore found in minimal belief. Specifically Acontius argued that belief in the Trinity, and such ideas such as the Real Presence, should be abandoned. The godly person was one who, with discernment, left out the most. The book was to

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become popular in England among the members of the Great Tew circle in the 1630s; indeed, it became almost their main text. It has been claimed that this text was a key instrument in guiding the Anglican Church along the paths of tolerance and reason. In 1648 the first half of Acontius’ book was translated into English by John Goodwin, an Independent and a pioneer of free choice in religion.

Bernardino Ochino The life of the Sienese preacher Bernardino Ochino holds up a further mirror to the risk at that time of standing up to clerical authority in Italy and daring to believe things beyond the permitted.40 Born in 1487, Ochino’s background was unremarkable, and his education patchy. But he had a capacity for learning, and soon overcame early deficiencies. Entering the austere order of the Capuchins, he became noted as a powerful preacher: Emperor Charles V is said to have declared, ‘That man would make stones weep!’. He healed divisions between quarreling parties in Perugia, and in Naples the congregation donated 5,000 scudi (crowns) in the collection at the end of a service. The reputation he acquired was that of a holy man, living abstemiously. Then in 1541, in visiting Naples, he took part in a discussion with Juan de Valdes and Pietro Martiri Vermigli (Peter Martyr). His entire outlook on life and faith shifted: he became a man of the Reformation. In his sermons in Venice during Lent in 1542 the authorities took notice of his utterances, and he came under suspicion. He spoke in favour of a follower of Valdes who had been jailed in Milan. The great preacher was forbidden to preach; but the Venetians, loving the sound of his rich and eloquent words, successfully begged the authorities to withdraw the prohibition. His watchers observed, hawk-like. As hints and signs of support for the Reformation were identified in his sermons, he made contact again with Peter Martyr, and both decided to flee Italy. A report reached him that six cardinals were in Rome waiting to sit in judgement on him. An armed detachment had been placed ready to seize him in Siena and Florence. Renée of France, fixer for radical Protestants, intervened on his behalf, as she had done for Curione, supplying him with money and a disguise, and Ochino fled to Geneva, where he made the acquaintance of Calvin. Moving on to Basle, he met Sebastian Castellio, before travelling on to Augsburg, where conditions were too disturbed for him to remain; so he returned to Basle, before travelling on to Strassburg, where he met his friend Peter Martyr. In the autumn of 1547 both these

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Italian Protestants received an invitation from Archbishop Cranmer to strengthen the reformed faith to England. Peter Martyr was given a professorship at Oxford, and Ochino became a non-residentiary prebend of Canterbury. Ochino’s time in England was spent creatively. The Spanish humanist Francis Dryander (Francisco de Enzinas) wrote to Bullinger in 1549: ‘As far as I can tell, Bernardino has never lived more happily, and worked more successfully, than now. He spends all his leisure hours in literary labours, and he himself says that he works with greater energy and success than ever before.’41 But with the death of Edward VI and the accession of Mary, both Italians were compelled to flee; Ochino returned to Geneva, arriving in October 1553, the day after the burning of Servetus. Horrified and repelled by the cruel death of Servetus, he left for Basle – though he had married in Geneva. Thence he moved on to Zürich as preacher to a community of German Protestants who had formerly worked for banks (such as Fugger) in Italy. He appears to have spent at least some time in a liberal part of Poland, for he is mentioned as having engaged in theological discussion at Pinczów. As he grew more liberal in his understanding of the Christian faith, so he discarded more and more dogmas. He showed a radical dismissal of the Trinity; his book Thirty Dialogues, printed in 1563, was an original and well-argued text, apparently a humane defence of the Trinity, but actually a powerful solvent both of the technical labyrinthine language of Augustine, and of the Athanasian Creed. The text supported the idea of the Trinity, but its method of argument weakened devotion to the Holy Three. Queen Elizabeth I on her accession is said to have considered inviting him back to England, in his capacity as ecclesiastical peacemaker. But he stayed in Zürich. Aged about 75, he published a dialogue which seemed to endorse polygamy (but which was rather a careful assessment of the arguments pro and con). This was too much for the Zürich authorities, and he was instantly banished with all his family, in the middle of winter. Basle, Mulhouse: nowhere was he allowed to rest his head, though he managed to get a post as a temporary preacher to Italians in Kraków. Both Catholics and Protestants (in the form of Theodore Beza, Calvin’s successor at Geneva) argued forcefully for his continuing expulsion; so he quit Poland and sought to reach Moravia (the eastern part of the Czech Republic today), where toleration could be found. Three of his children died of the plague on his journey, and he himself died at Slavkov (or Austerlitz), in 1564, at the age of 76. Beza, the punitive Calvinist, pitilessly ascribed his desperate wanderings and family misfortunes to the special providence of God.42

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Michael Servetus In Spain the movement for Church reform began as eagerly as that in Italy. Villanueva di Sijuena in Aragon was the birthplace, probably in 1511, of an exceptional scholar and physician, whose ideas of religious reform were among the most radical, as well as the most devout and humane, in the sixteenth century. Michael Servetus (Miguel Serveto y Reves), born to a legal family, entered the service of the Franciscan friar Juan de Quintana, a Spanish Erasmian, at the age of fifteen. He briefly left the service of Quintana to study first law in Toulouse, and then theology, with Greek and Hebrew.43 Spain’s reform was characterized by the popular, rational and intellectually grounded form of Catholicism associated with Erasmus. At this date Spanish Christianity did not manifest the dour obedience, dogmatic unity and militant intransigence with which the country later became associated. Spain’s Catholicism was then Erasmian, largely because the King of Spain, Charles V, had been born and brought up in the Spanish Low Countries, today Belgium and Holland. He spoke Flemish as a first language, and enjoyed the company at his court of Flemings, many of whom were deep-dyed in Erasmus’ ideas, and who imported the open and humane notions of the man from Rotterdam into Spain.44 The situation changed when Charles left Spain to become Emperor. Erasmus’ works were placed on the Index. Charles V changed too, in view of the enormous challenge now posed by Luther and the Reformation. The Inquisition crushed the Iberian movement for reform. Spain also differed from the rest of Europe in that the history and rich culture of Moorish Andalusia had bequeathed communities of Jews and Muslims to the peninsula, who despite their monotheism would not accept the Christian Gospel. What held them back? Was it not belief in the Trinity? It seemed to Servetus that if the Church could abandon the Trinity, seen by monotheist non-Christians as a belief in three gods, it would be easier to bring these Abrahamic monotheists into the fold. Servetus did not remain long in Toulouse, for Quintana had been appointed confessor to Charles V, and recalled him to his service. At the side of Quintana, Servetus witnessed the imperial coronation at Bologna in 1530, viewing with distaste the adulation offered to the Pope. As his theology was developing, Servetus left Quintana in the following year, travelling to Lyon and Geneva. He developed further serious doubts about the Trinity. He found that the word did not appear anywhere in the Bible, a text as new and astonishing to him as to other theological radicals. He seems to have tried to meet Erasmus in Basle – the evidence is fragmentary

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here – but the humanist had left the city. Instead, as a Protestant refugee, Servetus stayed for just under a year with Oecolampadius: the impetuous youth of 19 residing with the 48-year-old reformist leader. Editions of the early Church fathers were appearing from the presses, some in Erasmus’ translations, and they often showed reservations about the idea of the Trinity. These would have included Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Ignatius of Antioch. Ignatius held strongly to the idea of the unity of God: to him, Christ was God only insofar as he had come forward and engaged with humankind, whereas the Father was God beyond understanding, for ever enclosed in holy silence.45 The young theological enquirer learnt that some early fathers had had doubts about the Trinity. Servetus, following this tradition, lived in radically changed times. The Protestant Reformation, aided by the printing press, freed up the discussion of theological topics, and discovered an eager and less policed market-place of ideas. Servetus was also possessed of a stubborn and determined will. No words of caution uttered by the older man could shift the radical hot-headedness of the young man. At a conference in Zürich, Oecolampadius warned his fellow reformers that dangerous heresies appeared to be developing from this Spaniard. Zwingli advised him to kick him out. Servetus left Basle, and found a refuge in more tolerant Strassburg. Here he lived in the house of Wolfgang Fabricius Capito, who was receptive to his ideas; Caspar Schwenckfeld was there too. Servetus met Martin Bucer (Butzer) too, who advised caution. But the Spaniard’s secret aim was to publish his ideas on the Trinity. Not far from Strassburg, at Hagenau, he found a printer, Johannes Setzer, who agreed to handle his first book. In the summer of 1531 De Trinitatis Erroribus (‘On the Errors of the Trinity’) appeared. The book at once drew hostility among the reformers from Zürich to Wittenberg. Martin Bucer, under pressure from Oecolampadius, declared from the pulpit that Servetus deserved to be drawn and quartered.46 Luther, some years later, called it a ‘horrible, wicked book’.47 Catholic theologians were less exercised, though the Inquisition tried to persuade Servetus to return to Spain. The book was prohibited in Strassburg and Basle.48 Servetus was forced to publish a kind of retraction, ‘Two Books of Dialogues on the Trinity’. But the new work, when read carefully, was not an admission of error. It simply set out the argument of the earlier book in more gentle language.49 These two works, appearing in consecutive years, showed that Servetus was at heart a spiritual reformer. His approach to religion was different from that of Luther, the guilt-racked monk, flat on his back imploring

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God’s grace, or Calvin the lawyer, building his authority with the cold skill of a political attorney. Servetus differed, too, in largely being without a sense of guilt or sin. He was not troubled or tormented by the pervasive sense of spiritual anguish of the reformers, and probably his lack of a sense of sin increased their animosity towards him, since Pauline (and Augustinian) guilt played such a part in their theology. By contrast the Spaniard – impetuous, convinced of his own rightness, often unlikeable – had a strong sense of the inner world of Christianity being about love, not sin: something personal and creative, between a believer and Jesus Christ. Faith to him also had an outward significance; it was seen as able to transform the world by inspiring good deeds. Servetus combined to a remarkable degree devotion, erudition, and the capacity to present his ideas. In his words the old theories of scholastic theologians dissolved as he put forward the notion of Christian love. Substance, subsistence, essence, persons: these words, used to bolster the doctrine of the Trinity, appeared as no more than the artifices of pedantry – mouthed words, but meaningless. His books, too, for all their scriptural devoutness, showed a live, agile spirit of the Renaissance, rather than the weary and automatic formulae of the orthodox Middle Ages. The first sentence of ‘On the Errors of the Trinity’ reads: ‘In exploring the holy mysteries of the divine Trinity, it is from the man that I have held one should begin.’ (ab homine exordiendum eo duxi).50 ‘It is from the man’: therein lies the centre and originality of Servetus’ thoughts about the Trinity. The words are emblematic of a new approach, hovering between the Renaissance and Erasmus, which could not accept abject fossilized obedience to old methods. He did not entirely reject the Trinity, as is sometimes held; his own beliefs on the issue approximated to Sabellianism, the idea that One God can become the Son or the Holy Spirit. The Spaniard’s essential theology was that God, though unknowable, revealed himself, first through creation of the world, and then through the birth of Jesus, divinely generated in the womb of Mary: ‘the true, real, natural son of God, embodying the Deity’.51 Thirdly, God manifested himself through the Holy Spirit. Thus there are not three persons, but three manifestations; Servetus’ Trinity is not metaphysical (reliant on concepts like ‘hypostasis’, ‘consubstantiality’, and ‘essence’) but ‘economic’: an orderly arrangement. This was far from Athanasius’ formula, which spoke of ‘persons’. Servetus was specifically opposed to the Athanasian Trinity. ‘Persons’ led to distinct divine entities: one God thereby became three almost-Gods. To Servetus this formula, by dividing God into metaphysical constructs, approached atheism. ‘Three persons’ broke up God into parts; God himself ceased to exist.

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Servetus contrasted the abstract and laboured language of the Athanasian Trinity, with the human life of Christ, as related in the Gospels, which demanded a personal, living response, individual to individual. The scriptural texts and sources quoted by the author showed wide reading. The human Christ, whose life was an example which was to be followed, and whose central theme was love, was his ideal, not a page of metaphysics. Jesus could not be reduced to ‘the hypostasis of an essence’, which was the view of orthodox Trinitarians, whether Catholic or Reformed. Love became the most important element in his view of Christian faith: ‘Qui Christum diligit, plus est, quam qui credit’ (He who loves Christ is more than he who believes); ‘Fides est ostium, charitas perfectio’ (Faith is the door, love the perfection).52 Both these remarks were quite contrary to Lutheran theology, where the cornerstone belief was in justification by faith, or ‘solafideism’: that faith was the one central requirement for a Christian. Though Servetus’ books were written hastily, even his enemies showed admiration for his range of reading. His arguments are hard to dismiss. Melanchthon wrote ‘Servetum multum lego’ (I read Servetus a lot).53 But the hostility was greater. The leaders of the Reformation, despite their revolt against the authority and practice of the Catholic Church, remained attached both to the theories they gleaned from St Paul’s epistles – Grace, Justification, Predestination – and to the Neoplatonic notion of the Athanasian Trinity. They could not accept the daring of Servetus, who took the reform further than they had permitted themselves. Their response was shock and outrage. Oecolampadius wrote to Bucer, on 5 August 1531: Friends in Berne are greatly offended by this publication. Inform Luther; it was printed in our country without their knowledge. The Church will fall into disrepute unless it is suppressed. Keep a watchful eye ... This beast has crept in among us. He wrests all the passages of scripture to prove that the Son is not coeternal and consubstantial with the Father, and that the man Christ is the Son of God.54

Melanchthon, writing to Joachim Camerarius, of Leipzig University, in 1533, expressed a fear of the revival of arguments concerning the Trinity ‘whether the logos is a hypostasis – whether the spirit is a hypostasis’.55 Servetus disappeared. He changed his name to Villanovus and, leaving the German-speaking Swiss world, went to live in France, initially settling in Paris, before moving to Lyon, somewhat more tolerant, in view of its silk industry and trade fairs. Here he worked for the scholarly printerbrothers Melchior and Kaspar Trechsel. His most notable production was

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the 1535 edition of Ptolemy’s Geography. The book troubled the ecclesiastical authorities in its assertion (contrary to scripture) that Palestine was not a land of milk and honey. Servetus also questioned the veracity of reports that people in France infected with scrofula had been cured by the king’s touch. His edition also contained a number of popular if crude generalizations on national characteristics: that on the Spaniard could be a self-portrait: ‘The Spaniard is restless in mind, vast in endeavour, highly gifted and impatient of instruction.’56 He returned to Paris to study medicine under Jacques Sylvius (du Bois) and Jean Fernel, also giving lectures on geography, history and mathematics.57 Becoming a highly regarded medical practitioner, he was the physician of choice of Pierre Palmier, later Archbishop of Vienne, a man who had attended his lectures, and who became his friend. Palmier was a humanist, infused with liberal and enlightened sentiments, a lover of learning and the company of scholars, in the manner of Montaigne. In print Servetus defended the ideas of Symphorien Champier on the medicinal value of certain herbs – Champier had been attacked by the botanist Leonardo Fuchs (after whom the Fuchsia is named) – and in 1537 the Spaniard produced a book on the medicinal value of syrups, especially of citrus fruits, which favoured Galen’s understanding of medicine rather than that of Avicenna. The book was respectfully received, and reprinted three times: it also made Servetus some substantial money. In 1539 Luther first mentioned Servetus and his writings against the Trinity. One wonders why he had delayed so long, and made no earlier reference, when he was writing about the beginning of John’s Gospel.58 Luther attacked him, targeting at the same time the extreme Anabaptist leader Johannes Campanus: Campanus, though quite lacking the powerdriven paranoid grandiosity and violence of the Anabaptists of Münster, was nevertheless infused with antinomian ideas. Theologically, he denied the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit, and the doctrine of original sin. In political and social terms, he may have encouraged the peasantry to leave their work and do nothing in view of the approaching end of the world; although the report that he had done so was possibly just the view of a hostile witness. In 1538, after Servetus – following a tradition of the time – had written a defence of ‘judicial astrology’, a skill akin to fortune-telling, he was compelled to leave Paris and return to Lyon, where he remained, apart from a three-year stint as a medical practitioner in Charlieu. His humanist friend Pierre Palmier, now archbishop of nearby Vienne, offered him an apartment in the palace precincts.59 The 1541 reprint of the Ptolemy is dedicated to Palmier. The work was followed by a commission, again from

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the Trechsels, to edit and complete the Latin Bible of Santes Pagnini, a liberal Catholic humanist from Lyon, who had published a Hebrew lexicon and edited a Quran published in Venice in Arabic in 1537/8, of which one copy survives.60 The Bible had been left unfinished when the translator had died.61 For his version of the text (which appeared in 1542), Servetus used the unauthorized text of an edition published in Cologne. His own contribution consisted of chapter headings and marginal annotations – which, though printed in minute type, took a new slant on scripture by declaring that the Old Testament text should be viewed as relating to historical matters of the time, and only in a veiled and secondary sense as foretelling the divine plan. (Isaiah’s ‘Comfort ye’ thus principally related, in a historical manner, to Cyrus of Persia, and in Servetus’ opinion it was only through fixing the historical facts in their minds that Christians could begin to speak about the text being a prophecy about Christ.62) Servetus also gave the edition a preface, which hinted at ideas of returning the Christian faith to its original state, and a dedication to his patron, the Archbishop Palmier. The Council of Trent declared that the edition was heretical, despite its textual superiority to Jerome’s Vulgate text, which thenceforward, despite its imperfections, continued as the accepted version for the Catholic Church.63 Servetus, living under the alias of Villanovus, and secretly nursing revolutionary theological opinions, enjoyed a decade of peace in Vienne and Lyon. Despite his medical and botanical interests, his main focus remained cosmic and theological. He still felt an urge to publish a work which might end false teaching in the Church, and steer belief back to its primitive, pristine condition. In Lyon there was a bookseller by the name of Jean Frellon. He informed Servetus about John Calvin, now the leader of the reform, and offered to put the two of them in touch.64 They corresponded from 1545: Servetus requested Calvin’s views on the relation between the Father and the Son, the Kingdom of Christ and the nature of baptism.65 Calvin replied to Servetus using the pseudonym Despeville; Servetus, alias Villanovus, used as a pseudonym his real name, Servetus. The Spaniard was dissatisfied with the responses he received from Geneva. For his part the Genevan master grew angry – for Servetus’ real aim was to show up inconsistencies in his doctrine – and broke off the correspondence, regarding Servetus not only as haughty and arrogant, but even Satanic. Guillaume Farel was an unpolished man who had been first to lead the reform in Geneva, and who had then, on recognizing in Calvin qualities of leadership that he lacked, willingly reducing his position to that of a rough, tough enforcer; to him Calvin wrote, declaring that if Servetus

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should come to Geneva, he would not leave it alive (Nam si venerit ... vivum exire nunquam patiar).66 This letter indicates the point at which Calvin began to develop a marked hatred of the Spaniard and his views.67 The sentiment needs to be considered in the context of a letter which Calvin wrote to the Protector Somerset in the following year, 1548, in response to a request from the Protector to Calvin for advice for the upbringing of a young Protestant King. Calvin replied: From what I understand, my Lord, you have two kinds of rebels who have risen up against the King and the State of the realm. The one are a fantastic people, who, under colour of the gospel, would cast all into confusion; the other, obstinate adherents to the superstitions of the Roman Antichrist. Both alike well deserve to be repressed by the sword which is committed to you, seeing that they attack not the King only, but God, who has seated him upon the throne, and has entrusted to you the protection as well of his person as of his majesty.68

Even after Calvin had declared his correspondence with Servetus closed, the latter continued to write, with a series of 30 letters, all of which dealt with serious matters of basic Christian theology.69 He received no reply, which is hardly surprising since the tone was high-handed and confrontational. The Gods of the Trinity were as false as the Babylonian gods, Servetus declared.70 The metaphysics of the Trinity – that is, the to him destructive and atheistical language of ‘persons’ – was a great blasphemy and the imposture of the Antichrist. God was everywhere, not contained in ‘persons’. Belief in God was all that was essential for salvation. Faith was a straighforward acknowledgement that Christ was the son of God, backed up by good works and prayer.71 Servetus, unlike Luther and Calvin and their followers, believed in the moral validity of good works. From this position he attacked the doctrine of predestination. The tone, as much as the content, exasperated Calvin. Since Calvin refused to engage in correspondence, Servetus wrote to Abel Pouppin, Calvin’s colleague at Geneva, almost certainly in 1547: ‘Instead of one God [he declared] you have a three-headed Cerberus, instead of faith you have a predestined dream [fatale somnium], and you say that good works are nothing but empty pictures.’ ‘Your faith in Christ is a mere cosmetic which achieves nothing [merus fucus, nihil efficiens], man is a dull lump [iners truncus], and God the chimaera of an enslaved will [servi arbitrii chimaera].’72 The phrase iners truncus carries an echo of St Augustine’s view of humanity as expressed in the City of God: universa humani generis massa damnata – ‘the complete condemned lump of the human race’.73

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Pouppin too declined to reply to Servetus. Other reformers remained deaf to Servetus’ views. The comparison of the Trinity to Cerberus was taken as particularly offensive. To the Inquisition, the clergy, and the public this appeared as a shocking blasphemy, though Servetus’ point was not that the Trinity was a kind of second Cerberus. He wished rather to indicate that worship of the Trinity was akin to paying homage to a triple-divided entity such as Cerberus. The distinction was apparently too fine. The Reformers held that his radicalism had passed the boundary of Christian acceptability. Undaunted, in the summer of 1548 Servetus wrote to Pierre Viret, the minister of the Reform at Lausanne, but Viret did not answer either.74 All Servetus’ attempts to explain his view of faith – personal, reasonable, authentic, truthful, and with a measure of love, reflecting the spirit of the Gospels – were blocked by the self-appointed guardians of the gates of doctrine and authority. So he decided to publish. The next four years were spent in preparing a major work for the public. This text was ready by 1552. But who would print it, and distribute it to the book fairs? Frankfurt, then as now, was a city which hosted a great book fair, with two annual conventions, at Easter and in the autumn.75 In his home town of Vienne he found a sympathetic publisher, Balthazar Arnoullet, whose brother in-law was a printer. All swore secrecy for the project; and in an abandoned house in the woods they set up a press. As soon as each sheet was printed, the manuscript copy was burned. By January 1553 one thousand copies of Christianismi Restitutio – ‘The Restitution of Christianity’, a title which echoes both Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion and Curio’s Christianae Religionis Institutio (The Institute of the Christian Religion) – had been printed. Some were kept on site, others dispatched to Geneva, and others held pending sale in Frankfurt. (A better translation of institutio might be arrangement, or structure.) Much of the book consists of an elaboration of the views on the Trinity set out in Servetus’ earlier books. The text of the 30 letters to Calvin is printed in full: frequently one finds the two doctrines, the Trinity and infant baptism, assailed. The book is also notable for containing a description of the lesser (pulmonary) circulation of the blood, 80 years before William Harvey published his account. (It did however appear three centuries after the description of the same physiological function by Ibn al-Nafis, of Damascus, d. 1288/9, although the Arab’s description had become lost and was no longer part of the shared knowledge of the world.) Servetus’ own description also vanished from Europe’s view until it was rediscovered by William Wotton in his Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning of 1694.76

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Somehow, John Calvin got hold of a copy of Christianismi Restitutio by the end of February 1553. He had a close associate in Geneva by the name of Guillaume de Trie, a young aristocratic French merchant who had become a zealous Protestant. De Trie had a cousin in Lyon, Antoine Arneys, who had criticized his relative for living in a city with low standards of Church order and discipline. When the Protestant merchant learnt that Servetus was living in Lyon, he reacted by pointing out to his Catholic cousin that a notorious heretic and denier of the Trinity was at liberty in his town.77 In his letter to cousin Arneys he enclosed four leaves from the new book as evidence.78 A Dominican inquisitor, from the Roman Inquisition, named Matthew Ory, was in Lyon at the time. To him Arneys hurried, with de Trie’s letter and the pages from the book. Ory felt that there was insufficient evidence for a prosecution.79 The matter was taken to the Cardinal, François de Tournon, and proceedings were instigated against Servetus; his house was searched, as well as the printer’s main establishment. Arneys was asked to obtain the whole book from his Genevan cousin. This he could not do; but de Trie did however get hold of a number of the letters expressing radical theological opinions which Servetus had sent to Calvin, and which could only have been released with the agreement of the man to whom they had been addressed.80 (Thus Calvin, the foundational Protestant, was actively assisting the Roman Inquisition, with de Trie choreographing the persecution. Radical Protestantism was to Calvin more inimical than Catholicism.) Further documentation was sent to Arneys from de Trie, who showed himself to be an eager informer.81 Soon there was sufficient evidence for a trial in Vienne, and Servetus was arrested on 4 April.82 Despite his established friendship with Archbishop Palmier and the favour he had found with Guy de Maugiron, the lieutenant governor of Vienne, a judicial process was undertaken by the Inquisition. It had been made possible through the good offices of organized Protestantism.83 At his trial, Servetus realized that his situation could be perilous. His answers were vague, though he produced a convincing story. He was held in virtually open custody: he was allowed to have with him a 15-year-old youth called Benedict Perrin who acted as his servant, and was permitted access to the prison garden. At about 4.00 a.m. on the morning of 7 April 1553, he rose from his cell, dressed quickly in day clothes but with an outer covering of night garments, and asked the jailer for the key to the prison garden, as had been his practice on preceding nights. The jailer, off to tend his vinestocks, agreed. Servetus threw off the night-clothes and left them under a tree, and, from a platform in the garden, he reached the main courtyard by means of an agile climb and a leap, first to a pig-sty, then

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on to the wall which divided the imprisoned from the free. He was soon across the Rhône and at liberty.84 His absence was not noticed for two hours. Then there was uproar at the jail, with the jailer’s wife howling and screaming, caterwauling as though the world were ending, and assaulting servants, children and prisoners. Servetus’ trial continued for ten weeks in his absence; the absconder was finally found guilty and burned in effigy on 17 June, along with copies of his book.85 The question remains open as to whether he received help in making his escape. He had established friendships with both the archbishop and the lieutenant governor, but there is no evidence in either case. Nevertheless it seems that his escape was a little easy. A mystery surrounds the activities of the fugitive following the jailbreak. Servetus attempted to get into Spain, but turned back fearing the police.86 He could not return to Strassburg. So he aimed for the kingdom of Naples, intending to practise medicine there. Two routes were possible: through Piedmont, or via the Swiss cities into northern Italy. (This is the route which the Italian rationalist humanist Matteo Gribaldi had taken.) He chose the Swiss option. He decided to go to Geneva – in terms of travel plans a good choice, but not so from an ideological perspective. Geneva, in the decade before Calvin’s arrival in 1536, had been the object of a stubborn conflict between the Duke of Savoy, Charles III, and the Swiss. The population was divided between the Eidgenots (confederates), looking towards a Swiss identity, and the Mamelus (Mamluks), content as subjects of the Duke. Bit by bit the Eidgenots showed they had the edge over the Mamelus, finding an alliance first with Friburg and then with Berne. The Duke, enraged, withdrew his protection from the city. A Swiss army intervened, weakening ducal power further. A Greater Council was set up in Geneva, composed of 200 citizens, and a Lesser Council, for more confidential business, initially of 60 members, later limited to 25. By 1530 Geneva was managing its own affairs. Into that apparently peaceful settlement swept the Protestant Reformation: Guillaume Farel settled in the city in 1533, and began a campaign of violent anti-Catholicism. Friburg withdrew its alliance; and the Catholic Duke tried again, unsuccessfully, to secure the city. Protestantism was formally proclaimed in August 1535. Farel intensified his crude campaign of religious change; and in July 1536 a French refugee, of greater political subtlety and of immense learning, John Calvin, came to the city for a day, but was persuaded by Farel to remain longer. Two years later, the anti-Calvinist party, the Libertines, succeeded in expelling Farel and Calvin; but the city’s administration dissolved into chaos, and Calvin – without Farel, for the time being – was recalled in

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1541, at which time he imposed his severe and joyless theocracy. (The appellation ‘Libertine’ merely indicated that they interpreted scripture freely. It had none of the eighteenth-century overtones of living a wild and dissolute life.) A good proportion of the population was against his rule, and many native Genevans left the city. Zealous Protestant refugeesettlers took their place, devoted to a strict leader and willing to endure harsh godly discipline. It is possible that it was Calvin’s learning which had persuaded Servetus to make his initial contact with him, four years after the Frenchman’s return. Maybe now, eight years on, the Spaniard believed his own vision of the reform of Christianity was so compelling and clearly worked out that Calvin was bound at last to accept it. There is also a possibility that he was making contact with the Libertine party, but this seems unlikely – though Calvin’s rule was again in question by 1553, and he had responded by reinforcing the authoritarian aspects of his religious dictatorship. Servetus’ appearance in Geneva was extraordinarily ill-timed. In August 1553 he was in the city, staying at the Rose d’Or hotel, at that time the city’s best.87 On 13 August, while attending the compulsory Sunday afternoon service, the fugitive was, according to the records of the Consistory (the clerical arm of Calvin’s rule), identified by certain brothers, seized on account of his ‘heresies and blasphemies’, and with the approval of the town magistrate thrown into jail.88 Calvin’s secretary, Nicholas de la Fontaine, was jailed alongside him as surety. By any standard of justice Servetus’ arrest was a seriously illegal detention. As Edward Gibbon was to write two centuries later, ‘Servetus ... neither preached, nor printed, nor made proselytes.’89 He was a passing traveller: neither a member of Calvin’s Church, nor a subject–citizen of the city of Geneva. He had in effect been kidnapped. A case was prepared against him based on evidence prepared by Calvin, and soon he was in court, defending himself in a manner not dissimilar from that of a twentieth-century political prisoner. The pre-trial examination was held before Geneva’s Lesser Council (the city’s civil court), a tribunal of 25 members, led by the Lord Lieutenant, Pierre Tissot. Secular in nature, its members had nevertheless absorbed the ambience of a strict religious regime. Calvin still held Servetus in deep loathing, and the sentiment of heretical disgust expressed in the letter to Farel was active in his mind. There was no common ground between the ruler, steeped in missionary power and human abasement, and prisoner, acknowledging little sense of sin, focusing rather on belief in the Christ–man, and the love (Charitas) taught by the faith. Calvin stayed out of the early part of the trial, leaving the task of presenting the prosecution’s case to the

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surety, de la Fontaine. Servetus was examined on his writings: his career of radical heterodoxy was rehearsed, and specific emphasis was placed on his denial of the orthodox Trinity, and of the pre-existence of Christ. Forty or so articles were drawn up against him overnight by Calvin;90 the material was derived from the text of Christianismi Restitutio. Servetus had also, from his time in Strassburg, shown a dangerous sympathy with Anabaptism.91 The first part of Servetus’ trial (which was like a hearing) ended on 15 August. The Lesser Council was convinced there was a case to answer. Germain Colladon, a close associate of Calvin, entered as advocate for de la Fontaine, who was freed soon afterwards. Philibert Berthelier, a Libertine, acted as magistrate, in place of the lord lieutenant, Pierre Tissot. Berthelier was no friend of Calvin. On 17 August Calvin, displeased with the conduct of the trial, himself entered, a diminutive figure with granite authority, and, alongside Colladon, he shared the task of prosecution.92 The accusations, 39 in number, centred on the notes on Ptolemy (Servetus’ allegation that Palestine was not a land of milk and honey meant, Calvin declared, that he was accusing Moses of lying), and the notes in the Pagnini Bible: that ‘Comfort ye’ related primarily to the historical figure of Cyrus and only secondarily in a prophetical sense to Christ. Calvin grew angry too at Servetus’ pantheistic concepts. He exclaimed: ‘Then the Devil is of the substance of God!’ Servetus replied: ‘Do you doubt it?’93 A few days later, disputing the existence of the notion of the Trinity in the period before the Council of Nicaea, Calvin triumphantly quoted from a work by Justin Martyr. However the work which he cited, the De Expositione, was a later forgery. Calvin was wrong and Servetus right. But no one at that time knew that the work in question was inauthentic.94 The strength of the prosecution case persuaded the magistrate, Berthelier, that the case should continue – despite Berthelier’s political opposition to Calvin. Servetus appears to have believed that the case was going his way, and took the opportunity to pour scorn on Calvin and mock him.95 His confinement became close, and his prison windows were boarded up.96 (It may be that word had reached Geneva of his jailbreak from Vienne.) There was a suspicion that he might be making contact with the Libertine party. But Calvin remained confident: on 20 August he wrote to his original patron, the thuggish Farel: ‘I hope at least that he will be sentenced to death, though it is my wish that he be spared needless cruelty.’97 Now the city-state was compelled to prosecute Servetus, and the task fell to the attorney-general, Claude Rigot. Before the start of this phase, Servetus petitioned the Council (22 August).98 The proceedings were unlawful, he declared; he should be set free, since religious

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questions could not (according to ecclesiastical precedent, and the will of Emperor Constantine himself ) be determined in criminal courts, but only by discussion within the Churches. Moreover, he pointed out, the punishment for heresy at the time of the same emperor was banishment.99 He, the prisoner, had not sown sedition in Geneva, and was no political radical. His theological disputes had been only with theologians, not paraded before the general populace, and he had condemned the social upheavals carried out by the riotous Anabaptists of Münster. Moreover, since he, Servetus, was not a native Genevan, and was ignorant of local customs, he asked for legal representation.100 (Genevan law held that malefactors whose wickedness was extreme and obvious should be denied legal representation. This law remained in force until 1734.) On the same day the Council wrote to the court in Catholic Vienne, requesting copies of the evidence used against Servetus in the trial held there. Rigot took up his task on 23 August.101 He, too, was not a member of Calvin’s party. He embarked on a new set of thirty accusations, subjecting the prisoner to a harsh personal examination about his life and beliefs.102 He dismissed Servetus’ petition with scorn, calling him a conscious and deliberate liar. He declared that the prisoner was falsifying history and misrepresenting facts. He was one of the most insolent, reckless and dangerous (audacieux, téméraires et pernicieux) heretics.103 The new charges focused on the dangers posed to future generations by the prisoner’s doctrines.104 Heresies such as his were liable to lead to a criminal and dissolute life; they posed a risk to the morality of youth. (It may be worth recalling that this charge had been preferred against Socrates.) The prisoner, it was said, had given a favourable estimate to the teachings of Jews and Turks, and was now resurrecting ancient heresies long since condemned. His support for religious freedom was a political threat, since it would take away the capacity of the magistrate to retain control. As regards Jews and Turks, Servetus denied he was of Jewish ancestry, and dismissed the charge that he had discussed religion with Jews. He admitted to having read the Quran, but pointed out that this was permitted in Basle. (Bibliander of Zürich had published a Latin version in 1550.) Its text overall was not good, but it contained good things (Servetus’ words were ‘On peult bien prendre de bonnes choses’).105 The prosecutor asked the prisoner why he had not married. His response was that he remained single owing to an operation which had gone wrong at the age of 5. He had, he said, contemplated marriage, but had desisted on the grounds of incapacity.106 Rigot, tipped off by Calvin, attempted to persuade the court that Servetus had remained unmarried owing to a sexual disease that he had caught, as a result of his penchant for prostitution and adultery

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(scortatione ac adulterio sese olim contaminasse).107 The prosecution had little success in its personal attack. Servetus answered the charges gravely and carefully; any hint of over-confidence was gone now. He had lived the life of a sober Christian, dedicated to doing good. His only aim had been to correct ancient errors in the faith and practice of the Church. There was no immediate official response to the prisoner’s rebuttals.108 The following Sunday Calvin’s sermons were largely composed of theological objections to Servetus’ ideas, indicating that he had had a part in framing the 30 charges. The court in Catholic Vienne at length replied to Geneva’s request, by sending the jailer and the captain. They arrived on 31 August.109 The Vienne court begged to be excused sending documents to the Protestant stronghold, but requested the return of the prisoner, whom it had sentenced to death. This the Council in Geneva refused to do, assuring Vienne nevertheless that justice would be done. The Vienne jailer identified the prisoner positively. Would the prisoner prefer to remain in Geneva, or be returned to Vienne? On his knees he begged to be allowed to stay in Geneva. When the proceedings had started in Vienne in April, Servetus had been attending the sick-bed of Guy de Maugiron, the lieutenant governor. A letter now arrived from this gentleman, saying how gratified he was that Servetus had been captured. Was this because de Maugiron was suspected of having aided Servetus’ escape? Servetus’ property had been awarded to de Maugiron’s son by royal command, and a list of debtors was required, so that the payment could be made. This Servetus refused to provide, saying that to do so would identify the many poor people who owed him money.110 A third phase of the trial now began, with a lengthy written theological debate, conducted in Latin, in the courtroom, between Calvin and Servetus about the notions of the fathers, and matters of doctrine. The judges had requested Calvin to search Servetus’ writings for doctrinal errors.111 Calvin responded with 38 paragraphs of Servetus’ alleged heresy.112 Servetus had declared that Trinitarians were Tritheists, who by dividing God into three were in effect atheists. He had accused Calvin of being a replica of Simon Magus, who in the New Testament book of Acts is said to have joined the early Church, with the sole intention of learning how to practise magic, which done, he left it. (He was therefore accounted by many Christians as a most evil sorcerer.) Servetus also declared that Calvin’s doctrines of original sin, humankind’s total depravity, and determinism, reduced a human being to an inanimate object: no better than a log or a stone.113 Calvin responded with an attack on Servetus’ pantheistic views, that God was everywhere present: he declared that the prisoner’s

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doctrine vastly limited the majesty of God and rendered the divine fallible and friable, like flesh. Servetus had declared that little children could not commit mortal sins. Calvin could not see godliness in them. He argued savagely, in an almost deranged manner: ‘The fate that this man deserves is this. His little chickens, according to him so sweet and innocent, should in squads [turmatim] dig out his eyes.’114 The dispute continued over the central point at issue: that Calvin believed that God and Man were separated by a vast gap, whereas Servetus saw the divine in every human being. To Calvin any lessening of the remoteness of God’s status signalled the end of all that mattered, in life, death or eternity. Calvin concluded with a verbal flourish, insisting that Servetus’ plan was to ‘extinguish the light of sound doctrine, and overthrow all religion’.115 Calvin now came under political pressure in Geneva; his Libertine opponents seemed on the point of forcing him from his position of authority. Servetus appears to have got wind of these developments, for his responses to further questioning again became flippant and derisive. He appeared to think the case was as good as won. He ceased to answer charges with sincerity or care. He attacked Calvin from the dock.116 But nothing changed for him in jail. Nearly two weeks had passed since Servetus had offered his refutation of the prosecution’s additional charges, and there had been no reply. So on 15 September he wrote again to the Lesser Council, complaining of the delay. His dungeon was verminous, he added, his clothes and shoes had rotted. He attacked Calvin’s reliance on the judicial precedent of Justinian and again asked for legal representation.117 A request was made for the case to be referred to the Council of 200. The Lesser Council agreed that his personal needs should be attended to, at the prisoner’s expense. Calvin’s response would be forthcoming. The Council now contacted the ministers and councils of other Swiss cities – Zürich, Berne, Basle and Schaffhausen – sending them copies of the proceedings, and of Servetus’ Christianismi Restitutio, and asking for advice.118 This process of consultation had occurred two years earlier, when the other Swiss cities had been asked for their opinions on the fate of Jerome Bolsec, who had opposed Calvin over predestination. Then, most of the cities had advised caution and conciliation. Now Calvin had skilfully prepared the ministers in advance of just such a move by informing them of the wickedness of Servetus’ views, hoping to forestall a moderate judgement. Bullinger in Zürich, Sulzer in Basle, Haller in Berne: all were told of Servetus’ blasphemous wickedness. Nevertheless in Geneva Servetus believed that the verdict might be favourable. A week later he wrote again to the Lesser Council, this

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time to rebut Calvin’s false allegations. The accusations were: that he had maintained that human souls were mortal, and that Jesus had taken only a quarter of his body from Mary. Such misrepresentations required that the accuser should be held in prison alongside himself, the prisoner.119 Servetus reiterated to the Council his central demand: ‘What I seek from you gentlemen is justice, justice, justice.’120 In a list of separate articles, he demanded an enquiry as to whether, six months earlier, Calvin had persuaded de Trie to write to Lyon, and whether he had enclosed the first section of Christianismi Restitutio. Other claims against Calvin, alleging Protestant–Catholic collaboration, were made. Servetus added that no one should be prosecuted like a criminal over a point of doctrine,121 and least of all should he be by a false accuser. He also argued that Calvin’s position, of having gained worldly power through discovering the seeds of true religion, was truly the doctrine of Simon Magus.122 Servetus declared that the cold was growing harsh, and that his physical condition was deteriorating.123 However, the Lesser Council disregarded this petition.124 The replies from the Swiss cities were forthcoming by late September.125 The councils had turned the matters over to the ministers, and each of the four took an outwardly strong, but inwardly questioning, line. Servetus was guilty of blasphemy. His opinions were a cancer, a plague. But the verdict was up to Geneva. One minister, Pier Paolo Vergerio, of Chur, or Coire, the capital of the Grisons, a former papal nuncio who had fled the Roman Inquisition, dissented openly. At the same time an anonymous request arrived, calling for humanity.126 This was from the enigmatic David Joris, former Flemish Anabaptist leader and heresiarch (he had identified himself as a Messiah), now living secretly, and prosperously, in Basle under the name of Johann van Brugge, a man whose later life was a case study of extraordinary deception and equally extraordinary humanity. Consider rather the precepts of our only Lord and Master Christ, who taught not only in human and literal fashion in scripture, but also in divine manner by word and example, that we should crucify and kill no one for the faith, but should rather be crucified and killed ourselves.127

Servetus sent a further desperate appeal to the Council on 10 October, describing his now terrible state: the dirt and cold, aggravating his colic and rupture, and some other miseries that I am ashamed to write. It is great cruelty that I should not be allowed to speak, in order to remedy my necessities. For God’s sake, my lords, give some order about it, either out of compassion or out of duty.128

The council sent two members to visit the prisoner, but no relief was given.

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The replies were held by the Lesser Council for a week or so before the verdict. Amied Perrin, a Libertine, tried to get the verdict referred to the council of 200; but the lesser council held to its right to pronounce. The verdict was that the prisoner was guilty and the sentence was passed without a vote on 26 October. Only the issues of denying the Athanasian Trinity and opposing infant baptism were mentioned. Nothing else that had been brought up in the trial – pantheism, denial of immortality, the notes in the Ptolemy edition or the Pagnini bible – was mentioned. Nor was there any reference to political matters. Heresy was the sole point at issue. The prisoner had spread false and heretical doctrines. These had infected many souls with poison. Servetus was condemned to be bound and taken to a place called Champel, and there fastened to a stake and burned, together with his printed book.129 Calvin, silent for the past few days, now sure of the fate of his prey, called for the mode of death to be execution rather than the stake. The request was refused. When Servetus heard the sentence, he is said to have stood like one stunned, drew deep breaths, cried out like a demented man, beat his breast, calling out Misericordia, misericordia.130 Guillaume Farel, Calvin’s coarse one-time patron, now enforcer, notable for his capacity to undertake violent or brutal work, had arrived in Geneva that day; he was ordered by Calvin to escort the prisoner until the sentence was carried out. But first the condemned man was persuaded to seek a visit from Calvin to his cell.131 He arrived, and asked what the prisoner wanted. ‘Your pardon,’ he replied. Calvin said he should seek pardon from God, and attacked him for his heresies. In refusing a pardon, Calvin set the seal on his responsibility for the fate of Servetus, a responsibility which had begun with the illegal detention at church in August. Servetus was then taken from his prison and compelled to walk the few miles to Champel (today on the west side of the Chemin de Beau-Sejour). People stared, in puzzlement, in dismay or in compassion. Farel declared: ‘See how Satan works, compelling hearts to compassion while ignoring the awful warning of unspeakable blasphemy.’ Servetus cried out, ‘Have mercy on me, Jesus, thou Son of the Eternal God.’ Farel, in derisive malice, said to him, ‘Say, “Have mercy on me, Jesus, thou Eternal Son of God,” and you shall be freed.’ Once at the stake, Servetus was bound, together with his books, and a manuscript. The brushwood laid against him was ordered to be green: formerly, it was thought that the order had been made so as to prolong the agony of death, and the accounts of Bolsec and Castellio support this view,132 but it is possible that the motive may had been to create smoke to lead to rapid loss of consciousness. A crown of sulphur was placed upon his head – an event

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shockingly similar to the placing of a crown of thorns. The motive for this, whether malign or compassionate, seems lost. Bound at the stake, Servetus’ last words were a repetition: ‘Jesu, thou son of the eternal God, have mercy on me,’ a call to the guiding figure of his life, the man of the Gospels, not a metaphysical hypostasis. Servetus lingered in terrible pain for half an hour as the flames engulfed him in an agony beyond comprehension or description, then gave a great cry of pain, and was no more.133 Most of the Reformers applauded the burning: Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s humanist co-adjutor, in Wittenberg, Peter Martyr in Strassburg, Wolfgang Musculus and Berthold Haller in Berne, Heinrich Bullinger in Zürich all approved, sometimes strongly. Calvin himself, sensing possible criticism of his action, quickly put out an explanation for what he had done: his Defensio Orthodoxae Fidei134 appeared in January 1554 and has been described as ‘one of the most frightening treatises ever written to justify the persecution of heretics’. It is abusive to Servetus and his doctrines, and declares that humane dealings with heretics, and pardon, are a greater cruelty than the death penalty, since they murder and poison souls with false doctrine.135 Calvin’s web of control, deployed with quiet terror, led to a sense of fear in the Swiss cities. He had agents. He had to crush opposition, and he followed the persecution of Servetus with a sly campaign against Valentino Gentile. This independent thinker had been born in about 1512 in Calabria. His enthusiasm for the Reformation led him to Geneva in 1556,136 but he found it hard to subscribe to Calvin’s doctrinal uniformity, and was entrapped by one of Calvin’s spies in a convivial but heterodox discussion, which he believed to be a private exchange between two individuals. The agent reported Gentile’s views to Calvin; he was arrested, and examined. The points at issue were similar to Servetus’: whether the Trinity was apparent in the Old Testament, and so forth. He unwisely expressed his opinion that Calvin’s view led not to a Trinity but to a Quaternity. (See the argument above, p. 41.) Calvin and his ministers voiced outrage in strong language. Threatened with torture if he refused to give straight answers, Gentile confessed his errors, and repented.137 But the five examining lawyers declared the recantation invalid, and found him fit for death, adding that a grave risk attended his continuing freedom, in view of possible contamination from his errors. He assuredly deserved the stake, yet justice called for him only to be beheaded. There was a delay, and then a plea for mercy came from Lyon; Gentile performed a humiliating act of devout penance, and a fortnight later was free to leave – which he at once did, and after various adventures, arrived in Poland in 1562. On falling foul of a royal edict against foreign religious radicals, he returned

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to Switzerland, settling at Gex, near Geneva – Calvin was by now dead – ready for more theological dispute. The governor was someone who viewed dispute with disfavour; he was strict and had a memory. Haller in Berne was told of his arrival. Gentile was conveyed to Berne, put on trial for heresy concerning the Trinity, and condemned to death by the sword – a sentence which was carried out the day after the verdict. Basle almost alone seemed to offer freedom from Geneva’s reach. In the previous decade, Sebastian Castellio had taught in Geneva, before a disagreement with Calvin made him leave for Basle, where he worked as a proof-reader for Oporinus. He was subsequently appointed to the chair of Greek at the university. Castellio, mild and diffident in person, was steely in argument. He was a true humanist, showing his respect and love for the ancient world by changing his name from Châteillon to Castellio. In print his name appears as ‘Castalio’, indicating a verbal link to the Castalian spring, the fountain of cool water at Delphi, mythically held to be the inspiration of poets. To him the Reformation had offered a way to compassion and humanity, not to the harsh and absolute doctrines of predestination and divine grace. A number of Erasmians were also in Basle: Martin Borrhäus (or Cellarius), the rector of the university, C.S. Curio, Bernardino Ochino, David Joris (living comfortably with his family under a new identity) and Laelius Socinus. In 1551 Castellio had produced a Latin translation of the Bible, dedicated to Edward VI, with a remarkable preface calling for toleration, arguing that if Christians could allow Jews and Turks to live unmolested among them, they could surely do the same for other Christians. Castellio’s address to the English king is notable for its outspoken defiance of illegitimate secular power. He argued that the killing of heretics or believers who differed was fundamentally irreligious, and that the magistrate had no part in interfering with belief. The Christian religion, moreover (he said) was too full of obscurities, riddles and difficult texts for anyone to be quite sure about the details of belief. So the secular power which, often acting at the instigation of punitive clergy, took decisions to pass judgement about private belief, was usurping God’s role, and was acting in an illegitimate manner.138 Two months after Calvin had issued his self-justificatory Defensio, Castellio put out a small book, of which he was part author, entitled De Haereticis, an sint persequendi (‘On Heretics, and whether they ought to be persecuted’).139 The work was a compilation of the views of those who held that toleration of others’ views was a way forward more in tune with the divine will than burning Christian people alive on account of their sincerely held beliefs. Printed in secret, the book reached the public amid necessary deception. The author’s name appeared as Martinus Bellius,

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with Magdeburg as the place of publication; it was actually printed by Oporinus in Basle. These identifications were false trails designed to put off the scent the agents of Calvin. (Stefan Zweig, in his 1935 account of the conflict between Castellio and Calvin, painted Calvin as a forerunner of the totalitarian leaders of central Europe of his day.) The contents of De Haereticis put the case for toleration with clarity and open-mindedness. Not to be outdone, Theodore Beza, who would become Calvin’s successor, responded to Castellio with an attack on toleration entitled ‘On heretics and why they must be punished by the civil magistrate’, a book rushed out in September of the same year. Castellio returned to the topic in a further text, not printed until 1612, nearly 50 years after his death. Here he elaborated the theme with a striking declaration: that a man killed was not a dogma defended, but a man killed. The death of Servetus came to be seen, not immediately, as a significant event, perhaps a turning point, in the history of European religion. In the heartland of Protestantism, a religion of choice, challenge and conscience, which created a tradition stressing personal interpretation of scripture, a man had been burned at the stake, for disbelief in a complex and unscriptural dogma of Christian faith, which had somehow come to be perceived as central. There began a slow backing-away from the dogma and methods of Calvin. The liberal theologians in Basle, especially the Italians, were shocked. It had a lasting influence on anti-Trinitarians of the later sixteenth century (whose theology was however quite distinct from that of Servetus). Their teaching spread to Holland, inspiring a movement towards toleration there. The notion that there had to be a limit to the violence which faith might impose upon dissident believers also reinforced theological moderates in England, and subtly infused the Anglican Church with tolerance and humanity. Defenders of Calvin have declared that his conduct was typical of the epoch. One modern historian has claimed that ‘tolerance, in the sixteenth century was not and could not be anything but a sign of religious opposition or apathy’.140 No one, it is also said, should impose the standards of the twenty-first century upon the sixteenth century. But the mere fact that Castellio made a declaration on behalf of humanity and against cruelty as he did – a course of action actively (not apathetically, or for contrarian reasons) followed by the open-minded, tolerant and humane religious leaders in Basle whose names we have previously encountered, together with their printers, and the humane, passionate French Catholic orientalist Guillaume Postel – refutes these points; and at the same time as the Genevan enactment of cruelty was being carried out, Montaigne was writing reflective and humanistic essays. Two things encouraged the

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revulsion against religious cruelty: the legacy of Erasmus (who had died in Basle in 1536), and the spirit of the Renaissance. Neither was very strong in northern Europe at this time, but neither was negligible: Germany had a growing classical consciousness as a result of the pioneering humanism of Rudolf Agricola. It is not a question of imposing modern standards upon an earlier century. Although great cruelty flourished at that time, there was no overall pattern of harshness in the name of faith. The brutality lay in the authority that had been granted to faith, seen in the Catholic Inquisition, and in the Protestant supreme power of Calvin. Calvin, with the authority vested in him and his allies, focused on the sin of heresy, and employed a law derived from Justinian in order to crush it; in so doing he would appear to have drawn heavily on bleak and corrosive times of late antiquity and the Middle Ages, turning grimly towards retribution and death, away from the humane and tolerant multi-hued currents of thought, culture and behaviour which were emerging in his own century.

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T

he case of Servetus became emblematic in the struggle for free choice of faith, and for an end to terror into conformity or enforced belief. After 1553, his fate was often invoked when freedom to believe was sought. Both he and radical Christian humanists – who were mostly Italian – criticized the doctrine of the Trinity, but his theology differed from theirs in that he was mystical, pantheistic, and believed in a Sabellian kind of Trinity, whereas they believed that God was recognizable by his rationality, and that the Athanasian Trinity was contrary to reason. Both were in agreement in revering the human aspects of Jesus’ life, and held that his life and teaching were too important to be absorbed into a pattern of Neoplatonic metaphysics. Servetus was admired, and his memory honoured, for his example, rather than for his theology.1 In northern Italy, despite the extinction of Lutheranism by about 1540, the radical reformation was still receiving popular support, especially among the artisan class. Anabaptists continued to observe their beliefs in secret, influenced largely by the newly translated Bible and to some extent by the writings of Servetus, in particular by his opposition to the Trinity, seen as a key topic since it was not Biblical. Ministers would travel silently to secret congregations. The city of Vicenza acted as a centre for heterodoxy. Eventually the different groups met in Venice, in September 1550, to work out their theology. All of the participants were devout men; none was anti-religious. Their principle was to reconcile faith with the teachings of the Bible, and to remove the later additions dating from the Church councils and fathers. Ten principles were decided on, the first of which was that Christ was not God but man, born of Joseph and Mary, but filled with the power of God. Other points they agreed on were that there was no hell but the grave, and that the souls of the wicked perish with the body, as do all other animals.2 Agents of Catholicism however soon discovered the theological radicals, and they were driven out or forced to conform. Their beliefs, scriptural and opposed to the teachings

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of both the Roman Church and the majority of the Reformers, put them at risk of all Christian authorities. They spread out: a group of about 40 professors of the faith, led by one Abbot Leonardo Buzzali, headed for the Ottoman Empire, ending up in Damascus where the former monk earned a living as a tailor. Others went to Switzerland, or to Transylvania, territory not yet under the obdurate Habsburgs, and where radical questions of faith, such as toleration and the notion of the Trinity, could still be freely discussed. The north Italian assembly of reform had no lasting influence, and did not lead to the establishment of radical, rational Christianity in Poland, a view which was held in the late seventeenth century. The Neapolitan link of Juan de Valdes was more influential in creating the groundwork for the first community of rational Christians. He had made an impression on the questing, unresting Bernardino Ochino, who, when in London in 1548 at the invitation of Cranmer, had met Laelius Socinus (Lelio Sozini; 1525–62), a graduate of the University of Padua, where the intellectual tradition was to ask hard theological questions, and to challenge dogmas. The revolutionary theological ideas developed by these two Italian devotees of radical reform braced and encouraged the minds of each other. After university, Socinus had left Italy, and travelled first among the Waldensian villagers of the Grisons in south-east Switzerland, mountaineer Christians whose straightforward theology, as already noted, was free of Catholic dogma and did not include the Trinity. His religious views tended towards the global in their scope; one commentator suggests that he was aiming for a union not just of Catholicism and Protestantism, but of the three monotheistic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.3 (He studied, or intended to study, Hebrew, Greek and Arabic.4) Travelling on to Swiss cities, meeting Calvin and Melanchthon, he settled in Zürich, where he questioned – to the anxiety of Calvin – the accepted doctrines of the Trinity, the atonement, justification (the idea that an infusion of God’s grace, rather than right action, makes an individual free from sin) and the efficacy of sacraments. Laelius Socinus’ travels took him briefly to England in 1548, where he encountered Peter Martyr at Oxford, and his theological sparring-partner Ochino in London. Returning to the Continent, he travelled via Prague and Breslau (Wrocław) to Kraków, the Polish capital, where Italian culture featured strongly, owing to the fact that King Sigismund I had married Bona, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Sforza of Milan, in 1518. Again in Switzerland, he took part in disputes with the leading reformers, before making a second journey to Poland, where he found that a number of the local magnates were sympathetic to rational, anti-Trinitarian views. After further wanderings, he ended up

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in Zürich, where he died in 1562, at the early age of 37, his mission an apparent failure.5 Two points indicated that Laelius Socinus’ efforts had not been in vain. One was the sympathy that he had discovered among the magnates in Poland for radical, anti-Trinitarian views. And secondly, his papers were filled with sound and intelligent rational theology: and on his death they fell into the hands of his able nephew, Faustus Socinus.

Revolutionary Transylvania The history of the independence of Transylvania shows a complex interaction between the land itself and two empires, Christian and Muslim, of which it was a borderland. This land had from around the year 1000 been part of Hungary. Following Hungary’s defeat at Mohacs by the Ottoman Turks in 1526 it became disputed territory. One disputant was Ferdinand, the representative of the Habsburg empire (and brother of Emperor Charles V), who ruled Bohemia and Hungary-Croatia as king in 1526–64. He was the choice of the local magnates. Later, in 1531, he also became ‘king of the Romans’, and emperor, as Ferdinand I, on the abdication of Charles V in 1555. The other disputant was John Zapolya, the choice of Hungary-Croatia’s lower nobility.6 Zapolya was a client of the Muslim Ottomans, and his marriage strengthened that link, since he wed Isabella, the daughter of Sigismund and Bona of Poland, whose throne had been supportive of Suleyman I. Ferdinand I and John Zapolya, despite their rivalry, came to an agreement in 1538, though Ferdinand was restless and intent on intervention and control. On the death of John Zapolya in 1540, Ferdinand tried to seize Hungary, but was expelled by Suleyman, who upheld the right of Zapolya’s widow Queen Isabella, and her baby son John Sigismund (in Hungarian, Zsigmond Janos), who was crowned king of Hungary on 15 August 1540, at the age of just five-and-a-half weeks.7 * * * Suleyman recommended that, since Isabella could not hope to stay in Buda on account of Ferdinand’s threats, she should take up residence in Transylvania. This she did, taking with her a much-read text of Erasmus.8 In 1543 Transylvania declared its independence, while remaining under Ottoman suzerainty, an act signified by the payment of an annual tribute. The following year Isabella’s infant son John Sigismund was recognized as king of Transylvania: John Sigismund II Zapolya. The Turkish emperor

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cradled him lovingly in his arms. But the pretty domesticity did not last. Pressure from Ferdinand forced Isabella and her son to flee into Poland in 1551.9 Nevertheless, the people of Transylvania – Magyar, Szekely (both Hungarian-speaking) and Saxon (German-speaking) – had opted for the Reformation; the Augsburg confession swept away almost all elements of Catholicism. (The Szeklers were particulary drawn towards Unitarianism. It is untrue, as has been asserted, that they remained Catholic.) The call was heard throughout the lands, almost amounting to an anthem, Egy az isten – God is One. Ferdinand, in attempting to re-introduce the former Athanasian religion, found only Jesuitical failure, and a skilful coup engineered the return of Isabella, the queen mother, and her royal son John Sigismund II, who entered Kolozsvar (Clausenburg, Cluj) in 1556, aged 16, escorted variously by Polish, Vlach and Ottoman troops, an ethno/ religious pluralism demonstrating the vitality of anti-Habsburg feeling which overrode differences of nationality and religion.10 The years following were characterized by political infighting and an array of conspiracies; but the Reformation continued apace, and Church property became Crown property. Isabella died unexpectedly in 1559. John Sigismund was left to continue to struggle with Habsburg Ferdinand, an authoritarian religious monopolist, for his throne.11 Despite the political insecurity, extraordinary theological and political developments took place in Transylvania at this time. Two powerful and persuasive theological radicals persuaded the people to let the Reformation really change Church practice and belief, and cleanse the faith of heavy, human doctrinal varnish. These figures were the Unitarian preacher Francis David (or David Ferenc; he was of Hungarian–German origin) and Dr Giorgio Biandrata, a smooth-talking Italian physician, originally from Saluzzo in Piedmont, a specialist in feminine ailments, who had treated his fellow Italian Queen Bona, and her daughter Isabella, recently deceased. Biandrata became a convinced Unitarian, and, after a brief return visit to Italy, left to travel on to Geneva, where again he did not stay long. Fearing the wrath of Calvin, he moved on to Kraków in 1558 and then to Transylvania.12 Over the next ten years a number of advanced notions in the development of religious toleration were put into practice in Transylvania, and it is unfortunate that, owing to its remote geographical position, the country was unable to spread its vision of the acceptance of others’ faith into the heart of Europe. John Sigismund II Zapolya was a convinced theological radical, and he became a Unitarian, while interfering only a little with the beliefs of his subjects. In 1568 he declared the city of Kolozsvar to be a Unitarian city. Also in 1568 a law was passed known as the Edict

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of Torda, requiring the toleration of the religion of others: the first such decree in Europe’s modern history; though one cannot ignore the apparent contradiction of proclaiming toleration while at the same time declaring that Kolozsvar should be entirely Unitarian, which may have meant that non-Unitarians had to move out. The following year saw a continuation in radical theology and the world of ideas, with the publication in Alba Iulia (Gyulafehervar, Weissenburg) of a section of Servetus’ Christianismi Restitutio, undertaken by Biandrata.13 King John Sigismund II, never strong, died in a riding accident in 1570. His successor Stephen (or Istvan) Bathory was a tolerant Catholic, who, though religious innovation was prohibited, proclaimed as ‘accepted’ four faiths in the country, Catholicism, Lutheranism, reformed Calvinism and Unitarianism in 1572 – the year that Western Europe was enduring the intolerant horrors of the Eve of St Bartholomew.14 For over a century Transylvania continued to sustain religious toleration. Perhaps its most famous leader was the Calvinist Gabor Bethlen, who ruled in 1613–29, and at one time seemed the only Protestant voice in Europe when the Reformation appeared crushed by Catholic, Imperial armies. The Transylvanian Hungarians, led by the Rakoczi family, maintained a strong sense of independence – so much so, that the Ottomans felt compelled to invade and re-establish their overlordship in 1660.15 The failure of the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 had a serious effect on the open-minded and tolerant pro-Ottoman Christians of Transylvania, since the intolerant Habsburgs with their menacing hunger for Catholic uniformity were given heart, and in 1711 they annexed the territory, snuffing out toleration, and imposing one faith, harassing, threatening or beating up those who did not conform. The impact of Transylvanian religious openness and transparency was not forgotten abroad; Milton made reference to the land and its students, then at Cambridge, in Areopagitica.16 Some refugees, escaping from the consequent crushing Habsburg reign of imposed belief, made their way to Holland, helping to secure that country’s prime reputation for toleration.

Faustus Socinus In terms of free argument, learning and publication, the city of greatest importance for anti-Trinitarians continued to be Basle. To this city Laelius Socinus’ nephew, Faustus, born in 1539, travelled in 1574, and encountered the continuing freedom of expression which existed in that city. Here he wrote the fullest exposition of his theology.

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In Poland, the Reformation made rapid progress, with a more radical edge than had been seen in Western Europe. Here criticism could be made of the Trinity without fear of being burnt or beheaded. The country was yet untouched by the Counter-Reformation; it took 100 years for the sentiments of the Council of Trent to find a place here. Religious freedom was embodied in a law of 1555, which was confirmed by the Consensus of Sandomir of 1570 and extended by the Confederation of Warsaw in 1573.17 Variety of belief was supported by tolerant Polish rulers. First there was Sigismund II Augustus, who died without an heir in 1572. We can discount the farcical episode of Henri III of France, the last Valois king, being elected Polish king for a year – Le roi malgré lui – before slipping back to France. A more serious ruler emerged when Stephen Bathory, formerly in Transylvania, having overseen the proclamation of four accepted faiths, was proclaimed king of Poland, leaving Transylvania to his brother Christopher. Although a devout Catholic, and growing more devout still, he proclaimed a general mood of toleration. His Paduan education shone through and he remained true to the spirit of the 1573 Confederation. Stephen was fortunate to have an enlightened chancellor, Jan Zamoyski, who memorably proclaimed, ‘I would give half my life to bring back to Catholicism those who have abandoned it, but I would give my whole life to prevent them from being brought back by violence.’18 However, the encouragement given to the Jesuits was to have disastrous results for such enlightened views. In 1565 the Polish Reformed Church split into two branches: the Greater Church remained Calvinistic and Trinitarian, whereas the Minor Church rejected the notion of the Trinity. Both were staterecognized institutions. The adherents of the Minor Church hoped to remain within the Protestant fold. Prince Nicholas Radziwill, Palatine, or local lord, of Wilno (Vilna; Vilnius) and the second most important person in Poland, held Arian – that is, anti-Trinitarian – views, and promoted them with passion and shrewdness; but he died in 1565, a critical moment, when a number of Calvinist ministers were moving towards disbelief in the Trinity. Jan Sieninski was a Calvinist magnate whose wife could not accept the Trinity. In recognition of her beliefs, he permitted the foundation of a non-Trinitarian community in 1567 at a new town of Rakow (50 miles north-east of Kraków), so named after the crab, or rak, in his coat of arms.19 Anyone could settle in Rakow who felt oppressed by religious compulsion. The climate was good, and industry developed, based on the manufacture of cloth, paper and pottery. One has to resist a tendency to idealize it, but in a way the community became a unique commonwealth, and its 100-year existence constituted one of those rare

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instances when human beings have created a good and equal society; though sometimes, given the propensity of theological radicals for fierce religious disagreements, disputes led to near-chaos. A strong minister regulated the organization in 1572.20 He established a succession of distinguished ministers with a capacity to lead, and the city became the acknowledged centre of Polish anti-Trinitarianism. But uncertainty and a measure of theological rancour persisted. The fabric of the Minor Church appeared rent, perhaps beyond repair. Language The term ‘Arian’ appears in all Polish writing about anti-Trinitarians; other terms too are used for those who rejected the idea of the Trinity – so many, that they are mocked by those sceptical of diversity among modern historians of Poland.21 As in Germany, the freedom to believe created by the Reformation opened possibilities for diverse groups. In Poland, a more radical theology became accepted as a result of the recognition granted to the anti-Trinitarian Minor Church. Subsequently, the term ‘Arian’ has been used as a synonym for ‘Socinian’ – that is, a follower of Faustus Socinus. But there is a central theological difference between Arianism and Socinianism, which needs to be highlighted, and which will show that the term ‘Arian’ in the Polish context, though useful, can be systematically misleading. Arius was the fourth-century presbyter who opposed Athanasius. He denied that Jesus was co-existent and co-eternal with God. But he did not deny that Jesus had pre-existence before his birth in Bethlehem. It was not eternal pre-existence, which is the view of Athanasian orthodox Christianity. Socinus and his followers, basing their beliefs on a blend of the New Testament and reason, denied preexistence altogether; Jesus was born as an ordinary human being, but became associated with God through his office and appointment, and by reason of knowing the will of God. Therefore Arianism and Socinianism should not be seen as alternative terms for the same set of beliefs. Socinus in Poland At that moment, in 1579, Faustus Socinus arrived, who, through his ability and personal qualities, created an inspiring leadership for the Church, and gave his name to the belief in rational, tolerant anti-Trinitarianism: Socinianism. Socinus came from a distinguished legal family from Siena; his grandfather, Mariano, had been a professor of Canon Law, and his mother’s mother was a Piccolomini, great-niece of Pope Pius II,

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the founder, in 1460, of the liberal University of Basle. Faustus’ father had died when he was young, and the son showed no interest in the profession of the law. His education was unsystematic. Protestantism was strongly present in the Sozini family; several of his uncles came under the suspicion of the Roman Inquisition, and one was forced to flee. On obtaining the theological papers of his late admired uncle Lelio, he had worked through them, and had further developed his ideas in Geneva and Lyon. (He never studied systematic theology, a neglect which was to his advantage, since it meant that he could look at the Gospels as an ordinary person, without any preconception save that of an Italian humanist.) For 12 years thereafter – wasted years, in his opinion – he spent time at the Florentine court of Duke Paolo Giordano Orsini, husband of Isabella de’ Medici, leaving for Basle in 1574.22 He was financially independent, receiving funds from property he had inherited in Siena. Basle became his place of work. Following a dispute with a French Protestant minister called Jacques Couet (Covetus) he wrote but did not publish a summary of his theological position: De Jesu Christo Servatore. ( Jesus Christ was not a salvator, saviour, but a servator, helper.) Here we have the kernel of the Socinian viewpoint: that Christ died not to appease a wrathful God, but to open humanity’s eyes to compassion, which is the way to eternal salvation.23 In this work Socinus stressed the moral teaching of Jesus, making the point that the Gospels focused on the deeds of humankind far more than on any theory concerning humanity’s relationship with God. Jesus, Socinus declared, revealed a morality; he did not reconcile an abject humanity to an angry God. The idea of atonement – that there was a need to atone – was rejected, since it contradicted the idea of God’s forgiveness. Socinus also rejected predestination, a doctrine central to both Augustine and Calvin, and asserted that humanity had free will. All that Christians had to do was to learn God’s will through the example of Christ, and follow it.24 The notion of satisfaction – of Jesus’ death on the cross being part of a debt owed to God – had little to do with religion, since it was dependent on the idea of God being the promoter of vindictive justice. Moreover, if Jesus was God, there could be no point in God undergoing punishment for offences committed against God. As a Socinian writer put it in 1693: ‘If I pay to my self the debt of my debtor, or undergo the punishment of my offender, to satisfy the wrong done to my self, this is but a mock-satisfaction.’25 This might seem new; it had, however, already been sketched out by Abelard. From Basle Socinus was invited to Kolozsvar in Transylvania, where the pastor, Francis David, had developed an extreme view of Unitarianism, whereby Christ should not be worshipped; indeed, his followers came to

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be known as Semi-Judaizers, since they grew more attached to the law of Moses than the gospel of Jesus. The attempt to moderate David’s views was unsuccessful, and the pastor was imprisoned by Stephen Bathory, the ruler of Transylvania, on the grounds of theological innovation; he subsequently died in prison. Socinus has been blamed for Francis David’s death but it is hard to see how he could have saved him. David was a man whose theological views, once fixed, could not be moved. He had something of implacability about him. He had been a Catholic and then a Calvinist, and carried something of the hard absolutism of his former faiths to the new, open world of rational theology. But it is regrettable that Socinus never expressed any sorrow at his death. The Italian’s own response to the dispute, as to whether Christ should be merely invoked, or adored as well, nevertheless indicates the religious humanism of a tolerant and open human being: The man possessed of the greatest faith in God, if he should pray to Christ, will not only not displease God, but, by this action, will render him glory, and express his gratitude for the great power bestowed, in the person of Christ, on human nature itself.26

The sentiment, seeing the possibility of greatness for human nature, is far from the notions of Augustinian theologians, encompassed by sin, guilt and soul-sickness. In Socinus’ words we can see the possibility of Michelangelo, Shakespeare or Beethoven, something absent from the narrow and jejune view of humanity proposed by Augustine or Calvin, or indeed Savonarola. (Francis David, too, unfortunately lacked the intellectual broad-mindedness of the Italian-born radical theologian, as well as his undogmatic humanistic approach and ability to place the good of others and of the community above personal matters.) Faustus Socinus travelled on to Poland, to discover there the same tolerant and welcoming territory that his uncle had found 20 years earlier. He resolved to stay in Kraków, and become a member of the Minor Church’s congregation. By reason of his strong but open and humane personality, he soon rose to be their leader. There is a curious matter here. The community insisted on adult baptism, which Socinus saw as unnecessary: Christ had not demanded it, and none of the apostles had been baptized. Refusing to be re-baptized, he was not allowed membership of their community or to partake of what most people now call Holy Communion. They begged him to be baptized, but he refused.27 Nevertheless, even though he was thus never technically a member of the community, and there is no record of him ever taking communion, he was within a short time acknowledged as leader; many resorted to him

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for counsel, advice and his informed and compassionate opinions; and he gave his name to their straightforward, Gospel-based rational beliefs. His writings became the backbone of the community’s beliefs. Living life in the Gospel manner was more important to him, and to other Socinians, than rites, symbols and gestures. The Socinian community showed vigour and intellectual dexterity: they caught something of the spirit of the age, partaking of both belief and rationality, and allowing each to flow into the other; they deliberated intensely sometimes for weeks at a time. They were fortunate too in not having to pay obeisance to any court or ruler; their theological views did not have to chime with a secular authority, in dutiful obsequiousness, or a holy office, in devout submission. In their freedom, the community resembled the characters who had escaped from the court, with its strict rules, established yet arbitrary, to the Forest of Arden, in As You Like It. The disputes among the Rakow community could be many-hued; but Socinus held the Church together by a strong and powerful intelligence, and an unchallengeable capacity for humane leadership. A theological opponent, the Revd George Ashwell, a high-church Anglican, wrote thus of him in 1680: All those qualities that excite the admiration and attract the regards of men met in him: that, as it were with a charm, he bewitched all who conversed with him, and left on their minds strong impressions of wonder and affection towards him. He so excelled in fine parts and a lofty genius, such were the strength of his reasonings and the power of his eloquence, he displayed in the sight of all so many distinguished virtues, which he either possessed or counterfeited in an extraordinary degree, that he appeared formed to engage the attachment of all mankind; and it is not the least surprising that he deceived great numbers, and drew them over to his party. So that what Augustin said of Faustus Manichaeus may not improperly be applied to Faustus Socinus, that he was magnum diaboli laqueum, the devil’s decoy.28

An academy was founded in Rakow in 1602 by Sinieninski’s nonTrinitarian son, Jakob. It soon gained the reputation as a leading institution, attracting pupils from all denominations, Catholics and Calvinists, as well as Unitarians, and became known as the ‘Sarmatian Athens’.29 (Sarmatia is the classical name for eastern Poland and western Ukraine.) At its most extensive its pupils numbered 1000. One copy of the rules and regulations of this academy survives. A press was also set up, which printed the texts, arguments and conclusions of the community’s rational and humane theology in clear and attractive type, with title pages bearing discreetly elegant decoration. It is mistaken to say that the community ‘withdrew from society’;30 they welcomed visitors and students of all kinds.

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The success of Socinus and his followers in creating an antiTrinitarian tradition, based on reading the Gospels for their content, spirit and morality, and using critical reason for textual and doctrinal complexities, was due to the leadership and to the precepts of the founders, in which good sense and moral commitment figured, alongside a spirit of devoutness. They declared that they would not believe anything that they could not understand. In an early edition of their confession of faith, the Racovian catechism, we find ‘sound reason’ (ratio sana) advanced as one of the central elements of Christian belief.31 The Socinians responded too to the changing climate of opinion, which was no longer the servility of the past. The faith and thought of the Renaissance were alert; hard questions sought clear answers. The structures of authority were losing power. The theological radicals rejected St Augustine’s views both on predestination and on original sin: ideas which had been taken up by Luther and Calvin. Although Socinus rejected the complementary idea of ‘original righteousness’, he could not see any truth or sense in the idea of original sin: many people clearly were not born wicked, and if the notion had anything to do with sex (or ‘concupiscence’), then consider: sexual attraction was just the manner by which the human race perpetuated itself, and could not in itself be classed as wicked.32 The rational Aristotelianism current in Padua, different from the dogmatic Aristotelian scholasticism which, as an authority, had come close to embalming much of the Middle Ages, found a response in them. The Paduan tradition was clear-eyed and shorn rather than blear-eyed and woolly, and lacked comforting illusions. They kept a distance from the Neoplatonism of Florence and the other Renaissance cities, holding that this system had been a major player in the corruption of Christianity, and that it had introduced extraneous doctrines into the faith. Socinians never held to the Platonic view of the soul, which was that it was ‘in’ the body as whisky in a bottle. Although their faith was seen by them as a guarantee of eternal life, they believed that the individual soul died with the body, a notion derived from Averroes, the Andalusian Islamic philosopher, which had originated in Aristotle’s unprivileged idea of the soul; only faithful souls (which had, like the body, died) would be resurrected at the last day. This view, known as psychopannychism, or the sleep of souls, was found among some other Christian reformers of the sixteenth century. It reflected a mood of practical humility, in its denial of the self-importance of possessing a soul that shone brightly from the moment of death. There was nothing mystical or Platonic in their thought; no mystical ascent towards The One, or dramas of guilt. Their rationality, and their commitment to active Christian deeds and to education, meant that there was no chance that they would end up

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driven by the zealotry that had been seen in Münster in 1535, which had become a nightmare city when unlettered Anabaptists had taken power there, showing symptoms of power and madness. Along with the criticism of Luther’s idea of justification, the opposition to the idea of atonement was perhaps the most fundamental break with the existing schema of Christianity. The atonement followed from Christ’s satisfaction for sin, that is, the notion that Christ’s death on the cross took away the sins of the whole world. It presupposed an angry and emotional God-figure, Jupiter-like in his thundering visage, and whom today we might liken to a Bronze-Age Deity, rather than the universal God that is a logical necessity of monotheism. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is alleged to have atoned for all mankind’s sins for all time, and reconciled sinful mankind to God. The Socinian response was that the notion of satisfaction – taking away all sins – meant that there could be no forgiveness, since forgiveness was a personal act, unique in each case. The idea of satisfaction was built upon a notion of God as an arch-punisher, not as an arch-forgiver. The purpose of the coming of Jesus Christ was, according to the Socinians, not to die, extinguishing our sins, as a magical and mythological accomplishment, comparable to, in Sir James Frazer’s account in The Golden Bough, the corn god dying and being reborn every year in spring-time, but to reveal a new way of living. Talk of ‘sacrifice’ was a reversion to paganism, calling to mind the tale of Agamemnon sacrificing his daughter Iphigeneia in order to placate the goddess Artemis and permit fair winds for sailing to Troy. To a Socinian the importance of Jesus lay in what he preached, and the example he set, not in a myth about expiatory death. The significance of his death was that it taught humanity to feel compassion. It was not a sacrifice. Along with rejecting the theological dogma of satisfaction, the Socinians refused to accept predestination (which was Calvin’s chief dogma, and derived, like original sin, from Augustine). They opposed that bleak and fateful doctrine with the defiant assertion that the human individual possessed free will. Sacraments were of no significance. The Lord’s Supper was only an act commemorating the death of Christ.33 The Socinians’ rationality and promotion of a spirit of openness, together with their intellectual standards, shown in their lengthy and careful examinations of Biblical texts, led to a mood of charity and toleration. Their disputations lasted for days at a time. They also sought for all believers to be free from state coercion. They interpreted scripture in a rational, non-miraculous manner, anticipating the method of nineteenthcentury German theologians, who looked for what actually happened in the Gospel narratives. Above all they were anti-Trinitarian: they saw

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the Trinity as a mystery grafted on the faith. (The pre-existence of Jesus Christ, a necessary part of belief in the Trinity, jarred with the unique and personal story of Jesus’ birth as told in the Gospels.) The Gospels – at least the first three – were rational documents, devoid of language of essences or hypostases, or of trinunities or coessentialities, and rational Christians looked for a similarly understandable faith. The beginning of the fourth Gospel was problematic; but there was Jerome’s view of it having been a later interpolation, and the point of the missing definite article for ‘God’ (see above, p.19). Moreover even here, there was no notion of shared substance. It is hard, even when the metaphysical humour is upon one, to propose that a word – even the ‘word’ of Stoicism and Neoplatonism – shares substance with its speaker. A word, rather, shares a family resemblance with a gesture, a raised eyebrow, or a smile; it is often an expression of reflection or will or intent. Socinians were keen to stress the sense of consecration and mission in the nature of Jesus’ life, and to declare that the identity of substance of God the Father and Jesus the Son was a misreading. Mysticism was something which had been allowed to enter into faith by bishops and princes when Neoplatonism was a pervasive intellectual fashion; its use had come to dull the moral sense of the ordinary people, and to numb their critical faculties concerning oppressive laws. The Socinians, in their Polish homeland, established a working, committed, un-authoritarian society – part of what has often been called the Radical Reformation, but which might be better described as the Further Reformation, by which believers carried ideas of reform beyond the limits of respectability set by Luther and Calvin, and sought instead to create a community of faith which, while acknowledging the New Testament as a foundation, was always prepared to test it by rationality, on the grounds that God gave human beings rational thought. Their model of authority was different too: it was not reliant on the assent of princes (as in Luther’s case) nor on the theocratic model of Calvin. The Socinian model was more open, seeking to encourage the participants to find the seat of authority from within themselves. Discipline was loosened, in favour of self-discipline. For most of the time this worked. But violence occurred, both from local Catholics and from the community. On Ascension Day, 30 April 1598, Socinus, living in Kraków, was physically attacked by a mob while ill in bed, dragged out and hurled in the mud. It was a case of unprovoked violence. His books and papers were thrown on a fire, and he himself was threatened with the same fate, unless he ‘recanted’. He refused to do so, even after the appearance of a drawn sword. His persecutors decided to drown him instead in the Vistula, but as the threatening mob was passing shouting and screaming by the

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University, he was rescued by its professors; they invited the ‘heretic’ in, and slammed the doors on the mob. Socinus, grateful for having been saved from the baying multitude by scholars, was ever thereafter regretful that his papers had been destroyed, especially his text against atheism.34 Socinus retired to the village of Luclawice, where he died six years later. There followed 30 years of constructive and creative work and exploration of ideas; but then in 1638, a serious case of indiscipline occurred, when two youths from the community threw stones at a large Catholic crucifix, starting a chain of events which gave an opportunity for the majority community to threaten and close down the entire Socinian enterprise. One rash act, and the Jesuits moved in, and with their military precision proceeded to demolish the academy, printing press and indeed entire community of what was a remarkable and admirable experiment in human living, and thinking, within a context of faith. The question needs to be asked: were the Socinians in Rakow a utopian community, who attempted to create heaven on earth without taking account of human nature or the people around them? They certainly have an appearance of seeking a utopia, as they laboured to create an ideal, harmonious and benevolent community, where work, faith and the intellect were all combined in sensible proportions. But the historical background of the foundation of the Rakow community does not support the idea of utopianism. The Polish experiment was essentially a reaction against the dogmatic violence of both Catholicism and Protestantism. Poland, with its tolerant king, Sigismund II, and its unconcerned, non-inquisitorial, modern-minded magnates, was a natural draw to those seeking to get away from the threat of bloodshed for belief. Rakow was a haven, not a strenuously imposed millennial conquest. It came to an end not owing to the contradictions inherent in utopianism, but because the political nature of Poland changed. In the twentieth century, the idea took root that the Rakow community might be seen as a forerunner of communism. The notion seems to have been propagated both by Polish communist propaganda, as a way of seeking its own authenticity, and by Polish extreme national–Catholic elements, keen to decry the tradition of Polish religious toleration which existed before the emergence of the Jesuits, and to make the minority communities appear as alien, non-Polish, and deserving of the punishment of expulsion and death which was their fate after Poland became single-mindedly Catholic. Both characterizations are ill-conceived, since members of the Socinian Rakow community believed in thinking for themselves, and in not having a central authority or dictatorship. In this regard the Jesuit–Catholic model of Poland is itself closer to the nature of

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Stalinist or post-Stalinist communist Poland, since deference to a single authority is a characteristic of both.35 The Socinian community, driven from Rakow, attempted to re-group in western Ukraine, then under the control of Poland, in the town of Kisielin (Kysylyn) in Volhynia, about midway between Kraków and Kiev. This was a time of violent disturbance in central Europe, with the Cossack revolt of Chmielnicki (1648–51) creating massive loss of life. The Socinians were driven out too, but managed to exist in this new home for about five years, before persecution by Jesuits (who stigmatized them as heretics, not dissidents) forced them out. Properties were looted, the people subjected to merciless mob violence, incited by militant faith, and churches and school buildings were burnt down.36 They went on to re-establish themselves in Transylvania, but here prospects were unstable, and although there were some long-term gains, their only real stability occurred in Holland from about 1660, in parts of Germany and at a slower pace in England. The misfortunes of the Polish Socinians reached a climax in the years following the chaos associated with the Swedish invasion and occupation of Poland, of 1655–60. Charles X of Sweden had invaded Poland, on the pretext of protecting her from Russia. The country, demoralized by the weak rule of Jan Casimir, a former Jesuit priest and cardinal, seemed on the point of collapsing altogether: Warsaw fell without resistance, and soon after Kraków. The Polish king fled to Austrian territory.37 But the Swedes behaved as all occupiers tend to, and the Polish people, whether peasants or magnates, rose in revolt, and found the courage to begin to expel the invaders. The king secretly returned, and undertook a vow in Lvov cathedral before the image of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa to dedicate Poland to the Virgin Mary if the Swedes could be finally thrown out. Polish victories occurred everywhere. Jan Casimir’s vow meant the final expulsion of all non-Catholics, especially the non-Trinitarians, who had denied the Deity of Christ; in the crude and malign manner of theopolitical thinking, they, rather than the Lutheran Swedish invaders, were held to have brought ruin to Poland, and were pitilessly targeted. The vow in Lvov meant the end of pluralism and toleration; expulsions, destruction of villages and forced conversions followed. The humane tolerance expressed by Jan Zamoyski some 70 years earlier was cast to the winds. It is important to stress that Socinus and his followers were not freethinking humanists in the modern sense – inclined to atheism, if not already there. Their characterization as such by some writers even today shows a continuing fear of the movement and its leader’s ideas. Like most people of the time raised as Christian, Socinus believed implicitly in the

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Bible, and the Gospels above all. However, he rejected the councils of the Church, from Nicaea onwards, believing that the conclusions formulated there violated the words and spirit of the Gospels. He was a free-thinker only in the manner in which other leaders of the Reformation were freethinkers, in that they interpreted scripture and the history of the Church by the light of their own understanding, dispensing with the authority of the Roman Catholic Church. He was a humanist in the word’s original sense, which has been mentioned earlier in the discussion of Calvin and Castellio (see above, p. 89), not in the modern sense – to which it is often elided – of disbelieving in the divine dispensation, in the manner of Bertrand Russell. Faustus Socinus was far from the type of ‘freethinker’ who emerged in the eighteenth century, for instance in the person of Anthony Collins, and very far from Gibbon, Voltaire or Tom Paine. The two hefty volumes of Socinus’ works, printed in Amsterdam ‘post ad 1656’, show throughout a deep and devout personality – rational too, and prepared to argue for rationality; but above all a believer in the Christian Gospels. His works do not show the sceptic or cynic of his opponents’ legend. Typical of his views was the point he made in one of his many letters, written in about 1590 to a Polish lady, Sophia Siemichovia: As to myself, you may assure yourself, I have no greater care than not to deviate, either to the right hand or to the left, from the way which the sacred books prescribe to us: because I well remember that nothing must be added to, or taken from, the Word of God and his precepts.38

We can also gauge, from another letter, the depth of Faustus Socinus’ commitment to toleration, which was (as Lord Acton noted) positive and sincere, not mere opportunism to protect his own skin. To Matthew Radecki, sometime secretary of the republic of Danzig (Gdansk), he wrote in 1584: I am sorry I’m not what you imagined me to be – though I am indeed a man of no party. And though I have become a member of this Church, as far as my conscience would allow, it is because it seemed more pristine than the others. I don’t condemn the others, or in any way despise them. Rather, I acknowledge any Church to be a true Church of Christ, where the precepts of Jesus Christ are heard in his words, even if it puts forward other things unrelated to these words. Anyone who takes Jesus’ words to heart I esteem as a fellow-Christian.39

Nor could Socinus and his immediate followers be seriously described as cynical wreckers, activated by a dark and deliberate intention of working for destruction. They were sincere, devout and thoughtful followers of the

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Christian Gospels. English Nonjurors and Tractarians, and their modern followers, have tended to be fierce (without necessarily consulting original sources) in attacking Socinianism as anti-Christian, and as standing in opposition to a Christian society. However, if the rational believers were actually asked about their religious stance, at some interfaith gathering, they did not say ‘Socinians’ or ‘Anti-Trinitarians’ but simply Christians. Moreover, wherever they have been found, they have been observed to have been activated by a strong and eloquent notion of public service, helping to build and unite any society in which they live. Socinianism has been classed with deism as one of the twin pathways to atheism. But the two were unalike; and both were opposed to atheism. The central aspect of Socinianism, after belief in the Gospels, was its appeal to reason, on the grounds that those texts were rational documents, which led to Unitarianism, that is, a belief in one undivided God. There may have been an element within it which led the human mind unknowingly to scepticism, since it downgraded authority, supporting rationality instead, on the grounds that God could not have willed humankind to be deceived. Religious truth, for a Socinian, had to pass through the gateway of reason, which was a gift of God. Socinianism’s undisguisedly rational approach to theological issues led to an increase in the status of knowledge and reason concerning divine matters. Socinus and his colleagues read the Gospels carefully and in a believing frame of mind, and came to the conclusion that they were primarily rational documents about conduct, not texts about mysteries which demanded that the rational faculty be shut down. Chronologically, Socinianism emerged publicly some 80–100 years before deism, which showed little presence before about 1680. English fellow-believers too were close students of the sacred text: John Bidle, Paul Best and Thomas Firmin all knew it in detail. Only in the nineteenth century did the balance among Unitarians between faith and reason shift significantly towards reason. Rational Christians held that the New Testament, on which they focused closely, refuted Trinitarian Christianity, whether Catholic or reformed. (Servetus himself had flung back at his tormentors the accusations made against him of serious heresy, declaring that, by contrast, it was John Calvin who was the heretic and blasphemer.) To the allegation that they were blasphemers, Socinians responded by saying that Trinitarian Christianity, being non-Biblical, was by scriptural standards blasphemous. By contrast the deists believed that Christianity was a manifestation of ‘natural religion’, which could be described as the instinctive tug towards good behaviour, benevolence and altruism that one finds throughout the world in the type of person who is virtuous and kind, whether or not

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he or she is ‘religious’. Deism has more than a passing resemblance to Roman Stoicism, and other sets of beliefs which have stressed sober virtue and shied away from the glittering lure of feverish enthusiasm. (The deists noted the civilized and public-spirited qualities of the Confucian Chinese, despite their not having heard the Christian scriptures.) To a deist, Christianity was ‘the republication of the religion of nature’ – the phrase was taken from a sermon of Bishop Thomas Sherlock. To a Socinian, the Bible and especially the New Testament was implicitly true and should be believed, and the starting point for any discussion of faith. None of Socinus’ writings urges belief in ‘natural religion’, the gentlemanly idea of a vague theistical principle underlying the practice of everyday virtue, with no requirement of religious observance. Thus it is mistaken to categorize Socinians along with deists and atheists. Socinianism in England may have undermined certain types of public religion, and be seen therefore as against the interests of the state; but that was because public religion was bound by the demands and interests of the bishops (or, during the Commonwealth, the Presbyterians). Socinians were far from irreligious. They read the Bible with in many cases greater assiduity than the Trinitarians who attacked them. They also attempted to follow the human pattern of Christ’s life, something that neither the Roman inquisitors nor John Calvin could seriously be said to have done.

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5

‘Trinunities, Coessentialities, Modalities ... monstrous terms’

I

n England, the theologically radical ideas, based solely on Biblical reading, of Jesus as a man, specially chosen by God, rather than as part of the Godhead from all eternity, first developed in the Eastern counties, reflecting the influence of trade with the Low Countries. But neither Queen Elizabeth I nor King James I in his early years was able to tolerate denial of the Trinity. It was a dissent too far. The Norfolk men Matthew Hamont, a wheelwright, and Francis Kett, were burned at the stake respectively in 1579 and 1589 for disbelief in the Trinity; in Suffolk, John Lewes and Peter Cole, a tanner, were burned for the same offence in 1583 and 1587. During the earlier part of James I’s reign the Legate brothers, from Essex, died for their beliefs, Thomas in Newgate in 1607 and Bartholomew at the stake in Smithfield in 1612. These men were of high character and deep theological seriousness. Their beliefs, though, were too revolutionary, and perhaps disturbing, for the time. Edward Wightman was also burned in Lichfield in 1612 for denial of the Trinity; he was not a serious thinker like the men in East Anglia, but a mentally disturbed enthusiast.1 In London, the Strangers’ church developed as a centre for foreign theological radicals, and its presence led to a further (if smaller) degree of radical dissent. This church, the Ecclesia Peregrinorum, established by Edward VI in 1550 to serve foreigners, was subject to visitation of the Bishop of London, though its superintendent was local, meaning in this case non-English. The first person to hold the post was a Polish Protestant called John à Lasco ( Jan Laski). Most of the foreign congregation was made up of theological radicals, many of them Flemish or Walloons. The following year a separate church was set up for visiting Italians. These churches were closed in the Catholic days of Queen Mary, but re-opened by Elizabeth in 1560, with a new establishment for Spanish Protestants.

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Reformed believers from the Netherlands went on to establish eleven further churches outside London. Most of their adherents managed to avoid falling foul of the Act of Uniformity by simply keeping quiet, but the Anabaptists among them were unable to do so, and Bishop Grindal, refusing to grant exceptions, excommunicated Adrian Hamsted, the Dutch minister at Austin Friars. The Italian civil engineer and theologian Jacobo Acontius spoke up for him, and received a similar penalty. The radicalism of the Continentals stimulated and drew out a current of thought from among the English in favour of rationality and sense, which was coupled with a distrust of metaphysics and arcane abstract notions.2 James I’s personal beliefs were built on Scottish Calvinism. But in the arena of public policy he sought peace and civil concord in devout matters: his daughter was married to a Bohemian Calvinist, and he sought for his son a Spanish match. He opposed the more humane line of the Arminians at the synod of Dort, not so much on account of Calvinist beliefs, than because the Arminians appeared as disturbers of the peace. Indeed, he often seems keen to move away from his Scottish theological roots, as for example in the encouragement given to his clergy to see what the Greek fathers – Chrysostom, Basil and the others – said, rather than the Western St Augustine, whose doctrines, in their morose Latinity, lacking intellect, insight or culture, hung heavily around Calvinism.3 When he was encouraged by his archbishop of Canterbury to provide troops for the Thirty Years’ War (in 1618), seen as a theologically final battle against the Roman Antichrist, he desisted; and in the last years of his reign, in an outbreak of severe anti-Catholic sentiment, he relented towards the Arminians, since that party held that not everything Catholic was bad. Probably it was his dislike of theological warfare which led him to inch in the direction of less extreme punishment of disbelievers in the Trinity. The Protestant English Church came gradually to accept the need for a partnership between reason (usually meaning a moderate spirit of enquiry) and revelation in forging faith. But while that same Church was compelled to be defensive against Catholic challenges from the Continent, it remained firmly Calvinist, though the English never entirely gave up a fondness for moderation in religion. Anglicans drew the line at questioning the Trinity, the Incarnation or the Atonement. This was reason too far. These doctrines were held to be the mysterious essentials of the scheme of faith. Almost all people, led by the King, were convinced that Jesus was in some mysterious way God. Even though there is no mention of the Trinity or of ‘substance’ in the Bible, and the doctrine as it later developed had not been taught even in outline for at least 150 years after Jesus’ death, it had long been held to be central: the cement which held the faith

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together. Nevertheless, to most Englishmen of that time the strength and continued existence of the Trinitarian Anglican Church were of central importance, since the English believed themselves to be God’s Elect people. They held that their reformed faith had been handed to them as part of their election. Anglicanism was too important a mark of God’s grace to risk its loss by over-stressing the rational side of the faith. The followers of Faustus Socinus had placed in the centre of their theology ‘sound reason’ – akin to the modern logician’s ‘well-formed formula’. Faith should be consonant to both sacred texts and right reason; it could not be ‘repugnant’ to either. The 1609 edition – that date may be approximate – of the Racovian catechism was dedicated to and dispatched to James I, he being the most important Protestant monarch in Europe. The opening of the dedication (by Jerome Moscorzowski, of Czarkow) embodies the free and refreshing flow of new theology that was the hallmark of the Polish Socinians – Renaissance in its rediscovered spirit, albeit showing the piercing, crystalline spirit of Padua rather than the richer, more umbral tone of other Italian cities such as Florence: In the same way, Most Serene King, that to all things which desire to deceive by the appearance of truth and imitation of probity light is hateful, and all investigation a source of fear, lest they be repudiated through the detection of the sham and the discovery of the fraud: by the same token it is a characteristic of those things which are true and sincere that they rejoice in the light, and eagerly desire to be brought into the sight of all and subjected to the investigation of all, that they may appear to all in reality to be such as they are indeed by nature, and win and achieve among all the authority that they deserve for their native and authentic truth and sincerity.4

James I was displeased, angry that a people who called themselves Christian could deny that Jesus was divine and was the atoning saviour of mankind. The book was burnt, at royal instance and by order of Parliament, though not until 1614. A further edition, of 1651, printed (but with a false imprint) by William Dugard, headmaster of Merchant Taylor’s School, and friend of John Milton, was burnt by order of the Council of State in April 1652 – even though Dugard was the Council’s own printer. A later version of the text, of 1680, enshrines the importance of reason, by declaring that without it ‘we could neither perceive with certainty the authority of the sacred writings, understand their contents, discriminate one thing from another, nor apply them to any practical purpose’.5 Within England, rational religion, and the attempt in the field of theology to use reason alongside scriptural text, appealed to all classes. Few felt constrained simply to rely on authority. The blend of intellectual

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criticism with devoutness was not the exclusive preserve of either the educated or the poor. Besides East Anglian working men (who were prepared to go to the stake for their beliefs), it developed among members of the intelligent artisan class such as John Bidle (a schoolmaster, and son of a tailor), and the thoughtful members of the clergy who were guests of Lord Falkland at his Oxfordshire home. All held that reason had a part to play in religion, and that consequently belief in the Trinity was on the edge of being untenable.

The Great Tew Circle In the 1630s an unofficial university of rational Christianity came into being in Great Tew, about 17 miles (27 km) from Oxford: Universitas Tuensis Magna, one might call it. This remarkable centre of learning was presided over by Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland, for a brief space, before the Civil War intruded, which led to Falkland’s death in the field for the Royalist cause. Politically, Falkland was committed neither to the Royalists nor to the Parliamentarians. He was critical of ship-money, and though he attacked the bishops for claiming divine right, he feared Presbyterian government more. He sought to delay the impeachment of Strafford, and stayed out of the proceedings against Archbishop Laud.6 When the clamour of the times forced people to decide for King or Parliament, his position of soft allegiance was no longer tenable, and he threw in his lot with the Royalists, losing his life, at the age of only 35, at the battle of Newbury (in 1643). But it was for the discussions held at his Oxfordshire home that he is best remembered. Here, a group of thinkers and theologians met to dispute, in a liberal and humane atmosphere, the deep issues of philosophy and religion, and to explore the relationship of religious belief to the state, and of reason to religion. Falkland himself presided, and has been given memorials of great clarity and sorrow in the History of the Rebellion and Life of Clarendon, his close friend. All who met Falkland warmed to his charm, generous hospitality, intelligence and youthful good looks. (In the nineteenth century he was given a worthy sculpture in the antechamber to the main Lobby of Parliament in Westminster.) Moreover, he had so dispassioned a consideration, such a candour in his nature, and so profound a charity in his conscience, that in those points in which he was in his own judgement clear, he never thought the worse or in any degree declined the familiarity of those who were of another mind.7

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Falkland’s household came to resemble a permanent graduate seminar, ‘a college situated in a purer air’ and ‘a university bound in a lesser volume’ according to Clarendon.8 With recourse to a fine library, and with no subject off limits amid serious discussions of the issues of the time, the members of the Circle – presided over by an ideal host – underwent ‘a severe course of study ... but very delightful to him as soon as he was engaged in it’.9 None in the company knew how many people were staying at his house until they assembled for dinner. The library was the supreme instrument of their discussions: a library, with ‘all the books they could desire’, which was for use, not for show. Here were works on all aspects of faith, including rare Socinian volumes printed in Rakow, Poland.10 Great Tew was a centre for uncompromising theological discussion, within a humane context. A favourite text was Acontius’ Satan’s Stratagems, with its plea for doctrinal minimalism, and its argument that it was not heresy that was Satanic, but persecution. We find there, besides Clarendon, William Chillingworth, John Earle (who ‘never had, nor ever could have, an enemy’), Thomas Hobbes, Henry Hammond, Gilbert Sheldon and John Hales (known as ‘the ever-memorable’ – perhaps because he, hitherto Calvinist, had ‘bid Calvin good-night’ in 1618 when, as chaplain to the English ambassador in the Netherlands, he had witnessed the partisan trickery with which the hard-line Dutch Calvinists had excluded the liberal Remonstrants at the Synod of Dort). The poets Abraham Cowley (author of the Sonnet to Reason quoted above) and Sidney Godolphin (the dedicatee, at one remove, of Hobbes’ Leviathan) were also numbered among the circle of Falkland’s friends. Chillingworth played an important part in refining the outlook of the Church of England, through his book, The Religion of Protestants (1636), which was written at Great Tew with constant reference to Falkland’s library. Like many at the time, he was searching for the firmest foundation of religion, and declared he had found it, proclaiming – in his book’s most frequently quoted statement – ‘The Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants.’ This, together with an open and rational mind, was all that was needed. Lady Ranelagh, the sister of Robert Boyle, the father of chemistry, may also have been present on occasion. Hugh Cressy was also a guest, but, allegedly fearing that Presbyterianism had too great a hold upon Anglicanism, he embraced the Roman Catholic faith in 1646. (A suspicion remains that he was unable to bear the burden of free and rational discussion about religion.) His defection, and that of Hobbes, who moved to a political posture of submission and docility, and to religious adherence satisfactory to power, showed that it was hard to balance intellectual and spiritual liberty with inner human yearnings for certainty and authority.11

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A sideline on the Great Tew Circle is that, although its members were theologically radical, they were not politically radical. They came from the Anglican, Royalist circles of Oxford, though they were out of sympathy with the clerical coerciveness of Archbishop Laud. Their political sympathies did not, however, mean that they could support the demand for one form of worship which was laid down by the King and his archbishop. The Polish Socinian volumes in Falkland’s library, besides criticizing and rejecting the Trinity, called for freedom of conscience in religious belief. One of Socinus’ central tenets was that no scheme of faith should be imposed. Chillingworth, writing in Falkland’s library, echoed this view when he declared that ‘nothing is more against religion than to force religion’.12 The Royalist connection with religious liberty (at this date, but not post-1660) was noted in the nineteenth century by Sir James Stephen, and quoted in the journal Scrutiny in 1948 by the Marxist critic L.C. Knights, an admirer of Clarendon’s History. Stephen had written: There are few more curious problems in English history than that which these facts suggest. Why was it that religious liberalism in the seventeenth century was allied with political Toryism, whilst the most bigoted and narrow views of religion were held by the founders of our political liberties?13

‘He was the first Socinian,’ says John Aubrey, of Falkland. But was he? (Anthony Wood called Aubrey ‘magotie-headed’.) The word has been noted as having two meanings both at this time and later: a broad as well as a narrow sense. In the broad sense, it denoted someone who applied reason to religion, who felt free to enjoy the liberty of doubt. Such a believer did not automatically accept what was pronounced by any established church, whether in Rome, Geneva, or the Laudian Church of Charles I and his archbishop. The narrower sense indicates a follower of the theological methods, arguments and conclusions of Faustus Socinus and his followers, which involve denial of the Trinity, the atonement, predestination, justification and irresistible grace. Both traditions found their origin in the ideas and methods of Erasmus.14 Clarendon himself made the point, in 1673: he declared that there could be nothing wrong, within theological circles, in ‘the making use of that reason for the examining of that which is most properly to be examined by reason’; similarly, reason should be employed in that context in avoiding weak arguments, and discovering logical fallacies. If we accept Socinianism to mean the simple use of reason in religious discourse, ‘the party will be very strong in all Churches’. But if it meant asserting that Christ was neither divine, nor a person (i.e. of the Trinity), then a holder of such views deserved reproach.15 This is fair, up to

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a point: but if one employs the uncompromisingly clear glass of reason to view the Gospels it is quite possible to note both that Jesus saw himself as distinct from God ‘that sent me’, and that the Trinity was a doctrine later than Scripture, emerging from a background of non-Christian philosophy. The two meanings of Socinianism can on occasion collide. Any view of the Bible, using reason to confront difficulties, can put the notion of the Trinity under pressure. Whether the theological enemies of traditional belief were Socinians in a wide or narrow sense, the word was considered to be full of negative implications. It was also an anxiety-word: it denoted the holder of a dreadful, though hard to pin down, heresy, one who, by applying reason to religion, threatened – to some minds, but not to the Socinians themselves, who saw themselves as Bible Christians and morally upright – a collapse of the structure of revealed Christian religion and the dawn of atheism. Calvinists held Socinianism to be the rotting agent of all religion. The term ‘Socinian’ was often just a term of abuse. The charge of Socinianism was freely tossed about. Hugo Grotius, the great Dutch humanist, jurist and theologian, initially attacked the Socinians. In 1623, he had a dispute with one of them, Johann Crellius, but was unable to answer Crellius’ points, and came to the conclusion that he was basically in agreement with them.16 Grotius’ notable work, De Veritate Religionis Christianae (On the Truth of the Christian Religion, 1627) defended Christianity on the grounds that it was reasonable, not on account of its having been revealed. In England, Archbishop Laud had begun his career with an onslaught on anti-Trinitarians, yet the clergy whom he promoted in the 1620s were castigated by arch-Puritans as ‘Socinians’. Socinian could mean anything new, tainted with reason as if incised with tabu, similar to primitive man’s horror at the night-world outside the security of a familiar cave; the fear not that there might be fearfulness outside, but rational order. Fear, perhaps, less of hell than of a hellish absence of hell. There is another aspect to Socinianism which led to its detestation among some theologians, and that was its call for toleration. Socinianism pioneered an end to the notion of exclusive salvation: the idea that only one religion was true, with its corollary that extreme measures such as burning were justified towards members of other groups, on account of their ‘heresy’. Faustus Socinus was, as Lord Acton observed, driven by a steady belief in toleration. The Academy at Rakow, one of the community’s most notable achievements, admitted students of Catholic and Calvinist persuasion. Those who held opposing views were appalled at the Socinian attitude. The Calvinist fundamentalist heresy-hunter Pierre Jurieu called toleration ‘this Socinian dogma, the most dangerous of all

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those of the Socinian sect, since it amounts to the ruin of Christianity and to the establishment of indifference among religions.’17 The titles of the books which opposed Socinianism indicated the fear: A Cage of Unclean Birds, Hell Broke Loose, The Hydra of Socinianism. Here was a belief which was widely seen as untouchable. It was something unwholesome, frightful, an indescribable beast, a pervasive hideousness, a foul and sinister bird of prey, tainted with dread from the beyond, ‘the poyson of Socinianism’, in John Owen’s phrase, something which might lure a man or a woman, unknowingly, to unspeakable awfulness. Socinian books ‘clancularly crept in’ to respectable libraries.18 The job of the orthodox was to ‘unmask’ Socinianism. These attitudes derived partly from the fact that Socinianism was hard to pin down. It was never a sect. Socinians might be anywhere. They had no churches. (Socinians remained for decades within the English Church.) Rather, the belief was a leavening within the established Christian communities. If a believer did not assent to part of a creed, he or she remained silent while the words were being recited. If a local preacher displeased, a rational Christian just cast around for another with a more suitable outlook. Partly, too, there was a fear that the Socinian approach might just be right. It looked like simple good sense to incorporate reason into religion, and was done anyway, up to a point – in terms of assessing the canon of scripture, and in analysing, or re-ordering, difficult Biblical passages. Socinianism did no more than take to a new level the notions of independent thought first outlined at the Reformation. Moreover, belief in the eternal pre-existence of Christ was a very difficult notion. In terms of conduct, Socinian men and women balanced clarity of thought with benevolent action; they sought to be open-minded, humane, unhidden (practising what we call today ‘transparency’), building a community. They looked for ways to do good rather than to become mired in doctrinal details. This did not mean they were smug ‘high thinkers’ or interfering ‘do-gooders’, though they recognized that sincerity was important in religious belief, since to pretend to believe a religion one did not hold was hypocritical and sinful. They saw that change and new laws were needed. The Socinian outlook focuses on natural virtue (however meagre its appearance) rather than original sin; the community tended to look for the good in humanity, and to build upon it, rather than constantly to harp on its opposite, although they did understand that the path to the bad was an easy one to follow. Martyrs and monasteries, anchoritism, devotion to relics, consuming guilt for sin, and monkish solitude were alien to their faith. Mysteries, they held, belonged to superstition, along with the apparatus of saintly cults and holy body parts; the contemplation

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of them led to a sense of inner dullness and self-obsession, when the gospel spirit was of spiritual enlightenment, perhaps joy. Religion’s main concern should not be with dogma and fear, but with creating a charitable and humane outlook leading to public benefaction, and a society where active good, discreetly carried out, was valued. Too much interior life and self-obsession – such as the Calvinist practice of ‘seeking assurance’, in which the seeker would look for providential signs that he was among the Elect – constituted pride and luxury, when Jesus had taught humility. This was how they saw the message of the Gospels. * * * From 1637 the regime of Charles I and Laud was in trouble. In November 1640 the Long Parliament was summoned, and, after the impeachment of Strafford and Laud, the prerogative courts – Star Chamber and High Commission – were abolished. People were allowed, within wide limits, to worship as they pleased. The tendency of the English towards many-hued variety in religious belief became apparent in the sects which multiplied in the country. The Presbyterians, however, could, like the Laudians, show a militant demand for uniformity, but of belief, rather then religious practice. They hated diversity and sects. Thomas Edwards, a very angry Puritan, made a list of them in a raging book entitled Gangraena (1646). The work was the response of a scandalized evangelical, stringently opposing toleration and variety. The Unitarians nevertheless proclaimed their beliefs: that God alone was divine; reason was a rule of faith; Christ had been a mere man, not an eternally pre-existing substance; humanity living today was not responsible for Adam’s sin.19 In 1640 Archbishop Laud had attempted to act against ‘the damnable and cursed Heresie of Socinianism’, specifically decreeing that importers, printers and sellers of such books should be excommunicated and subject to the proceedings of the Star Chamber. But the provisions fell foul of the Long Parliament; in the same year they were declared to be null and void, and against the fundamental laws of the realm and the right of Parliament.20 Besides, there were questions about the nature of heresy. The great jurist John Selden – a parliamentarian who was to oppose the execution of the King on the grounds that it was unlawful – observed in his Table Talk: Tis vain to talk of an heretic, for a man for his heart can think no otherwise than he does think. In the primitive times there were many opinions; nothing scarce but some or other held. One of these opinions being embraced by

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some prince, the rest were condemned as heresies; and his religion, which was but one of the several opinions, first is said to be orthodox, and so to have continued ever since the apostles.21

It is perhaps worth re-stating the point that, etymologically speaking, ‘heresy’ derives from the Greek word for ‘choice’. Paul Best Paul Best was a north country landowner, from Emswell (Elmswell on modern maps), near Driffield, East Yorkshire. He lived from about 1590 to 1657, and was among the first English Socinians. As a young man he showed no desire to remain at home managing his estates; his inner urge was rather to travel, both as a person and as a spiritual thinker. In the course of a lengthy journey through Continental Europe in the 1620s and 1630s, he served in the Thirty Years’ War, in the conquering Protestant army of Gustavus Adolphus, and went on to engage in theological disputations in Poland and Transylvania. There he came into contact with the concept of rational Christianity, a fact we know since on his return a friend remarked that his devotion was more ‘to carnal reason than to the mystery of faith’. After his travels to Eastern Europe he returned to England probably in the early 1640s, a convinced Socinian.22 A manuscript essay written by Best enjoyed a moderate circulation, since it was castigated for its impiety in an anonymous pamphlet of February 1646 entitled Hell Broke Loose: or a Catalogue of many of the spreading Errors, Heresies and Blasphemies of These Times. Thomas Edwards in Gangraena weighs heavily into Best’s ‘most horrid blasphemies . . . calling the doctrine of the holy Trinity a mystery of iniquity, the three headed Cerberus, a fiction, a tradition of Rome, monstrum biforme, triforme’.23 Before the publication of this attack, Best’s views had caused serious concern to the authorities, and he had been imprisoned in February 1645. The description of the Trinity as a three-headed monster indicates that he had been in contact with the ideas of Servetus. Later that year he was brought before Parliament and the advisory body which it had set up, the Westminster Assembly. But, like most Socinians, or Unitarians, Best was tough, unafraid, and argued lucidly and well. His case was the subject of a number of parliamentary deliberations, which continued throughout July 1645. The Commons hesitated, and sent him back to the Gatehouse, where he was kept a ‘close prisoner’. Militant Puritanism sought to crush, or silence, extreme dissent. But the anti-Trinitarians continued obstinately to re-appear. As Presbyterianism

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gave way to Independency, a course of unqualified suppression proved impossible. The Independents were more tolerant than the Presbyterians. Paul Best and later John Bidle frequently came face to face with antipathy bordering on rage and horror from both Parliament and the Westminster Assembly on account of their opposition to the doctrine of the Trinity, but each time they were spared extreme punishment. The Assembly was dominated by, but not exclusively made up of, rigorous Presbyterians. Parliament was also dominated by Presbyterians, though here their increasingly weak position led to changes in the nature of the debates and decisions. The army itself was overwhelmingly Independent. The divisions, especially within Parliament, meant that radical dissenters like Best and Bidle escaped the death penalty. It seems likely too that Parliament felt it necessary, as a practical lawmaking body, to consider the consequences of any extreme action, and to avoid alienating the populace unnecessarily. So, despite legislation calling for the death of radical dissenters, Parliament held back from imposing extreme penalties. A more general plan to suppress all dissent failed too. Moreover Cromwell was to an extent personally committed to tolerance in religious matters (except of Anglicans and of course Catholics). Some Independents themselves held anti-Trinitarian views. They would have supported Best. Even when imprisoned closely in the Gatehouse, Best managed to smuggle out material devoted to his Socinian views for publication. In all, he was kept in jail for 18 months, awaiting a decision. The Parliamentary manner of dealing with anti-Trinitarians appeared to the prisoner to be a straightforward case of being allowed to ‘Rott in Goale’ – although it is arguable that Parliament was simply unable to make up its collective mind what to do with them. (Outside Parliament, William Walwyn, the Leveller, and an Independent, probably John Goodwin, a man of sturdy and humane views, spoke out in his favour.) So Best decided to force the issue. Defiantly he issued a pamphlet entitled Mysteries Discovered. The pamphlet, hard to read, cites scripture with wearying insistence; its reasonable conclusion is that the Trinity is unscriptural: ‘the reall truth of God has been trodden under foot by a verball kind of Divinity, introduced by the Semi-pagan Christians of the third century in the Western Church’. The author declared that it was not Socinianism that was blasphemous, but rather belief in the Trinity: ‘to multiply the Deity, or detract from its Unity is blasphemy, as all the Doctors define’. He also recommended toleration, citing the examples of the Netherlands and Poland. By order of the Commons the pamphlet was burnt. Parliament could not decide what to do with the author. In the end he was quietly released by Cromwell, at the end of 1647, without fuss.24

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Back in Yorkshire Paul Best returned to farming and landowning pursuits. Apparently his brush with radical and life-changing religious ideas, which were incised with political and social implications, had left him untouched. Perhaps he knew just when to disappear into anonymity. He died obscurely ten years later, in about 1657.

John Fry Captain John Fry was another member of the gentry who became an opponent of Trinitarianism. A Dorset man, with an inclination to religious speculation, he was elected to the Long Parliament as member for Shaftesbury in 1640, and after a somewhat uncertain start in the Commons, he was suspended from that body in January 1649 for denying the Trinity, largely at the urging of extreme Presbyterians such as Francis Cheynell, and was expelled from Parliament in February 1651 for making statements adjudged to have been ‘erroneous, prophane and highly scandalous’. His books were ordered to be burned in New Palace Yard. A friend of Henry Hedworth, a reclusive yet active non-Trinitarian who was based in Huntingdon, Fry lived on well into the Restoration, being imprisoned for heresy in 1665 at the instigation of Lord Windsor. He also provided funds for Polish Socinians driven from their homeland after 1660. Other radical critics of the Athanasian Trinity included the Gloucester man John Knowles, who went on to live, quietly and discreetly, first in Chester then in Pershore. Knowles was questioned by the (parliamentary) ‘Committee of Glocester’ in 1650 on doctrinal points; he answered them with a carefully evasive letter, emphasizing that it was his principle ‘not to beleeve or practise any thing, but first to ask ... What reason, what ground do I have from the Scriptures ... being not desirous to try truths by whole sale, but to receive it as God discovers it’.25

John Bidle Parliament had hesitated before declaring that Best should die for his beliefs. The same was true as regards John Bidle. (His name can also be spelt ‘Biddle’ or ‘Beedle’.) This had not been the case 100 years earlier for Servetus in Geneva. Calvin’s state power had been more concentrated, and in Geneva there had been no effective opposing body of theological dissidence such as the Independents. In England, the democratic practice and tolerance of most Independents was a major factor in

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preventing theological extremism from operating as a policy. Cromwell, besides having a tolerance unknown to Calvin, would have disagreed with the idea that to deny the Trinity was to strike at the heart of the Christian faith. Moreover John Milton, Cromwell’s Latin Secretary, held heterodox views on the Trinity, and towards the end of his life he ceased attending any church services. He may have had a hand in the clemency shown towards Best. The copy of Best’s pamphlet held in the Bodleian Library contains manuscript notes with, in terms of style and handwriting, a Miltonic connection; they may even be in the hand of the poet, or his amanuensis, John Rous.26 (Milton’s eyesight was by then beginning to fail.) The belief system adopted by the poet and Latin Secretary is further evidence that denial of the Trinity was not considered a mortal blasphemy in Cromwellian England. It was a heresy, but not seen as subverting the faith. John Bidle lived almost contemporaneously with Paul Best and John Knowles. In contrast to Best, the country landowner who had sought foreign adventure, Bidle was the son of a Gloucestershire tailor, who became a brilliant Oxford scholar, gaining his MA in 1641, and going on to become a schoolmaster in Gloucester, teaching at the Crypt Free Grammar School. As a Gloucester man, he was part of a distinct group of West Country Englishmen who developed anti-Trinitarian ideas. Both as a teacher and as a person Bidle was, in Anthony Wood’s opinion, exemplary. A curious sidelight of his life there is that, in August 1643, while he was teaching his young pupils Greek and Latin, the city, which had become a Parliamentary stronghold, was besieged by Royalists for four weeks, with William Chillingworth in charge of siege-works. Bidle’s theology changed fairly rapidly from Puritan–Calvinist to radical anti-Trinitarian, merely on account of reading the Bible. His deviations were noted by the Presbyterian party, and in the spring of 1644 he was brought before magistrates for denying the Trinity. He was imprisoned, bailed, and compelled to submit a summary of his beliefs which, at the second attempt, was just acceptable.27 As his views developed, he grew to feel a strong dislike, an abhorrence even, for the term ‘person’ in the sense of three persons and one God. Specifically he held that the Holy Spirit was not, according to scripture, part of the Godhead. In defiance of authority, he wrote Twelve Arguments against the Deity of the Holy Ghost in 1645. The work is cogently argued, literate, clear, and quotes scripture throughout, and even though it was still in manuscript, it led to another short term in prison (2 December 1645). A sympathetic person from Gloucester procured his ‘inlargement’. A visit from Archbishop Ussher of Armagh in July 1646 failed to persuade him of the

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error of his beliefs; he ‘continued obstinate’. Ussher also recommended him to read the Church fathers.28 He was ordered to face a specially constituted Parliamentary Committee in London, and openly admitted that he disbelieved in the divinity of the Holy Ghost. Imprisoned for the third time, he remained detained for about nine months, before he sought, on 1 April 1647, the support of Sir Henry Vane the Younger, hoping to gain either charge or release.29 Bidle complained that his opponents were using the magistrates to suppress his opinions, to avoid answering them; they deluded both themselves and others with Personalities, Moods, Substances and suchlike brain-sick notions, that have neither sap nor sence in them, and were first hatched with the subtilty of Satan in the Heads of Platonists, to pervert the Worship of the True God.30

Notable is Bidle’s attack on the meaning, or lack of it, in the language of Trinitarian belief. The assistance of Sir Henry proved counter-productive; he was ‘confin’d more close than before’.31 No change occurred in Bidle’s situation; so, sensing that he had nothing to lose, he published Twelve Arguments in September 1647.32 Parliament acted swiftly; Bidle was summoned to the Bar of the House of Commons, to answer charges of denying that the Holy Ghost was part of the Godhead. The pamphlet was ordered to be suppressed and burnt (6 September 1647). But the printer could not be found, and the order for burning proved to be good publicity for the book (it ‘vended so fast’ according to Wood), leading to the appearance of a second edition in October. ‘Opponents say that we should renounce reason when we speak of divine mysteries; but scripture is uncertain at these points, and as a result they ground themselves on the meer conjectures of their own Reason.’33 In May 1648, largely in response to Bidle’s activities, an order known as the Draconic Ordinance was passed by both Houses of Parliament.34 This was a fearsome law against blasphemy and heresy, making death the penalty for those who denied the Trinity. But it never gained the force of law. Parliament was divided; a number of Independents in the army would have been subject to the provisions of the new law, and their power was increasing. Bidle took no notice of the legislation, and published in November, while still in prison, a Confession of Faith touching the Holy Trinity, followed by The Testimonies of Irenaeus – the result of his colloquy about the Church fathers with Archbishop Ussher. (Bidle’s study had proved the opposite to what Ussher had intended, since he discovered, and demonstrated, that there had been no belief in the Trinity in

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the first Christian centuries.) The prisoner would have taken considerable risks to have two theologically radical pamphlets printed under the very noses of his jailors. The Westminster Assembly was affronted, and called upon Parliament to act and pronounce the death penalty upon him. But Parliament refused to accede to the request; he was not condemned, and indeed soon freed on the surety of a friend.35 Then he found an appointment in Staffordshire, as chaplain to an unnamed patron-benefactor. John Bradshaw, president of the Council and ‘his capital enemy’ (Wood), heard of this and took action.36 An order was obtained from Parliament, he was brought back to London, and re-imprisoned, for the fourth time. His benefactor in Staffordshire died, leaving him in poverty in the Gatehouse, with nothing but ‘a draught of milk from the cow every morning and evening’. However, his luck had not entirely run out, since he found employment as a proof-reader of a new edition of the Septuagint, the Greek text of the Old Testament. Prison seems to have stimulated Bidle to more concentrated work in the field of rational theology, of the kind that the authorities considered reprehensible, and which would bring graver charges upon him. Hitherto he had reached his non-Trinitarian conclusions entirely on the grounds of his own reading of the Bible. He had not read any of the works of the Polish Brethren. Now, however, in prison, he read the works of Socinus, which gave him a formidable capacity for argumentation, and improved his debating skills.37 Bidle’s Confession of Faith, the longer, post-Draconic Ordinance work, was carefully composed and well-argued. After expressing gratitude to Luther and Calvin for cleansing Christianity of its Roman accretions, he declares that they did not go far enough: ‘yet are the dregs still left behind, I mean the gross opinion touching three persons in one God, which error not only made the way for those pollutions, but lying at the bottom corrupteth almost our whole religion’. This introduced three gods, and so subverts scripture. The contention of Athanasius, ‘yet there are not three Gods, but one God’, is no help. For who is there (if at least he dare make use of his reason in his religion) who seeth not, that this is as ridiculous, as if one should say, Peter is an apostle, James an apostle, John an apostle; yet there are not three apostles, but one apostle?

In reality, Bidle argued, Trinitarian ministers always subordinate the Son to the Father, and in their prayers do by God mean no other than the Father. When faced with the difficulty of the doctrine, they declare that Christ is both God and Man, an answer which is no answer, since this is

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the matter in question. Bidle adds that the idea of the Trinity is objectionable on the further ground that it prevents people from considering God as the first cause of all things. Persons (the Son, and the Spirit) cannot be the first cause of all things, when they themselves have been caused by the Father. In his preface, Bidle launched into a memorable assault on the metaphysical language of the Trinitarians: they have erected a new Babel ‘with their Trinunities, Coessentialities, Modalities, eternal generations, eternal processions, incarnations, hypostatical unions, and the like monstrous terms, fitter for conjurers than for Christians’.38 This is a further assertion of Bidle’s dislike of windy metaphysics, recognizable in a tradition stretching from William of Ockham to A.J. Ayer. Here is the spirit which informs the hostile English attitude to Hegel, Heidegger, Husserl or Habermas. As earlier, Bidle was attacking the language of coessentialities and modalities and so forth, and not arguing about the operation of those mysterious entities. His argument was that discussion about them was not wrong or mistaken, but meaningless. One cannot claim him as the first English common-sense philosopher; but his writings foreshadow the English concern with meaningful language, which became a major concern in the twentieth century. In denying the Trinity, Bidle was, following Servetus, touching sensitive theological and ecclesiastical nerves. In February 1652 Parliament passed (at Cromwell’s instigation) a general Act of Oblivion, which enabled Bidle to be restored to full liberty. For two years he lived a productive and peaceful life, and gained a congregation. At this time, there appeared two new versions of the Socinian manifesto, the Racovian catechism, the text which explicitly endorses the importance of reason for the processes of perceiving the authority and understanding the contents of the Bible. One appeared in Latin in 1650 or 1651, and the other in English in 1652. The former was burnt by order of Parliament in April 1652, after considerable hesitation, much of it owing to Milton’s personal doubts; he was a friend of the printer, William Dugard. The English version was translated by Bidle and given the false imprint of ‘Amstelredam’, a typical ruse to put heresy-hunters off the scent. Parliament seems to have temporarily lost interest in sniffing out dissident theology; at all events, it took no action against the English edition. Bidle’s cause was boosted by Cromwell’s Instrument of Government of 1653 – the act by which the Protector gave the power of law to his authority to rule – which also gave a legal backing to all dissenters, even to those holding views distant from what might be termed orthodoxy. Bidle could not resist the desire to publish, anonymously, his theologically subversive ideas, and though Cromwell gave protection to him for his views, the

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Presbyterians in Parliament were still keen, as John Calvin himself had been, to search out heresy and extirpate it where possible. Bidle seems to have taken advantage of the more relaxed atmosphere, with the publication that year of three small Socinian works, all likely to enrage the Presbyterian party, and in all of which Bidle had had a hand.39 The anonymous publication of A Twofold Catechism, part of which consisted in A Brief Scripture Catechism for Children, brought Bidle to the Bar of Parliament in December 1654. In these two works Bidle had as ever sought to scrape off the accretions encrusted on the faith. Plain faith was, he noted in his preface to the second, almost impossible for children, ‘having the eyes of their understanding so veiled with prejudicate opinions’. In the preface to the longer text, Bidle included a further passage ridiculing the language, and as he argued the matter, of top-heavy metaphysical Christianity.40 Examine therefore the expressions of Gods being infinite and incomprehensible, of his being a simple Act, of his subsisting in three persons, or after a threefold manner, of a Divine Circumincession, of an Eternal Generation, of an Eternal Procession, of an Incarnation, of an Hypostatical Union, of a Communication of Properties, of the Mother of God, of God dying, of God made man, of Transubstantiation, of Consubstantiation, of Original Sin, of Christs taking our nature on him, of Christs making satisfaction to God for our sins, both past, present, and to come, of Christs fulfilling the Law for us, of Christs being punished by God for us, of Christs merits, of his meritorious obedience both active and passive, of Christs purchase of the kingdom of heaven for us, of Christs enduring the wrath of God, yea the pains of a damned man, of Christs rising from the dead by his own power, of the ubiquity of Christs body, of apprehending and applying Christs righteousness to our selves by faith, of Christs being a Surety, of Christs paying our debts, of Christs righteousness imputed to us, of Christs dying to appease the wrath of God, and reconcile him to us, of infused grace, of free grace, of the world of the elect, of irresistable workings of the Spirit in bringing men to believe, of carnal reason, of spiritual desertions, of spiritual incomes, of Outgoings of God, of taking up the Ordinance, &c. and thou shalt finde, that as these forms of speech are not owned by the Scripture, so neither the things contained in them.

At the bar of the House Bidle was asked if he was the author of these works. He responded with a question: Was it right that one brought before the seat of judgement should incriminate himself? The Speaker asked him if he acknowledged that the Holy Ghost was God, or no. His response was that nowhere in scripture did he find the Holy Ghost called

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God. A week or so later he was committed as a close prisoner to the Gatehouse, forbidden the use of pen, ink or paper, disallowed visitors; and all copies of his books that could be found were burnt. This was his fifth visit to jail. As he was being sentenced, a pamphlet seller inside the Palace of Westminster (where considerable freedom was offered to petitioners and pamphlet-sellers, conditions very different from those obtaining within the Lobby area today) was offering to members of Parliament as they came and went copies of the Dissertatio de Pace, an English text despite its Latin title, being one of the 1653 publications: a translation of a work by a Polish Socinian calling for broad religious tolerance and belief in the minimum of theological tenets. The text pointed out that excommunication, bitterness and rancour were not part of Christian duty.41 Bidle’s ideas were gaining in circulation, and found popularity, even internationally. Knowledge of his activities reached Danzig (Gdansk), where a Socinian scholar called Jeremiah Felbinger wrote in August 1654 to the Gloucester man of his delight at the reports of his ‘sincerity and constancy in matters of Christian faith’, urging him to spread the word further than the English regions, ‘even to the New World, where Englishmen frequently travel’.42 In England his major opponent at this time was John Owen, Oxford’s Puritan Vice-Chancellor and Cromwell’s one-time chaplain. A former Presbyterian, he retained his Calvinist theology, even after he had moved to Independency in the mid-1640s after a reading of early Church history. The political radicalism of Independency seems not to have interested him; neither did its tolerance of milder theology. There was no element of liberalism in his theological outlook: his first book attacked the moderate theology of Arminianism as being ‘a Discovery of the old Pelagian Idol, Freewill, with the new Goddess Contingency’. In 1653 he attacked Socinianism, declaring that the constitution of the divine nature led absolutely to the necessity of satisfaction for sin. He also renewed the assault on Arminianism, attacking John Goodwin’s Redemption Redeemed. Henry Hammond, the moderate Anglican who had been part of the Great Tew Circle, and one of those from the group who later helped preserve the Anglican Church, at a time when it might have died, and the official faith of England might have become Roman Catholicism or Presbyterianism, was the subject of the first of many attacks in 1654 when Owen attacked him for his views on episcopacy. Owen’s many works manifest both deep knowledge and polemical vigour. At Oxford he did, however, show a milder side of his character: he protected learning (notably allowing Edward Pococke, the Laudian professor of Arabic, perhaps the greatest scholar of his generation, to keep his living at Childrey in Berkshire), and

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in a lighter vein Owen gained a certain notoriety for dressing with a high sense of fashion, not something one usually associates with a Puritan, and relaxing by playing the flute – what we call the recorder today – and showing a penchant for athletics.43 In 1655, following an instruction from the Council of State, Owen wrote a refutation of ‘Bidellianism’. The massive work, Vindiciae Evangelicae, notes that ‘the evill is at the doore’ and ‘there is not a citty, a towne, scarce a village in England wherein some of this poyson is not poured forth’.44 Owen understood the prevalence and popularity of Socinianism, although the writings of Socinus had not been widely read. The author went on to mount a severe criticism against the English Polyglot Bible of 1655–57: a great project in nine languages and six volumes, edited by the Royalist Brian Walton and undertaken with the protection of Cromwell himself, who exempted the paper from tax. Owen held that the principle underlying the publication of the Polyglot was that scripture might have been corrupted. This, he trumpeted, was the foundation of Islam, the principal prop of popery, the pretence of fanatical anti-scripturists and the root of much hidden atheism in the world.45 Owen’s diatribe is an example of the fear of textual criticism which manifested itself among scriptural fundamentalists, an anxiety which is traceable back to Erasmus’ opponents. (The thinking of textual fundamentalists is that textual criticism, and freeing religion from dogma, are part of a hidden plan to abolish religion.) The search for a better Bible text was to Owen a step on the road to atheism. He could not see that to be a member of a text-based religion meant that one had to depend on scribes, who were fallible. The vivid sentence in Vindiciae demonstrates the distribution of Socinian views throughout the land. We may ask, how were such views spread to fairly remote corners of the country? Almost certainly the answer must be that they had been disseminated by demobilized soldiers in the years following the Civil War. The army’s strong Independent leanings have already been noted. Independents – though not Owen, who only joined Independency on a theological/historical technicality – were often open to radical Christian views such as those espoused by anti-Trinitarians. Vindiciae Evangelicae also attacks the Dutchman Hugo Grotius, both a great legal theorist and a theologian – a successor to Erasmus, whom he called ‘the master and teacher of the whole human race’.46 Owen viewed Grotius’ inability to answer the arguments of the German Socinian Johann Crell as a surrender to Socinianism. The Dutchman’s English supporter and apologist is identified as Owen’s pet hate Hammond. The attacks on Grotius and Hammond lasted some years, with the dissenting moderate

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Richard Baxter drawn into the dispute. There was an element of farce here, with Baxter accusing Grotius of using the disguise of Socinianism to mask his Jesuitry. This was religious paranoia too far.47 For Bidle, six months of hard prison regime followed, before his release. A dispute with an illiterate Baptist landed him in prison again, and in 1655 his Presbyterian enemies sought to dust off the Draconic Ordinance of 1648 and use it against him. However, Cromwell intervened personally, suspending the proceedings, and banishing the prisoner to the Scilly Isles, in October of that year, where he was incarcerated in the castle of St Mary’s, with an allowance of 100 crowns (25) per annum.48 The location seems to have been personally chosen by the Protector, since the writ of Parliament did not extend that far. Here Bidle remained for three years, writing with eloquence and power. Friends made submissions on his behalf, and eventually, in 1658, a writ of Habeas Corpus was successful and he was discharged. At once he returned to the business of working to promote anti-Trinitarian ideas – Bidle’s entire career was a living refutation of the slogan ‘Prison Works’ – though he was advised to retire to the country, which he did, nevertheless often returning perforce to London, the hub of ideas. The Restoration brought Bidle no joy. He was arrested in June 1662, and when the court, acting under the direction of a JP, Sir Richard Brown, could not find any statute under which to charge him, he was nevertheless fined 100, a sum which he did not have, and thrown into prison (for the seventh time) until the fine was paid. The court’s action was one of pure malice.49 In a stifling, miserable jail, amid foul conditions, Bidle soon succumbed to an infection – identified as ‘prison fever’ – from which he died, aged 47. His life had been a transparent testament to reason within religion, brought to life by his stubborn, driven yet powerfully creative and humane personality. Wood says: He was accounted by those of his perswasion a sober man in his discourse, and to have nothing of impiety, folly or scurrility to proceed from him: also, so devout, that he seldom or never prayed without being prostrat or flat on the ground.50

Bidle – if we believe the account of Bishop White Kennet – had befriended a ‘curl-pate boy’ called Thomas Firmin, who had been brought up as a Calvinist, but had changed his views to rational anti-Trinitarian under his mentor’s influence.51 In the process he stimulated within the younger man the access of human goodness and charitableness which flows from the abandonment of hard and punitive religious belief. Bidle taught Firmin simply to pay attention to the central message of the Gospels, to use his

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reason, and to dispense with the rest. When Firmin became rich through his textile business, his generosity was laid open to the poor of London, and its Huguenot refugees. Bidle also taught Firmin something new about relieving poverty. He made the point that it was not enough just to dispense money from a position of superiority – which could seem self-satisfied – to the poor. ‘’Tis a duty not just to relieve, but to visit the sick and poor; because they are hereby encouraged and comforted, and we come to know of what nature and degree their straits are’.52 In other words, generous people should not shirk the human dimension of charitable giving. There should be something like a spiritual equality between the giver and the receiver: a sense of mutuality. People – the poor – were human like ourselves, not abstract ideas. Givers should mingle with needy humanity. Bidle, having rejected the dogmatic posturings of religion, rejected too the easy distance of theorizing about poverty. And if it was hard to visit the poor and needy, and an effort, then so be it, it was hard; it was still the job of any person committed to charity to put him- or herself out, and to use not only cash, but the personality too, for the purpose of giving. Bidle’s sense of personal example, and his stress on the use of reason in theology, meant that his legacy would remain relevant in the debates that characterized the end of the seventeenth century. His Life, written by John Farrington of the Inner Temple, could not be clearer about the mainspring within: ‘He valued not his doctrines for speculation but practice.’53 His undivided refusal to be compelled to adopt others’ opinions, and the humane clarity of his rational devotion, shamed his detractors and persecutors, whose actions proved nothing except their own malevolence and cruelty. His kindly but wholly unalterable spirit acted as an inspiration. Never smug, when he was relaxing with friends he confounded the prevalent image of a gloomy Puritan by being ‘merry and pleasant, and liked well that the Company should be so too’.54 He had laid the foundations of rational anti-Trinitarianism and a common-sense type of Christianity in England; now, in the difficult post-Restoration times, the cause was taken up by two men who had admired him, Thomas Firmin and Stephen Nye.

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6

A Climate of Repression

T

he Parliament which met in May 1661, and which is usually known as the Cavalier Parliament, imposed a religious policy which was punitive, stringent and conformist. Its brash overbearing attitude was constant for more than a decade, with members ignoring pleas for tolerance and reason. Just before the Restoration, in April 1660, Charles II had issued the Declaration of Breda, which gave hope that Presbyterians and others might be part of the settlement, since it offered ‘a liberty to tender consciences’, and made assurances that ‘no man shall be disquieted or called in question for differences of opinion in matter of religion which do not disturb the peace of the kingdom’. Dissenters had indeed taken an active part in the Restoration.1 But the Parliament’s attitude, operating somewhere between triumphalism and paranoia, meant that religious minorities were ignored or crushed in the years following, and forced to make a show of believing things that they did not believe. If they refused, they were brought before a magistrate and made to suffer penalties. There was no liberty to consciences. The mood was vengeful. Bigoted suspicion ran far. Lord Halifax expressed a view which was widely shared: ‘It is impossible for a dissenter not to be a rebel.’ Daniel Neal observes that many members of the Cavalier Parliament ‘became tools of the ministry in all their arbitrary and violent measures’.2 Presbyterians and others could do little more than hide their beliefs. They did not dissent merely for the sake of being contrary, or to mount a subversive attack on the Stuart monarchy, but on account of what the Bible said. Charles II’s own religious beliefs were nebulous, perhaps pragmatically so. Initially he wished to see the parties ‘meeting in the midway’.3 But the Parliament rendered honourable mediation impossible. Even 12 years later the Declaration of Indulgence, which would have removed disabilities from dissenters, again proved to make only small changes.4 The royal religious policy was seen to operate in a vague region between opportunism and mystery. The conversion to Catholicism promised to Louis XIV only came on the deathbed.

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The principles of the Clarendon Code (which gave the force of law to the anti-minority mood, though Clarendon himself held reservations about them) included the Corporation Act of 1661, which excluded dissenters from public offices in corporate towns, and the Act of Uniformity, which compelled the clergy to give assent to the 1662 Prayer Book on pain of expulsion from their livings, and to be re-ordained if they had not been ordained by a bishop. This act led to what is known as the Ejection in August of that year, when about 1,000–2,000 nonconforming ministers were driven out of their parishes and homes, often directly out into the hedgerows. The action was brutal and it brought serious consequences, since it led to divisions within England which were social as well as religious. It was also the law which, harshly enforced, precipitated the imprisonment and death of John Bidle – even though initially the law officer had been unable to find a statute under which he could be detained. Bidle’s case led to the passing in 1664 of a Conventicle Act, which imposed a ladder of fines for those attending dissenter meetings. (This legislation lapsed in 1668, but was renewed in 1670, when financial incentives were offered for those who spied on neighbours.) The Five Mile Act of 1665 decreed that an ejected minister could not live within five miles of his old parish. By this mean-spirited legislation, the re-established royalists clothed themselves in the apparel of revenge against the devout revolutionary spiritual anarchy of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, when the varied faiths of dissenters had roamed across a landscape of kaleidoscopic belief. Gilbert Sheldon (1663–77) was followed by William Sancroft (1677–91) as Archbishop of Canterbury. Neither of them approved of compromise with dissent. In 1688 Sancroft led the ‘seven bishops’ who refused to read James II’s Declaration of Indulgence, and he never recognized William and Mary after the revolution of 1688; he had to be evicted from Lambeth Palace to make way for the generous broadchurchman John Tillotson. Sheldon, once the guest of Lord Falkland at Great Tew, where he had imbibed the ideas of reason and toleration, now appeared as narrow as William Laud, and to have turned his back on the principles of his youth.5 He had guided the Anglican Church to re-establishment in 1660, and was thereafter rigid in his desire to see the application of the Act of Uniformity of 1662, supporting the expulsion of Nonconformist clergy. What had led to this change from enlightenment to rigour? In the words of S.R. Gardiner, his ‘generosity had been chilled by the icy wind of Puritan supremacy’.6 Bishop Burnet considered that Sheldon regarded the Church as ‘a matter of policy [rather] than conscience’.7 As a man of culture, he employed (and paid) Wren to

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build at Oxford the splendid theatre named after himself. As evidence of his new-found theological hardness, he chose first Thomas Tomkyns as his chaplain, then Samuel Parker. Lord Clarendon also introduced, in 1662, a Bill for licensing books. Anything deemed heretical, schismatical, blasphemous, seditious or treasonable was banned. In religion or ‘physic’ (medicine) or philosophy, nothing outside the purview of the doctrine or disciplines of the Church of England was permitted. Law books had to be licensed by the Lord Chancellor or Lord Chief Justice; books on history or affairs of state were perused for correctness by the principal secretaries of state, sacred (or philosophical) works by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The act remained in force, with a gap, until 1695. It was widely evaded; but its existence for 33 years explains why there was caution about publication, and frequent anonymity.8 The moves against the dissenters were popular. Many, perhaps most, English people sought an end to Puritanism; they welcomed the return of Christmas and maypoles, and were pleased to be able to go to the theatre again. But Puritans still numbered a large community. Puritanism had the benefit of being serious, and, among the Independents, it had led to the formulation of radical and far-reaching theories of democracy and human rights. Its hold, though, on English civil society was weakened by its prohibitions and its tendency to intense, millenarian belief. The gloominess of its outlook was also up against the basically optimistic, gossippy, discreetly pleasure-loving English temperament. As Herbert Skeats, a chronicler of dissent, has written: on William III’s death the lower classes all over the country threatened to pull down the [dissenting] meeting-houses … the people far preferred the chatty, easy-going careless ‘parson’ to either the severe and scrupulous Presbyterian, the godly and painstaking Independent, the zealous but generally unlettered Baptist, or the ardent but strange Quaker.

The parson allowed them to live largely as they pleased; he was not too censorious about sin; he was ready with absolution at the last moment of life to ease them into the hereafter.9 Now, however, the Restoration was demonstrating a tendency to punish rather than to accept. This caused some re-appraisals: the official practices of raiding dissenters at their places of worship, of knocking at the door of harmless worshippers, of breaking up and fining congregations, and of detaining individuals with barely legal formalities, were procedures which caused doubts.

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Early Controversies of Reason Despite the mood of tradition and intolerance maintained by the parliament, the development of reason continued apace. Laws restricting conventicles could not stop Newton’s discoveries. The scientific outlook promoted by the Royal Society was at odds with the unitary, conformist society of the type that the Clarendon Code proposed. Newton’s researches swept away the ghosts of Aristotelian semiscience, a discipline which, despite Aristotle’s own scientific capacity (specifically in the field of biology, in which he was admired by Darwin) and the favour he showed to an early form of the scientific method, had developed into a fixed and rigid anti-scientific system, based above all on authority. The new science also had an impact on the religious outlook, posing questions over the centrality of the human race and its drama of salvation in the newly understood universe. After Newton, the human being was a diminished species, and the possibility arose that all things could be explained without reference to a Deity. Reason, accepted by most theologians, thinkers and indeed poets as a partner of scriptural revelation, might be on the verge of becoming a complete system of explanation which would do away with the sacred. Nevertheless most people saw scientific discoveries as amplifying, rather than diminishing, God’s realm. Reason, in the form of the rational religion proposed by Socinus and exemplified by John Bidle and his small congregation (which may possibly have continued to exist secretly after his death in 1662), had enemies at this time. Andrew Marvell appears to have attacked the sale of Socinian books; but, since he was close to his nephew William Popple (a convinced Unitarian, living abroad), it would seem that his criticism of Socinianism might not have been the whole story. There was, however, nothing feigned in the attacks mounted in the 1680s by John Dryden on the views of Socinus, and thereby on reason within religion, first in an Anglican verse narrative and then in a Roman Catholic allegory. Other opponents of reason included those who sought a more disciplined society, with a uniform religion providing a rigorous guidance; some of such people appear to have aspired to control other people’s lives, and to have disliked the idea that ordinary folk should be allowed to think for themselves. They saw reason and revelation as existing in separate categories, with reason as tending to the subversive. They were out of sympathy with Bishop John Wilkins, his investigations into the principles of mechanics and hypothetical moon-journeys, and the Royal Society. Human enquiry was limited, and should stay so; the people

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needed revelation. They should be awed into submission by the prospect of heaven or hell, not stirred into thought by rational faith. The overt argument for control was that free choice in faith might lead again to civil disorder and possibly to the execution of the monarch. The supporters of rigour and control sought to stop this possibility by closing down dissent: in other words, making a pre-emptive strike in favour of uniformity. Those of a more thoughtful nature saw reason as the first step, and revelation as the second step, towards securing the best balance between knowledge and faith. Our reason, and our understanding, though incomplete by themselves, were seen as necessary for the accomplishment of a balanced faith. Such men included George Ashwell, whom we have already come across offering a muted tribute to Faustus Socinus. He saw good sense in the pairing of reason and revelation. He did not view them as mutually exclusive, or see reason as the enemy, in the manner of Tory anti-rationalists. Ashwell, a traditionalist and a high-churchman – that is, a believer in the Prayer Book and the 39 Articles, not one concerned about vestments, liturgy or furnishings – saw the vital importance of reason, though he held that at some stage it had to take a back seat, and become an accompaniment to revelation. He set forth this idea in the epistle dedicatory to a book he translated. Reason, he declared, ‘teacheth out’ – that is, lays out in order – the principles of the book of nature, ‘which sets out to our view Gods works of Creation and Providence’. From this foundation, the ‘supernatural light of revelation discovers to [i.e. reveals the way to] our faith and superstructs thereupon’.10 Thus, in the opinion of this moderate high-churchman, revelation was to be found on the structure of reason. Reason first helps us to understand nature, and an understanding of nature leads inevitably to an apprehension of the divine, laid out as it was by the goodness of the creator. Neither doth Nature lead thee towards God by a far-fetched and winding compass, but in a short and straight line. The sun waits upon the rain, and dew; the rain and dew, upon the grass; the grass serves the cattle; the cattle serve thee; and if thou serve God, then thou makest good the highest link in that golden chain, whereby heaven is joyned unto earth.11

John Locke was more radical: reason, he declared, ‘is natural revelation’, meaning that reason is what we find ourselves using when, by the natural means of inferential thought which God has given us, we observe the God-created world around us. For Locke, too, ‘revelation is natural reason enlarged by a new set of discoveries communicated by God immediately’. Reason for Locke was more closely related to revelation than the stepchange indicated by Ashwell; Locke saw reason as part of a continuum to

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revelation. Both were divine, God-given. Locke’s memorable conclusion was that he that takes away reason to make way for revelation, puts out the light of both, and does muchwhat the same as if he would persuade a man to put out his eyes, the better to receive the remote light of an invisible star by a telescope.12

Just as we cannot see at all without our eyes, so too, the telescope of revelation is unusable without the natural eyes of reason.

The Fabric of Reason Reason – enquiry – constituted a major part of the backdrop to the dispute within the Anglican Church concerning the Trinity of the 1690s, sometimes called the Great Trinitarian Controversy. That debate, which deeply troubled the Church establishment of the time, showed links to three aspects of life in the late seventeenth century. In the first place, the dispute had a political dimension. The authorities intervened twice, in February 1696 with a Royal Injunction, and in January 1698, in the form of the Blasphemy Act. The Injunction demanded that members of the clergy who pronounced on the topic of the Trinity in the course of their sermons should ‘abstain from bitter invectives and scurrilous language against all persons whatsoever’. The Act of 1698 outlawed the preaching of opposition to the Trinity, and, by imposing severe restrictions on anti-Trinitarians, threatening to remove almost all civil rights from them, closed the debate. This action brought satisfaction to the extreme high-church, Nonjuror party, which was identified in the main with the Tories, with their formal, traditional, often unreflective theological viewpoint. They were dedicated to the 39 Articles and saw religion to a great extent as a matter of state, and Anglicanism as part of a national and class code. The merciless severity of the 1698 act terrified anti-Trinitarians into silence.13 The second context was the theological and doctrinal one: here was a challenge to the traditional belief of almost all members of established Churches, whether of East or West, in the Holy Trinity, a belief which found its basis not in Biblical texts but in Christian authority dating from the fourth century ad – in the traditions of the Church and the formulations of the Christian fathers, from Athanasius to John of Damascus (but not in the ante-Nicene Irenaeus, Justin Martyr or Tertullian), who held the view that God the Father and Jesus Christ were of ‘the same substance’, or homoousioi. To question this view appeared, to

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most of the leaders of the established Church, to be taking reason a step too far; too much reason might (in the words of William Sherlock, Dean of St Paul’s) reduce the Christian faith to ‘a new and more perfect sect of philosophy’.14 Thirdly, the Trinitarian controversy related to new ideas in philosophy. The thought of both Thomas Hobbes and John Locke could be seen as having a sceptical or even atheistical tendency, even though both those philosophical thinkers protested their Christian orthodoxy. Hobbes’ materialism, as set forth in Leviathan, disturbed the devout. The Cambridge Platonists, with their stress on the spiritual aspects of human life, directed their writings against Hobbes. Hobbes’ materialistic tendencies, and his fairly pronounced Nominalism, gave the Trinity no favours; although his notion that societies should support government for fear of worse, would seem to support Trinitarianism where it was upheld by government. The Cambridge group, in their opposition to Hobbes, did not explicitly reinvigorate the concept of the Trinity; many of them, by their stress on reason as a benevolent, kind and godly quality, cleared the path towards its quiet abandonment – though their appeal to the transcendent, the immanent, the non-rational, in belief, burnished the sense of mysticism in which devotion to the Trinity has thrived. Locke’s 1690 Essay concerning Human Understanding eased many of the concepts of the ancient philosophers out of philosophical discussion, especially scholasticism with its vocabulary of ‘being’, ‘becoming’, ‘essence’, ‘modalities’, and focused on what could be experienced, touched, seen and measured; despite the text’s excessive length, frequent confusions and occasional irresolution, it was (unlike Hobbes’ work) a fundamental and new outlook on the world. It constituted, with its basis of empiricism and analytic reflection, the birth of modern thought and of our understanding of the world of today. It has sometimes been claimed that the dissenters broke up the organic unity of England. There is a Tory interpretation of history, as powerful as the ‘Whig interpretation’, which declares that the dissenters were responsible for the modern ills of society: for its fragmentation, and even for the alienation and anomie found in sections of it today. Better the society of quiet townspeople and villagers, all obedient to their parson and loyal to the monarch. Society could have been ‘saved’ by the perpetuation of the Stuart monarchy and the enforcement of the established Church (and the eradication of dissent). Specifically, Socinianism, with its use of human reason in solving theological problems, has been blamed. But this would have been hard, if not impossible to achieve. Leaving aside the human cost of enforcement, advances in the sciences, in which England led the way

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at this date, would have been difficult or even impossible within a streamlined, unquestioning, timid monopoly faith. Religion was still closely allied to science, and scientific ideas benefited from a variegated religious outlook. The process was reciprocal. Just as reason and fresh original ideas infused the development of scientific notions, so did the same qualities come to cast new light on religious faith and religious origins. Clarendon had, in his discussion of the two meanings of Socinianism mentioned above, acknowledged the serious and devout aspects of that movement’s followers. Others though have seen it as a near-atheistic doctrine, which, by denying faith the ingredient of the unknowable, stripped away at the grand mysterious narrative of devout England, and brought in alien and heretical doctrines which confused decent God-fearing English folk and fed them not just with false dogma but also with a misguided way of seeing religious faith. This was not as it seemed at the time. In the first place, the theological radicals were distinct from political radicals. The politically revolutionary ideas of Gerrard Winstanley and Col. Rainborough were absent from the notions of the leading anti-Trinitarians, such as John Bidle, Stephen Nye and Thomas Firmin. John Bidle, a tailor’s son, had been an Oxford scholar who had become a schoolteacher, and had decided that his religion should be an accurate reflection of the teaching of the Gospels. Hence he disbelieved in the Trinity. He had read no foreign Socinian text before he arrived at his conclusions, so believers in the spiritual primacy of England could not accuse him of coming under the influence of alien, foreign ideas. He did not espouse anti-Trinitarianism in order to subvert English society, or to destroy its traditional, godly and semi-feudal structure. He had no political agenda; and he first read the Continental anti-Trinitarians in jail in 1648, some years after he had formed his radical Christian views, which he arrived at solely from reading the Bible. Politics was a topic absent from his considerations. Stephen Nye was a cautious and reclusive Hertfordshire vicar, scholarly and widely read, an able theologian, whose central aim – at least up until the Blasphemy Act of 1698 – was to remove the Trinity from divine worship, on the grounds, again, that it was absent from the Bible, that it destroyed the unity of God, and in its Athanasian form was against reason, a faculty that was God-given. Nye was firmly and solely focused on theological issues. Thomas Firmin, as a merchant – a manufacturer of and dealer in expensive textiles, who was also of a very charitable outlook – was an upholder of the status quo, being a supporter of William III. Society as it existed was good for his type of operation, which was to make money honestly in large quantities by selling textiles to the rich, so that employment could be given to those without

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work, with any profit left over being given as relief for the poor. Earlier he had worked hard to bring relief to the victims of the Great Fire; and had worked with religious refugees. Firmin, who financed the Unitarian pamphlets published in the 1690s, embodied merchant charity, and was a much admired, even loved, governor of Christ’s Hospital. He was also a friend of the great and the good of the day. Socinianism, as it was embodied by Thomas Firmin, was loved, not loathed. He was respected, even idolized, for his benevolence by his charges at Christ’s Hospital, as well as by many without money or jobs at the time. His charitable acts foreshadowed those of Thomas Coram in the following century, although no memorial has ever been erected to him. The association of Socinianism with deism runs counter to theology. (A more likely origin of deism is found in Muggletonianism, in that the followers of Lodowicke Muggleton dispensed with prayer, believing that God does not listen; they also disbelieved in witches, held meetings in pubs rather than churches, and believed that after the divine being had set in motion the machinery of the world, he took no further notice of human affairs.15) To associate Firmin or his Socinian beliefs with moves to destabilize or ‘corrupt’ the (as it has been portrayed) pure stream of devout – one has seen the word confessional – Tory England is a doctrinal misunderstanding, modern in its origin, and showing a crude view of religion which is most often the preserve of the primitive atheist. To see the religious views of Bidle, Firmin and Nye solely through the spectacles of politics and the condition of the English state, is a pungent example of a Tory interpretation of history being forced on facts with just as much eagerness as the Whig interpreters have compressed data into their barrel of progress. In this context, it is perhaps relevant to point out that a politically and socially radical figure of the 1630s and 1640s – though he would not have used those terms – was steadfastly conservative in his Puritan theology. Roger Williams, the founder of the colony, later state, of Rhode Island, showed again how politics and theology both could and did move in opposite directions. He was a dedicated Calvinist with stern beliefs; but at the same time he held that magistrates had no business in enforcing belief, and that settlers and natives (‘Indians’) had entirely equal rights. The Narragansett Indians should not be dispossessed, he held, and they were closer to God than either royalist, Laudian Christians or the bigoted bosses of Boston. He also opposed the view that new territory discovered by the colonists belonged, by the alchemical compound of royal colonialist necromancy known as the ‘king’s patent’, to King Charles, saying rather that it was the property of the native population, from whom it should be bought, not seized on the grounds of arcane mystical kingly magic.

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The waning of the punitive policies associated with the Cavalier Parliament, and the growing appeal of reasonable religion among some figures of the Anglican Church in the 1680s, seemed to create an opportunity for the Church’s security and advancement. There was less a sense now that the purity of Church doctrine and tradition would be debased by things that might strengthen it, such as compromise and enquiry. In the years following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, leaders of the Anglican communion were faced with two main issues. They had to build a Church strong enough to withstand the Catholicism associated with the exiled James II, and they saw a need to nurture a faith which would erase the memory of the violence, divisiveness and irrationality which had characterized political and religious life in the earlier part of the century, and which had led to the Civil War, the execution of the monarch and the collapse of the Church. ‘Enthusiasm’ had to be deflated. Only if these matters were secured could the Anglican Church be strong enough to anticipate a sound and confident future. A strong Church was envisaged to be not a narrow, in-turned and militantly defensive and paranoid church, but one which was broad and inclusive, and which would include even those who dissented to some small degree, and whose beliefs might be blurred around the edges in the matter of Anglican orthodoxy, as set out in the 39 Articles, the defining statement of belief of the Church of England. The Church would gain by inclusiveness. The broad-church men, or Latitudinarians, included John Tillotson and Thomas Tenison, successive archbishops of Canterbury and both supporters of reason as a partner to revelation. They understood that theological strength came from doctrinal generosity, not an inwardlooking concern with the authority of all the Articles and with the House of Stuart. They looked at old truth in new ways. Their opponents, the party sometimes known as Altitudinarians, were traditional, loyal to the Stuarts despite their tendency to Catholicism, and dedicated to the Prayer Book and the Articles. They clamoured, often loudly, for what they held to be traditional English piety, with a royal element. The high-church party, with its Stuart proclivity, its Tory affiliation and its volatile, often angry language, fierce in guarding hard traditions, was inimical to reason and enquiry, not least because its members were seldom temperamentally devotees of the calm and scholarly (and indeed welcoming and kindly) outlook which was part of Latitudinarianism. The party had a tendency to call out ‘Church in danger’, and summon up a rather primitive response from followers, often fractious and opportunistic, more likely to be driven by anxieties than to see faith and the politics connected to faith, and the way forward, in a calm perspective. Their Deity

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could on occasion appear not as a universal God but as a tribal totem. Their cause became that of the Nonjurors after 1688, with the departure of their royal patron – or rather, their supposed royal patron, since an episode of 1686 had shown up the nature of James II’s alleged defence of the Anglican Church. Then, the post of Dean of Christ Church, Oxford, had become vacant, and the college’s Tory, Stuart-minded undergraduates had initially shown enthusiasm at the prospect of the continuation of Divine Right reinforcing the Anglican Church. But they had received a shock when the king appointed John Massey, a Catholic, to the post. Massey at once declared that he would build his own chapel within the college, where Canterbury Quad now stands. English people have often shown a tendency to welcome reason, sense and compassion in their belief system. There has seldom been an inclination to offer docile obedience to doctrinaire terminology or crude authority. The English Church, in the opinion of Edward Stillingfleet, the distinguished bishop of Worcester who was later to be troubled by John Locke’s philosophy, was the offspring not of Luther or Zwingli, but of Erasmus’ Greek New Testament, and his Paraphrases. ‘For Erasmus was the man who awakened men’s understandings, and brought them from the friars’ divinity to a relish of general learning.’16 By citing Erasmus as a building-block of Anglicanism, Stillingfleet implicitly placed the Dutch theologian’s moderate and scholarly outlook on faith as a cornerstone of the English Church: tolerant, rational, broad of sympathy, a place for scholars and the common people; even, on occasion, a witty Church. Erasmus’ method had been painstakingly to unravel a complex problem in a rational and charitable manner, and it was this method which was looked for but not found in the Trinitarian Controversy of the 1690s. Nonconformity and dissent had become part of English life in Cromwellian times. At that time, when there was little authority directing belief, with the Presbyterians in Parliament losing authority to the Independents in the army, most beliefs could be expressed; there was almost a free market of faith. The authority of bishops had been ended, for which many gave thanks. Independents (Congregationalists, now assimilated into the United Reformed), Baptists and Quakers each sought for belief which limited or dispensed with a doctrinally dictatorial and superior clerical class. Only ‘new Presbyter’ could appear like ‘old priest’. It was as though there was a search for the immediacy of belief; belief which could not be obscured by either priest, bishop or presbyter. The tendency towards nonconformity seen in England in the absence of Anglicanism was the seed-bed for the success of John Wesley in the eighteenth century.

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The Deity became seen less as a punitive judge than an adjunct to physics: thus, when Newton calls space the sensorium of God, the description was intended to be scientific, not theological: an indication that space really existed, and was not just a relation between two points (as Leibniz held). Newton’s understanding of space concerned physics rather than theology, although the Deity was part of his system. As science gained a wider acceptance, and as its value of demonstrating observable and repeatable phenomena became acknowledged, theological issues still mattered; but they had moved from being authoritative to being speculative. The Clarke–Leibniz correspondence is a masterpiece of speculative enquiry. Theology could still stimulate invective; but in analysing the world, its position had shifted from being a total explanation of humanity in the universe to being the arena for a discussion of the physics of space.17 The high-church group, and the Evangelicals, had little time for reason as a constituent of religion. They had no sense of Anglican Church tradition reaching back to Erasmus. Nor did they find place for the postNewtonian world, and the idea that scientific discoveries might have some impact on theological beliefs – which was not all negative, since science broadened out the vision of God’s creation (a notion later given expression in Addison’s hymn ‘The spacious firmament on high ...’). Today the high-church clerics receive plaudits for having strengthened society. They are admired (by some) for creating the image of a disciplined and orderly society, rather than for their devout opinions. Religion is apt to be seen here as a kind of social glue, rather than something reached by personal conviction. Dissenters are seen as weakening the fabric of society; whereas the opposite was more often true, since by their active charitable works, and later on municipal spirit, minority believers measurably strengthened the bonds of society. Thomas Firmin was one such: a man who had changed his faith (which is sometimes seen as unacceptable) from Calvinist to Unitarian, and who built up a thriving business, charitably organized, and was at the same time well known and liked by a broad cross-section of society.

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7

‘Then is Christ the Father’: A Quaker Puzzle

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he bullish traditionalism of the Cavalier Parliament crushed the hopes of dissenters. The unsmiling and authoritarian face of the established Church expressed itself in a peppery and unforgiving manner, sliding into persecution. This was a change from the times before the Puritan Revolution, when Anglicanism had become infused with the tolerance and wide horizons of Arminianism, while Puritanism had grown more narrow. Amid the anti-dissenter mood of the time, which continued to march to its own drum-beat and ignore the head-wind of dissent, there came from the Quaker leader William Penn a surprising and forceful denial of the Trinity. In his pamphlet The Sandy Foundation Shaken, of 1668, he focused the light of his intellectual powers upon the Trinity, found the doctrine to be unsustainable, and proceeded to pull it apart. Penn refuted the doctrine on the grounds of ‘right reason’. (This was not the ‘inner light’ of reason which became a characteristic belief of the Quakers; reason, here, was an open and public thing.) If there be three distinct and separate persons, then three distinct and separate substances, because every person is inseparable from its own substance. And as there is no person that is not a substance, in common acceptation among men, so do the scriptures plentifully agree herein: and since the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Spirit is God, (which their opinion necessitates them to confess,) then unless the Father, Son, and Spirit are three distinct nothings, they must be three distinct substances, and consequently, three distinct Gods.1

Penn also noted the geometrical progression inherent in Trinitarian personhood: that if each person is God, and God exists in three persons,

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then there are in each person three persons or Gods, and the three instantly become nine, and then 81, and so on to infinity.2 (Matthew Tindal was to make the same point in 1695.) Penn also drew another inconsistency out of the Trinity, noting that if that the only God is the Father, and Christ be that only God, then is Christ the Father. So if that God be the Son, and the Spirit that one God, then is the Spirit the Son, and so round. Nor is it possible to stop...3

This constituted a refutation of the medieval representation of the Trinity seen in the design of the Scutum Fidei. Penn also attacked the ‘vulgar doctrine of satisfaction’:4 the idea that Christ’s death on the cross atoned for the wickedness of humankind (consequent on Adam’s sin of disobedience) and for the subsequent wrath of God. This doctrine is refuted both from Biblical texts, and from right reason. In the Bible, Penn points out, God had already been declared to be merciful and gracious (in numerous places in the Old and New Testaments5 – especially Micah – ‘He delighteth in mercy’). The words of the Lord’s Prayer are ‘Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.’ The typical New Testament view of Christ’s coming was that it was ‘the proper gift and effect of God’s love’.6 The life of Christ itself showed up the contradictions inherent in the Trinity. For if Christ is part of the Trinity, then the debt paid by Christ is also paid by God and by the Holy Spirit. And if Christ’s death brought satisfaction to God the Father, then it also brought the same to Christ (‘which cannot be’).7 And if the Son is the same as the Father, then the debt remains unpaid, since it was paid from the same to the same. If Jesus were a mere man, he could not pay the debt, since ‘a finite cause could not proceed to an infinite effect’. The contradiction persists in the cases of him being either God and Man. The same logical anomaly is found as regards the doctrine of ‘imputative righteousness’, which states that human guilt and sinfulness can be ascribed to, or loaded on to, Christ as a consequence of the vicarious substitution of himself on the cross for the entire guilt of sinful humanity. Would God (asks Penn) condemn the just, in order to justify (that is, declare free from sin) the wicked? It is, declares Penn, for the people themselves to behave well, not to leave it all to Jesus Christ. ‘Satisfaction’ was a theological tenet which hinted at antinomianism, implying that we could and can do what we like, since Christ once did and always would take the blame. Penn was committed to the Tower for blasphemy. Here he published what has often been considered a retraction, Innocency with Her Open Face: but a careful reading reveals it to be more equivocal, being more a re-statement of his original opinion, and a justification for sticking closely

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to scripture before venturing a view. Penn here describes the existence of Jesus as ‘everlasting’, a term different from ‘pre-existent’, which is necessary for full belief in the Athanasian Trinity. He reiterated the central Quaker doctrine – that Christ was not a distant historical figure, but was within. Whether this understanding was compatible with belief in the Trinity was arguable. Penn also here expresses admiration for Faustus Socinus, ‘whose parts, wisdom, gravity and just behaviour, made him the most famous with the Polonian and Transylvanian churches’. He adds though that he was never a Socinian.8 The Quaker leader was eventually released through the agency of the Duke of York, later James II.9 At the other extreme, Samuel Parker, Sheldon’s chaplain, published in 1670 anonymously a text with the title A Discourse of Eccesiastical Polity, wherein the Authority of the Civil Magistrate in matters of External Religion is asserted, the mischiefs and inconveniences of Toleration are represented, and all pretences pleaded in behalf of Liberty of Conscience fully answered.10 Originally a fierce Independent, Parker had wall-jumped to the conformists, and brought his uncompromising bigotry with him. With such a title, a reading of the actual text almost seems superfluous. Parker’s basic thesis was that, as regards the security of the state, private opinions were too important to be left to private individuals. They needed to be policed. There had been enough pretensions to conscience, which had led to nothing but a brutish and fanatick ignorance, making men to talk of little else but raptures and ecstasies, and filling the world with a buzze and noise of the divine spirit; whereby they are only impregnably possest with their own wild and extravagant fansies, become sawcy and impudent for religion, confound order, and despise government, and will be guided by nothing but the whimseys and humours of unaccountable conscience.

Parker inveighed against the guidance of the Puritan conscience, however sincere. His words gave voice to an outpouring of vengeance from a former sectary, a disillusioned follower of the once living revelation of his own inner voice, now turned to stone. The ‘clamours of giddy and distemper’d zealots’, he declared, had weakened the power of the law; the authorities had been placed on the defensive by the ‘sawcy pretenses of ungovernable and tumultuary zeal’.11 Just as all people have to obey the law in civil cases, so, Parker argued, should men obey a similar law in matters of conscience. They may as rationally challenge a freedom from the laws of justice as from those of religion, and ... to grant it in either is equally destructive of all order and government, and equally tends to reduce all societies to anarchy and confusion.12

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This was a savage back-track to Archbishop Laud’s policy of ‘thorough’, but without Laud’s compensatory moderate theology and imaginative view of world faith. Samuel Parker was compelling, even goading, all the people, on pain of civil punishment, to believe, and only to believe, in one set of beliefs. The justification he offered, that uniform belief promotes the good order of society, and that lack of uniformity leads to such perilous acts as the killing of the king, may have had meaning in 1649, but it was becoming out of date in the worldly circles of Charles II, where court religion had developed into vagueness, with traits more akin to social (and perhaps political) conventions than devout convictions. Five years after Samuel Parker’s rasping effusion, an effort was made by a moderate theologian to suggest that the Anglican Church of the day had strayed too far, in the matters of doctrine and compulsion, from the practices of the early Church. In 1675 Herbert Croft, bishop of Hereford, wrote a pamphlet entitled The Naked Truth, or the True State of the Primitive Church. (In the titling of challenging theological pamphlets, the times witnessed a fashion for stark terminology.) The appearance of this small work, says Anthony Wood, was like a comet, and it led to an array of counter-pamphlets.13 Croft’s views stood in direct opposition to those of Parker. He argued that all Protestant sects in essence agreed with one another, and that, as regards their differences, some form of compliance would be preferable to penalties and enforcements. Dissenters should not be set before a magistrate. Magistrates should police actions, not beliefs. Religious compulsion had hitherto done nothing but evil.14 Both the title and the content of Croft’s pamphlet again brought into focus a realignment between the past and the present. In earlier times the only form of assent required, Croft argued, was the Apostles’ Creed, which had been sufficient for the Church before Constantine. Croft’s theology was orthodox on matters such as the Trinity, although, in sidelining the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, he quietly reduced their importance. His recommendation that the faith should be slimmed down, and be defined in part by what was not believed, was one which was shared by the Italian reformers of the previous century, Acontius and the Sozzinis. The divestment theme of his text was a topic which would reappear. Croft’s recommendations were speedily answered. The spirit of Samuel Parker reappeared like a sour ghost to quash any move towards leniency and latitude in religious affairs. Thomas Tomkyns, nephew of the musician of the same name, and also chaplain to the newly hardline Gilbert Sheldon, shared with Parker a fierce opposition to toleration. As an assistant licenser of books he held the distinction of almost having refused to license Paradise Lost on account of a brief passage in Book I,

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treasonable in his opinion, which described the rising of the sun as an event which ‘with fear of change/Perplexes monarchs’.15 He had written in 1667 on The Inconveniences of Toleration, and now, in 1675, he followed up Croft’s plea with a wordily titled pamphlet, republished five years later as The New Distemper, or the Dissenter’s usual pleas for Comprehension. Consider, wrote Tomkyns, the mischief done by dissenters during Cromwellian times. Moreover, toleration was condemned in scripture; the author cited the biblical precedent of the Church of Pergamos which, in the book of Revelation, had held on to the ‘doctrine of Balaam and of the Nicolaitanes’;16 apparently believers in this context had favoured a form of worship with a pagan ingredient. He viewed dissenters as in principle seditious, setting their own churches above the state, and added as a sneer, like a glass of stale wine, that their morals were dubious. Radical dissent sometimes appears to have created anxiety, or even a sense of threat, to a certain type of orthodox believer. Nerves jangled at the scent of heresy. Andrew Marvell complained, in 1672, that ‘There is a very great neglect somewhere, wheresoever the inspection of books is lodged, that at least Socinian books are tolerated, and sell as openly as the Bible.’17 On the surface Marvell appears to have been another of those who believed that, unless the panoply of the Church’s mystery and doctrines were upheld, a serious fate might come to afflict society as a whole. But was he being ironical? His nephew William Popple was a wine-merchant and Socinian, living beyond the reach of the magistrate. He had written the preface to Locke’s first Letter on Toleration, and translated Locke’s text into English. It looks as though his poet uncle might have been echoing the mood for effect, rather than endorsing it. Something like moral panic still coloured opposition to Socinianism, and to dissent in general. The easiest way to stay out of trouble was to adopt a pose critical of it. The poet John Dryden was a serious opponent of the pairing of religion with reason or enquiry. The Catholicism which he professed after 1686 was markedly different from that held in the next generation by Alexander Pope. (Dryden has been charged with opportunism in the matter of belief.) A little earlier, while still a professing Anglican, he had written a poem with the title Religion Laici, which proposed that the best religion for the people was the moderate faith of the established English Church. It appeared in 1682, and it already makes the poet’s dislike of enquiry in religion clear; here, ‘the bold Socinian’ is berated for using scripture to urge that Christ was but a man.18 After he became a Catholic, Dryden produced another, longer, verse-narrative on matters of theological controversy, supporting the claims of his new faith and again showing dislike bordering on contempt for those who held beliefs other than his

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own. The poem, The Hind and the Panther, is a theological allegory, portraying the Catholic Church as a poor hind set upon by a powerful Anglican spotted panther.19 One wonders why the author chose the form of a versified Aesopean fable to dramatize the intricacies of theological beliefs and the behaviour of their followers. The work is seldom read today. Negative characterizations of dissenters drive the work. Presbyterians are the ‘insatiate wolf ’’, Independents the ‘bloody bear’, free-thinkers the ‘buffon ape’, Quakers the ‘quaking hare’, and Unitarians the ‘false reynard’. One should recall that members of these groups were at the time living in fear of the knock at the door by agents of the magistracy. When the author points out that Socinus disavowed ‘the Son’s eternal Godhead’ ‘by Gospel texts alone’ he manifests the antipathy to scripture texts found in the Anglican poem; the sentiment was more suitable to his new faith, where reading or translating the Bible could be fatal. ‘Have not all Hereticks the same pretence/To plead the Scriptures in their own defence?’20 Christians other than Catholics are to Dryden ‘impure’, ‘with fat pollutions’, they ‘lurk’d’ in sects; ‘graceless’, ‘impious’, ‘their blasphemy renew’d’, ‘swarming’. One could hardly hope to find a richer mugshot gallery of villainous stereotypes.21 The Cavalier spirit, herding the populace into conformity, remained dominant in England. The triumph continued of hard and doctrinaire Anglicanism, although the king looked on uncertainly. The most that the dissenters might hope for was a form of inclusivity: some ‘latitude’ on the part of the established Church. But that hope soon vanished. The mood of the country, as expressed in the parliament and through the Clarendon Code, was hostile, seeking uniformity. Here the established Church was seen by the Tory, high-church party then uppermost, as the guarantor of the social order. Dissent in religion might, it was held – or perhaps it was put forward, as an opportunist propaganda justification for not having to grant freedom to dissenters – lead to a breakdown in social norms. There was fear, or the hint of fear, of a recurrence of the mood in the country similar to that which had existed before the Civil War. The victorious Royalists paraded their victory. Ideas of equality and social transformation, which the Independents had begun to formulate, found no place now. The Anglican Church appeared more as a partner of Royalism and tradition, less of social cohesion – although some senior members in the hierarchy looked for a broad, or comprehensive, Church. To convinced Tories, dissenters were in principle unsound, seeking to weaken or destroy the ordered state fabric which was part of their outlook. The Stuart monarchy and the 39 Articles were to them the best guarantees of sound religion and sound politics. Dissenters were sapping the bonds of religion, and to the new masters

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that meant the bonds of the state too. As relics of Cromwellian times, they appeared as subversive. In the reaction against dissent, the security and even lives of those who wished to live as Anglicans, but were unable to subscribe to all the articles, were at risk. The obediently conformist majority, within a religiously authoritarian state which could show violence, felt no compunction about making life unpleasant for dissenters. As a result the latter felt compelled to plead for protection. Despite the antipathy to dissent and reason in religion, 1664 saw the publication of a Latin translation of John Bidle’s Twofold Catechism, ably done by a youth aged 15 called Nathanael Stuckey (who was probably of Polish origin). His work presented English Unitarianism to the world at large. This promising youth died of the plague the year after the appearance of his remarkable translation. It demonstrated that Bidle’s spirit lived on, despite his untimely death. * * * On the near Continent, however, the subject of reason within faith was still a live topic. Hard-line Calvinism was crumbling. Post-Calvinists were abandoning the severity and intolerance of the Genevan master and discovering different types of Protestantism in the more humane, tolerant and rational versions of Arminianism and Socinianism. Even Geneva itself had developed into a city noted for its rational and tolerant faith. The Netherlands, too, became an important place of refuge for part of the Socinian community, who had been driven by the Jesuits first from their Edenic life in the humane and creative society built on the Sieninski estate in Poland, and then from Ukraine. An imposing series of volumes containing all the main Socinian writings was printed in 1665–69 in Amsterdam (identified only as ‘Irenopolis’ – city of peace – on the title page). The Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, or library of the Polish Fathers, by which name the exiled Rakow community came to be known, consists of nine folio volumes of rational Christianity. The emerging spirit of religious toleration in the Netherlands was arguably a greater factor in the Dutch Republic’s considerable wealth than rule-bound Calvinism, with its central belief in predestination, an idea as stifling to entrepreneurial energy as the ‘oriental fatalism’ for which the East has often been derided. From the Netherlands books and ideas about rational religion made their way to England, where their impact was seen most directly in the Eastern counties. The almost total free market of belief which had been a feature of the Commonwealth and Protectorate meant that dissent lay not far below the surface for English men and women.

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The emergence of science and the Royal Society, too, made inroads on the faith of the high-church party. Science has never lived comfortably alongside defensive, entrenched, conservative self-righteous faith; now, the leading lights of the new scientific world were manifestly seen to be men of faith, but of a wide and comprehensive faith, which embraced new discoveries and looked upon them as findings about God’s universe, which thus inspired them to seek more. It was not possible for someone in tune with the new discoveries to countenance a narrow and state-driven view of Anglicanism, rigid with dogma and predestination – a view that would prefer Newton’s discoveries never to have happened. The issue of the protection of dissenters came up in a curious manner in August 1682, in the course of a half-forgotten meeting which took place at Lambeth Palace. An ambassador from the sultanate of Morocco, Ahmed ben Ahmed, had arrived in London in January of 1682, for the purpose of negotiating the status of Tangier. (In the course of the discussions he had presented two lions to Charles II.) As the diplomatic mission drew to a close, two leading Unitarian ministers approached his excellency with the intention of presenting him with an address or manifesto, couched in the form of an ‘Epistle Dedicatory’, but in content unlike the usual type of fawning or laudatory dedication. The ministers were most probably Noel Aubert, sieur de Versé, a former Catholic who had become drawn to Socinianism, and Stephen Nye, the Hertfordshire vicar. The parties were formally introduced to one another by Sir Charles Cotterell, Charles II’s master of ceremonies. The document set out the points of agreement between Unitarianism and Islam which were seen as basic, even fundamental. It referred back to an earlier discussion, which had taken place in 1610, concerning the basic theological positions of Christians and Muslims. The participants then had been an ambassador from Morocco, Ahmed ben Abdallah, the Dutch Protestant leader Prince Maurice of Nassau (keen to make a connection with Morocco in order to outflank Spain) and a Portuguese Catholic (Don Emanuel, known as Emanuel van Portugal). Following this meeting the Moroccan had set out in writing the Muslim view to the Christians, emphasizing the pivotal tenet of Islam, the singularity of God, but at the same time noting the special and reverential roles assigned within Islam to both Jesus and Mary. The discussion had been held in a rational spirit of seriousness and friendship. It seemed an auspicious basis for the 1682 meeting.22 The idea of serious theological discussion between some Christian and Muslim leaders was current elsewhere in the seventeenth century. Two decades before the Lambeth Palace meeting there had been another

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approach from England to Islam. In 1660, Mary Fisher, a Quaker from Suffolk, had been received by the Ottoman sultan, Mehmet IV, at Adrianople. He was told by his interpreter that she had ‘something to declare from the Great God to the Great Turk’. The sultan had listened to her carefully and respectfully, though nothing changed. What is perhaps important about this exchange is the cordial temper and good manners which characterized the discussion.23 The Unitarians’ Epistle Dedicatory re-emphasized belief in an ‘Only Sovran God, who hath no distinction or plurality in persons.’ The aim of the meeting appears to have been to ‘form an alliance with the Mahometan prince for the more effectual propagation of Unitarian principles’.24 The dissenting pastors complained of the ‘rash severity’ of the clergy, and hinted at seeking the protection of the Moroccan sultan. Untroubled by notional boundaries between West and East, Unitarians wished to put on record ‘in what articles we, the Unitarian Christians of all others, do solely concur with you Mahumetans’. They pointed out that on some important points they ‘drew higher’ to Islam than to their fellow Christians.25 They and the Muslims both struggled to proclaim the faith of the One Supreme God, without personalities or pluralities. The two ministers summarized for the ambassador the history of Unitarian belief, and then set out the facts of the present-day worldwide dispersal of non-Trinitarians. The only locations where they were not numerous were Western and Northern Europe ‘by reason of the inhumanity of the clergy’. They offered books, apologizing for the ‘philosophical plainness and freedom that is part of our profession’, but offering them nevertheless. In conclusion, they focused on the international, non-parochial spirit of Unitarianism, and on the practical and optimistic aspects of their faith. Unitarians have never placed much emphasis on ‘fallen man’, or dwelt long on ‘sin’, let alone ‘original sin’, preferring to stress the dignity and worth of humanity, and to work for improvements. Their project was ‘a union with all mankind’, and the core of their belief was in the ‘harmonious and relative rectitude . . . placed in the reason of man’. Despite the good intentions, the Epistle Dedicatory was not accepted. For some reason, although open discussion of sensitive theological points had been acceptable to the disputants in 1610, it was now off limits. There was now an anxiety in the matter of religion as practised and understood in Islamic countries. Mental walls seem to have been built. Unitarians have always believed in going straight to the point, and their offer to ‘discover unto you’ the ‘weak places that are found in the platform of your religion’ led in 1682 to the rejection of the document in its entirety.

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8

A Conflict Erupts

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he approach to the Moroccan ambassador was thus a failure, though it produced a document which framed the main beliefs of English Unitarians of the time. It also marked a shift from the use of the word ‘Socinian’ to ‘Unitarian’. The latter had been a term favoured by the community in Transylvania, and the imposing volumes printed in Amsterdam in the years after 1665 described the believers as Unitarians. The word may, according to Alexander Gordon, derive from the Arabic muahid, of which it is a translation.1 A few years later, in 1687, a small volume was printed in England which opened the serious and often heated debate about the Trinity, and placed the anti-Trinitarian followers of John Bidle at the centre of a vigorous controversy. Appearing anonymously, since its author did not wish to become a victim of the law of press censorship, it was entitled A Brief History of the Unitarians, Called also Socinians, in Four Letters written to a Friend.2 Conditions were still hard for the community: the legal disabilities enforced by the Clarendon Code meant that the devotions of dissenters were policed and punished, and the Act of Uniformity compelled them to attend Trinitarian services, where doctrines were proclaimed to be true which they held to be false – although no one stopped alert and enterprising believers from making choices about where to worship, or whose sermon to pay attention to. Unitarians still remained within the Anglican Church, partly out of the hope that the Church might develop an outlook broad enough to find a place for their beliefs, and partly because doctrinal dissenters often just did not want to break away. Some anti-Trinitarians like William Freke were mute worshippers, attending church in silence. Freke held schism to be a grave sin. Only a few separated themselves. The Conventicle Act of 1670 allowed up to five believers, no more, and not of the same family, to attend a religious service in a private house. At the same time, there was something odd about the 1687 appearance of the Brief History of the Unitarians. No obstacles were placed by James

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II or his ministers in the way of its distribution. It has been suggested that its free circulation may have been permitted to show the extremes to which Protestantism might lead.3 The Catholic James may have permitted its publication not through a genuine desire to allow free circulation of ideas but as a crafty act of reverse propaganda aimed at discrediting his opponents: letting the people see the enormities consequent upon granting universal toleration. In his Declaration of Indulgence, of the same year, the monarch offered toleration to both Catholics and nonconformists. Doubters saw this as a similar ruse. Could the king possibly be genuine? It was possible to see it as the monarch’s way to the establishment of eventual total Catholic conformity in England: see variety in all its discreditable chaos, and return to unswerving authority.

Nye and Firmin The publication of A Brief History of the Unitarians brings into focus two figures central to the controversy concerning the Trinity which troubled the ecclesiastical establishment, and which spread to the wider populace, until the Blasphemy Law of 1698. The first was the author, Stephen Nye. He was the grandson of Philip Nye, a leading Independent: that is, a member of the community noted in the previous decades for radicalism and ignoring established forms of worship. In contrast to the Presbyterians, they rejected the structure of Calvinism, although a number of them held Calvinist predestinarian beliefs. They held that any group of believers meeting together had the right to decide belief and theological stance. There was no need for a spiritual director. The group itself, by its own democratic decisions, provided all the authority that was needed. Stephen Nye had been educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, before becoming the studious vicar of Little Hormead, in Hertfordshire: a very small church with a congregation of matching size. A clear and astute thinker, Nye was witty, direct and cultured, bracingly radical, and opposed to oracular Neoplatonic thinking, mysteries, and to the comfort philosophy of magic, charms and idols with which Christianity has sometimes tended to fringe itself. He was careful to hide his views, and closely protected his anonymity. None of his tracts or pamphlets bears his name. According to the censorship law, any of them could have been deemed unlawful. Against the simplicity of the Gospels, and the morality and reasonableness that is found within them, Nye set the words of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, theory-driven documents which bear little relationship to the earlier texts, since they were written in the wake of Greek, and

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especially Neoplatonic, ideas. ‘Being of one substance with the Father’ introduces the Greek notion of substance into a religion founded with no such concept, showing up a philosophical gulf as wide as the geographical one. The ‘friend’ to whom the letters were addressed was Thomas Firmin, whose textile business (started in 1655) was directed towards charitable ends; the curl-pate boy who, aged 19, is alleged (on Bishop White Kennett’s authority4) to have interceded with Cromwell on Bidle’s behalf, and who, on better authority, had learnt to take to heart Bidle’s lesson that charity has a human, individual and personal dimension, which is that, for charity to have meaning, the giver should, by personal presence, offer to the poor some inner spiritual resources, and not just cash. Bidle, who had been given lodgings by Firmin when on the run for publishing his XII Arguments, convinced his host of the need for religious toleration, and their discussions led him to see the weakness of the traditional view of the Trinity. Firmin, a former Calvinist, had changed his views after the boyhood experience of being a ‘hearer’ of John Goodwin in his church in Coleman Street. He agreed with Bidle on the hollowness of Trinitarian theology, but remained largely orthodox on other points of belief. His personality was, or became, out of tune with Calvinism, for there was nothing doctrinaire or exclusive in his outlook, and his temperament was sociable, outgoing and convivial, though in partying with society he never lost sight of the disadvantaged. He used to attend the services of John Tillotson in St Lawrence Jewry or William Outram in Lombard Street, both of whom accepted the usual view of the Trinity and wrote in defence of it.5 His business profits he would use almost exclusively for the relief of the poor. Business for him was also a way of creating jobs to relieve poverty. He set up warehouses where coal and corn could be bought at cost price; and the street children whom he rescued were given an industrial training. Firmin’s charity was tested by the Great Plague and Fire (1665 and 1666), especially when the workshop in Lombard Street was burnt down. He found new premises, and was soon operating at an increased profit. Later business ventures showed less success, but he was still able to offer employment and to visit prisons, often paying the sums required to free prisoners imprisoned for debt. He had a house in Hoxton, and its bright and cheerful garden was his ‘special delight’.6 Firmin was also active in helping the Huguenots re-settle in England in the 1680s. He arranged for them to be housed, on first arrival, at the Pest-house, which had been used at the time of the great plague and was now empty. Here he acted as almoner, providing food, clothing, fuel and employment. In Ipswich, his home territory, he set up a linen factory to

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create work for them. Protestant refugees fleeing from Poland were also given assistance by him – families escaping the revanchist Jesuit-driven Catholicism then ascendant in that country. Many of these refugees would have been Calvinist, with a theology markedly different from Firmin’s own Unitarianism.7 Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, remarks in his History of my own Time that Thomas Firmin, the Unitarian, was in great esteem for promoting many charitable designs, for looking after the poor of the city, and setting them to work: for raising great sums for schools and hospitals, and indeed for charities of all sorts, private and public. He had such credit with the richest citizens, that he had the command of great wealth as oft as there was occasion for it.8

He indeed had a wide acquaintanceship amongst the great and the good of his time, being on friendly terms with the Provost of King’s, Cambridge, Benjamin Whichcote, and John Worthington, the former Master of Jesus, Cambridge, and three bishops, John Wilkins, the effectual founder of the Royal Society, John Tillotson and Edward Fowler. Burnet’s description should be noted, in view of some characterizations of Unitarians (or Socinians), even in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as sinister social wreckers and malevolent subverters of the stability upon which the fabric of English civilization depends. At his business premises in Lombard Street Firmin hosted a kind of salon. Bidle and Firmin created an English form of Unitarianism, based on practicality and good works, and somewhat outside the main continental Socinian movement, with its intellectual rigour. (Bidle had also held a curious (but not uncommon) view of God as having an actual body; almost a physical being.) Firmin had also known John Locke since at least 1671. The two shared a humane, practical, anti-metaphysical outlook, which made it natural for them to work together.9 From 1691, the conflict concerning the Trinity was driven by the publication of a series of ‘double-columned’ tracts. In view of the censorship, these appeared anonymously. Employing clear, hard and sometimes witty argumentation, they presented a strong challenge to the claims of traditional Trinitarians. They were distributed widely and freely, and in some cases appear to have become the talk of the emerging English civil society, as men gathered for convivial discussion in coffee-houses. For seven or eight years, up to his death in 1697, Firmin almost certainly provided the entire funding for the publication of the pamphlets. The many responses they elicited turned the 1690s into a war of theological words.

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All the texts, with their flashes of wit, were closely argued. Traditional Anglican bishops and theologians did not hold back their dismay and anger at the double-columned publications. Socinian pamphlets, Bishop Stillingfleet declared in 1697, have ‘swarmed so much among us within a few years’. William Sherlock, having maintained in 1690 that Socinianism was ‘one of the most stupid senseless heresies, that ever infested the Christian Church’ was later to complain that the Socinians were the aggressors, since they ‘without any provocation publish and disperse the most impudent and scandalous libels against the Christian faith’. Socinian pamphlets were ‘dispersed in every corner and boasted of in every coffee-house’. Atterbury – if he was the author – in the 1697 Letter to a Convocation Man referred to the ‘great mischief ’ done by the pamphlets.10 The crisp and well-argued rational theology of the Unitarians was proving hard to answer, forcing the established Church into a defensive position, which to some seemed like a fight for the Church itself. The ironic thing was that most of the writers were members of the established Church; they just sought the widening of the frontiers of that Church. The title of Nye’s Brief History, written for Firmin in 1687, before the appearance of the tracts, was misleading. The book was really a manifesto for Unitarianism. Quoting widely from the Church fathers, the author pushed forward his central theme of the primacy of God the Father. Nye used scripture texts to show the difference in concept of God and Christ: thus, God could not be tempted, yet Jesus was tempted in the wilderness. God was infinitely great and good; yet Jesus ‘increased in wisdom’. Jesus ascribed wisdom and infallibility only to the Father. Nye also stressed the significance of the tradition of Nazarene Christianity (that is, of Jewish followers of Jesus), showing that it had been distinctly Unitarian.11 The letters were sent to an unnamed ‘person of excellent learning and worth’ (perhaps Henry Hedworth) for perusal; in response this individual quoted two authors relevant in the context: the fifth-century priest Salvian of Marseille, who observed of the Arians, in the middle of that century: ‘They err, but with a good mind, not out of hatred, but of the love of God.’12 The other was William Chillingworth, from his defining book The Religion of Protestants: ‘I have learnt from the ancient fathers that nothing is more against religion than to force religion.’13 Nye contrasted the theology of Unitarianism – ‘an accountable and reasonable faith’ – with Trinitarian belief, which he described as ‘absurd, and contrary both to reason and itself, and therefore not only false but impossible.’ The Trinity was made up of three persons, each of whom was God in his own right: ‘three persons who are severally and each of them true God. This is an error in counting or numbering.’ The doctrine,

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Nye declared, imposes false gods on believers, and robs the one true God of the honour due to him.14 It is noteworthy that on this occasion Nye expressed his opposition to the Trinity not on theological and metaphysical grounds, but on the bases of logic and mathematics. In a similar vein, Bidle had once attacked the language of the Trinity (‘coessentialities ...’), as much as its theology. Nye faced head-on the challenges exhibited by the opening verses of St John’s Gospel. He acknowledged the similarity of it to the beginning of Genesis. He pointed out that the meaning often given to ‘in the beginning’ was ‘from all eternity’. But: ‘From all eternity is before the beginning, or without beginning; not in the beginning.’ ‘In the beginning’ cannot mean ‘from all eternity’. It ‘must refer to some time and thing, it must be in the beginning of the world or of the gospel or of the Word’.15 The Word was with God is taken to mean that Jesus was with God the Father. But what of the Holy Ghost? Why is the third person of the Trinity excluded? Nye quoted Grotius’ understanding of this passage. The Dutch theologian and jurist said that the sense intended by ‘the Word’ was the power and wisdom of God. He quoted many scriptural passages (including Hebrews, i, 2–3), to back this up. Unitarians, along with Roman Catholics, were excluded from the measures of the Toleration Act of May 1689. The act – technically ‘An Act for Exempting their Majestyes Protestant subjects dissenting from the Church of England from the Penalties ...’ – was passed, almost unopposed, at the instigation of Lord Somers; it represented a change of mood, rather than policy; a turning away from the severe uniformity which had been in place since 1662. Although a burden of intolerant legislation aimed directly at dissenters (now seen rather as nonconformists) remained,16 they nevertheless slowly became part of the establishment, and ceased to live on the edges of outlawry. Chapels were built, first in back alleys, and then in public thoroughfares. In London, the merchants and tradesmen, who were largely dissenters, converted more than 20 halls of the trading houses or guilds into meeting-places, giving them pews, pulpits and galleries.17 Unitarians continued to swim in mainstream Anglicanism; unseparated, they had no chapels, and no special places of worship. They knew how to keep quiet. But in their homes, for the books that they read, they were still under threat. They could be stubborn. Serious believers, if prohibited from practising their devotions, are apt to embrace personal piety more keenly than those whose devotions are permitted. In hiding a forbidden printed text, the convinced believer was encouraged in his resourcefulness, and often showed a sly humour in evading the hand of the magistrate. A number of Unitarian works were printed in small volumes, easy to conceal

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in the folds of clothes or in the nook of a wall if the clumsy hand of the law showed up.18 Unitarians protected their books with care. Unlike the early Christians, they did not feel at all drawn towards imprisonment or martyrdom for their beliefs. Their realistic and practical faith saw both prison – except as an opportunity to study and write – and martyrdom as pointless ways of wasting a good life, not as steps towards achieving a crown in heaven. Literacy, learning, teaching, publishing and good works, based on a simple worship of one God and a reading of the Gospels, were at the heart of their faith, not questionable and occasionally showy selfmortification or lurid self-destruction. The religious communities who benefited from the Act of 1689 were the Independents (whose theology was often strict and Calvinistic, but whose practice was democratic), the Presbyterians, who eventually died out or mutated into Wesleyans within England, and the Baptists, largely tolerant in theological matters. It improved the sense of religious possibilities even for those radicals it excluded, making the goal of including reason within religion seem more achievable. John Locke wrote that it was ‘something to have proceeded thus far’. He added, ‘By such a beginning, I trust that those foundations of peace and liberty have been laid, on which one day the Church of Christ is to be established.’19 Subsequent to the passing of the Act, an attempt was made to modify the Creed of Athanasius, notable for its damnatory clauses. But a dispute among the bishops became acrid, and no change was made.20 The high-church devotees of the Stuarts – the ‘Jacobitical faction’ – united to prevent any change. Moreover, some of the clergy were alarmed by a serious challenge to the Athanasian Creed which had appeared anonymously, in a pamphlet of a single sheet of paper. The text entitled Brief Notes on the Creed of St Athanasius pointed out the puzzling nature of the Creed, and its curious language. It had also appeared long after the other creeds, and it had (the notes alleged) prevented an authentic reformation of the Church, that is, a genuine return to the beliefs of the early Christians. The anonymous author – actually Nye – highlighted the complaint that the Athanasian declaration contained an arithmetical as well as a grammatical contradiction.21 Three items could not by definition be one item; to claim so was an absurdity. The Brief Notes also made the point that a good life is more important than ‘right belief ’, since belief has always been disputed.22 Nye also pointed out that the Greek Orthodox Church did not agree that the Holy Ghost proceeds from both the Father and the Son; and the Greeks (Nye averred, quoting Gennadius, the first Greek patriarch under Ottoman rule – perhaps not the safest authority to cite) additionally declared that

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Athanasius was drunk when he made this Creed. Nye further elaborated on the contradiction inherent in saying that three persons, each of whom is God, yet are the one true God. Is the Son therefore the one true God? A contradiction, the author reminded us, ‘destroys it self, and is its own Confutation’.23 Nye’s conclusion was that the Creed subverted the foundations not just of Christianity, but of all (Abrahamic) religion – of revelation backed by reason.24 The foundation had to be that God is one. The Athanasian Creed might be professed by what Nye called the ‘Roman Political Church’; but for the reformed Churches, for whom scripture is the Compleat Rule of Faith, its presence was intolerable and inconsistent with their principles.25 It alienated Jews and Muslims. The notion of one true God was according to Nye apparent in nature as well as in scripture, so that more people in the East followed the ‘Alchoran’, while Christianity was rejected on account of ‘three persons’. The Creed’s mischiefs did not end there. It was destructive of love and charity, on account of its judging and damning. In this way it destroyed the Christianity of faith and love. Controversies and wars have resulted, fierce and violent, imposing tyranny, leading to both superstition and a polity ‘quite contrary to the Doctrine and Practice of our Blessed Lord and his Apostles’.26 By using the word ‘polity’ Nye showed that he was conscious of the political dimension of imposed belief.

William Sherlock and Mutual Consciousness Two works by respected Anglican theologians rapidly came out to confute the attack on Athanasius, of which the Brief Notes of 1689 was the first clear and well-written manifestation. Both were attempts to spin the Athanasian Creed back into relevance. A third followed a few years later. What is remarkable about these three works is that each of them differed widely from the others. Moreover, two of them differed so deeply from one another, and their authors quarrelled in public with such rancour and bitterness, that ordinary Anglicans were left in the dark, seriously puzzled, and sensed that it might be better to leave matters of religious doctrine alone, and perhaps not enquire too deeply into religion itself. Dr William Sherlock saw his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity appear in public in June 1690. The simplicity of Nye’s views, and the unassuming directness with which he expressed them, appealing to common sense and written in plain language – qualities which English people either instinctively admired or had grown to respect – called for a careful refutation from the standpoint of orthodox Trinitarianism. A

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new approach, Sherlock seemed to be saying, was needed; a new formulation, to capture the minds of those for whom the terminology of the Church fathers on the Trinity had lost the power to persuade, and for whom the arcane intangible metaphysics of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds were drifting like dreams in space. Sherlock was a canon of St Paul’s Cathedral, elevated to the deanery in June 1691. He was a mandarin figure among the clergy, a man of learning, distinction and with an instinctive rapport with the governing classes, who, despite having declared that no one who had sworn allegiance to James II should take the oaths a second time to William and Mary, to everyone’s surprise found himself swearing allegiance to the new rulers. The suave Sherlock had some of the clerical qualities more often found in the eighteenth century. To his enemies he appeared smug, self-satisfied, and ambitious. He acquired the nicknames ‘Proteus Ecclesiasticus’ and ‘The Trimming Court Divine’. Yet there was an intellectual edge to his thought, expressed in a pleasant style, which is not common in the works of the august and elevated. Nor did he, in the manner of Nonjurors such as Hickes, Atterbury and Charles Leslie, take pleasure in malice and indulge in splenetic and corrosive polemics. Sherlock’s two central ideas for explaining the Trinity were selfconsciousness and mutual consciousness. Self-consciousness meant the manner in which an individual mind or spirit was conscious of its own thoughts, feelings or reasonings, to which no other spirit is privy. Thereby the spirit was numerically one,27 and distinct from any other spirit. It was, in his opinion, the quality by which each of the three persons gained the quality of being distinguished, ‘just as three finite, and created, minds are’.28 By mutual consciousness, that individual self-consciousness was shared. The quality indicated by this new term was by contrast one ‘which no created spirits have’.29 To each of the three persons of the Trinity the self-consciousness of the other two was entirely open. Thus the three persons of the Trinity were united into the one Godhead. Elsewhere, Sherlock describes mutual consciousness as ‘an inward sensation of each other’, ‘in-being’.30 In Sherlock’s hinterland lay a little-known volume written five years earlier by one John Turner (‘late fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge’), A Discourse Concerning the Messias. Turner had grappled with the complex question: What is a person? He proposed that the idea of a person depended on the notion of self-consciousness: ‘by person nothing else is meant but a self-conscious nature’.31 This would seem to imply that an unselfconscious individual – someone just not aware of his or her place in

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space and time, but who passively carried on living, as in a series of acts of drudgery – was not a person. The definition excluded infants, and those with limited mental capacity. This is less than satisfactory, though perhaps one could argue that every person is to some extent self-conscious. The ideas of Dr Ralph Cudworth, a leading Cambridge Platonist, also influenced Sherlock. Cudworth had considered that consciousness – meaning something like self-consciousness – was an integral part of thought.32 In the somewhat cloudy terminology of his major work, Of The True Intellectual System of the Universe, he declared that consciousness was that ‘which makes a Being to be present with it self ’, which may mean that consciousness leads to self-awareness, and is the animating principle which distinguishes human beings not just from logs or stones, but from dogs and cart-horses too. Now Sherlock too was saying that self-consciousness was the constituent principle of being a person. But there is a problem. In terms of logic, it would seem clear that a person comes before self-consciousness. A person (in the sense of a unique individual) cannot be dependent on the notion of self-consciousness, since it is not possible for there to be selfconsciousness without a person to be self-conscious. This was the main flaw in Sherlock’s argument. We can ask: How were the three persons individuals? Answer: through their consciousness. But: how were they conscious? Through being individual entities. The argument was circular, even before the notion of mutuality bound them together as one, yet three. This was a major error in argumentation. Sherlock’s ideas were thus back-lit by Cudworth, while also drawing on some of Turner’s ideas. His originality lay in the fact that, besides surrounding his words with a pleasing verbal haze of Platonism, he discarded the scholastic old language hitherto used to explain the Trinity. Nature, essence, substance, subsistence, hypostasis, person: all these verbal forms were thrown out, dismissed as ‘terms of art’, and no good since even the Church fathers used them indifferently, ‘as not to understand each others meaning’.33 Sherlock declared that we get our ideas of substance from matter, and that we call God a substance only owing to our ‘carnal reason’; matter has sensible qualities, which we then transfer to a mind or spirit, to which we come to ascribe will and understanding, thoughts and passions. If we speak thus we are thereby materializing the Almighty. This (Sherlock claimed) hinted at the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, the feared materialist, and denier of the spiritual. God is not a substance; we should see him instead as infinite truth and wisdom.34 Sherlock puts it thus:

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the fathers … nicely distinguished between hypostasis or person, and nature and essence and substance, that there are three persons, but one nature, essence, and substance; but then when men curiously examined the signification of these words, they found, that upon some account or other they were very unapplicable to this mystery [viz. of the nature of the Trinity].35

For what, asked Sherlock, is the substance or nature of God? How can three distinct persons have but one numerical substance – that is, only one substance, and not three, in number? Sherlock did not like the term ‘substance’ as used in explaining the Trinity. It seemed unhelpful, even though it appeared in the Athanasian Creed (‘Neither confounding the Persons: nor dividing the Substance.’) He considered that his concept of mutual consciousness was the only way ahead which was free of contradiction. We should note that ‘subsistence’ was not used, as we use it, as in the phrase ‘basic subsistence’, meaning basic means of living. Subsistence meant, in theological terminology, the same as hypostasis, which is person: the puzzling term about which none could agree. Sherlock was, however, hinting that the distinction between substance and persons was less clear cut: that it was no longer relevant, and could be abandoned. All that henceforth we should be concerned with, in his opinion, were the concepts of mutual consciousness, which united the persons of the Trinity into one, and self-consciousness, which enabled them to be distinguished, as three. A critical Unitarian pamphleteer was quick to ask whether Sherlock’s argument vindicated the Athanasian Creed, or threw it overboard. The purpose of that Creed was to highlight the difference between substance and persons: to demonstrate that the persons were three, but the substance one. The main problem with Sherlock’s view was that, by asserting three divine persons were separate through self consciousness, he was in effect giving too great a distinction to the three persons, and positing three gods. The persons of the Trinity were ‘distinct, infinite minds’, as different as Peter, James and John.36 (As noted, the old language of substance, nature, essence, subsistence, hypostasis, had gone.) Sherlock was clear in interpreting the three persons as three substantial beings and three infinite minds.37 This could only mean three spirits, infinite in their perfection – in other words, three gods. Sherlock’s attempt to get to grips with the term ‘person’, a problematic term for philosophers today as much as it was for theologians of the past, lay in the nature of his answer to the question, What is a person? His response was cleverly denotative: he did not say what a person was, but only what a person has. A person was a person by having understanding,

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will and power of action. The same was (he declared) true of the persons of the Trinity, but they were made one by mutual consciousness. The three divine persons were not separate but only distinct: each divine person has a self-consciousness of its own, and knows and feels itself (if I may so speak) as distinct from the other divine persons; the Father has a self-consciousness of his own, whereby he knows and feels himself to be the Father, and not the Son nor the Holy Ghost and the Son in like manner feels himself to be the Son, and not the Father, nor the Holy Ghost ... as James feels himself to be James and not Peter nor John; which proves them to be distinct persons: which is a very plain account, how these three divine persons are distinct...38

We may wonder how Sherlock knew what the divine persons feel: how, without enquiry, he knew them to have an individual self-consciousness, and each to have feelings distinct from the others. The external, denotative approach to the notion of a person is hardly adequate for describing divine persons. Could anyone say that God could be described by his properties? It is possible to see the argument of self-consciousness of a person as a kind of grafting of Descartes’ dictum Cogito ergo sum upon theological argument. But doubts come crowding in. Descartes proclaimed Cogito ergo sum after he had doubted everything around him – all the evidence of his senses. He had argued that his sight, sound, hearing, touch and smell could be fraudulent and faked; he might have been led astray by a malicious demon (or, as we would say, that he might have been a victim of sensory illusions). Descartes’ philosophy is founded upon a profound doubt. So he looked for one piece of evidence, one cornerstone for a philosophy, a certainty of knowledge which could not possibly be wrong. This he found in the Cogito formula. ‘I think, therefore I am’ was thus more than a statement about perception or mental function. It was a performative utterance by which, when it was being said or thought, the sayer or thinker was able demonstrably to prove his own existence. This conclusion was then set in place as the cornerstone of a new type of philosophy, and it was from it that ideas of body (or, in Descartes’ terminology, ‘extension’), mind and the idea of God naturally developed. Sherlock’s argument does not conform to this pattern. It is nothing to do with scepticism with regard to the senses, which is at the heart of Descartes. Nor does the Cartesian argument, that I exist because I am a thinking thing, work for the infinite threefold personalities of an infinite God. Descartes did not say, ‘God thinks, therefore God is’. He demonstrated the existence of God as one of a further set of conclusions from his original inference, the Cogito, which was about himself. Sherlock is by contrast attempting to say

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that a consciousness of self enables a person of the Trinity to maintain both a unique identity and one shared with the other two persons. Is this claim tenable? It would seem to be extremely doubtfully so, and anyway, Sherlock has not proved it. He may have asserted it, but that is a long way from proving it. ‘Mutual consciousness’ is Sherlock’s other central concept: the quality that unites the three members of the Trinity. What does it mean? The concept of consciousness is by itself hard to grasp; mutual consciousness more so. Perhaps it is a state best considered as occurring when two or more individuals can be imagined knowing how the other or others are feeling, deciding, judging, hoping (and so forth) at any one moment. It could occur when the mental furniture of one individual might be made totally open to the apprehension of another, to another’s awareness, while not being party to the origin of such cogitations. For spiritual entities, this meant that the three were one in apprehension and understanding. (‘Mutual consciousness makes three persons[,] essentially and numerically one.’) But it is doubtful that mutual consciousness was a concept strong enough to obliterate the tritheistic notion implicit in the selfconsciousness of the three divine persons. They were still out there, three figures on the theological landscape, and they remained separate – ‘really distinct from each other’39 – although with a united and shared consciousness. The formula for ‘mutual consciousness’ did not permit them to be at the same time one God, as Athanasius had proposed.40 Sherlock could perhaps be saved from the charge of tritheism by his belief in divine essence, which had to be one. He had declared that three substantive persons subsisted in one undivided essence. But when he had asked himself how this could be so, all he could reply was ‘I will not pretend to fathom such a mystery as this, but only shew, that there is nothing absurd in it.’41 ‘Divine essence’ looks close to the old metaphysical concepts that he had ditched. He appears to have been saying: such issues are no longer relevant, in that the final answers to understanding the Trinity have been discovered in self-consciousness and mutual consciousness. Anything else was old and out of date. Push the envelope, smell the coffee; New Trinity is here. Mutual consciousness was the perichoresis that the Church fathers had written about, the principle of unity, and which was given the English translation of circumincession. If we consider for a moment what Sherlock was doing – in effect, psychologizing the Trinity, by speaking in terms of self-consciousness and mutual consciousness, while discarding the old metaphysical terminology – we can make a surprising connection; for this is what David Hume did in his Treatise of Human Nature printed 50 years later. At the centre of

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Hume’s philosophy was the notion of cause, and he was determined to show that all the old attempts to explain the ‘causes of ideas in the mind’ were false, and he did this, he believed, by showing that the nature of the concept of cause itself was false. There is, he argued, no connection between cause and effect, beyond the habit of mind of the observer. Cause is something which we as onlookers get used to; it is our own mental groove. There is nothing out there to connect one set of events with another. This devastating scepticism is open to many objections; but it had a parallel in Sherlock’s own expulsion of metaphysical language, and in his reliance on what we might call a psychological explanation – sacred in his case – seen in his terminology of ‘natural self conscious sensation’ and ‘feeling each other’s knowledge’. Sherlock’s method removes the Trinity from the coarse verbiage of scholasticism to something approaching the personal. Hume did not reach an assessment of flesh and blood humanity, since he was stuck with his picture of human beings as ‘bundles of impressions and ideas’. But in bringing home cause from systems of verbiage to the language of feeling, he had a predecessor in Sherlock. With Sherlock’s remarkable, and indeed to most people quite new, explanation of the Trinity in terms of consciousness – and, in a sense, that quality that many English treat with reserve, feeling – fellow theologians, once they had got over the surprise, started to ask questions. Does mutual consciousness indicate that all three distinct infinite substances know, and perhaps feel, the same thing at the same time? What are their points of difference, if all three are mutually conscious?

Staring at the Sun: Arthur Bury and The Naked Gospel Sherlock’s book was, like John Wallis’ pamphlets which followed (see below), a sincere attempt to find answers, from a position held to be consonant with orthodox Christianity, to the problem of the Trinity. In 1690, just after Sherlock’s work had appeared, a new critical work appeared, which hovered close to what was seen as ‘heresy’; indeed, many considered it had overstepped that mark. Its central point looked new, though it had been quietly current for many decades. As already noted, 15 years earlier Herbert Croft, Bishop of Hereford, had written a pamphlet entitled The Naked Truth, or the True State of the Primitive Church. The new work also had a stark title: The Naked Gospel. The author was Arthur Bury, Rector (that is, head) of Exeter College, Oxford. Like Croft, Bury sought to restore the essentials of religion, basing his arguments on the sacred text, removing the embellishments laid on by later theologians.

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Essentially he found in the Gospels two notions: belief and repentance. (Even then, repentance, he reminded readers, sometimes did not figure – there is no call for it in the Sermon on the Mount.) Christianity, according to Bury, corrected the errors of natural religion (that is, the misunderstandings present, despite the natural tendency to be a kind and responsible person and good citizen). The Gospels were given not to bring obscurity to the law of nature, but to make it more legible. Faith, to which we aspire, is not random credulity, but an act of reason. Here was a clear statement of faith distancing itself from fiducia, or implicit clerical devoutness, untethered to knowledge or understanding. Bury saw the Christian religion reemerging as close to assensus, or rational assent. (He trusted reason, holding its origin to be divine.) To be a Christian is simply to follow Jesus; one did not have to believe any hard or impossible doctrines. The Naked Gospel was principally – for Bury’s text tends to the obscure and rambling – a protest against speculation concerning who or what Jesus Christ was. This was an issue which had been current in the fifth century ad as ‘the Christological question’. What did it mean to say that a human being was also divine? No one can understand the meaning of Jesus being an incarnate son of God, Bury argued. It is an unnecessary hardness of belief. A traveller follows the sun, without enquiring into the origin and nature of solar light. We don’t gaze at the sun, or our eyes grow weak. If we stare too intently at a text, we lose sight of its meaning, which is that it is a pattern for living. On ‘the manner in which Christ was God’, Bury quoted the Emperor Constantine: ‘a silly question fitter for fools or children, than priests or wise men’.42 If it is all a mystery, why do we go on disputing about it? There is none of this kind of speculation in the Gospels. Some modern theological follies he declared to be more absurd than the heathen doctrines exposed by the Church fathers. Speculation and mystery end not in love, joy and peace but in hatred, tribulation and strife. (Bury’s text here makes Acontius’ central point.) He even saw a danger in too much reason, holding that, although reason should be followed as the surest guide, logical conclusions should not be ferretted out to the point of obsession. There was a defiant element in the writing, which led to a suspicion among traditional theologians that the author was threatening their beliefs in a more fundamental manner than was at first apparent. They felt uneasy at the shift to intelligent assent. They did not like Bury’s main theme, which could be summed up as: pack up the theory, and start living the Gospels. Bury also showed an original and engaged attitude towards Islam. He did not show a blanket intolerance towards the Muslim faith. He disdained an ‘us-and-them’ attitude. Although he distanced himself from

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Islam by saying that its prophet was a rogue and a deceiver, views typical of the time before the publication of Sale’s translation of the Quran (1734), in the preface to his pamphlet Bury declared that ‘Mahomet professed all the articles of the Christian faith’,43 which is overstating things somewhat. The Prophet of Islam had declared himself to be not an apostate but a reformer – and this was fairly obviously the view of the Rector of Exeter College himself. At the same time, he noted that Mahomet had been given ‘occasion and encouragement’ by the ‘Christian doctors’ – meaning the difficult Church fathers – men who weighed down the Church with heavy lumber, much of it inimical to the spirit of the original texts. Bury rather liked the plain-speaking view of Islam on the topics of the Trinity and image worship. The first of these doctrines, as entertained by the Christian Church, he declared, was polytheism, the second idolatry. Bury’s views constituted a challenge to accepted theology. To his enemies, the stance of the Exeter College head of house amounted to Socinianism: heresy. Islam, or an aspect of it, had been given a hearing in Oxford. One may recall Edward Gibbon’s much-repeated jibe of 80 years later that, had it not been for the defeat of the Muslims at the battle of Tours, ‘the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might declaim to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet’.44 From Arthur Bury the divines of Oxford were indeed being offered a discussion of the theology of Islam, even if the manner was cursory, not because their city had been conquered by an army, or because an Arab or Turkish fleet had sailed uncontested up the Thames to the point where it becomes the Isis, but because the Islamic faith had something relevant to say to established Christianity, and perhaps in one respect, that of the unity of God, it might – alarmingly to many – be true. Thomas Long, of Exeter (formerly of Exeter College), offered an answer to The Naked Gospel.45 In the Preface, the author focused his critical attention above all on the view that the complexities of Christianity had encouraged Islam, and had made the conversion of Jews and Muslims extremely difficult: the point made by Servetus. But he declared that nevertheless it was right to believe in the Trinity. The issue raised by Bury had led to some reassessment. Within Bury’s thinking, notions active at the time of Lord Falkland and the Great Tew Circle now re-appeared, and would emerge again where the nature of faith itself was examined in a critical manner. Politically England had since 1688 become stable and constitutional. Fifty years earlier, in the 1630s, before the disaster of civil war, Falkland had presided over the ‘university bound in a lesser volume’, animated by his generosity and uniquely charming personality; but it had left no records.

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All we have is Clarendon’s account, and the high positions achieved by several of its participants within the Anglican Church, alongside the few carefully read Socinian books, now housed in the Brotherton Library, Leeds. Bury was offering a critical look at faith which shared some of the ideas from the 1630s, and which the individuals who had been present at those discussions, such as Henry Hammond and Gilbert Sheldon, had later disowned, even though they had steered the Church of England to paramountcy in 1660. He was publicly connecting reason to religion. In the Preface to his pamphlet he repeats the admonition of Charles I to his elder son, that, after receiving instruction in religious matters, he should follow the light of reason in choosing his faith. Bury reasserted this view, by declaring that faith was an act of reason, not of speculation, and reason was the voice of God. Oxford University’s response to Arthur Bury was unequivocal. Henry Aldrich, the Dean of Christ Church, a Royal Peculiar (that is, a college under the sole authority of the monarch) and Professor William Jane, of the same college, persuaded the college’s Visitor, the Bishop of Exeter, Sir Jonathan Trelawney, to intervene. It was a clear case of heresy. Trelawney lodged himself at Christ Church, and declared he would conduct a formal visitation of Exeter College. On 26 July, he moved in stately procession from Christ Church to the college blighted by heresy, only to be impertinently received with the bolts of the college doors nailed shut. He ordered his liveried servants to break in. After a token resistance, Bury faced his Bishop-Visitor in the college hall, and found himself not only deposed but excommunicated too, on grounds of scandalous disobedience. It was a fierce display of power.46 Bury appealed to the King’s Bench, and the judgement went in his favour. But it was reversed by the House of Lords in December 1694.47 Convocation – that is, the body made up of all past and present members of the university – independently decreed that all copies of The Naked Gospel should be burnt, and the pyre was lit, in the old Schools Quadrangle (today part of the Bodleian), on 19 August 1690. It is hard not to be struck by the fact that, half a mile away from this fiery enactment, where stacks of Bury’s pamphlets were being piously reduced to ash, the very college from where the Visitor had launched his visitation to crush heresy was a formative House of John Locke, whose great work, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, was in the same year offered to the English public. Here was a text which, showing a similar need for notions to be slimmed down, mapped out the future paths for the exploration of human intellect, and helped fashion the emerging identity of querulous despotic England into confident modern Britain. Locke’s text

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was condemned by the heads of all the Oxford colleges, but at least it was not burnt. The burning of Bury’s pamphlet only increased interest in it, leading to a second printing (which lacked Bury’s contentious passage on mysteries). The author was further attacked in print by William Nicholls, a fellow of Merton College. Nicholls attempted to affirm what Bury had denied: that the Trinity was consistent with the simplicity of the Christian religion. It could be sufficiently understood by the humblest believer. In faith we need revelation, and in revelation we expect mysteries, which are to be accepted and not questioned. Reason, declared Nicholls, was insufficient, and therefore revelation had been granted. The beliefs propounded in the New Testament were beyond the capacities of reason. To bolster his claims Nicholls made a point about Aristotle and Cicero, moralists of antiquity: that they had insisted on revenge, and therefore, as exemplars of reason without revelation, they were inadequate as teachers of morality.48 This seems to be of questionable relevance to his point that revelation, given by religious faith, restated the inescapable idea of sacred mysteries. Nicholls failed to say whether reason was valuable or not in determining whether a revelation was true or delusional. Bury found a dedicated defender in Jean le Clerc, a Netherlandish Remonstrant pastor, editor of the Bibliothèque universelle et historique and one of the lesser known but significant figures of the early Enlightenment. In a preface to a fairly detailed look at the evidence given by the Church fathers, Le Clerc wrote: We may still see how the simple primitive chastity of the gospel was defiled by the ceremonies and the vain philosophies of the pagans: how Platonic enthusiasm ... their dogmatized contradictions in councils, their silly quarrels, their frequent changes of opinion, their childish trifling with words, their inconstancy, pride and other passions laid open as the source of publick troubles and common calamities. In our own times we have seen the same phrenzy acted over again, academic inquisitors (like supream infallible tribunals) burning articles and books, afterwards embracing the very same; expelling and recalling, canting and recanting, after the manner of their forefathers, who veered about with every wind, and were very angry that the laity would not believe things against their sense and reason.49

Bury had considered the Trinity redundant; and Nye’s Brief History of the Unitarians had mounted an assault on the same theological concept. The latter had been answered in a new-fangled manner in Sherlock’s Vindication. Nicholls’ defence of the traditional doctrine was lengthy but insubstantial. Now there was a third counter-attack. In the same month as

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the burning of Bury’s tract, and two months after Sherlock had published his work, Dr John Wallis, Oxford’s distinguished Savilian Professor of geometry, an internationally renowned scholar, published, in a ‘Letter to a friend’, The doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, briefly explained. This letter was followed by seven others on the same subject.

John Wallis: ‘Three Somewhats and One God’ Wallis, now aged 74, had been appointed to his professorship as long ago as 1649, on account of his brilliant deciphering of Royalist codes found on the battlefield of Naseby. Able and much liked, and of great learning, he was a Parliamentarian who had kept his chair after the Restoration. He now proposed a defence of the Trinity. But even for him, a comprehensible explanation of the traditional dogma of the Trinity proved elusive. The Savilian professor acknowledged that belief in the Trinity was a matter of revelation, not of natural knowledge;50 that is, that we cannot deduce it rationally – although we can speak about it. I know that the Fathers and school-men and some after them have imployed their wits to find out some faint resemblances from natural things, whereby to express their imperfect conceptions of the sacred Trinity; but they do not pretend to give an adequate account of it, but only some conjectural hypotheses rather of what may be than of what certainly is.51

In other words, seeking parallels from pagan antiquity was a waste of time. Wallis asked believers to envisage a cube. It has three dimensions; and these create one entity. A cube is thus both three and one at the same time.52 However, Wallis failed to see the point that the issue for the Trinity (as conceived by Athanasius) is that, for the doctrine to be fully represented, three cubes, and not three dimensions, have at the same time to make up one cube. This is a manifest geometrical absurdity. Among the theologically orthodox, and who elicited replies to one of Wallis’ further letters on the Trinity, was one who signed himself ‘W.J.’. The initials seem possibly – one cannot by any means be sure – to have belonged to William Jane, Regius Professor of Theology at Oxford: the same who had agitated for the deposition of Arthur Bury. But the theology of W.J. is distinct from that of the Oxford professor, and it is significant that W.J. wrote from London (a point emphasized by the recipient) as if to indicate that he was not an Oxford man. His argument was one which was to be heard later: ‘Let us be content with what is revealed to us in

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scripture.’53 This viewpoint was surprisingly close to that of the Rector of Exeter College, the antagonist of William Jane, if not of ‘W.J.’: a reason for querying the identity of the two. We should, the author held, stay with what is said in, or can be inferred from, the sacred text. Additional analysis of the Trinity would always prove damaging, even destructive, to the Christian faith. The puzzling ‘W.J.’ pointed out the flaw in Wallis’ argument that the Trinity could be explained with reference to the dimensions of a cube. He saw that the parallel inadequately represented Athanasius’ formula. We should not, said the hidden ‘W.J.’, ‘Spin Creeds, like Cobwebs out of our own bowels’.54 Here was another echo of Arthur Bury’s thinking. From a perspective of biblical criticism, a further weakness of Wallis’ position is that he held that two Bible texts were centrally supportive of the Trinitarian position: 1 John v, 7, and Matthew xxviii, 19. Both of these have been shown to be in all likelihood forgeries: the first by Erasmus, and the second in the twentieth century by F.C. Conybeare. Without them the biblical argument for the authenticity of the Trinity is much weakened.55 As for language, initially Wallis had been in favour of the term ‘person’, though with qualification: ‘If the word Person do not please, we need not be fond of words, so the thing be agreed ... we have no reason to wa[i]ve the word, since we know no better to put in the place of it.’56 ‘Where scripture is silent, we may be content to be ignorant.’57 Wallis admits that we do not fully understand the words ‘beget’ and ‘proceed’. Here we might quietly acquiesce (without troubling ourselves further) did not the clamorous Socinians importunely suggest the Impossibility and Inconsistence of these things, insomuch as to tell us, That how clear soever the expressions of scripture be, or can be, to this purpose, they will not believe it, as being inconsistent with natural reason.58

As with the Resurrection from the dead, the doctrine of the Trinity, Wallis suggests, requires a double inquiry: Is it possible, and is it true? Each has to be argued from natural reason, with an addition from revelation. In this case revelation fulfils the demands of natural reason, according to Wallis. Wallis rather hopefully declares that ‘there is nothing in natural reason (that we know of, or can know of ) why it should be thought Impossible; but whether or not it be so, depends only upon Revelation’.59 Wallis is here hoping to persuade us of a negative: that the Trinity is not impossible. He does not venture a proof positive. The anti-Trinitarians had indeed declared that the Trinity seemed absolutely impossible. Wallis argued that the Resurrection from the

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dead was not. ‘What is it that is thus pretended to be impossible: Tis but this, that there be three somewhats, which are but one God (and these somewhats we commonly call persons.)’.60 This led to ridicule from the Unitarians, who wondered if it could be right that the fate of a man’s immortal soul lay in understanding the meaning of a somewhat. (Nye wondered whether ‘We must believe a Trinity of Somewhats.’61) Wallis’ grudging preference for the word ‘somewhat’ seems to show irritation at the criticism offered to the term ‘person’. The meaning of person doth not agree to them [members of the Trinity] exactly in the same Sence in which it is commonly used amongst men: we say so too, nor doth any Word, when applyed to God, signifie just the same as when applyed to men, but only somewhat analogous thereunto.62

On the triple identity of the Godhead, Wallis made what to him seemed to be an important point: ‘What in one regard are Three (three dimensions) may be in another regard be One (one cube).’63 He gave examples of things which might be three and were also one: such as being and knowing and doing. ‘A Man may be and may know what he doth not do; yet ‘tis one and the same soul ... which Is and Knows and Does.’64 (‘Understanding, will and memory ... are all the same soul.’65) He sensed however that these examples fell short of sound validity as parallels: ‘Tis true that not any nor all of those ... do adequately express the distinction and unity of the persons in the sacred Trinity.’66 In the first place, this is not the position of the Athanasian Creed and Trinitarian orthodoxy. The Creed does not declare that God has three attributes. It declares that he is three persons, and that each of those persons is fully God at the same time (‘So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty: and the Holy Ghost Almighty.’) In the second place, Wallis fails to distinguish the ‘is’ of identity from the ‘is’ of predication. The former is shown in a sentence of the form: ‘A sister is a female sibling’ – that is, a sister is, and only is, a female sibling. The latter is of the form ‘John is left-handed’; here the ‘is’ enables us to enumerate one of John’s characteristics; he may also be red-haired, funny, a good cook, and so forth. (You cannot say ‘John is, and only is, lefthanded.’) With the nature of God in the Trinity, we are looking for some form of definition: we need the ‘is’ of identity. Only the ‘is’ of identity can come close to explaining how one God is (and only is) three persons, who are (and only are) each and severally Almighty God. (We are looking for the defining identity of the one God, not for the characteristics – loving father, creator of the universe – of God himself.) Wallis does no more

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than supply parallels which list predicates (‘attributes’); none of them hints at a definition. However, it was more than two centuries before the discovery and formalization of the distinction between the two usages of ‘is’, so Wallis cannot be blamed for the confusion. Wallis himself, in his definition of ‘person’, showed diminishing confidence in the possibility of finding a clear understanding of the Trinity. He wrote, as unhelpfully as the remarks about ‘somewhats’, ‘By personality, I mean the distinction by which the Three are distinguished.’67 None of his eight letters concerning the traditional Trinity comes near to crafting a convincing defence of it. They avoid any engagement with the central issues of the topic, as propounded by Athanasius: that three elements must at the same time be considered as having the logical competence to be one element, while being able instantly to revert to their threefold identity; and that each and every one of them is God; and yet at the same time there is only one God. Wallis was arguing for a form of Sabellianism: that God can change his identity by taking on the form of the other persons of the Trinity. Wallis’ disregard of the Neoplatonic method of thought underlying the Athanasian Trinity was perhaps not surprising, since Athanasius and Wallis came from such different intellectual traditions: the Greek father was steeped in the philosophy of his age, where the creation of an elevated feeling was more important than a focus on meaning or clarity of definition, to which the Sabellian Trinity is more attuned. The Oxford professor, despite early years with the Cambridge Platonists, was, as a mathematician, given strength and sinew by the organization and rationality of his discipline, and any Neoplatonic tinge in his thought seems to have evaporated in a puff of mystic steam. Wallis received two responses from the Unitarians, to which he showed irritation, but offered no convincing re-statement. The first response, Doctor Wallis’ letter ... answer’d by his friend was a straightforward rebuttal of his arguments for using the analogy of the dimensions of a cube. The second, Observations of the Four Letters of Dr. John Wallis, is almost certainly by Stephen Nye. Its central point concerned the ‘reversionary’ aspect of the Athanasian Trinity, the same criticism as offered by W.J.: that it was not enough for three things to be one, as in the example above, John had a selection of characteristics which helped to define him; each of the three constituents had separately at the same time to be the one thing that they all three made up. We are looking for an identity relation. The Unitarians, with their commitment, rationality, and agile tactics by which they stayed one step ahead of the magistrates of pamphleteering – tactics which have been described as vagabond publishing – brought out

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two works at this time. They reprinted John Bidle’s tracts from the time of the Commonwealth and the Protectorate, and offered up the Brief Notes on the Creed of St Athanasius, originally of 1689.

A History of Positive Facts... Thomas Firmin was, through hard work, financial support and serious advocacy among the great and the good, the main support of the Unitarians in the battle of pamphlets with the Trinitarians. Other rational Christians were also stimulated and encouraged by the development of practical, outwards-looking Christianity. An anonymous Socinian text of 1690, entitled A Discourse of Humane Reason, declared, with an exuberant dash, ‘The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a history of positive facts’.68 With that confident assertion the author sought to relocate the locus of Christian belief away from Neoplatonic mystification and confusion, and from personal, introverted speculation, towards the social needs of the day. The text veered towards deism, in saying that Christianity was no more than the law of right reason.69 The law of nature, it declared, is the foundation of Christ’s instructions. Christianity arises from that law, and is built upon it. Hence, the Discourse proposed, ‘what concerns our duty and morality, that only is intelligible, useful and solid; all the rest are but mysteries, allegories and useless speculations’.70 Faith should no longer be in acquiescent subjection to hypothetical and insoluble ‘mysteries’, Christianity should be placed in the arena of the common good. The new approach was a frontal assault on traditional Catholic, Lutheran or Calvinistic attitudes of guilt and sin: in its assertion that good deeds were more important than correct belief it gave the Gospel message a central place, seeing no benefit in accumulated Church authority; indeed, since correct belief was uncertain, and since thoughtful men had written and upheld contradictory things about it, the subject would most likely tend to divisiveness, and encourage humankind to stray from searching for a true path of faith, which was charity and good deeds.

‘Double-column’d’ Tracts Thomas Firmin published the first volume of ‘double-column’d’ tracts in the same year, 1691. The title deserves to be quoted at length: The Faith of One God, who is only the Father; and of One Mediator between God and Men, who is only the Man Christ Jesus; and of one Holy Spirit, the Gift (and sent) of

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God; asserted and defended. The eight new tracts were all anonymous, and even today the authorship of many remains uncertain. (Reprinted were others by or about John Bidle, seen as the renewed movement’s pioneer.) Stephen Nye was the intellectual guiding spirit. He wrote a typically upbeat introduction, An Exhortation to a free and impartial Enquiry into the Doctrines of Religion. In affirming the importance of the enquiry, Nye criticized the idea that a belief which has long been received should be exempt from examination. Those who have once imbibed such an error are apt to live and die in it. By contrast, he put forward the view that it was up to us ‘in our adult, advanced and capable years to believe, not because we have been thus taught, but because, after review and after trial, we are satisfied’.71 We are free and rational creatures; if we were neither, our actions would be of no interest to the Deity; but since we are both, our reward will come in proportion to the manner in which we have made use of our reason and our liberty. He (or she – Nye was among the first expressly to include the female gender in theological considerations72) who does not make sufficient enquiry, but is just content with what was fed into the mind during childhood, and what was instilled at school, will be like the idle and unprofitable labouring servant, who hid his talent in a napkin. All sects can boast of learned and good men; but learning is only of value in a context of freedom and sincerity. Too often the learned are primarily driven by considerations of the next job, or are shackled by doctrinal allegiances made early on in their careers (‘subscriptions’73). These restraints show that learned people can be ‘fitter to support the kingdom of darkness and error than to revive the true light and genuine gospel of our Lord Christ’.74 Scriptural texts and the reformers both agree on the point that none are to follow their teachers with an implicit or blind faith. Everyone should use his own ‘Judgement of Discretion’. Great ability or learning are not needed; to arrive at the true faith the only requirements are sincerity and a free unprejudiced mind. ‘Take this away and we must necessarily return again to Rome.’ Seldom can theology have been written with such bracing freshness, and with such a sparkling hint of modernity, as by Stephen Nye. Firmin also reprinted Nye’s Brief History of the Unitarians and published Some Thoughts upon Dr Sherlock’s Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, in a letter... All of these, until the end of book licensing, were illegal, vagabond publications. Nye offered a response in late 1690 to Sherlock’s Vindication with an attack on the saintly propagator of the same-substance formula. It took the form of an anonymous pamphlet entitled The Acts of Great Athanasius. The title held within itself a teasing irony. Cleverly, on the title page, the

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name of William Sherlock appeared (in capital letters) in the position of that of author. Only if one read the page carefully did one realize that the dean’s authorship was of the Vindication, not of Athanasius. At least one modern author has been led astray by this ruse. The pamphlet set out to prove that the fourth-century saint had feet of very slippery clay; though a prospective reader might, from the stately appearance of Athanasius’ name on the title-page, assume that he was about to study a text committed to the orthodox viewpoint as set down in the Creed of Athanasius (or Sathanasius as some Unitarians punningly called him). The author of The Acts accused Sherlock of reviving tritheism, belief in three gods. The first of Nye’s points was that the doctrine of the Trinity was not founded on the scriptures, but on the tradition of the Church: ‘so say all the catholick doctors’.75 Some of them have not scrupled to own that this doctrine is contrary to reason. Sherlock, the author continued, emphasized that the Trinity was traditional, deriding scriptural authority as ‘the note-maker’s infallible and compleat rule of faith’. Which means that it was not Dr Sherlock’s rule of faith.76 This dismissive view of scripture was evident in contrasting Sherlock with Chillingworth, who had famously declared that ‘the Bible, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants’. Nye’s tract pointed out the long and distinguished history of opposition to the idea of the Trinity, mentioning Eusebius of Nicomedia, and the fact that the emperor Constantine died a Unitarian.77 Nye summed up the dogma as ‘An arithmetical as well as a grammatical contradiction.’78 Nye further pointed out the difficulty of sustaining the Athanasian viewpoint, by quoting Jesus’ saying in Mark x, 18: ‘Why callest thou me good? There is none good, save one, that is God.’ This remark indicates a clear discontinuity between God and Jesus. Athanasius had originally been deacon to Alexander, bishop of Alexandria, the greatest Christian centre of the time. Alexander had strongly argued for the homoousian position – that God and Jesus were of the same substance – at the Council of Nicaea. His deacon fully supported his views. When Alexander died Athanasius was raised to the bishopric. The new bishop then himself behaved highhandedly and craftily. He compelled the consecration of a bishop by threats.79 The Church hierarchy in Alexandria condemned the action as a breach of Church law, and declared the consecration unlawful and void. But Athanasius made a direct and secret appeal to Constantinople, which at the time was unaware of any local dispute. The imperial authorities, in their ignorance, at once set their seal on the election. Athanasius returned in triumph. In the years following he continued to act like a tyrant. He smashed up an altar, broke a communion cup and burnt a Bible. He had (we are told) an affair with a nun. Altogether his life took on the

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appearance more of a criminal and thuggish outlaw than a father of the Church.80 At a council called at Caesarea to debate his crimes, he simply failed to turn up; and at another held at Tyre he appeared with a group of like-minded theologians, while hiring a prostitute to denounce the president of the council as one of her clients.81 A delegation of six bishops travelled to Egypt to gain information on the nature of Athanasius’ conduct, and returned convinced of his wicked ways. His election was declared void, and he was ordered to leave Alexandria. Whereupon he rapidly took himself to Constantinople, and trumpeted that the members of the council at Tyre were all Arians, and their contrary opinions were created out of party spirit, with no consideration of theology. He himself was (he declared) by contrast a good man, adhering to the beliefs formulated at Nicaea. Altogether he behaved somewhat like a villainous colonial official, creating mayhem in a colony but then going to the imperial capital and pleading with his masters, impressing them with his moderation, sincerity and concern for his people and their moral progress. The emperor Constantine fought shy of finding Athanasius guilty, and so initiated a further enquiry.82 The evidence against him was strong, and Athanasius was banished to Treves (Trier) in Germany. Thereupon Constantine, perceiving the mischief of this leading upholder of Trinitarian doctrine, himself became a Unitarian.83 A seal was set on the imperial belief by baptism, shortly before the emperor’s death in 337, by Eusebius of Nicomedia, a known Unitarian. (Not to be confused with Eusebius of Caesarea, the author of the History of the Church, also a non-Athanasian.) On the death of the emperor, as was usual, banished men were permitted to return home, so Athanasius once more returned to Alexandria. The emperors who followed held divergent theological views. Athanasius now engaged on further intrigue and dodgy practices, and his flock petitioned Emperor Constantius to have him removed. A council was called for Antioch, in 341. Ninety-nine bishops were present; and Athanasius was deprived. This time Athanasius fled to Rome to the protection of the Pope. Julius was a supporter of the Nicene view, and wrote to the bishops of the East that Athanasius must return. Another council was called, in Sardica (Sofia), probably in 343, the Western bishops supporting Athanasius, and the Eastern ones, knowing his deviousness, egotism, factionalism and unpopularity, keen to see the back of him.84 The council – reflecting the dispute between the two emperors, Constans (the Athanasian) in the West, and Constantius (the semi-Arian) in the East – split into two, with the Easterners accusing the Westerners, and vice versa. A further council in Arles (in 353) also condemned

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Athanasius, as did a similar in Milan two years later. Athanasius fled from Alexandria (his third expulsion), and was replaced by George from Cilicia, an Arian – Saint George of England, honoured throughout the Mediterranean littoral, whether Christian or Muslim (though it should be noted that he employed his predecessor’s methods). The emperor Constantius congratulated the people of Alexandria on supporting George, and deserting ‘that imposter and conjurer’ Athanasius. Further councils at Syrmium (or Sirmium; modern Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia; 357) and Ariminum (Rimini; 359) distanced themselves from the doctrine of equal substance, the latter just declaring that ‘The Son is not a creature like unto other creatures’.85 Nye’s colourful history of Athanasius stops there; the saint lived on until 373, advocating in later life the Deity and personality of the Holy Spirit. The purpose of Nye’s resumé was to question the fundamentals of the partiality of Sherlock, and of the rest of the Western Christian tradition, for the Athanasian view of the disputed events; and in this he succeeded. Was this saint really saintly? A second response to Sherlock was offered in Some Thoughts upon Dr Sherlock’s Vindication. The unknown author has been suggested as Henry Hedworth, or even the Remonstrant pastor Jean le Clerc. Sherlock had claimed that the passages where Jesus said ‘I and the Father are one’ and ‘The Father is in me and I in him’ demonstrated that Jesus was speaking in terms of unity of essence, or nature; and the hearing Jews had taken it so to mean, since they declared that he spoke blasphemy. But the anonymous author pointed out that, as mentioned above (at the beginning of Chapter 2) this interpretation ignores some intervening verses that indicate that Jesus was talking in terms of office and mission. ‘Unity with the father’ did not refer to an essential and metaphysical unity, but to a mere moral and relative unity, which consisted of equality of works, and not of ‘essence and nature’.86 The Athanasian Creed is described as providing a ‘full dictionary for theological gibberish’.87 The emphasis by Nye and other Unitarians on the language of theology is significant; it is as though they are saying: Be careful of language. It can offer you systematically misleading expressions. Unitarians since Bidle had sought to rein in language from the excesses of terminology found in words like essence, hypostasis, consubstantial, and circumincession. A third response to Sherlock from the same quarter had the title A Defence of the Brief History of the Unitarians against Dr. Sherlock’s Answer. This looked at the history of the idea of three persons. The notion was absent from scripture, and the idea that God and Christ were the same thing was as contrary as saying ‘There is one King William, and one

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viceroy in Ireland, the lord Sidney; and the viceroy is that one King William.’ ‘Indeed this is a doctrine so unreasonable and contradictious, and so opposite to Holy Scripture; that I think, had there been no such thing as Platonick philosophy, the Trinity should never have been heard of.’88 Initially Platonism – that is, Neoplatonism – had served the Arians (Nye refers his readers to a work by Curcellaeus, or Etienne de Courcelles, entitled Quaternio). But then the Church fathers desired to see the three as equal both in nature and power. In avoiding the charge that the three persons were three gods, the fathers responded, in a manifestly fraudulent argument, that the three beings are one God, as if three human beings – Peter, James and John – are but one man. They are not. When this point was made, the proponents of Trinitarian scholasticism came up with the term person or hypostasis. This unknowable verbal form was given the further refinement of being described as ‘one divine essence’. But then, like men straining to catch a will o’ the wisp in a bog, while sinking deeper into the mire, the scholastics tensed their sinews to net new words, as they attempted to define the three. Three subsistencies. Three modes. Three relations. Three I know not whats. ‘This is meer nonsense, for a person is an intelligent being, and three persons must needs be three intelligent beings.’ So Dr Sherlock was being disingenuous if he did not see that three distinct minds, or three substantial beings, were inevitably three gods.89 Equality of works: this was a central aspect of Socinianism, or the Unitarianism into which it was developing. The men and women who made a decision to abandon Trinitarianism, with its devout unknowable mysticism, manifested, virtually from the beginning, a moral commitment to doing good in the world. It is possible to hazard a psychological reason here – although this is based on retrospect, rather than any new empirical evidence: that when a devout person realizes that there are few if any insoluble mysteries in faith, when the spiritual mind is no longer immobilized by the pleasurably inert mental clamp of meditating on and paying spiritual homage to the incomprehensible, the individual in question often experiences, besides a sense of the reality of the world, an access of moral aspiration to do good now, and to discontinue the cloistered or semi-cloistered deep and devout focus on personal sin, holy grief, theological abstractions and logical impossibilities. Socinianism moved people away from being abject sinners fearful of wrong belief towards becoming practical doers. This was reflected in the theology expressed in the pamphlets of the time, which expressed a conviction that at the last day people would be judged for deeds and not for beliefs.

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y late 1690 and early 1691, in response to the Unitarian challenge, two distinct and unalike notions had emerged as defences of the doctrine of the Trinity. One was Sherlock’s idea of the self-consciousness and the mutual consciousness of the persons. The other was the dimensions-ofthe-cube explanation of John Wallis. While the Unitarians maintained a single clear viewpoint, the defendants of the traditional doctrine appeared unable to avoid a variety of conflicting explanations. Wallis had been politely criticized by W.J., and now Sherlock was offered equally polite but firm criticism by another theologian who shared the author’s Anglican faith. Edward Wetenhall, Protestant bishop of Cork and Ross, could also spell his name ‘Withnail’, and in An Earnest and Compassionate Suit for Forbearance ... by a Melancholy Stander-By, he declared his intention to bring peace between Sherlock and the Unitarians, saying that further discussion was futile and damaging. He held that the Trinity was beyond analysis, and even discussion. There was ‘no greater blemish on the Reformation than the open dissension of its professors, nor among men that are serious in religion a frequenter, or perhaps a more scandalous sin’.1 The fault, he asserted, lay at an earlier date than the Reformation. Wetenhall did not attack Luther or Calvin, but poured scorn on the complex language of the Church fathers: ‘The school-doctors have been worse enemies to Christianity than either the heathen philosophers or the persecuting emperors.’2 The first reformers desired ‘a purer and more scriptural sort of divinity ... though they retained sundry scholastick cramping terms ... yet banished them out of their public prayers’.3 The only explanation of the Trinity that he had any time for was that of Richard Hooker. As a melancholy stander-by, he warned Sherlock: ‘Of all the controversies we can touch upon at present, this of the Trinity is the most unreasonable [meaning inaccessible to reason], the most dangerous, and so the most unseasonable.’4 No one could control a dispute about the Trinity: ‘The more men draw this disputacious saw, the more perplex’d and intricate this question is ... men look upon them [i.e.

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attempts to solve it] to be unsatisfiable and insoluble.’5 There was no point in using the ‘scholastic cramping terms’ essence, person, substance, subsistence, attribute, hypostasis, since nobody knew what they meant. Mankind should look for ‘a way towards the laying to an eternal sleep this and suchlike controversies’.6 Perhaps it might be best simply to suspend judgement: ‘an agreeing so far to a thing, as not to contradict it ... let us all be quiet’.7 ‘Were it not better that these doctors had let it alone.’8 Richard Hooker, ‘in his days Master of the Temple’, the man credited by Wetenhall with having had something useful about the Trinity, had explained the issue thus: The substance of God, with this property to be of none, doth make the person of the Father. The very self-same substance in number with this property to be of the Father maketh the person of the Son; the same substance having added unto it the property of proceeding from the other two maketh the person of the Holy Ghost. So that in every person [of the Trinity] there is implyed both the substance of God which is one, and also that property which causeth the same person really and truly to differ from the other two.9

This version had the merits of tentativeness and of a lack of strident dogmatism. The word ‘implyed’ is perhaps key. Two qualities are implied: God, and the individual personhood. This can either be seen as a neat solution of the contradiction inherent in the Trinity, or as an evasion of the issue in favour of the holding of two contradictory propositions at the same time. And can we extract meaning from the statement ‘the same substance having added unto it the property of proceeding from the other two’? Can an infinite substance have anything added to it? This seems like a further contradiction. Perhaps Hooker’s words, for all their surface plainness and clarity, held mysteries and illogicalities within them. Two years later Stephen Nye looked below the surface reasonableness of Hooker, and found only contradictions. The allegations of contradiction were indeed serious, and need to be examined, even though the criticism emerged later. Hooker’s formulation had been that the substance of God, ‘to be of none’, was the Father, and that the Son held the same substance, with the property ‘to be of the Father’; while the Holy Ghost also held the same substance, with the property of ‘proceeding from the other two’. Nye looked deeper into Hooker’s account of the Trinity, and found a contradiction: if the Father begat the Son, the Son destroys the Father ... begotten doth always destroy unbegotten ... if therefore the substance of God unbegotten maketh (as Mr Hooker contends) the Person of the Father; and the self same

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substance, begotten, maketh the Person of the Son: it unavoidably follows, that the Generation of the Son is the Destruction of the Father; because the Property or Characteristick of the Father, even [i.e. that is] Unbegotten, is destroyed out of the divine substance by the characteristick of the Son, which is begotten.10

He also posed the question: where did the substance of God originate? Did God beget his own substance? In other words, a spiritual substance which is both unbegotten and begotten (which is what the Athanasian Trinity requires) is a contradiction: it is two opposing things at the same time. God and individual personhood cancel each other out, the abilities ‘to beget’ ‘to be begotten’ and ‘to proceed’ negate any idea of an unbegotten Deity, and they cannot be ascribed to one divine substance. Nye asks: ‘Is it not as much to say, he was before he was?’ The rector of Little Hormead was chary about quarrelling with Hooker: To give up Hooker, is to dishonour the Church of England it self; to part with Father Hooker, is to endanger the very Surplice, and even the Cross in Baptism; nay, that Book of Books the Common-Prayer. If Mr Hooker could err about the Trinity; What will the Fanaticks and Trimmers say?11

Yet still Nye declared Hooker was in error, and concluded that Peter Lombard was correct when he said, ‘the Substance of God neither begets, nor is begotten, nor proceeds.12 Bishop Wetenhall’s criticism of Wallis took on his proposal that ‘somewhat’ be substituted for ‘person’. ‘What,’ asked his grace, ‘if people were to substitute in their prayers, “O holy blessed and glorious Trinity, three Somewhats and one God, have mercy on us.”?’13 (‘And’ is here in the sense of ‘and at the same time’.) The melancholy stander-by perceived the connection between devotion and language: that spiritual things should not be expressed in mundane perfunctory words. But he did not answer the question: What does one do when the language is seen to be faulty – that is, when ‘person’ is so confusing a term, that any attempt to find meaning in it ends in fog and perplexity, and tends towards the unravelling of the whole notion of the Trinity? In conclusion Wetenhall declared, ‘I love truth, but I love peace also, and true devotion.’14 Wetenhall’s forbearance was not shared by others involved in the controversy. The Unitarians were set on proclaiming a faith which combined devotion with reason; their life-changing ethic of doing good in the community stood in contrast both to the Calvinist doctrines of election and predestination – which threatened to annul virtue, by proclaiming a godly determinism, that the greater part of humankind

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was necessarily destined for eternal torment, however well they behaved, thereby discouraging attempts at improvement – and to the often paralysing power of focusing the mind upon insoluble mysteries. William Sherlock was a man only emboldened by criticism. He knew the attractiveness of the Unitarians’ minimalist beliefs and the impact they were making in advancing them. He had published his Vindication to challenge them – a text which had its own version of minimalism, dispensing with the old terms which had hitherto given support to the Trinity – subsistencies, modes, procession and so forth – in favour of self-consciousness and mutual consciousness. He would continue to confront and confute antiTrinitarians. Sherlock himself did not call them by the name Unitarians, which had become current since 1682. He preferred the word Socinians. This indicated foreignness, and hinted at the sinister and perhaps shocking nature of an alien, elusive and damnable heresy. The word was satisfactorily close to ‘so sinful’. Almost nothing went unanswered in the 1690s. Although censorship persisted in theory until 1695, the Unitarian pamphlets, published with no author, printer or place of publication, could not be shut down, although the English authorities of the time (who lacked the punitive, heresyhunting rigour of other controlling religious groups) would have liked to have silenced them. Nothing shut up the correspondence, until the Blasphemy Act of 1698, passed after the failure of the Royal Injunction of 1696, stamped down like a great boot and liquidated the controversy. Sherlock responded to Wetenhall/Withnail in 1693 with an Apology for Writing against Socinians. The text was a frontal attack on Wetenhall’s quietism. The Irish bishop had intended to draw a veil over analysis of the doctrine of the Trinity: Not so, cried Sherlock, trumpet it forth. Could it really be true that faith should have such latitude (Sherlock asked) that we may believe ‘that the Father alone is the True God, the Son a mere Man, and the Holy Ghost nothing but a Divine Inspiration’?15 That Christ ‘had no Being before he was born of the Virgin Mary’?16 (Notable here is the affirmation of Christ’s pre-existence, a difficult notion for the faithful to accept.) Sherlock, now attacked on two fronts, complained of the tactics of the Socinians; they, he contended, were ‘the aggressors, who without any provocation publish and dispose the most impudent and scandalous libels against the Christian faith’.17 Socinian pamphlets are ‘dispersed in every corner and boasted of in every coffee-house’.18 Socinian Christianity, with its lucidity and spirit of rational enquiry, and its tough and convincing arguments, was becoming the talk of, and perhaps the religion of choice of, intelligent and sociable frequenters of the coffee-houses. Wetenhall

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had been sensitive to the fragility of theological discussion, when he argued that any vindication – in effect, discussion – of the doctrine of the Trinity against Socinians would make men atheists.19 Wetenhall’s timidity had been exposed in this suggestion. Maybe we should be cautious in discussing the Trinity; but the Irish bishop’s argument that the subject was unreasonable and unseasonable was a Hobbist argument: simply, don’t rock the boat. Or rather, steer your boat away from the perilous topic. To Sherlock this was cowardly timidity. The dean rejected his idea that a stout defence of the doctrine of the Trinity would make men atheists.20 The doctrine had to be held high. ‘Run down the doctrine of the Trinity and Incarnation,’ he riposted, ‘and there is an end of the Christian religion, and with that the end of all revealed religion; and as for natural religion, they can make and believe as much or as little of it as they please.’21 To Sherlock, mysteries were an integral part of religion. Must we then turn all Socinians, to preserve the Reformation? queried Sherlock.22 No: Socinianism was ‘the common banner under which all the enemies of religion and Christianity unite ... all the atheists and infidels, and the licentious wits of the town, are their converts’.23 Wetenhall’s ‘negative belief ’24 should at all times be avoided. It would ‘receive Heathens, Jews, Mahometans into the Christian Church’ – a notion rather similar to that which people like Franck and Postel had been considering a century and a half earlier. Sherlock’s Apology made no mention of the new terms, self-consciousness and mutual consciousness, which he had eagerly brandished in the Vindication. Those words proposed in the 1690 book as explanations of the mystery, had now vanished. His central theory seemed to have been quietly dropped. The pamphlet’s purpose is above all to challenge the ‘charm of a negative faith’.25 The year before, in 1692, Thomas Burnet’s Archaeologiae Philosophicae had been put before the public. Burnet was the Master of the Charterhouse, and his style, whether writing in English or Latin, was one of stately elegance. His first publication, of 1681/1684, on the Sacred Theory of the Earth, was popular but preposterous: the idea he proposed was that the earth resembled a gigantic egg, whose shell had been crushed during the Flood. The runny bits came to constitute the oceans, and fragments of the shell rose up jaggedly to form the mountains.26 The astronomer John Flamsteed retorted that there was more to the origin of the world than a fine-tuned sentence, and that Burnet could be refuted on a single sheet of paper. In the new work, he made an attempt to reconcile his curious theory with the first chapter of the book of Genesis, but Genesis perceived in a new way. Here, perhaps for the first time in living memory, sacred scripture was treated in an allegorical, non-literal manner. Eve and

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the Serpent had a gossip together, and, when Eve had been discovered to have eaten the apple, our First Mother was addressed by the Almighty as ‘Mrs Curious, who so much love[s] delicacies’. Burnet drew a parallel between the story of the Garden of Eden and Plato’s ‘Garden of Zeus’ (in point of fact, the reference should have been not to Plato but to the fifthcentury heroic Greek poet Pindar). Genesis in its entirety was seen as a metaphor, and no longer as literal truth. The effect was profound. Despite the eccentricity of Burnet’s first book, which by now had rather faded from memory, his new, allegorical approach to scripture was persuasive. It found great favour among those of a sceptical tendency: as a popular ballad had it (see below), Burnet was hinting That all the books of Moses Were nothing but supposes...

Burnet’s book added to the growing mood, which was re-evaluating the entire and absolute literal truth of the Bible – something that, if we take the example of Origen from among the Church fathers, had not been axiomatic in early Christian days: see his criticism of Celsus above (pp. 33–4). The main thrust of the theological discourse of the times, however, continued to concern the nature of the Trinity, and it would soon manifest itself in a howling gale of scorn blasting from a vicarage north of Oxford. * * * Two years after Wetenhall had made his request for quiet, Nye issued a vigorous Letter of Resolution concerning the Doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation, which made sure that the subject would not be put to sleep. Nye, we should recall, was the shrewdest of the Unitarians, branding Trinitarian Christianity as ‘Athanasian religion’, as though it were an alien heresy, perhaps not Christian at all. Here he focused on the Unitarians’ departure from the rest of the Christian community on these two doctrines. They are a small flock now. But there was a time when all the world was against Athanasius, and Athanasius was against all the world. He claimed that the principal reason was that ‘the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation have no solid or good foundation in Revelation, or Holy Scripture’.27 It was not a question of exalting reason above revelation. It was simply this: there was nothing in revelation (i.e. the Bible) to support the Athanasian view. Nye also made a critically important point about the Unitarians’ attitude to reason. They had been charged by their enemies with exalting reason above revelation: but, he declared,

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’Tis not true that we prefer our reason before revelation: on the contrary, revelation being what God himself hath said, either immediately, or by inspired persons; ’tis to be preferred before the clearest demonstration of our reason. But because we cannot suppose, without disrespect and injury to God, to his goodness and veracity, that he has so made us that our faculties should be deceived, in what they clearly and distinctly perceive, and because God hath in revelation frequently appealed to our faculties, to our understanding and reason; therefore we conclude that what is clearly and distinctly discerned by reason as true or false, is so. And from there we infer; that what is false in reason can never be true in revelation, or by revelation. So that whatsoever in revelation doth seem to contradict reason, can be nothing but our blunder; our unskilful injudicious and too close adherence to the mere letter and words of revelation.28

Here devoutness and common sense came together in a convincing synthesis. Nye’s careful text continued with a look at the consequences, which verged on the absurd, of taking metaphorical biblical statements – things ‘certain by revelation’ – literally and without qualification: in particular Jesus’ saying ‘I am the true vine’. What were the implications of adhering to a literal understanding of every word of scripture? Would Biblical literalists be forced to believe in ‘an humane Vine’ or ‘a viney Man’? Lovers of mystery should perhaps be paying devout respects to such. The expression was of course a metaphor. Nye balanced common sense and the terminology of numinous poetry thus: ‘as ’twas certain by sense, to those who conversed with him, that he was a true and very Man, so ’tis certain by revelation that he was also a true and very Vine’.29 The point was that scripture, and all revelation, had to be balanced by reason. He also set forth the reasonable objections for religious people not to believe in mysteries and the Trinity: that belief in the Trinity had the same kind of basis as belief in transubstantiation; and that it is hard to pay devout homage in terms of praise, love, homage, faith and so forth, to a threefold mystery of ‘persons’ rather than a single God. Belief in the Trinity had also ‘crumbled’ the Christian Church into divisions30 over such matters as the Filioque. Nye recalled the bitter wrangles of the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries, and the development of Marian and saint worship: in all cases departures from the essentials and fundamentals of Christian teaching. Historical circumstances also brought about the supremacy of the Pope as a way of enforcing belief in the Trinity, argued Nye.31 Scripture was sidelined; and this led the way to the ‘merchandise of souls’ known as papal indulgences.32 From the Trinity also developed the doctrine of

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Satisfaction – the punitive theological notion predicated on the idea of the anger and not the love of God. Nye quoted the views on the Trinity of Ralph Cudworth. Cudworth had aimed to point out that ideas of threefoldness had emerged in ancient times, thus supporting the universality of the Christian Trinity. A trinity was found in Plato, derived from ‘the arcane theology of the Egyptians’. Similar views were found, said Cudworth, in the Magick or Chalday oracles, and the Mithraic mysteries, both of them derived from Zoroaster. The Roman Capitoline trinity had its origin in the ideas of the Phrygians, who developed such ideas from the mysterious and ecstatic Dionysian religion of the Samothracians of the northern Aegean, analogous to the Kabiroi, and possibly related to the Dioscuri.33 Even in Judaism, despite its determined monotheism, a Neoplatonic notion similar to Trinitarianism could be found in the Cabala, which described successive waves (sefiroth) of mystic semidivine heavenly-cloud-shaped entities. However, as Nye points out, all these extraneous ideas could be simply accounted as paganism and idolatry, which had crept into monotheism and Christianity when the original strength of the doctrines and texts had grown weak under the pressure of the fashion for Neoplatonism. The flood of dissident pamphlets continued. An all-out assault on the notion of the Trinity, written in vigorous language, came from the pen of William Freke, mute worshipper, also in 1693. Its title was unequivocal: A Brief but Clear Confutation of the Doctrine of the Trinity. The text began with the notion of the times, that God gave man reason. (This was an alarming notion to the orthodox, whether Catholic, Lutheran or Calvinist, since it acted as a bridge between religion and natural knowledge, and dissolved the need for mysteries.) Therefore, the author contended, the controversy about the Trinity required the full use of that faculty. Step by step he showed ‘that the divinity attributed to the Son and Holy Ghost is both unscriptural and idolatrous, and an injustice to the Father’. The Athanasian Creed declared that the father is God, the son is God and the Holy Ghost is God; yet not three gods, but one God. Freke drew a parallel: Peter is man, John is man, and Thomas is man; and yet there are not three men, but one man. (The parallel was closer to being apt, and less of a confusion as regards the meaning of ‘is’, than that made by John Wallis. John was and only was a man, in the manner that a sister is and only is a female sibling. But his full character was more than anything that could just be identified by the simple word ‘man’.) And how could God cry out from the cross, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ ‘By a kind of ventriloquy they make Christ as God, to be able to tell us all things; but by and by again as a man they attribute ignorance to

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him: so sometimes they make him omnipotent.’34 Three doctrines were highlighted: eternal generation, the procession of the Holy Ghost, and homoousiotes (the notion of having the same substance). ‘Great and noble thoughts indeed if true. But I challenge any man upon the face of the earth to show so much as one text with sense to favour them; and might not we be ashamed then of such castles in the air?’ As for the clergy, they could not really be blamed for tending ‘to varnish over an old rotten error for preferment’.35 Freke, who did not hide behind anonymity, sent copies of his pamphlet to members of both houses of Parliament. His words and action caused outrage. The Lords voted the pamphlet to be an infamous and scandalous libel, and the Commons resolved that it should be burnt. All copies that could be found were committed to the flames by the common hangman in Old Palace Yard on 3 January 1693 o.s. (i.e. 1694).36 In the yard the ashes of the brief but clear confutation may have brought satisfaction to authority, but the conflict was far from ended. Smouldering embers, fanned by the Stander-by and Sherlock’s response, threatened at any time to burst into wild fire. Sherlock’s earlier position had been that the barbarous terms person, nature, essence, subsistence, consubstantiality and so forth had obscured the doctrine of the Trinity. In the Apology none of these terms was condemned; and he made no mention of his exciting new vocabulary. Did this indicate a partial change of mind?

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An Oxford Tempest

A

new assault now roared out; a rattle of theological gunfire forced open a third front in the dogmatic war, making the blaze in Old Palace Yard appear no more than a smoky bonfire. An Oxfordshire clergyman called Robert South entered the fray. (We have met him before, mocking the Royal Society.) His prime target now was Dean Sherlock, who had risen effortlessly in the hierarchy of the Church, while his own career had stalled. South loathed liberal, rational latitudinarian clergymen; he believed his own hardline Anglican Calvinism pointed the way to salvation. He also believed in strict conformity of Church practice, in the manner of Archbishop Laud,1 and thus was probably best described as a Laudian Calvinist. But, unlike most Calvinists, he was not gloomy; indeed, he employed a scornful and derisive wit in the prosecution of his plots and feuds, and was well acquainted with the street-fighting methods of insult and invective. Today he might be called ‘brilliant but acerbic’. Bishop Burnet wrote of him as ‘a learned but an ill-natured divine’.2 Thomas Birch, the biographer of Archbishop Tillotson, echoed this view: Among the protestants, who have attack’d his Grace’s writings, one of the most forward and petulant was Dr. South, whose learning and genius were accompanied with an unrestrain’d acrimony of temper, and a boundless severity of language, mixed with the lowest and falsest, as well as the truest wit, both in his conversation and writings, against those, who differ’d in the least from him, especially in matters, which he imagin’d, or represented, to concern the interests of the established church...3

South’s witty and waspish preaching had caught Charles II’s ear in the 1680s, when, after one of his sermons, the monarch was reputed to have turned to the son of the late Earl of Clarendon, Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester (with whom South had travelled on a diplomatic mission to Poland), saying, ‘Odd’s fish, Lory, your chaplain must be a bishop; therefore put me in mind of him at the next death.’4 (South,

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however, a perpetual outsider, never received such a mortal elevation.) South – loyal, Tory, with a rigorous and unbending theology – was possessed of an astringent and arch tone, laced with a wit which can bring a smile today. Sometimes too, in the roulades of vengefulness and tirades of fury, his verbal vigour can remind one of a tempestuous aria sung by a scorned enchantress in a Handel opera. The title-page of his attack on Sherlock indicates the prickly and personal nature of the main text: Animadversions upon Dr Sherlock’s book, entituled A Vindication of the Holy and Ever-Blessed Trinity, &c. together with a more necessary vindication of that sacred, and prime article of the Christian faith from his new notions, and false explications of it. Humbly offered to his admirers, himself the chief of them. By a divine of the Church of England. South believed that the Trinity could be explained by means of the traditional terminology of scholastic philosophy. There was no need for Sherlock’s concepts of mutual consciousness and self-consciousness. Indeed, he found these new-fangled terms repellent. Nor did Locke’s philosophy of sensation have any point for him; he nowhere mentions the new thinker’s notion of the term ‘idea’. The terms essence, substance, accident, person, subsistence, being, nature, mode and suppositum were as meaningful to South as the terms molecule, atom, electron and neutron are today to a physicist. They mapped out the loci of understanding, and defined the categories of reality. Other forms of explanation he derided with piquant scorn. South outlined his attack in the preface. The Church was being betrayed from within. The notion of the Trinity was never that there were three distinct minds or spirits, in other words, three gods. Sherlock was a ‘Pettit Novellist Charging the Whole Church as Fools and Hereticks, for not subscribing to a Silly Heretical Notion solely of his own Invention’.5 The correct decisions about belief and heresy had been concluded by the early Church councils. South asks: how can Sherlock hold that allegiance is on scriptural grounds due to the sovereign powers of state, if he has so comprehensively undermined the notion of the Christian religion? Will this turn people against the Church, and manifest the ‘irresistible magnetism of the Good Old Cause [English republicanism]’. ‘The Fable tells us of a Cat once turned into a woman, but the next sight of a Mouse quickly dissolved the Metamorphosis, cashiered the Woman, and restored the Brute.’6 When Sherlock saw the damage he had caused, might he not restore himself to felinity? South pointed out the two main failings of Sherlock’s account: that self-consciousness needs a self, and that he had misunderstood Descartes’ meaning of the Cogito. In South’s words, ‘According to the natural order

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of things, self-consciousness in persons presupposes their personality, and therefore is not, cannot be the reason of it.’7 Self-consciousness also requires that actions have been performed, so that such consciousness can reflect upon them.8 South elaborated on Sherlock’s misunderstanding of Descartes: it [self-consciousness] is borrowed too. But you will say, From whom? Why? Even from honest Des Cartes, and his Cogito ergo sum. Only with this unhappy difference in the application of it. That this proposition, which Des Cartes lays as the basis and ground-work of his philosophy, our author places with its heels upwards in his divinity. For whereas Des Cartes insists upon cogitation, only to prove and infer being, as one would prove a cause from its effects, or rather an antecedent from its consequent: our author on the contrary, makes cogitation the very cause and principle of being and subsistence, by making it the formal constituent reason of personality in the person who thinks, or reflects; than which nothing can be more false, and ridiculous.9

Descartes had shown that thinking proved existence by demonstrating the cause (existence) from the effect (thinking); Sherlock, according to South, sought to prove the cause from merely positing the cause itself: not so much ‘I think, therefore I am’ as ‘I consider my self, therefore I am’. Whence had the self found its identity and slipped in? South launched a direct attack on Sherlock’s definition of terms, which the dean had believed would produce a clear understanding of the Trinity. He deployed the full vocabulary of scholasticism which was in vogue before Locke. South set out a summary of what he intended in his use of scholastic terms, seeming to view his readers as rather dim children. Being, or ens, he defined as that which is, and that which has an essence. A substance is a being not inhering in another – one that exists by its self. An accident (in the Aristotelian sense) is a being which by contrast is inherent in another being. From these notions develop other ideas. A mode of being is a thing which does not add to another being, but only restrains or determines the existing being. (A being cannot be defined by another being, otherwise an infinite progress of beings, in the logical sense, results.) Essence South defines as ‘that by which a thing is what it is’. At the heart of essence lies the notion of cause; the essence of a thing lies in what caused it, and in its capacity to cause other things. Existence is the mode of being by which a thing stands actually produced out of the power of its causes. Existence is finite being. Things get trickier, and foggier, with the definition of a subsistence, which, as we have seen, means ‘person’ in theological jargon.10 This is

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summed up as a mode of being, by which a thing exists by itself, without existing in another, either as a part to the whole, or as an adjunct in the subject. The human nature of Christ exists in the person of the logos. Essence and subsistence differ both in created and in uncreated beings. As for suppositum: Whatsoever being or nature this mode of subsistence does belong to, that is properly called a suppositum:11 as being a thing, which by no means exists in any other, but as a basis or foundation, supports such things or beings, as exist in it; from which it also receives its name of huphistamenon [‘that which stands beneath’ – the Greek term is almost identical to Latin suppositum – CW]. And the consequence of this is that every suppositum or being thus subsisting by it self is a compleat being; that is, such an one as is not made for the completion of any other; for whatsoever is so, must naturally exist in it, as a part does in a whole, or at least be originally designed so to do. This account being given of subsistence, and of a suppositum, which is constituted such by it, it will be easy [sic] to give an account also what a person is; which is properly defined suppositum rationale, or intelligens. So that as a suppositum is substantia singularis completa per se subsistens, so the ratio intellectiva, being added to this, makes it a person, which is a farther perfection of suppositality, and the utmost perfection of subsistence, as subsistence and suppositality is the utmost bound and perfection of existence in all beings not intelligent.12

All of which, if one is in the right frame of mind, may appear clear and simple. Or it may indicate the extraordinary and bizarre nature of systematic philosophy in England, cluttered up with medieval relics, before the emergence of British empiricism. Trickling in and out of the complex and hard metaphysical definitions, there seeped the glistening livid dark-green venom of South’s raging contempt for Sherlock. This is what makes the book memorable, and what stands in contrast to W.J.’s mild criticism of mutual consciousness, and to the Melancholy Stander-by’s polite contribution to the debate, which in turn had evoked from the dean an Apology (which contained only a few sentiments which looked apologetic) for writing against Socinians. The nub of Robert South’s attack on Sherlock was that, having dumped the old terminology in his first offering, the dean had been compelled to return in penitence to it, as though he had had to tramp back in stockinged feet to a discarded old flame. South’s metaphor was more lurid:

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But God himself, who resisteth the proud, seems to have took the matter into his own hands, and (to shew his controlling providence over the minds and hearts of men) has at length brought this scornful man to eat his own words (the hardest diet certainly that a proud person can be put to), and after all the black dirt thrown by him upon the school-men and their terms, to lick it off again with his own tongue. So that after he had passed such a terrible killing doom upon these words, essence, substance, subsistence, suppositum, person and the like, here in his Vindication, all on a suddain, in a relenting fit, he graciously reaches out his golden sceptre of self-contradiction, and restores them to life again in his Apology.13

South gives examples: in the 1690 Vindication Sherlock had ostentatiously disposed of the old scholastic terms, saying they were used by the scholastic philosophers in different ways inconsistently. But in the Apology the dean criticizes Wetenhall for being too harsh on the school-men. Sherlock appears to be partially rehabilitating the complex language.14 South also complained that the dean had defined the soul, or mind, of man as a person. (It was casual of both of them to use the terms ‘soul’ and ‘mind’ interchangeably, since traditionally the former has been freighted with responsibility for moral decisions and higher feelings, while the latter has usually been seen as the human conceptual space which generates rational argument.) Sherlock, he declared, has almost as free an hand in making everything he meets with a Person, as K. Charles the Second had in making almost every person he met with, a Knight; (so that it was very dangerous for anyone who had an aversion to knighthood to come in his way,) our author, out of the like over-flowing communicating goodness and liberality, is graciously pleased, to take even the beasts themselves into the rank and order of persons; in some imitation, I suppose, of the discreet and humble Caligula, so famous in history for making his horse consul.15

South ends his attack on self-consciousness thus: Nevertheless, to deal clearly and plainly amongst friends, such a cheating, lurching thing does this expectation usually prove, that after all these pompous shews, and glorious boasts of self-consciousness, self-consciousness, ushered in with twenty encomiums (at least) like so many heralds, or tip-staves, or (rather) Yeomen of the Guard marching before it; yet, in truth, after all this noise, it is (like an owl stripp’d of its feathers) but a very mean, meagre, ordinary thing; being, in down-right terms, neither more nor less than only one property of a rational, or intelligent being.16

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South also claimed that Sherlock had in one step, or stroke, ungodded the three persons of the blessed Trinity.17 This was a step away from saying that Sherlock was the author of atheism. Despite the display of intellectual energy and destructive wit, South was generally held not to have defended the notion of the Athanasian Trinity satisfactorily. After the epic manifestations of wrathful turbulence in the first seven chapters, after his formidable mastery of the theoretical notions of the Schools, his explanation of the persons of the Trinity emerged: each was a mere ‘posture’ of the Godhead.18 This was feeble and anti-climactic; rather, indeed, like the owl stripp’d of its feathers. A ‘posture’ suggested the angular motions of an actor in a booth at a fair, miming first one part, then another, and then a third. The word did not get us closer to understanding what a person was: what individuated the persons of the Trinity. Nor did it bring into focus the mystery of perichoresis, or circumincession – the interrelation of the three persons of the Trinity. The mystery of the Trinity remained a mystery. Sherlock’s response was to distinguish between self-consciousness and self-knowledge. He claimed that South was talking about selfknowledge. Self-consciousness was according to Sherlock immediate, a kind of instant awareness of thoughts, knowledge, desires and so forth; what he calls ‘intellectual self sensation’;19 rather similar to what Hume would later call ‘impressions’. In the main Sherlock, despite his combative wordiness, shifted his ground, as if to admit that South was to a great extent right. He moved from stressing the act to the principle of selfconsciousness. He also affirmed that both the individuality of a person and the principle of self-consciousness were despite differences each in its own way equivalent to the soul. He was moving into the pleasant unarguabilities of Neoplatonism. There was no place for an individual self, the first principle of the personality. South in effect had won. The Unitarians were for the most part circumspect in exploiting the feud between Sherlock and South. But Stephen Nye allowed a little mockery to creep in. He compared Robert South’s performance in search of an explanation of the meaning of the persons to Don Quixote’s quest for the beautiful Dulcinea, only to discover her in the form of a plain barmaid. Dr S[ou]th had raised the expectation of his readers in no fewer than seven preliminary chapters; in the eighth he promises in the title of it, the longlook’d for, much desired Catholick and Orthodox explication of a Trinity of divine persons, in the unity of the godhead; but when all comes to all, he tells us the three divine persons are nothing else but the substance of God, or the godhead diversified into three postures. Never were men so bilk’d

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before, as his readers are, at this news; ’tis the Princess Dulcinea, turned into Joan Xanchez.20

* * * In taking stock of the situation, Nye put forward a general analysis in a tract of 1693. It is fair, despite the fact that he was himself a player in the dispute. This offering was a skilful attempt to see how the controversy had developed, and a summing up, in a reasonably impartial manner, of the essential views of the participants. Of the differing viewpoints, that of John Wallis he called the Ciceronian Trinity, in the light of Cicero’s utterance Sustineo unus tres personae – in Wallis’s translation, I being but one man, yet am three persons. This interpretation did not get to grips with the central Athanasian point about the Trinity: that each of the three persons was fully God, while at the same time the three persons were made one by John of Damascus’s perichoresis. Wallis’s Trinity was therefore accounted not to be Athanasian. William Sherlock’s Trinity was Cartesian, albeit a kind of misunderstood, inverted Cartesianism, for the reasons noted: that the force of Descartes’ Cogito is that it is performative: it proves a point (or aims to), at the very moment that it is uttered. It is not a general statement, made elegant and professorially; it does something at a specific time in the actual lived world, down and dirty. This notion was not grasped by Sherlock. His Cartesian Trinity is merely descriptive, or perhaps attempting to be analytical. Ralph Cudworth’s Trinity, as expressed in The True Intellectual System ... was Platonic: the essence of the Father was the root and foundation of the Son and Spirit (who were thus inferior to the Father) – a viewpoint which was close to the theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church (and indeed was not far from the view of Richard Hooker in his Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie of 1594); and Robert South’s, with its traditional array of terms such as essence, substance, hypostasis, subsistence and suppositum, all of which terms carried dense meaning for the Islip rector, was an Aristotelian understanding: essentially, a Trinity of properties. The contradictions which Nye spotted in Hooker’s explanation of the Trinity have already been noted. With reluctance the author criticized Hooker, seeing him as a giant figure for the Anglican Church, a great irremovable cornerstone. But criticism had to be made where it was due. So Nye did not flinch. There was also, declared the vicar of Little Hormead, a ‘mystical Trinity’, which, being mystical, could not be explained. Nye is fairly

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derisive in summing up the different positions. South’s explanation was ‘an absurd Socinianism’ – meaning presumably that by reducing the persons to postures, he was doing away with the complex reversible concept, whereby the three can at the same time be accounted one; Wallis ‘an ingenious Sabellianism’, close to the Unitarian position (since it was a trinity of attributes, not of persons); Sherlock was promulgating ‘a flat Tritheism’, Cudworth ‘a modified Arianism’, since the second and third persons were inferior to the first. Hooker’s was a Trinity ‘not of persons but of contradictions’ – the Trinity of the ordinary person. Nye saw this, somewhat disdainfully, as worship of ‘they know not what’. Each of these understandings of the Trinity was radically different from the others.21 Any unified orthodox understanding of the Trinity was illusory. No one on the Anglican side could agree on the nature of the Holy Three. Imaginative efforts were being made, but they all differed. And in the case of Sherlock and South, a raging feud had flared up. The Unitarians continued to publish a paper deluge of pamphlets, exposing the weaknesses in their opponents’ arguments, although they were surprisingly gentle in not exploiting the feud. Two new efforts were made, both in 1694, to quieten matters. One sought to get back to basics; the other looked for help from Neoplatonic philosophy. The first was put forward by the dissenting minister John Howe. His Calm and Sober Inquiry Concerning the Possibility of a Trinity in the Godhead did not attempt to hide the acrimony present in the dispute. Trinitarians needed to stay calm and sober, and to be less authoritarian in their beliefs, looking for possibilities rather than outright dogmatic explanations. Howe refused to look for a meaning of person. He was centrally concerned with the main issue: whether a Trinity was possible in the Godhead or not. The term did not appear in scripture. What did appear in the Bible text were the notions of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. These (he claimed) were declared in the New Testament to be one in the Godhead. They were also distinct. But it is beyond our ability to distinguish between them.22 The dissenting minister went on to give an account of the relations which persisted between the members of the Trinity. His explanation has imaginative charm, if less persuasiveness. The three persons were ‘delicious society’ to one another, an image which might seem to suggest an endless perfect summer party, held in a hidden garden. Howe pointed out that, for earthborn humankind, company afforded greater felicity than solitude; and that this was true for the Deity as well; therefore, since the Godhead was the embodiment of perfection, the Holy Union would more likely be three than one. Howe expressed the idea thus:

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Upon the whole, let such a union be conceived in the being of God, with such distinction, and one would think (though the complexions of men’s minds do strangely and unaccountably differ) the absolute perfection of the Deity, and especially the perfect felicity thereof, should be much the more apprehensible with us. When we consider the most delicious society which would hence ensue, among the so entirely consentient Father, Son, and Spirit, with whom there is so perfect rectitude, everlasting harmony, mutual complacency, unto highest delectation; according to our way of conceiving things, who are taught by our own nature (which also hath in it the divine image) to reckon no enjoyment pleasant, without the consociation of some other with us therein; we for our parts cannot but hereby have in our minds a more gustful idea of a blessed state, than we can conceive in mere eternal solitude.23

This is a view of the Godhead which is strikingly dissimilar to the image of God put forward by Milton in Book VIII of Paradise Lost. Here, God is speaking to Adam, who had just discoursed on the advantage of fellowship and society: What think’st thou then of me, and this my state? Seem I to thee sufficiently possest Of happiness, or not? who am alone From all eternity; for none I know Second to me, or like, equal much less.24

The other attempt to solve the Sherlock–South impasse appeared in a work by Edward Fowler, Bishop of Gloucester, printed in the same year of 1694, after his death. His ideas were summed up in Certain Propositions, By which the Doctrin of the H. Trinity Is so Explain’d ... as to speak it not Contradictory to Natural Reason. Fowler declared that the name God is used in more senses than one in scripture; and that the Father was the only self-existent member of the Trinity (meaning that he was not begotten and did not proceed). The Son and the Holy Ghost are from the Father. It was therefore ‘a flat contradiction’ to say that the second and third persons are self-existent.25 But the Son and the Holy Ghost have a right to the name of God. They were not created by the Father; they emanated from him, as light emanates from the sun, and this emanation was eternal. Arians by contrast say that there was a time when the Word was not.26 And Socinians declare that the Word was created. His view, of divine emanations, was (Fowler declared) a very old view of the Trinity and one that has ‘fewest difficulties, and to be incomparably most agreeable to H. Scripture’.27 Proposition no. 23 declared that the

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unity of the Deity is, to all intents and purposes, asserted by us, since we cannot conceive of the First Original to be more than one. Fowler, with his Neoplatonic notion of ‘emanation’, attempted to confront a frequent failing of the Trinitarians: their attempt to have it both ways, that is, their aim to assert the unity and uniqueness of God the Father, a being with divine perfection and pre-eminence, and at the same time their stress on the necessity of placing the second and third persons of the Trinity alongside him as equal, and equally God. The argument seems to have been that only perfect beings could emanate from a perfect being – though the plural term ‘perfect beings’ appears to introduce a note of polytheism. Moreover the placing alongside of two other persons detracts from the uniqueness and perfection of the first person of the Trinity. Fowler’s explanation demands too that we accept the Neoplatonic idea of ‘emanation’: a serene and peaceful notion, richly and augustly elevated and quiet, but one losing favour amid the severe analytic and scientific temper of the late seventeenth century. In 1693, Wetenhall, earnest and compassionate two years earlier in his opposition to Sherlock, demonstrated again his mild and pacific temperament, despite the anger seen elsewhere in the hard-edged dispute. He published an Antapology of the Melancholy Stander-by in answer to ... an Apology for writing against the Socinians. (The word ‘antapology’ is a happy linguistic coinage.) The most telling idea in this pamphlet was the notion that mutual consciousness can infer only an unity of accord, not of substance or nature.28 The three members of the Trinity might (as Sherlock had argued) manifest mutual consciousness, but they were not thereby necessarily demonstrating unity of substance or nature, which was the central point at issue in the traditional Athanasian formulation of the Trinity. They could act the same, and know the same things; but that did not guarantee them ‘unity of substance’. To prove a unity between Father, Son and Holy Ghost a much harder and more thorough explanation of the nature of the Trinity was required, than that which yielded the concept of mutual consciousness. Sherlock had not provided any such explanation. Sherlock’s response to Wetenhall came in the following year: A Defence of the Dean in Answer to the Antapologist. It was mild-mannered, and acknowledged the skill of his opponent’s argumentation. In this, his second response to Wetenhall, Sherlock showed some tolerance and less choler. His major cavil with Wetenhall was that ‘He would have our Divines stop for Peace sake.’29 Sherlock also disliked the Stander-by’s call for a very broad latitude in faith: ‘such a loose and wild principle, as if duly adhered to, we must tolerate most, if not all Errors, schisms and vices

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that were ever heard of in the world’.30 Elsewhere, Sherlock wrote, ‘The antapologist disputes earnestly, subtilly and triumphantly, opens his whole armory of metaphysics, and because they are thin, airy weapons which do no great execution, he points them with wit and satyr, to make them pierce the deeper.’31 Later in 1694 Sherlock delivered a further defence of his opinions, this time against Robert South. Here he re-iterated his use of the terminology of feeling, in place of scholastic language, writing of ‘natural self-consciousness’, the ‘natural principle of mutual consciousness’, ‘self conscious sensation’, ‘self-conscious love and self-conscious complacency [in the sense of ‘tranquility’]’, ‘intellectual sensation’, ‘natural self-conscious sensation’, and the like, all terms designed to wrest the language used for understanding the Trinity away from the ‘terms of art’ which South had so strenuously supported, and was to uphold again in a book printed in the following year. He followed this reply with a cursory postscript against John Howe, in which he rather grandly indicated that it was beneath his dignity to respond to a dissenter. He tetchily declared, ‘I do not intend to examine this book, nor approve or disprove it’. However, he went on to frame a reply, nevertheless. Howe’s ideas on the Trinity he dismissed with summary scorn: ‘This is such a notion of the unity of the Godhead that neither the scriptures nor the ancient church knew anything of.’ The dissenting minister had misunderstood mutual consciousness: the notion ‘is not a mutual perspection, or mutual insight into one another, but a feeling each other in themselves, and if such an internal vital sensation be not an essential union, I believe no man can tell what it is’.32 It is hard not to feel some sympathy with Sherlock, who, for all his air of cloud-capped superiority, had, both in his defence against South’s uncouth Aristotelian language and in his haughty dismissal of Howe, placed the notion of feeling centrally in his theological understanding: thereby, as with Hume and causation, offering new language so as to question presuppositions and examine a fundamental issue in an entirely new light, seeing the relationship instead in terms of the feeling – the ‘intellectual self sensation’ – of the three persons. Radical and open disputes, expressed with scalding vitriol, were appearing among the Anglican clergy. Orthodox theologians were unable to agree on the nature of the point at issue as regards the Trinity, let alone offer an explanation. Ordinary English pew-people were left bewildered, and those with a penchant for disrespect took to satire. A lively ballad, mentioned above in the context of Thomas Burnet, and probably by William Pittis, gained currency in 1694; it was given the title The Battle Royal, and was sung to the tune of A Soldier and a Sailor (a

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raunchy, unbuttoned popular ballad). The dean referred to is Dr Sherlock; the prebendary – Bluff – Dr South. The Master of the Charter(house) is Burnet.33 A dean and a prebendary Had once a vagary And were at doubtful strife, sir, Who led the better life, sir And was the better man, And was the better man. The dean, he said, that truly Since Bluff was so unruly, He’d proved it to his face sir, That he had the most grace, sir, And so the fight began, &c. When Preb replied, like thunder, And roar’d out, ’twas no wonder, Since Gods the dean had Three sir, And more than Two than he, sir: For he had got but One, &c. Now, while these two were raging, And in dispute engaging, The Master of the Charter Said both had caught a Tartar For gods, sir, there were none, &c. That all the books of Moses Were nothing but supposes: That he deserved rebuke, sir, Who wrote the Pentateuch, sir, ’Twas nothing but a sham, &c. That as for Father Adam, With Mrs. Eve, his madam, And what the serpent spake, sir, ’Twas nothing but a joke, sir, And well-invented flam, &c. That in the Battle Royal, As none could take denial, The dame for which they strove, sir,

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Could neither of them love, sir, Since all had given offence, &c. She therefore, slyly waiting, Left all Three Fools a-prating; And being in a fright, sir, Religion took her flight, sir, And ne’er was heard of since, &c.

The verses have a point beyond wit and scorn: they indicate that the dispute between the two representatives of Anglicanism, Sherlock and South, about the nature of the Trinity, had led to a growing climate of puzzlement, edging into disbelief, among ordinary people. ‘Religion took her flight, sir’ not because the traditional Trinitarian faith upheld by the state was under siege from Socinians, deists or atheists. This was the view held by Nonjurors and other Tory upholders of the mystic bond between the ‘Divine Right’ Stuarts and the state, regretting the flight of James II, and is maintained, with some minor revisions, by their modern highTory counterparts. The radical theologians were seen as evil men who rocked and subverted the state by slyly inserting their wicked beliefs into the minds of the faithful. However, a greater reason for the decline of religion was that the two most formidable upholders of the idea of the Trinity within the Anglican Church had fallen out in a bitter and indeed rancid quarrel about the interpretation and meaning of the Holy Trinity. The Unitarians had remained on the sidelines. Their community, at this date, made up of devout men and women, who read the Bible carefully and believed it to be true, wanted to remain within a broad and accepting Anglican Church. The formation of a separate Unitarian church was still about 80 years away. The damage to the Anglican faith was being done by antipathies within the Anglican Trinitarian camp, not from an assault without by ‘Socinians and deists’. The Unitarians just looked on, while the Anglicans, all of whom identified themselves as Athanasian in their orthodox beliefs, tore each other apart. This is the point that should be held in focus today when assessing the state of society and religion in England at this time, rather than false and fantastic attacks on sincere religious minorities. Ordinary folk were growing disillusioned with the disputing clerical class. The Trinity has often been seen as a defining element of Christianity. If the Anglican clergy, with their authority and orthodox theology, could not agree on the nature of the Holy Three, but instead took to violent and abusive disagreement, what hope was there for the docile, and sometimes humbly interested, people who came to worship and listen on Sundays?

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The dispute created a space for rational scepticism. The clergy had shown themselves to be like the British Labour Party were to be over Militant in the 1980s, or the Tories over Europe in the 1990s: consumed in an internecine struggle, fighting over an issue of significance to themselves above all, while ordinary supporters looked on, keeping their counsel and hoping for better times and a better spirit. John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury, played a part in the events of 1693–94, which was a high point in the controversy. He was a peace-maker, a latitudinarian, with a cast of mind both rational and devout. His theology was Trinitarian, and not Sabellian or Unitarian. A cursory reading of his sermons demonstrates that. But his enemies raged at his ‘secret Socinianism’, for little apparent reason other than that he befriended some leading Unitarians, and enjoyed arguing with them. Maybe too they took exception to his firm stand against predestination, which he declared was doubly destructive of religion, in that it held that God ‘will so permit them [humanity] to sin as they cannot avoid it’, and that therefore predestination was ‘a course ... to make it [religion] hissed out of the world ... a perfect discharge from all the duties of morality ... the result of the antinomian doctrine, the most pernicious heresy’.34 At this time a number of the clerical class believed they had the predestined right to sail into heaven unopposed. It is possible too that a subtle theological shift that Tillotson proposed in the understanding of the nature of God led his opponents to attack him. In doing this he paralleled, though he did not actually follow, a theme of Socinian thought. Hitherto, according to a traditional view expressed by amongst others Thomas Aquinas, God’s nature had been seen as so entirely above human understanding, that the fact that he was one meant that at the same time he could be three. Tillotson saw God as more intelligible: that when someone says ‘God is good’, the meaning is conceptually close to the idea that John Doe is good. The Archbishop talked of God in terms of ‘perfections’, and these perfections were such that ordinary parishioners could follow them. Tillotson did not conceive of God as such an entirely remote figure, quite apart from our own understanding. Tillotson’s God was closer to a Deity that had made humankind in his own image, and loved his creation. In terms of goodness, according to Tillotson, God ‘is so much better than any father upon earth’. It was a matter of degree. This view was close to an important Socinian understanding put forward in a text by Johann Crell which, as a revised edition of another author’s work, appeared in Amsterdam in 1642, with the title De Vera Religione. ( John Locke owned a copy of this book.) Since this view of God made the Deity closer to his creation, it was, in the argument

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of Crell, not possible for God to be both one and three at the same time. God’s oneness was like human oneness, and could not stretch to a simultaneous threeness. Tillotson no doubt would have disagreed here, since several of his sermons are sincerely Trinitarian. But some of his theologically minded fellow clergy may have understood the point, and attacked him for it.35 Queen Mary had learnt of Firmin’s generosity towards the London poor, and had expressed her admiration of it; but she was distressed by his heterodoxy of belief, and begged Tillotson to set him, and other Unitarians, right.36 Tillotson in response had a volume of his sermons republished (Four Sermons on the Death of Christ), to strengthen the case for orthodox Trinitarianism. But owing to their subtlety and friendliness of tone, and their lack of high church or Calvinistic bad temper, the Unitarians, disregarding the criticisms aimed at themselves, rather cherished the books, as showing the spirit of an open-minded if critical friend. The Archbishop also made a memorable avowal in 1694, in writing to Gilbert Burnet on 23 October, after reading the latter’s Exposition on the 39 Articles. He praised Burnet’s work, though with a note of reserve, and added an outspoken assertion: ‘The account given of Athanasius’s creed seems to me no-wise satisfactory. I wish we were well rid of it.’37 Here the Archbishop of Canterbury was expressing a hope for the abandonment of the Athanasian Creed. This was new, and remarkable. Tillotson died in November 1694: a great loss to those who believed in the broadness, tolerance and learning of the Anglican Church, and to Unitarians in particular. His generous temperament and benevolent criticism were much missed. Tillotson’s sermons today make the reader at once aware of the care of expression and theological orthodoxy of them. (They were also held to be masterpieces of religious expression in his day, an opinion which modern criticism does not seem to have upheld.) It is curious then to observe the malice and spite which was addressed to the Archbishop by the highchurch Nonjuror faction, exemplified above all by the scheming intolerance of Charles Leslie, and indeed by those of a more modern vintage. Stephen Nye returned to the controversy to reflect again on the differing explanations of the Trinity proposed by the orthodox. In an essay of 1694 (printed in a collection of 1695), which was confusingly given almost the same title as his essay of the year before, Considerations on the Explications of the Doctrine of the Trinity, he looked at the views expressed by leading Anglican bishops on the subject. The essay is dedicated to Henry Hedworth, the discreet and self-effacing Huntingdon Unitarian who had known John Bidle. Those examined were by John Tillotson,

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alive still at the time of writing, and by Edward Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, memorable both for his conciliatory Irenicon of 1659 and for his lengthy dispute with John Locke on the nature of substance. Nye also considered a text by Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury, and the Certain Propositions of Edward Fowler, late Bishop of Gloucester. John Howe’s Calm and Sober Enquiry was also given a close look, as was a response, probably by Sherlock, to South’s rebuttal of Sherlock, entitled The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity placed in its due light.38 Stillingfleet had scrutinized the place of reason in faith, in a sermon of 7 April 1691. He had made three points: that God may require us to believe what we cannot understand; that those who reject the idea of mysteries in faith create greater mysteries for themselves; and that the traditional Christian notion of salvation is more beneficial to mankind than that taught by the Socinians/Unitarians. Nye’s response was that the first point is true but irrelevant, the second is relevant but not true, and that the third is neither true nor relevant. On the first he declared that ‘all the chymists and the whole Royal Society are not able to make a barly corn, or a grain of wheat.39 Nye continued: He utterly mistakes, in thinking that we deny the articles of the New Christianity, or Athanasian Religion, because they are mysteries, or because we do not comprehend them; we deny ’em, because we do comprehend them; we have a clear and distinct perception, that they are not mysteries, but contradictions, impossibilities, and pure non-sense.40

Here Nye was re-affirming Locke’s notion of the basis of knowledge: ideas which are ‘clear and distinct’ – words, used also in his Letter of Resolution of three years earlier, which are directly quoted from Locke’s Essay. Unitarians, Nye declared, were happy to acknowledge some mysteries, such as the resurrection. What they could not take was the non-sense, meaning the inherent contradictoriness, of the Trinity. Nye’s focus on the language of the Trinity harked back to Bidle’s attack, made in 1648, on ‘trinunities, coessentialities, modalities, eternal generations, eternal processions, incarnations, hypostatical unions, and the like monstrous terms, fitter for conjurers than Christians’,41 and to the ‘philosophical gibberish’ of the terms essence, personality and consubstantiality referred to in an anonymous pamphlet examining the word ‘mystery’ of 1691.42 Meaningless words denote a null class, the writers seem to be saying. They present us not with false statements but with void. They are mere ‘forms of speech’, as Bidle put it in the Preface to his Twofold Catechism, ‘not owned’ by the Bible, and neither were the concepts contained in them.43 It was time to clear away linguistic refuse. The Trinity cannot ever be shown to be either

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true or false, since it is non-sense, owing to a contradiction inherent in it in its Athanasian version. This is not so with the resurrection, and was not considered so of miracles, although a generation or so later David Hume would seek to posit the inherent contradictoriness of miraculous events. Some ambiguity remains in the Unitarians’ attitude to ‘mystery’. A few of the earlier Socinians were inclined to reject the mysterious element in religious faith altogether, and say that mystery was inserted into a plain and straightforward set of beliefs with the intention of cowing the public before the authority of the priests: of sowing priestcraft. But at the same time, if the gospel narratives are accepted as true, miracles, Jesus’ transfiguration and resurrection are mysterious events, inaccessible to the common laws of cause and effect. A point that the early Socinians made was that in the New Testament the word ‘mystery’ (musterion) denoted something that had not yet been revealed. It did not denote something inherently unrevealable. ‘Behold, I tell you a mystery’ is St Paul’s way of saying that these things will be made clear and come to pass at some future date. A mystery to him was a temporary lack of open knowledge.44 Nevertheless, the Christian religion was in part about mysterious events, although few if any of them were so elusively enigmatical as the Trinity. Nye pursues the notion by maintaining that there is a distinction between, on the one hand, mysteries, and on the other imposture and contradiction. Tillotson, he declares, has been for the most part careful to make the distinction; and the point was echoed in the earlier Unitarian tracts. Unitarians (he declares) accept as legitimate belief in some mysteries, but cannot give credence to errors and contradictions. What is also interesting, in view of the negative sentiments addressed to Tillotson, and the accusations of secret Socinianism aimed at him by the stormy high-churchmen, is the care that Nye takes in this pamphlet to attack the views laid out in Four Sermons on the Death of Christ, 1693. Nye points out that Tillotson was a Real Trinitarian: that is, that he considered the persons of the Trinity as real persons, and not, in the manner of nominalists, as mere names for the aspects of God.45 In the penetrating and careful argument which Nye mounts against Tillotson, he arms himself with the texts of the Church fathers.46 The criticism of Tillotson’s Four Sermons continues thus for 25 close-packed pages. That the Archbishop should be so criticized by the leading English Unitarian thinker of the day shows the folly of making him out to be Socinianism’s hidden hand.

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An Injunction and an Act

I

n 1694 the principal of Jesus College, Oxford, launched the first of four attacks on Socinianism. His name was Jonathan Edwards – not to be confused with the American Puritan and predestinarian of the following century, or John Edwards, John Locke’s ill-tempered antagonist. No one took much notice of the work, which tended to the ponderous and wordy, lacking the originality, snap and fire seen elsewhere.1 Edwards claimed that Socinus had been not so much a Christian heretic as the founder of a new religion, like Muhammad.2 He overlooked Socinus’ Biblical devoutness and intellectual rigour, and proclaimed that his theology was a composition of the errors of Arius, Photinus, Pelagius, ‘&c.’. The book is somewhat desultory. The quadriform work was not completed until 1703, by which time the Trinitarian controversy had ended – at least in its Unitarian phase. It is, however, valuable for the texts quoted in its footnotes. Perhaps it is worth looking at the relationship at this date between Islam and Unitarianism. Islam had received a glance from Arthur Bury, who had noted its theoretical simplicity when placed alongside the complexity of Christianity’s Trinitarian and Christological disputed dogmas. In the actual Unitarian texts, one finds that anti-Trinitarians did not hold to a Muslim theology, in so far as they accepted the idea that Jesus was the son of God, whereas a central Islamic belief is that ‘God has no son’. Socinus himself was clear on this point. But they acknowledged the toleration of Christian communities found within Islamic societies. In the culture wars of the early seventeenth century, a dispute had arisen on the topic of whether Islam was a tyrannical unified threatening ‘bloc’, a malevolent ‘them’; or an empire where a non-Muslim who acted with circumspection could find within that society toleration and survival. This dispute was signified by the differing views of on the one hand Richard Knolles, whose Generall Historie of the Turkes of 1603 posited the idea of Islam as a threatening unitary bloc, and on the other George Sandys, whose Relation of 1616 found space to praise the Islamic (specifically, the

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Ottoman) empire for its toleration.3 (The topic of Islamic Andalusia seems not to have arisen at this time.) The Unitarians were unhesitatingly with the second group, partly because their theology was closer to Islam (while still retaining a significant distance) than to Christianity – ‘Athanasianism’ – as it had developed doctrinally in late antiquity, a closeness which had been demonstrated in the Lambeth Palace meeting of 1682; but also because their people in Transylvania were better treated under the vague suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire than under the coercive Catholicism of the Habsburgs, who by 1700 were about to make their final push into the land, a deed of destructive violence which has been, with ideological blindness, hailed in modern times as a ‘victory for Christendom’ (e.g. by the Catholic apologist Peter Partner4) but which brought about the violent end of Unitarian Christian communities and their alert, literate culture of thinking for themselves, and an end to the freedom of faith and opinion found hitherto in Transylvania. In late 1694 Matthew Tindal, also, like Edwards, from Oxford, entered the pamphletary war. The son of a clergyman, Tindal’s faith sought wider horizons than the parochialness of establishment Anglicanism. He had briefly been a Roman Catholic in the 1680s, when under James II Catholicism had been fashionable and lucrative; but he found that faith unsustainable in the bracing, combative era of the 1690s, especially in the metropolitan circles in which he briefly moved. Even before he gained a fellowship at Oxford, his beliefs had wandered off beyond Unitarianism. He was a deist – though he called himself a Christian deist – holding that all established religions preached approximately the same doctrine, which was ‘the religion of nature’: a faith which decreed that human beings need only be well-behaved, tolerant, kindly, honest and open in their dealings one with another. Christianity, he believed, was ‘the re-publication of the religion of nature’. His 1730 book Christianity as Old as the Creation took this stance, showing, with many quotations, the similarity between the tenets of Christianity and other faiths. Its title was taken from a sermon of Bishop Thomas Sherlock (son of William), who had likewise declared that the Gospels were a republication of the law of nature. The deists’ notion of God was not one of an interventionist, loving God, personally involved with all his creatures at all time. That conception was rejected as infantile, and at odds with experience and the observed actual nature and course of the world. Rather, the deity was seen as the prime starter, the first cause, who had lit the spark for creation and then left it to its own devices. God did not meddle in the life of his creatures, the deists held, and he had had no hand in history. This view appeared eminently reasonable to Tindal, a law fellow of All Souls College.

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His two pamphlets of 1694 and 1695 show him seriously, if provocatively, dealing with the issues of the Trinity and the large array of explanations put forth on its behalf, all of which were ranged against the unitary notion upheld by Bidle, Nye and Firmin. Tindal’s first contribution to the debate, written just after Sherlock, Wallis, South and Fowler had all expressed differing ideas, was published by Firmin in the familiar format of a double-column small quarto pamphlet. His challenge, aimed directly at the higher intellects of the day, appeared in the form of a letter to the clergy of both universities. Tindal saw the importance of what was for most people at stake: that humanity’s future state, in heaven or hell, was dependent on belief in a doctrine – the Trinity – to whose meaning its supporters could not give assent. It could be fatal for all eternity to pay homage to the wrong sort of Trinity. He scrutinized the central issue: What (in the context of divinity) was a person? Until we know what a person is, we cannot tell what the three are. If someone has to believe something, he or she must first know what it is, otherwise that individual is driven to believe ‘he knows not what’ (an echo of Locke’s phrase); and this is ‘the worst of all idolatries’.5 The problem with the Trinity was that none of its upholders knew its make up: they could not decide whether it was, a ‘Trinity of minds, essences, somewhats, attributes, faculties, modes, external denominations, &c that they must adore.’6 The author also noted the infinite mathematical series implicit in the idea of the Athanasian Trinity. He says, If God be three Persons, and each Person is God, there must be nine Persons, because each single Person must be three Persons, otherwise he could not be God, who is three Persons; yet all these Persons noways differ from one Person, one Person is one God, and the several Persons are but the self-same God, and can be no more distinguished from one Person, than the self-same God can be distinguished from himself, because the several Persons, and the single Person and God, are the self-same Being.

The nine persons would, according to Athanasius’ formulation, each equally be God, divisible into yet more persons; so we would have 81 persons, who would each be God; and so on ad infinitum.7 The serial implications of the Trinity, an essence made up of three infinite hypostases, had already been noted by William Penn in 1668. The series, a ‘vicious’ series, derives from the ambiguity of the term ‘person’. Tindal pursues the idea,8 and concludes his criticism by asking, ‘Is it not a contradiction to suppose three infinites of the same sort, because it is supposing infinite addition to infinite? If it is absurd to suppose more than one infinite space, why

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is it not as absurd to suppose more than one infinite person?’9 Tindal is in effect saying: try doubling the number of digits following the decimal point of π. Tindal sums up the use of the term person as a ‘senseless evasion’. We should face it, he is saying, ‘one God and one God and one God, none of which are the other, are three gods’.10 Athanasius had been, as we say, trying to have his cake and eat it: upholding the unity of God, yet at the same time accepting the entire ab initio divinity of Jesus and the Holy Ghost. This was possible in the Neoplatonic world, where logical thought, and the avoidance of contradiction, were unimportant; but it was not possible according to the coherent and structured logic of Aristotle and his modern followers, or the rules and manners of ordinary speech. If fancy, or the mellifluous rhetoric of Neoplatonism, is accepted into logical discourse, any assertion, however exotic and outlandish, is allowable and possible, if sweetly expressed. Colour and mood, rather than logic and rigour, are the aims of later Platonism. Tindal also drew attention to the distinction between real and nominal Trinitarians: that is, between those who believe in the Trinity as an objective reality, and hold that there really are three persons in one undivided substance (and condemn all those who do not so believe), and those nominal Trinitarians who believe in the Trinity because to speak thus is the easiest way to manage a complex issue in Christian theology; here the Trinity is seen as a metaphorical way of speaking about the relationship between Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but not actually describing (or connoting) an actual situation in the Godhead.11 Tindal continues his line of argument by posing the question: if the three persons share the same substance, how can it be that the one substance (meaning the divine substance of the Trinity) is at the same time unbegotten (in the case of the Father), begotten (in the case of the Son) and proceeding (in the case of the Holy Spirit). Surely one substance should have one origin?12 This was an objection similar to that made by the Arians (see above, p. 41). Robert South was also in Tindal’s sights. South had explained the three persons as modes – that is, aspects of beings which can be described in ordinary language, like the use of the word ‘posture’ in regard of a human being. But, asks Tindal, what are three modes of the same sort (as members of the Trinity must necessarily be)? (Tindal’s line of argument focuses on the question: How can a unitary God manifest himself in ways which relate essentially to human activity? The Father and the Son do not in the New Testament always see eye to eye. How can they be the same substance?) The Nicene view of the Trinity, he declared, posited three gods: it was tritheist. The Arians had upheld the unity of God. So,

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says Tindal, the notion that one God can have three modes or manners is ‘a piece of jargonry that cannot be apprehended, and consequently not believed’. And each person, if divine, must have all the modes, that is, be Father, Son and Holy Ghost at the same time.13 John Wallis, by contrast, according to Tindal had declared that the three persons were merely ‘external denominations of God.14 Tindal dismissed his view as Sabellianism – that is, light Trinitarianism, in which God remains a unity, appearing in different aspects. In this view he echoed Nye in his text of two years earlier; Wallis was merely enumerating the attributes of God, not making space for the reversionary issue – that each of the three persons can instantaneously revert to being fully God – which was central to the Athanasian Trinity. Wallis had after all made a serious error in his parallel of the dimensions of a cube. Tindal went on to offer a criticism of Howe and his Certain Propositions,15 and in a critique of Sherlock’s defence of his thesis against South, printed earlier the same year, the same author again found contradictions. Sherlock had argued that the Father had by eternal generation communicated his essence to the Son and that this essence was by eternal procession communicated by the Father and the Son to the Spirit. But, asked Tindal, was it in each case the whole essence of the Father and of the Son? If it was, then there were two essences, one of the Father and one of the Son. If it was only part of the Father’s essence, then the divine essence was divisible.16 Sherlock was essentially a tritheist, and no amount of metaphysical bluster could cover up the point. His Trinity was made up of entities as distinguishable as Jupiter was from Neptune or Pluto.17 ‘In scripture God the Father is as much distinguishable from the Son, as two men or angels can be; and mankind that are incapable of apprehending these metaphysical niceties and subtle distinctions, cannot but conceive them so.’18 Oxford was the scene of a further episode of Trinitarian strife. In 1695 Joseph Bingham, aged just 27, held the post of tutor at University College, Oxford. He was later to become famous for an authoritative ten-volume work, The Antiquities of the Christian Church (1708–22). On the Feast of St Simon and St Jude (28 October), he preached a sermon in the university church, St Mary’s, on the nature of the Trinity. His understanding of the Holy Triad corresponded largely to that of Dean Sherlock: that there were ‘three infinite distinct minds and substances in the Trinity’; and also that the three persons in the Trinity were ‘three distinct minds or substances’.19 This did not escape the attention of Dr Robert South, whose spirit, turbulent in Islip, thereupon blew a baleful tempest into the centre of Oxford. That divine’s committed supporters in the university city were outraged

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at the appearance of Sherlockian sentiments within the city’s devout and orderly precincts. A decree was procured in the Hebdomadal Council, judging, declaring and determining ‘the aforesaid words to be false, impious and heretical; disagreeing with and contrary to the doctrine of the Catholic Church, and especially to the doctrine of the Church of England publicly received’. Bingham’s supporters responded in a moderate tone by saying that what the heads of Oxford had condemned as heretical and impious, was entirely orthodox: the decree was an attack on the Nicene faith and the Church of England; and it exposed both to the scorn and triumph of the Socinians.20 To South’s supporters a Socinian triumph was a lesser matter than the elimination of all taint of Sherlockism. Further ill-focused Oxford complaints accused Bingham of Arianism, Tritheism and of following the heresy of Valentine Gentile, the sixteenth-century Italian opponent of Calvin, who had viewed Calvin’s understanding of the Trinity as implying a Quaternity, an understanding for which he was beheaded in 1566 by Haller of Berne.21 (South had recently translated a life of Gentile.) Bingham was compelled to quit his Oxford college, blasted out by the Islip whirlwind. However, Dr John Radcliffe (famed for the Library) found him a living at Headbourn-Worthy, conveniently near Winchester, where he pursued archival researches untroubled by heresyhunters. Here, at a sufficient distance from the wrath of Islip, he preached a sermon very similar in content to that heard in Oxford; it gave, we are told, much satisfaction. William Sherlock offered A Modest Examination of the Late Oxford Decree ... in 1696. The dean noted that the decree pronounced that the sermon ‘gave just occasion of Offence to many’. He suspected the activity of a ‘warm zealot’. Sherlock further attacked South’s views as ‘downright Sabellianism’, which ‘destroys as real a substantial Trinity, which is essential to the Christian faith as the Unity of the Godhead is’.22 In Oxford the expulsion of Bingham appears to have achieved what its promoters desired. It signalled a victory for Robert South. The effects of the Oxford decree have been described as ‘perfectly electrical’.23 Support fell away from Dean Sherlock; his authority seemed no longer mighty and oracular; his theology, despite all his pamphleteering, was seen as a step away from heresy.24 For all the activity of his pen, power was slipping away from him in the Trinitarian controversy. The publication of a pamphlet with the title A Designed End to the Socinian Controversy in early 1695, with John Smith, clockmaker, named as the author, caused surprise. In the first place, the author, though clearly Unitarian and not seeking any kind of compromise or middle way in the war of pamphlets, had actually named himself, whereas other writers

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supporting the Unitarian cause had, except for William Freke, remained anonymous, for the good reason that they might fall foul of the censorship, and suffer accordingly. (Censorship was abolished in 1695, but not until after the appearance of Smith’s tract.) It was puzzling too that The Designed End had not been printed in any of the volumes of Unitarian tracts. Was the name ‘John Smith’ a pseudonym, a teasing banality, a coded reference for everyman? And why ‘clockmaker’? This was a fairly humble trade in the seventeenth century. Might it stand in contrast to the clergy and philosophers who had so far participated in the controversy? However, in point of fact, John Smith did exist, and he was a genuine horologist, publishing significant books on his craft. He is also named as a beneficiary of the Unitarian Henry Hedworth’s will. His arguments in favour of the Unitarian cause were as persuasive as any: The Unitarian faith, which denies a trinity of persons in the Godhead, is much to be preferred since it is not perplexed with such contradictions to human understanding, but depends on more plain and noble evidences, and does also in all respects whatsoever effectually secure a good life; which, when all is done, is the very soul and life of religion, and will stand by a man when hypostatical unions, and mutual consciousness and Somewhats will prove but poor things to depend on for salvation.25

The tone, with its dismissal of the jargon of theology, was such as to rouse the Anglican orthodox, who expressed anger at it for being contrary to the 39 Articles. The author had not feared to name himself, and so had made himself liable to prosecution. He was also assailed by the orthodox: Francis Gregory, rector of Hambledon, attacked what he saw as Smith’s blasphemous falsehoods, and dismissed him as an illiterate mechanic.26 A case was prepared against him. The edition was burnt, and the author was forced to sign a grovelling recantation.27 Those who had written the texts printed in the Unitarian Tracts had been fortunate to have a wise editor who had protected their anonymity. England was not yet tolerant. Robert South returned to the fray in 1695 with another bruising assault on William Sherlock, Tritheism Charged upon Dr Sherlock’s New Notion of the Trinity ... The rector of Islip reasserted in forceful language the point made by others, that Sherlock’s notion of three equal spirits united by mutual consciousness was in effect a proposal that the Holy Three were three gods. He continued to insist that the old scholastic words – nature, essence, substance, subsistence suppositum, person, hypostasis and relation – were not only adequate, but necessary for the explanation of the Trinity, and he deplored the psychologizing terminology introduced by Sherlock,

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which he saw as having originated with Descartes and his Cogito, which saw a substitution of mental act for argument. Language was important for Robert South, in his insistence on the Aristotelian terminology, as it had been in a complementary manner for John Bidle, who had assaulted the talk of coessentialities, consubstantiality, eternal processions and the like. Taking hold of language continued to be a central part of the dispute. Ever since St John of Damascus had invented the frequently debated word perichoresis, or circumincession, language had, in the context of the Trinity, been more than flotsam on a sea of thought; it had been an armament, a system of both attack and defence, with an ability to skew perspective like that seen today in the use of the words ‘security’, ‘terror’, and ‘freedom’ in the mouths of contemporary politicians. It was an embodied capacity; a system of enchantment; something that created ideas and concepts, as much as expressing them. South managed too to smuggle in a dart of mockery against Sherlock for his allegedly unhappy marriage, recalling the marital relations in antiquity between Socrates and Xanthippe. In a wicked aside, he wondered, ‘Suppose then say I that Socrates and Xantippe should change bodies too, what would be the effect and consequence of such a change?’ and concluded that the only difference was that ‘she would have more rights to wear the breeches than she had before’. The philosophical question is of continuing moment – does it make sense to speak of two people exchanging bodies? – but in this context it could be read as referring to the dominant position of Mrs Sherlock’s presence in the councils of the dean.28 Much of the complex argument revolved around the discussion of whether the human soul was a person, and whether the body, as part of the human being, also made up an integral, or essential, part of the person. South stuck firmly to his original views and tough language. He shed no real light on the term person, which continued to be perplexing, as it does to this day.

The Royal Injunction After the damage to Anglicanism caused principally by the incendiary dispute between the two divines, Sherlock and South, both of whom were allegedly on the same side in their support for the traditional belief in three persons and one God, faith had developed a quality of uncertainty. Trinitarian belief was an embedded element of traditional Anglicanism – although Anglicans did not then and do not now much care for the intricacies of the theory of the Trinity to be spelt out, or for punishment

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to be demanded for those who denied it. The Anglican Church faced danger, through internal strife and ridicule. Following the death of Tillotson, Thomas Tenison was confirmed as Archbishop of Canterbury in January 1695, and enthroned in May. He agreed to frame a Royal proclamation addressed to all bishops and archbishops, to be published in all dioceses and enforced by the bishops. Its purpose was to knock clerical heads together to preserve the peace of the Church. This proclamation, usually known as the Royal Injunction, but published as Directions to the Archbishops and Bishops for the Preserving of unity in the Church ... concerning the Holy Trinity, was issued on 3 February 1696 (1695 old style), and called on all clergy in the first place to confine talk of the Trinity to scripture, the three creeds and the 39 Articles; secondly, carefully to avoid all new terms and confine themselves to such ways of expression as have been commonly used in the Church; thirdly, to observe the 53rd canon of the Church which forbade public opposition between preachers, and that above all things to abstain from bitter invectives and scurrilous language against all persons whatsoever;29 fourthly, it called on the clerical authorities to make sure that the foregoing directions were also observed by those who write anything concerning the said doctrine. Finally, if anyone ‘not of the clergy presumed to talk and dispute ... also to write and publish books and pamphlets concerning the divine substance, or essence, or nature’, the bishops were called on to ‘make use of your authority according to law for the repressing and restraining of such exorbitant practices’.30 This decree was a re-assertion of the central but low-key position of the Trinity within Anglican teaching. The second paragraph constituted a clear reproof of Sherlock; but in the third the Archbishop did not scruple to criticize South for his angry language. The Directions were an attempt to unify the Anglican Church doctrinally, without going into detail about meaning. The Royal Injunction was doctrinaire without doctrine. There was something paradoxical about its promulgation. Issues of conscience, private belief, sincerity, or the need for a broad Church were laid to one side. King William, acting in concert with Thomas Tenison, Archbishop of Canterbury, was asserting the doctrine not just of the established Church but of the dissenters as well (‘no preacher whatsoever, in his sermon or lecture should presume to deliver any other doctrine...’). Here, it could be argued, the King, whose arrival had freed the lives and consciences of Englishmen from despotism, and from what was then known as popery, was enforcing one single rigid form of expression concerning the Trinity. Moreover, the learned clerics of the established party could not agree precisely on the nature of the mystery: Sherlock was saying one thing and South another. Was his majesty leaning on

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Tenison? William was averse to the theological vitriol of squabbling and point-scoring. One senses that he just wanted them all to shut up. The Whiggish archbishop, bright but lacking in common sense, sought to promote peace by bringing into play again the old weapon of authority over conscience, which the Glorious Revolution had done away with. William had arrived in England to promote a new millennium of civil and religious liberty. Now, under pressure from the bitterness of the debate, the broad-church archbishop handed him a gift, not a cross of faith but a sword of authority.31 This was hardly the spirit of 1688. The Royal Injunction was, however, mild in comparison with the law which was passed two years later. * * * In a Discourse concerning Natural and Revealed Religion, printed in 1696, Stephen Nye, probably influenced by the Royal Injunction, abandoned the austere theoretical uplands of Trinitarian theology, and returned to a subject close to the heart of the Unitarian outlook: liberty of conscience in matters of religion, which was now severely compromised by the decree of February of that year. He focused on sincerity. ‘Have all,’ he asked rhetorically, a natural right to be indulged in their opinions, concerning the nature, the will and the worship of God; or may they be prescribed to and limited by the publick, or by parents, masters or others having civil authority over them? ... in very deed tis as much to ask, whether a man should be allowed to be sincere; whether we ought to constrain him to believe concerning, and demean himself towards, almighty God, honestly, or hypocritically and wickedly. If it be impious in the person himself to chuse or profess a religion which his mind tells him is false, and contrary to the will and good liking of God; can it be less impious in me, to constrain this person, by penalties and terrors to affront and disobey God? Or do I not make him disobey and affront God, if I awe him to profess and act contrary to what he is perswaded is God’s will and nature? If sincerity be a duty, nay the chiefest of all in matters of religion, then I force another to sin, nay to the greatest of sins, if I constrain or awe him to act against conscience; but can a man justify his forcing, or awing another to sin?32

This was an admirable summary of the case for freedom of conscience, unwelcome both to the framers of the Royal Injunction, as well as to high-churchmen and Nonjurors, who always like the smack of firm belief. Compelle intrare – compel them to come in (Luke xiv, 23) – was new for

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the liberators and Whigs, though natural for high Tories, as it had been, if more emphatically, for inquisitors and witch-burners. The Nonjuror traditionalist Trinitarians for their part remained active and voluble. There appeared, also in 1696, a pamphlet directly charging the late archbishop of Canterbury, the widely admired John Tillotson, with Socinianism. The author’s name was given as Alexander Munro, and the place of publication as Edinburgh. Alexander Munro (or Monro) was a former Principal of Edinburgh University. Tillotson’s sermons, argued the author, are the genuine effects of Hobbism, which loosens the notions of religion, takes from it all that is spiritual, ridicules whatever is called supernatural; it reduces God to matter, and religion to nature. In this school Dr T. has these many years held the first form, and now diffuses his poison from a high station ... His politics are Leviathan, and his religion is Latitudinarian, which is none ... He is own’d by the Atheistical wits of all England as their true primate and apostle. He leads them not only the length of Socinianism ... but to call into question all revelation, to turn Genesis &c into a mere romance.33

When the matter came to Munro’s attention, he wrote indignantly to the Hon. Sir Robert Howard, author of a History of Religion (1694) – a book which leant towards deism34 – disowning the pamphlet entirely and affirming that he had had no knowledge of it until a copy was placed in his hand. It did not take long for the real identity of the author to be revealed: it was the Rev. Charles Leslie, the able if unscrupulous Nonjuror polemicist, a fierce Irish Protestant and rigorous upholder of traditional Trinitarian Christianity; theologically a first cousin to Robert South, politically a follower of Sir Robert Filmer, whose book Patriarcha had put the case for the divine origin of civil government, and for whom the revolution of 1688 would have appeared as near-Satanic. Birch, the biographer of Tillotson, describes Leslie as ‘a man of learning and some wit, but accompanied by a vein of scurrility ... his writings disgustful’.35 Leslie had deployed a full armoury of rhetoric against the late archbishop; he upbraided him for not using the word ‘consubstantial’, as though the actual verbal form were a kind of password to orthodoxy. He is also condemned for using the word ‘person’ grudgingly and slightly – that is, unwillingly. Leslie also made an issue of Tillotson’s interpretation of Paul’s saying (Phillippians ii, 6) that Jesus ‘being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God’. This is a rather obscure phrase, found also in Plutarch; Tillotson’s interpretation was soundly based, being backed up by Grotius and Henry Hammond. Altogether

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Charles Leslie gives the appearance of being a high-church, rigorous fusspot, with too much time on his hands. When he accused the late archbishop of advancing ‘a Barbarous, Absurd and Blasphemous Notion of the Christian Religion’, one is driven to revisit Tillotson’s sermons and to question Leslie’s sanity. Further accusations are heaped on Tillotson: that he denied Christ’s satisfaction, was a secret Socinian, that he undermined the unity of God, and, besides being a Hobbist, deserved to be classed with the mocking deist Charles Blount. Leslie was not the last to give the impression of having been lured into the antechambers of madness by his own rigorous orthodoxy, but he stands as a warning – although he did gather up his wits enough to write in 1708 a series of four Dialogues Against the Socinians, in which he deployed careful arguments. He it was who first revealed to the public the fact that the Unitarians had approached the Moroccan ambassador in 1682, printing their manifesto in full as a preface to the Dialogues.36

Locke and John Edwards John Locke, the most distinguished English philosopher of his day, was also drawn into the conflict. On two issues Locke, who hated controversy but was always prepared to defend his own position with depth and thoroughness, was attacked. In the first place, his book The Reasonableness of Christianity of 1695 was subjected to a venomous attack by John Edwards, the son of Thomas Edwards, the stringent and severe Puritan author of Gangraena, a headlong assault on variety in religious belief. The son inherited the narrow-minded, persecutory and propagandist skills of the father. Edwards junior was a fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, until he proved himself so unpopular owing to his extreme Calvinism that he was forced to resign his fellowship.37 Locke’s Reasonableness, if read today, appears a devout and sincere account of the Christian message, built around the central idea that Jesus was the Messiah, with all that follows from that notion. The title seems to echo Henry Hammond’s Of the Reasonableness of Christian Religion of 1650 – note Hammond’s lack of a second definite article – and Hammond had been one of Falkland’s guests at Great Tew; so one can make a link from Falkland to Locke. The Bible Locke held to be axiomatically true, but it was nevertheless a book that should be looked at critically, like any other book, and learnt from. It was ‘a collection of writings designed by God ... to be understood in the plain direct meaning of words and phrases ... without such learned, artificial and forced senses as are sought out and put upon them in most of

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the systems of divinity’. There was no original sin to be exorcised. So why had Christ appeared? ‘To restore all mankind to life.’ Sin led to death, not endless torment in hell.38 The author paid no attention to creeds and the dogmas established by the Church fathers. Locke is untainted by St Augustine. One of the appealing qualities of the text is that it is exploratory and personal, not authoritarian or apologetic. Before writing The Reasonableness, Locke had made a careful study of the scriptures, especially the Gospels, and also read the writings of Reformation leaders. To his friend Limborch he wrote: I resorted to Calvin, Turretine [Francis Turrettini, a Calvinist with a mind lignified by dogma] and others, by whom, I am compelled to confess, I found the argument so managed, that I could not possibly receive the doctrines that they would inculcate. They appeared so different from the sense and simplicity of the Gospel, that I have not been able to comprehend their writings, nor indeed, can I in any way reconcile them to the sacred code.39

At once the younger Edwards attacked Locke’s book, in Some Thoughts Concerning the Several Causes and Occasions of Atheism ... The author lashed out, delivering words with the pungent pugnacity of a street-fighting pamphleteer: Locke was a ‘guilty man’, an ‘upstart Racovian,’ a ‘flourishing scribbler’, ‘our good Ottoman writer’ – note the attempt to characterize Locke as Muslim and Turkish, alien, other, belonging to ‘them’ not ‘us’ – ‘this inferior inquisitor’, an ‘egregious whiffler’, ‘the criminal’, ‘this judicious casuist’, a ‘stubborn dissembler’.40 Edwards’ reptilian rhetoric was driven by only a few matters of substance: on examination these amounted to the points that Locke had left out, such as any reference to the Trinity, the atonement, and the doctrine of Christ’s satisfaction (this was not altogether correct, since Locke was orthodox on satisfaction; it was just that he tried to keep theological jargon out, and did not call it by that name);41 and by implication that Locke’s book was not driven by any doomy sense of original sin, racking guilt, and fear of hell, all central for Calvinists. Locke refused to believe an important Augustinian idea that Calvin had derived from that saint (in City of God): the rightness of the notion that eternal punishment was deserved for the majority of humankind on account of the sin of Adam, the first man. Locke wondered: had all members of the human race authorized Adam to act on their behalf? Rather, it was Calvinism that had corrupted Christianity. At the same time, Locke did not take the easy option of upholding the view that Jesus Christ had restored the bland if amiable vaguenesses of natural religion, or deism.42 Indeed he opposed them; his book seems to have had in its sights Lord Herbert of Cherbury’s De Veritate. Herbert

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had argued for the presence of innate ideas in the human mind, thereby opposing Locke’s central notion in the Essay. He also held that there was no need for redemption. If there was one topic that showed Locke still held to religious orthodoxy, it was this opposition to Herbert.43 Nor was his text in any critical sense Socinian, though it was at that time, and has been since, accused of Socinianism. The Reasonableness could not be put alongside anything by Socinus, or Socinian writers such as Stegmann, Crell, Wolzogen or Schlichting, all of whom offered new interpretations, as opposed to just leaving out the parts that had been added on, and that had been formalized as ‘Church tradition’. The author resisted the characterization, correctly. His text is not informed either with the elegant if passionate Italian humanism of the first Socinians, or with the elevation of reason of their second generation. The Reasonableness is written in a spirit of personal enquiring devotion. It is a book which is serious in a typically English manner. The allegation of Socinianism tells us more about Locke’s accusers than about the author. Those who at that time called it ‘Socinian’ stressed the creeds rather than the Gospels, and focused on the dogmas – all of them questionable – of orthodox Christianity (original sin, atonement, justification) rather than the spirit of the Gospels. They preferred the rigid formalism of dogmatics and punishment to the quest for the inner meaning and spirit. Similarly, in our own day the decriers of Locke criticize him from the standpoint of the social and constitutional aspects of Anglicanism rather than the believed and personal aspects of faith. (Theirs is the secular and even atheistical view, disguised as devout, that religion is primarily a social or even political glue, a department of state, something exterior and displayed, with a task of upholding a functioning society. It is seen by them as acting in the manner of a never-ending state opening of Parliament or an eternal royal wedding, rather than as something personally and intimately believed by individual people.) Locke had read the Gospels, and decided to abide by them; he dismissed any sectarian label, preferring to be called just a Christian. Reason for Locke entered the equation purely as the arbiter of what was or was not revelation.44 Locke answered Edwards’ volatile and colourful accusations with two Vindications. This was the custom of the time, though to us it is hard to see why the philosopher needed to do so, since, in contrast to the views of the careful and humane author of The Reasonableness, a man who looked outward to the world and the heavens, the Puritan’s curmudgeonly, cussed and combustible sentiments answered themselves. Locke’s personality, and view of the world, have been described as showing two sides. One was his personal piety, and reverence for the

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scriptures, and belief in Jesus Christ. The other was his critical and rational empirical view, given strength by his dislike, while an undergraduate at Christ Church, for the arid technique of medieval disputation practised then at the university, and for the ‘unintelligible way of talking’ of Oxford scholastics.45 As if to challenge this method, Locke had befriended a group of young men who first practised the experimental method.46 He found, in constructing a view of the world, that the methods of experiment and investigation, coupled with the storehouse of knowledge gained from experience, more valuable than the tedious folios of unquestioning tradition. Was he then a divided man, with a personality split between faith and empiricism? Not really, since there was nothing mysterious in the important parts of the scriptures. The central issues of faith could coexist with the principles laid out in the Essay concerning Human Understanding. His successors could follow his critical view of the world; they could accept and enlarge on some aspects of it, and root out inconsistencies elsewhere. Personal, reflective piety is, however, harder to follow, and to create a school, than philosophy. Locke’s personal devotion was not something that could be taught or followed, except by those of a similar temperament. Hence he laid himself open to the angry Tory vitriol of those who saw – and see – him as a leading Whiggish liberal, a man who led the movement of the national apostasy of England (if we may pre-echo Keble’s sermon of 1833), and who dismantled the transcendental God-ordered nature of the English realm, as set forth in Filmer’s Patriarcha. Such a view endorsed the Jacobites and Nonjurors, and later the Tractarians, as the sole bearers of the sacred fire of Holy Albion. What Locke’s opponents have missed has been, besides a sense of realism and practical politics, a measure of self-criticism, and an understanding of quiet personal devotion. They also failed to answer some serious criticisms posed by Locke and others: how can we be sure that our monarchs are actually men and women approved by God? Might not the doctrine of Divine Right give them licence not only to rule well but also badly? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a large measure of the opposition to Locke has stemmed from personal bigotry and inflexibility.

Locke and Stillingfleet More serious was the criticism Locke faced from Edward Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester. His Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity appeared in 1697. It attacked Locke not for what he had said in The Reasonableness..., but for his views on substance expressed in Book

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ii of the Essay concerning Human Understanding written seven years earlier. Stillingfleet was concerned that, if substance were proved to be an empty concept, the doctrine of the Trinity would be in danger, since the Christian faith held that the three persons of the Trinity were united in one substance. Substance was indeed a tricky concept. The inherited philosophical theory from the ancients was that things were made up of substance and qualities, or accidents: substance was what lay beneath, whereas qualities were what was perceived (shape, size, colour, smell, taste and so forth) by our fallible senses. So that when one looks at a table, one only ‘perceives’ the surface qualities of the table; beneath it (so the notion goes) is another, occult, table, made up of substance, which we cannot perceive, but which our reason tells us is there. Locke did not dispense with this theory; but he did not like it either, and he mocked it in Book ii of the Essay, saying that it reminded him of the discourse of an Indian philosopher who declared that the earth was supported by a great elephant. When asked what the elephant rested on, the Indian thinker replied, a great tortoise, ‘but, being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied – something, he knew not what’.47 This formula, which Locke knew to be unsatisfactory, is what he nevertheless gives as a definition of substance. He needed substance, since his theory of perception had reduced our awareness of physical objects to qualities, such as the primary ones of shape, size, and the secondary ones of colour, taste and so forth. ‘Substance’ held them together. It was required for continuity: a house does not become a different house merely because, formerly painted magenta, it is now pastel green. Nevertheless substance was something that challenged one of the central pillars of his philosophy: that everything was accountable by being able to be seen or touched or heard or smelt or felt. No one could experience substance. To Locke, substance might remain necessary, but it was still obscure. He accepted it only with reluctance. We cannot gain an idea of substance by either sensation or reflection.48 But now, Stillingfleet complained, if the ‘gentlemen of this new way of thinking have now almost discarded substance out of the reasonable part of the world,’49 then the concept of the Trinity was in trouble. The three persons were, according to the orthodox view deriving from Athanasius, united in one substance: a spiritual substance, which was more tricky than a material substance. The bishop declared that the rational idea of substance was one of the first and most natural ideas in our minds.50 Therefore did it not exist? In his first reply (the Letter to the Bishop of Worcester), before he sharpened up his idea of substance, Locke made the

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point that Stillingfleet was attacking him not for his own writings, but for those of ‘another’. That other was John Toland, the young author of Christianity Not Mysterious, a lively and provocative text, which had bounded into the world of theological controversy with a great leap in late 1695. It is held today to be a prime text of deism, but its deism is not spelt out, nor is it calm, gentlemanly, or Olympian, in the manner of later deistic texts and their devotees; read today, it appears innocently – if colourfully – gospel-based. Its main theme is ‘that there is nothing in religion contrary to reason, nor above it’ – a statement which invites us to enquire what is meant by being ‘above’ reason. It is usually taken to mean anything that is a priori insoluble, or insoluble from the nature of the problem posed, rather than anything that is hard to believe, indeed scarcely credible, but which does not contradict itself. Toland took Locke’s ideas further than the man himself, holding for instance that religion had to be based on reason, whereas Locke, as we have seen, saw it as the arbiter of revelation. Locke crucially made a distinction between the basis of knowledge (which was largely intuition and probability) and the assent of faith. Each step in gaining knowledge was visible. ‘In belief, not so.’51 Toland by contrast held that the grounds of faith were identical to the grounds of knowledge. This was the view that Stillingfleet imputed to Locke. The implication of Toland’s attack on mystery was also to evaporate the notion of substance, and with it the Trinity; ideas which would naturally upset Stillingfleet. Locke was more diffident and circumspect than Toland, and held a greater personal faith. Stillingfleet attacked Locke for the contentious views expressed by Toland. This was not in any way fair. However, it made Locke analyse more closely his ideas on substance. In Locke’s lengthy Second Reply (1699) – actually his third communication with the bishop – the philosopher scrupulously clarifies what he meant by substance. Locke did hold on to a weak sense of substance: because otherwise the qualities which we perceive with our senses would be left hanging centreless in the air, as mere (to use the philosophers’ jargon) tropes. You cannot have hardness, or yellowness, without some thing, or substance, there, to be hard, or yellow. But he rejected the idea of substance as a substratum, or a scaffolding-like support of ‘accidents’. Locke, as ever, sought to be sensible and reasonable, and would not utter absurdities in the name of extreme reason; so he held on to a kind of nominal notion of substance. Whether it was strong enough to support the idea of the Trinity is debatable, and less than important, since to Locke, the earnest unsectarian reader of the Gospels, the Trinity could be by-passed as a later Christian doctrine.52

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Stillingfleet died shortly afterwards. To the end he refused to separate Locke’s views from those of the deists and Unitarians, which were the main targets of his episcopal wrath. He made Locke seem a guilty party by associating him with other writers. But he was not successful. His writings and thought were unsubtle. His main argument for the Trinity was an interrogation of Locke as to whether he personally believed in the Trinity. An Irish prelate commented of Locke, early in the dispute: ‘He has fairly laid the great bishop on his back; but tis with so much gentleness as if he were afraid, not only of hurting him, but even of spoiling or tumbling his clothes.’53 The seriously negative view expressed by J.C.D. Clark towards Locke ignores the subtlety of the philosopher’s theological position: that although he was not an orthodox Anglican or Presbyterian, neither was he a typical Socinian, since he believed in Christ’s satisfaction. Locke believed entirely in the Gospels, but had an aversion to religious ceremonies and such things as the 39 Articles. This was not religious subversion. That it has been so seen could be taken as showing a lack of concern with theology. The dark side of the controversy over the Trinity was shown in the matters of a young Scot who was executed for blasphemy in Edinburgh in January 1697. Thomas Aikenhead was the son of an Edinburgh pharmacist. At about the age of 16 he began to examine his received religious opinions, and declared the doctrine of the Trinity to be selfcontradictory, adding that all theology was ‘a rhapsody of ill-contrived nonsense’. A case was drawn up against him in 1696, when he would probably have been 18, by Sir James Stewart, crown prosecutor, and by special order of the Lords of the Privy Council. The accused was granted no counsel. Despite a serious expression of repentance, the young lad was found guilty of ‘obstinately persisting to deny the Trinity’ in December of that year, and hanged in January 1697. The evidence had been shiftily presented, and though in the trial Aikenhead had been shown to have denied the Trinity, he quite clearly had not ‘obstinately persisted’ in such a belief. Locke was very concerned about this case, and collected material on it; though he published nothing revelant to it. Aikenhead’s execution was the last hanging for heresy to be enacted in Britain.54 * * * John Toland’s Christianity Not Mysterious, so castigated by Stillingfleet, had for some months following its appearance enjoyed popular success. The arguments it set out constituted a subtle and complex criticism of

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orthodox Anglicanism, and indeed of traditional Christianity. Toland was an able if wild propagandist for universal reason and tolerance, while also accepting the Gospels – or at least their message – to be true. He sought the end of religious mysteries and clerical authority. Originally an Irish Catholic from Donegal, he became a Protestant and then a free thinker, albeit maintaining a colourful and contrary sense of God-as-reason. In his career as author and propagandist, he seldom deviated from the twisty path of scapegrace rapscallion. Despite declaring his opposition to Socinianism, his arguments, which claimed that we cannot escape reason, gave the Trinity no support. The book’s success was only partially checked when all available copies of the Irish edition were burnt by the public hangman in Dublin in September 1697. A member of the Irish Parliament declared that such a fate should have befallen the author, too.55 Toland won acclaim because a mood existed in the country which responded to his view that within Christian teaching there were no mysteries – that is, that there was nothing insolubly unreasonable or self-contradictory. This was outrageous and blasphemous to many of the clerical class. To them the Irish author appeared to empty religion of religious feeling; mystery was essential to it, although the publications and theological disputes of the 1690s had shaken some of the popular appeal of mysteries. The personal, poetic quality of religious sensibility – what one might call its emotional appeal – was being dragged from out of the centre of the faith, as understood by Laud; its elevated inner value, partly immanent, partly human, and, as opponents would claim, wholly artful, was being swept away. They were shocked at Toland’s dismissal of this inner quality; here was a new form of Hobbism, faith as an empty shell. The strange thing is that if Christianity Not Mysterious is read through the lens of the present, the likely response will be not that the book is impious and irreligious, but – on first reading, at least – that it is devout and respectful of faith, though written with the lively and democratic feel of a young man not afraid to challenge received opinions. (Toland was 25.) It is a vain task to search for elegant dismissals, or sly digs at religion, in Christianity Not Mysterious. It shares nothing with Gibbon. Central to the book’s argument is the same point as that made in the 1691 pamphlet, An Impartial Account of the Word Mystery, whose author, perhaps Henry Hedworth, pointed out that ‘By the means of Mystery, Divines have made religion a very difficult thing, that is, an Art which Christians are not able to understand.’56 Toland reinforces the idea, with reference to the importation into early Christianity of heathen notions, as well as confusing Jewish cabbalistical ideas. On the contrary, declared the man from Donegal: religion had to be rational. His argument ran thus:

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belief is dependent on understanding, since we cannot believe what we do not understand; and understanding is dependent on reason. Therefore belief is dependent on reason, and therefore any belief has, by definition, to be rational and non-mysterious. Faith, he declares, was ‘built entirely upon ratiocination’, since believers had to be convinced of what they held.57 Toland was offering the ultimate refutation of the saying of Tertullian, quoted at the beginning of this book, ‘I believe because it is absurd’. We cannot believe what we do not understand. The argument is appealing, especially when Toland backs it up by an appeal to rational scripture quotations (‘I am the light of the world’);58 but one may hold reservations about the validity of each step of the argument. Moreover, it seriously underplays the non-rational appeal of religion: the part which is enhanced by art, music, ceremonial, space and quietude. But since this was by definition a non-universalizable notion – one person might feel religious, but his neighbour could just as easily not feel the urge to believe – it would have had little appeal in the 1690s when the goal was to find a basis for belief which was open to all. There was another strand to Toland’s argument, which may also have led to the book’s castigation by the high clerisy. That was the spirited rhetoric with which he attacked the theologians of the past (and, by implication, of the present) for their part in the mystification of the common people. The book was a frontal attack on ‘priestcraft’, and therefore it was natural for the clergy to show hostility. Christianity Not Mysterious was democratic in being a stout defence of the poor, and of their need to have a straightforward understandable faith (‘The uncorrupted Doctrines of Christianity are not above their Reach or Comprehension, but the Gibberish of your Divinity Schools they understand not.’)59 He tore into ‘voluminous Systems, infinitely more difficult than the Scripture’.60 Reason he saw as an instrument for unseating priestcraft: ‘When some have advanc’d the metaphysical nonsense of doting philosophers into articles of faith, they raise a loud clamour against reason, before whose evidence and light their empty shadows must disappear.’61 No clergyman, trained in the intricacies of theology, holding close to himself the mysteries of religion, and aware of his place in society, could tolerate such an affront. Christianity Not Mysterious had no time for deference to the clergy. The book was popular, and reprinted in 1697. It pioneered a way to deism, although it is hard to class the work as deistical, since its underlying position was that the Gospels were true. Toland was a unique individual, who founded no school; indeed the life he led – populist and counter-cultural, even when discussing matters with well-born highbrow ladies at German courts – until his death in Putney in 1722, precluded the

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possibility of anything like intellectual leadership. But few people forgot his book, even though few have agreed on its central theme and purpose. Peter Browne, later bishop of Cork and Ross, published an elaborate ‘letter in answer’ to Toland, well regarded at the time, which landed some punches, but is unalert to the radical mood of Toland, and ultimately unconvincing. He accused Toland of vanity, which was probably true, but failed to challenge convincingly Toland’s effort to get a message of gospelbased action through to the mass of the people.62 Other things too, as well as a lively text, led to a popular lapse away from devoutness: the corruption and self-seekingness of the clergy, many of them absent officiating – or not officiating – in ‘pluralities’, and showing an indifference to parishioners. The social position accorded to the clergy facilitated the ordination to the priesthood of half-educated and halfhonest self-seekers, men who sought only the position that the styling ‘a Man of God’ gave them. It might also be seen as a further demonstration of the underlying fear among Englishmen that too much faith might lead to a resumption of civil strife. A traditionalist view on the plight of religion was articulated in a Calvinist pamphlet of the time, entitled The Growth of Error.63 It noted the steps away from devout zeal, and counted them as paces away from the doctrines laid down by the Master in Geneva. First, Arminianism had viewed the Bible text from the perspective of its readers, and rejected the idea of ‘inscrutable decrees’. The doctrines of irresistible grace (in which God was seen to be arbitrary in his handing out rewards or punishments) and of predestination (holding that a portion of humanity had been created in order that it should suffer everlasting torment) were unacceptable to Arminians. Socinianism moved further away from the harsh dogmas of magisterial Protestantism, by also rejecting the doctrine of predestination, and then abandoning the Trinity as contrary to reason and scripture. Thirdly, deism subverted providence, by removing the idea of God as interventionist father, positing him rather as the primal artificer, perhaps clockmaker; and finally atheism did away with the notion of God altogether. However alluring this aetiology of error may seem, it is faulty. It overlooks the sincerity and the Bible-centredness of both Arminians and Socinians and their straightforward dislike of the authoritarianism of Calvin and of his doctrine of predestination, a doctrine precariously poised to slip over at any moment into antinomianism – the rejection of all morality – since it rejected the idea that moral choices affected eternal fate. It also overlooks the historical roots of Arminianism and Socinianism. These religious movements – tolerant, humane, opposed

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to predestination and to the static world-view known as Aristotelianism – had origins in the liberal, critical Catholicism associated with Erasmus: at that time, a largely uncontested movement. They were not steps downward from some original strong and firm Calvinism: their roots predated the Protestant leader’s rule in Geneva. Humane critical Christianity had been knocked sideways first by the Reformation challenge, with the emergence of Protestant fundamentalism, seen in Calvin’s rule, and in the number of Protestant dogmas which were ‘strained from St Paul’s epistles’ – predestination, justification by faith, irrestistible grace, and so forth. The Catholic counter-challenge, in the second place, was equally severe, signified in the stern authoritarianism of the Council of Trent. By 1550 the works of Erasmus were on the Catholic Index of Prohibited Books. The Erasmian legacy re-appeared at times of lessened religious tension, such as – except in Italy itself, where the attempted papal assassination of Paolo Sarpi of Venice took place – at the beginning of the seventeenth century, or when, within religion itself, bigoted and overbearing faith grew weaker in a climate of calmness and rationality. It also was able to emerge again in the creation of a free religious society, such as that seen in the actions of Socinus in Poland, or perhaps the early Quakers in America.64 It is an error to see either Calvinism for Protestants, or the Counter-Reformation for Catholics, as high points for faith, from which thereafter there occurred a fatal backsliding. Both of these movements were temporary arrangements which, through their extreme theological postures, gained the force of absolutes. In 1697 there appeared an angry pamphlet written by an anonymous traditional churchman, outraged by the lively analytical challenge that the Christian faith was facing in the 1690s. Its title was A Letter to a Convocation Man, and it has variously been attributed to Francis Atterbury, William Binckes or Sir Bartholemew Shower: all rigorous high church Nonjurors. The author expressed a yearning for discipline and authority in the Church of England. So many wicked things were happening: the ‘Mosaic history’ was disbelieved, the Trinity was denied, mysteries were excluded, and there was a general indifference to religion. The author was shocked by the ‘pleas for universal unlimited toleration’. Convocation was the body that should deal with this questioning and irreligion; it should raise its profile, see itself as a spiritual parliament, the Commons spiritual,65 and act in the manner of a tribunal for heresy and church order, the author seemed to be saying. Here was an Anglican declaring that the Protestant habit of protesting needed to stop. But where precisely could it stop, since conscience was the key to the Reformation?

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Might he not be calling for a kind of Anglican Inquisition, or at least a clerical court? The problem with this approach was that Convocation – the Church’s parliament – was structurally weak. Originally set up in the thirteenth century by Edward I, it was divided into two houses, the upper (for the bishops, paralleling the House of Lords), and the lower, for the clergy (mirroring the Commons). It had lost its power as far back as 1532, when Henry VIII extorted from it the ‘Submission of the Clergy’, which meant that all its decisions had to be in line with the royal wish, and it could only sit at the monarch’s command. In the Whiggish times of the 1690s that meant being in tune with popular opinion: what the devout heresyhunters of the day wished least. But Convocation’s lower house had recently become revitalized, filled with anger at the disregard shown by the common people towards the clergy, and was locked in bitter opposition to its upper house, producing paralysis.66 The Letter, in seeking wider powers for Convocation, could also be seen as sidelining the monarch, and calling into question, even challenging, the monarch’s position as head of the Church of England.67 The lower house of Convocation did indeed go on to defy the monarch, and continued to sit, without a royal licence, until the death of the king in 1702. Its powers, though, did not extend to affirming doctrine or issuing pamphlets. The mood of the Letter to a Convocation Man was re-emphasized later in 1697 by an extremely angry book-length pamphlet by John (or Jean) Gailhard, entitled The Blasphemous Socinian Heresie Disproved and Confuted. It was dedicated and addressed to both houses of Parliament, and demanded, in florid language, that Socinianism be crushed. What was the point of expelling popery or idolatry, if ‘Socinian blasphemy’ was let in? He called for the heaviest penalties, and recalled the events described in Leviticus xxiv, 24 – actually verse 23 – when ‘The blasphemer was by God’s immediate command, stoned to death, by the whole congregation, because the sin and scandal were publick, so was the punishment to be.’ Gailhard referred approvingly to the cases of Edward Wightman and Bartholemew Legate and called for such ‘Ishmaels’ (note the Muslim, ‘other’ implication) to be delivered to the civil magistrate.68 What was new in Gailhard’s text was the extreme notions in the language. To call Unitarians ‘blasphemers’ was to use language similar to that employed by the Jesuits in Poland after 1655, when they incited the mob to drive out Unitarians and destroy their property and livelihood, justifying their acts by identifying the target group as heretics and blasphemers rather than dissidents.

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The Blasphemy Act Gailhard and his outrage won the day. There was counter-pressure, from Thomas Firmin and his associates and friends; but Firmin died in December 1697. In early 1698 both the King and Parliament finally lost patience with the Unitarians and their campaign of pamphlets. A Commons committee was appointed, on 9 February, to draw up an address to his majesty, for debate in the House both to suppress profaneness and immorality and all books which endeavour to undermine the fundamentals of the Christian religion, and to punish the authors. Thus a measure was undertaken to silence the anti-Trinitarians, which was introduced on the coat-tails of a moral crusade. Unitarianism was being seen not as an element in the debate on religion and on the eternal fate of human souls, but as weakening the national fibre. The Commons duly presented the address to the king on the 17th, beseeching his majesty to do all ‘for the suppressing of all pernicious books and pamphlets, which may contain in them impious doctrines against the Holy Trinity’. William was pleased with the address, and added a further rider: ‘I could wish some more effectual provision were made, for the suppressing those pernicious books and pamphlets which your address takes notice of ’.69 An Act was brought in on 26 February for the more effectual suppression of profaneness, immorality and debauchery, and an ‘ingrossed’ bill came from the House of Lords against ‘those pernicious books and pamphlets’.70 In this way an identification was created in the public mind by the government of Unitarianism with profaneness and immorality. It was a skilful piece of machiavellian spin-doctoring. The resultant law – 9 & 10 William III, chapter 32 – was entitled An act for the more effectual suppressing of Blasphemy and Profaneness. Its provisions were that if any person having been educated in or made profession of the Christian religion within this realm, shall, by writing, printing, preaching, teaching or advised speaking, deny, first, Any one of the three persons in the holy Trinity to be God: or secondly shall assert or maintain there are more Gods than one; or thirdly shall deny the Christian religion to be true, or fourthly the holy scripture of the old and new testaments, to be of divine authority: and shall upon indictment or information &c. be thereof lawfully convicted...

The penalty for a first offence was to be adjudged disabled in law, office or employment. For a second offence, the penalty was to be forbidden to sue or prosecute, or to be the guardian of a child; to be excluded from all civil, military and ecclesiastical authority, and to be imprisoned for three years

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without bail or mainprize. In other words, virtually all rights might be taken away from overt non-Trinitarians. Not only would they be forbidden to work or go to court, but they would be imprisoned and forced to hand over their own children.71 This law – repressive, drastic and draconian – put a cap on the combative and sometimes spirited Trinitarian Controversy of the 1690s. The impatience of the King and the Commons, goaded by the verbal malice of Gailhard, and his associates among lawyers and in Parliament, had led to a legal imposition of silence. It was also an admission of failure on the part of the Anglican Church to find an explanation of the Trinity that could command agreement and assent. With the fierce law of 1698, against the expression of antiTrinitarian views, and with the death of Thomas Firmin the year before, the Trinitarian Controversy was run into the ground. Sherlock continued to write pamphlets asserting that he had been right all along; further volumes of Unitarian tracts appeared until at least 1707; but the topic slipped out of currency. The fact that the tracts continued publication after the punitive law of 1698 shows that the publishers were prepared to demonstrate bravery; and a part, perhaps large, of this bravery is down to two women identified as printers and sellers, Mary Fabian of Mercers Chappel in Cheapside, and Mrs A. Baldwin in Warwick Lane.72 The accession of Queen Anne caused the dissenters some alarm. Her Majesty’s high-church tendencies were known. Would she allow the clergy to limit the effect of the Toleration Act? The streets became unsafe for dissenting ministers. But the full vigour of anti-minority intolerance was held back by two considerations. In the first place the nonconformists were numerically powerful, and becoming wealthy and socially influential. Secondly they had no love for the France of Louis XIV, which had recognized the Pretender as the lawful king of England. So although the popular mood was often against nonconformists, no move was made against them in the Tory days of Queen Anne.

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ith the shift of theological emphasis around 1700 from the Trinitarian to the Arian conflict the radical dispute over the Trinity was over. The English Church remained Athanasian. The formula of three persons and one God remained. Had the Unitarian challenge, ably mounted by Nye and Firmin, failed? In a sense it had. Insufficient clergy had been prepared to come forth and declare that the Trinity was unscriptural and a late addition to the faith, and that the eternal pre-existence of Jesus was a doctrine too far. And without a base of clergy, the Unitarians could not hope to succeed. The Athanasian Creed, with its damnatory clauses, remained in the Anglican Prayer Book. The communion preface for Trinity Sunday still spoke (and speaks) of ‘one God, one Lord: not one only person, but three persons in one substance … without any difference or inequality’. But on the other hand a number of things did change. Toleration had been partially enshrined in the law in 1689, which, despite excluding Unitarians, allowed dissenters to hold their own services. (It was not until William Smith’s Act of 1813 that the 1698 law was amended and freedom of worship and civil rights became possible for Unitarians. The law was not actually repealed until the Criminal Law Act of 1967. This statute law is to be distinguished from the common law offence of blasphemous libel, a law which in Ireland led to Emlyn’s conviction – see below – and in England led to the imprisonment of a man, J.W. Gott, in 1921 for comparing Jesus to a circus clown, and which in a private prosecution in 1977 secured the conviction of Gay News for publishing a poem by James Kirkup.) The spirit of toleration gradually found a place, sometimes obscured, within the Anglican Church (and by extension, the temperament of the English people), a process which was parallelled by the lessening, and often abandonment, of the system of meanness and oppression found in the Clarendon Code. The spirit of toleration cooled the ardour of the magistrate, in the matter of prosecuting heretics. Officers of

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the magistracy ceased to police personal devotions. Only Edward Elwall was prosecuted under the 1698 Act. Even the later adherents of the Oxford Movement – the theological inheritors of the Nonjurors – tended to work in the humble and demanding circumstances of the poorer parishes, rather than to declaim dogmatic theology from high places, despite the fact that the movement had been created in a harsh right-wing political stew of opposition to rational Unitarian theology, horror at the First Reform Bill, backwoods Toryism, and a curious belief in ‘national apostasy’ (conjuring up the fantasy of a one-time Merrie England which had been a unitary devout state professing a single religion). Although Elwall was the only person to be prosecuted under the 1698 act, denial of the Trinity still had a price, at least in Ireland. Thomas Emlyn was a dissenting minister, originally from Stamford. He had read William Sherlock’s Vindication, and became convinced that belief in the Athanasian Trinity led to tritheism. Moving to Dublin, his views began to cause consternation among his dissenting colleagues; his hearers began to be suspicious about omissions from his preaching. He was forced to make a written admission of his doubts. Fellow ministers resolved to dismiss him; he packed up, sold his books and prepared to leave for England. As he was on the point of leaving, a Baptist deacon, Caleb Thomas, obtained a warrant from the chief justice and seized Emlyn. In June 1703 he was tried for blasphemous libel, found guilty and fined the immense sum of 1,000, and ordered to remain in the common jail until it was paid. The Irish attorney general recommended that he stand in the pillory, and the chief justice reminded him that if he had been in Spain or Portugal he would have been burned. Emlyn was excused the pillory, and the fine was subsequently reduced to 70. But the Archbishop of Armagh, Narcissus Marsh, as the Queen’s almoner, demanded a shilling in the pound (i.e. 20), and refused to modify the demand to 70 shillings (3.50). Emlyn endured Dublin’s jail for two years before the fine was paid. The best comment on the affair came from the Bishop of Bangor, Benjamin Hoadly, a man of generous and liberal views, later the committed opponent of the Nonjuror Francis Atterbury: Sometimes we of the Established Church can manage a prosecution (for I must not call it persecution) ourselves, without calling in any other help. But I must do the Dissenting Protestants the justice to say, that they have shown themselves, upon occasion, very ready to assist us in so pious and Christian a work as bringing heretics to their right mind; being themselves but very lately come from experiencing the convincing and enlightening faculty of a dungeon or a fine … The Nonconformists accused him [Emlyn], and the

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Conformists condemned him, the secular power was called in, and the cause ended in an imprisonment and a very great fine; two methods of conviction about which the Gospel is silent.1

The Athanasian Creed, to which the Unitarians had taken greatest exception, began a little later quietly to be less frequently recited in Anglican worship. The words were strange, and the damnatory clauses frankly un-English. (A similar mood can be discerned in the fact that, in the 39 Articles, one finds an affirmation of the belief that some people are predestined to heaven, but the corollary, that others are predestined to hell, is omitted, showing English diffidence about damning.) The Creed’s tangle of doctrine may have had meaning in earlier centuries, but its linguistic time had pretty well run out now. Although the Prayer Book decrees that it should be recited 13 times a year, it failed bit by bit to win theological appeal, and does not get many hearings today. King George III banned it from the royal chapel.2 Aside from early liturgical setttings, it has never been set to music. A further example of the change wrought in Anglicanism by the stress on deeds rather than beliefs can be found in the case of Bishop George Bull. He had written A Defence of the Nicene Faith in 1685, to clear himself of a charge of Socinianism. The grounds for this charge were that he had advocated good works rather than stressed predestination. Yet the very image of the Anglican Church, ever thereafter, is that it is committed to good works. Only a few, if any, clerics, apart and ideological, believe in predestination, and ignore good works as challenging the authority of God’s inscrutable decrees. The best of Anglicanism has been its involvement with good works. In this regard, it has become infused with Socinian principles.3 In their preference for doing good, Anglicans became largely uninterested in details of doctrine. The emphasis on dogma found in Calvinism, the barely Christian ideas of predestination and original sin, as well as any attempt to explain the Trinity, became marginal matters. Just as the Church was different at the time of the Restoration from Queen Elizabeth I’s Calvinist Church, so the Anglican Church developed into something different from that found at the turbulent time of the Clarendon Code and the disputes about subscription to the Articles. It is as though Anglicanism had taken on board a saying of Stephen Nye, the leading English Unitarian of the 1690s: ‘A good life is of absolute necessity to salvation; but a right belief in these points that have been always controverted in the churches of God, is in no degree necessary, much less necessary before all things.’4 Another writer asked rhetorically: ‘Shall my

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faith depend upon Plato’s Ideas, Aristotle’s subtilties, Cartesius his self and mutual consciousness, and metaphysical abstractions more unintelligible to poor mortal men than the tongue of angels?’5 The methods of reason, of being reasonable, were also seen as part of Anglican faith. The English Church holds centrally that belief in a transcendent faith does not absolve the believer from following the path of reason. In this way, the Trinitarian controversy could be said to have helped the Anglican Church to re-discover its Erasmian heritage, which, in its tolerance, humanity and unwillingness to take sacred texts uncritically, its wit rather than anger, is the English Church’s most valuable constituent. In the English context, this heritage could be seen to have emerged most strongly in the personalities and writings of Richard Hooker, William Chillingworth and Lancelot Andrewes. The Trinity remained a live theological issue. In 1712 Samuel Clarke, rector of St James’s Piccadilly, published The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity.6 It influenced both Anglicans and Dissenters throughout the eighteenth century. The debate shifted to more moderate Arian belief, where the pre-existence of Jesus was acknowledged, but not his eternal pre-existence. Along with the Anglicans, Arians accepted that Christ had pre-existed (a necessary part of Trinitarian belief ), though they held that there was ‘a time when he was not’. They would not accept that his pre-existence was eternal, as it was according to Athanasian Trinitarian doctrine. The Arian controversy, led by the diffident and unassuming William Whiston, signified a further move away from belief based on authority and tradition. Whiston, Newton’s successor as Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was, unlike his predecessor, open about his beliefs, and suffered in consequence; he was deprived of his chair and expelled from the university in 1710, on the grounds of being an Arian. Moving to London, he was prosecuted as a heretic, but proceedings were dropped in 1715. Amid his sometimes eccentric books were works of real and lasting scholarship: in 1736 he and his sons produced a fine bilingual edition of the Armenian history written by Movses Khorenatsi, a leading historical author of late antiquity. The Arian movement did not have the inner dynamism and popular appeal of the preceding Unitarian controversy: most especially, it did not have the leaders of strong, defiant and articulate opinions as John Bidle or Stephen Nye, or the backing of such constant supporters such as Thomas Firmin. Whiston himself was, despite having undertaken serious work in critical theology, too keen on research to lead a campaign, in the manner

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of Firmin and Nye. He also had a streak of touching credulity, believing, according to Macaulay, in everything except the Trinity. The problem of subscription to the 39 Articles remained. The dissenters had been allowed to dissent, so long as they accepted 35 of the 39 Articles; they were excused those which related to authority and the structure of belief.7 The continuing demand for subscription to all or most of the articles led to two near-revolts, first among the Nonconformists in 1719, and later among the Anglicans in 1771. The Nonconformists were further hampered by their own internal issue of subscription: whether to accept the Westminster Confession of 1647 or not. The Nonconformists inclined strongly to viewing the Bible as the only ‘rule of faith’. Following a conference at Salters’ Hall in February 1719 (called to discuss subscription to sections of the Westminster Confession, some but by no means all of which concerned the Trinity), and after an interminable wrangle, replete with accusations of lying and dissembling, an Exeter minister called James Peirce, who had developed doubts about the Trinity, was locked out of his chapel. The aftermath saw the decline of formal creeds within nonconformity, and the assertion of liberty of religious doctrine. It also saw the severe weakening of English Presbyterianism, in which there had always been a constituent of authority, and a steady growth of anti-Trinitarian sentiment among dissenters.8 Many of them simply resisted the idea of being ordered to believe a man-made confession. This they viewed as ‘bondage’. They preferred freedom.9 Then it was the turn of the established Church. Its members continued to seek greater doctrinal freedom on the issue of the Trinity. Anti-Athanasianism was growing. A number of petitions flowed, most of them against having to subscribe to the 39 Articles. This issue led to the Feathers’ Tavern Petition of 1771. Parliament was petitioned to abandon the necessity of subscription to the Articles; the matter was debated in the Commons on 6 February 1771 but heavily defeated.10 The English Church establishment was immovable. On the failure of the Feathers’ Tavern Petition, Theophilus Lindsey, a Yorkshire vicar, resigned his living, and set out, with no money or prospects, for London. Arriving there in 1774 he hired a room, which later developed into a chapel, in Essex Street, off the Strand. This became the headquarters of a new and separate Unitarian congregation. Here at last the English Unitarians were able to have their own congregation and minister. No longer did they have to seek cover in the Trinitarian Church of England. But they were denied legitimacy. The Anglican Church held a stranglehold over dissent. The 1698 act was still in place, and was not repealed for 40 years.

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In the following years religion and politics in England became damagingly, and somewhat irrationally, intermingled. The Unitarians still faced the threat of punitive action, rendering them outlaws if found guilty of observing their beliefs. But at the same time they were fully behind the principles of the 1688 Revolution, and all that it had meant in terms of justice and equity, which they hoped would remove their legal disabilities. Many supported the Society for the Commemoration of the Glorious Revolution, often abbreviated as the Revolution Society, a moderate and constitutional society, not intent upon fomenting insurrection in England. In the country at the time, ‘Revolution’ was a good word of the political establishment, as it related back to 1688. It was not a term of wreckers and subversives. When in the year following its centenary the Bastille was stormed, the Revolution Society welcomed the event, as indeed did the British government. Unitarians were cautious and careful. In 1788, on 4 November, King William’s birthday, the Rev. Andrew Kippis, of the Hackney Academy, had delivered a restrained address on the anniversary of the Glorious Revolution. Nothing that Kippis said was in any manner inflammatory or subversive; Hugh Trevor-Roper describes his sermon as ‘moderate, indeed, conservative’.11 Then the following year, Richard Price, of the same academy, delivered another address, welcoming the French Revolution as that to which Britain should aspire. In Trevor-Roper’s words, ‘Exactly a year later, what a difference!’12 The British government might have endorsed the early manifestations of the French Revolution, as conformable to the English model, but Edmund Burke responded to Price in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, and with stinging rhetoric took aim at the Unitarian minister. Although Price had focused his talk on the storming of the Bastille, Burke appropriated it as an endorsement of the ruthless mob action three months later in driving the French king and queen from Versailles to the Tuileries. Overnight the term ‘revolution’ billowed out as a lethal standard, flapping and flailing with evil and monstrous violence and injustice, and Price was charged as its bearer. In May 1792 Charles James Fox, a tireless supporter of liberty and opponent of obscurantism, presented to Parliament a petition from the Unitarians requesting that the 1698 penal statutes be lifted. The situation in France had darkened further. Fox, undeterred from seeking liberty and justice, spoke of the absurdity of keeping useless laws in place, obsolete acts framed in the days of bigotry and persecution, obnoxious to people of understanding and humanity. He declared: ‘Toleration was not to be regarded as a thing convenient and useful to a state, but a thing in itself

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essentially right and just.’ His speech continued in that vein, forcefully promoting justice and sense.13 Burke, today seen as a key figure behind Britain’s Conservative revival of the 1980s, and an inspiration of the American Neoconservative movement, was having none of it. Although he acknowledged that he ‘knew nothing’ of the Unitarians,14 and seemed to have believed that Unitarianism was a new phenomenon,15 he declared that the Unitarian petition would ‘dismember the Christian commonwealth’.16 Unitarians were the ‘avowed enemies’ of the Church. Burke saw an identity between the established Church and the state. In a Christian commonwealth the Church and state are one and the same thing ... Religion ... is or ought to be the principal thing in [a magistrate’s] care, because it is one of the great bonds of human society ... It is the right of government to attend much to opinions.17

Here Burke was making a utilitarian argument for religion, and for one national religion: that it bound society together. He was not concerned with the matter of individual people seeking beliefs which they hoped might be true. He was attacking the Unitarians because Unitarianism in his opinion was a threat to the Church of England and hence the state – a charge which was not credible. Burke also tried to demonstrate that the Unitarians were a subversive political society. They were proselytes, he said, and their purpose was ‘to collect a multitude sufficient by force and violence to overturn the Church ... they declare they would persecute the heads of our Church’.18 Heady stuff; though it is doubtful that his hearers believed him, except those predisposed to be swayed by his colourful rhetoric. The evidence that he adduced was paltry. Burke referred disparagingly to the ‘Unitarian societies’. His presumed targets were the society which had been addressed by Kippis and Price, and the Unitarian Society, formed in 1791, whose full title was The Unitarian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and the Promotion of Virtue. He may also have meant the London Corresponding Society (whose leaders were deists rather than Unitarians), a group which did seek to copy French revolutionary methods. Burke declared, in a passage which seems laughable and paranoid today, but at the time must have felt alarming to the outlawed and scapegoated Unitarians: These insect reptiles only fill us with disgust; if they get above their natural size, and increase the quantity, whilst they keep the quality, of their venom, they become the objects of the greatest terror. A spider in his natural size is only a spider, ugly and loathsome, and his flimsy net is only fit for catching

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flies. But, good God! suppose a spider as large as an ox, and that he spread his cables about us, all the wilds of Africa would not produce any thing so dreadful.

The orator continued with a stanza from Horace (Odes, i, 22), conjuring up the image of a monster not seen even in Daunia (Apulia), land of soldiers, nor in the deserts of Juba, nurse of lions.19 Burke’s speech tends to call to mind the demagoguery he so castigated in French ultrademocrats. Fox’s motion was lost, despite a wise and moderate speech from William Smith, the Unitarian and abolitionist. Burke seems not to have considered that if the Unitarians were allowed to practise their faith without fear of arrest, their discomfiture with the status quo might disappear, and they would become the contented, prosperous and beneficent members of society which they became after the penal statutes were amended in 1813. Even against the background of revolutionary brutality in France, and incipient war, Burke’s comments are puzzling. In the first place, the idea of an identity between Church and state seems to hark back to the Elizabethan Settlement, and to be irrelevant to 1792. At the end of the increasingly secular eighteenth century, peopled by individuals such as Walpole, Pope, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Bolingbroke, Warburton and Gibbon, driven by money, status, poverty, art, knowledge and fashion, it made nonsense. And secondly there is the bizarre nature of his characterization of the Unitarian societies (which are not identified by name), as seething with political radicalism, and resembling giant malevolent spiders. Perhaps he was merely hankering for the intolerance, and the demand for the policing of opinions, of Bishop Samuel Parker of Oxford, or of censor Thomas Tomkyns. The Unitarians themselves simply sought freedom from the burdensome and unjust law of 1698. Burke’s words sounded like a return to the age of bigotry and limited understanding. Maybe we can find within them a pre-echo of the control of opinion found in twentieth-century totalitarian societies. One commentator noted that the phrase ‘deists, atheists and Socinians’ was ‘the climax of the oratorical Burke’.20 It was a catch-all tag, aimed at instilling fear. As an example of the folly of legislating for people’s beliefs, it may be worth glancing at the history of the Octagon Chapel, Norwich. This fine building, exquisitely designed by Thomas Ivory, was built for the Presbyterians in 1757. The minister in charge was Dr John Taylor, a learned divine with a pronounced tendency towards religious liberty. His congregation was wealthy and influential. After 1813 the community’s

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Presbyterianism melted away; the congregation declared its Unitarianism, and the chapel became their property. The acknowledged predominance of Unitarians showed the persistence of radical anti-Trinitarian dissent in the eastern counties, stretching back to the sixteenth century and the commitment of John Lewes, Peter Cole and Matthew Hamont, who had been prepared to go to the stake for what they held to be true. It was a case of the people’s beliefs finally overcoming repressive laws. One of the Unitarians’ achievements of the time, despite the legal disabilities, was the part they played in the creation of the Dissenting Academies, most notably the Warrington Academy, which existed from 1757 to 1783. Warrington was the ‘first red-brick university’, also known as ‘the Athens of the north’.21 Despite its short life – it became a victim to matters of student discipline – it instilled principles of real study and excellence into its students, and, with the other academies, was in advance of contemporary Oxford and Cambridge, which were intellectually sinking into the bogs of the Isis and Cam, with their senior members immobilized by the ‘dull and deep potations’ memorably recalled by Gibbon. Joseph Priestley taught in Warrington, as did John Taylor. Secular subjects were taught there for the first time. The (largely) northern academies showed a way to modern education in England. Northerners, along with the Scots, were at the time more open to education than southerners; and they valued their dissent. Warrington was not the first; several academies had been established at Newington Green, north of London, in the preceding century, one of them led by Charles Morton, who went on to become vice-president of Harvard College (later University). Daniel Defoe was a pupil. In the following century Mary Wollstonecraft moved her boarding school for girls there, and Mrs Barbauld (née Aikin), from a Unitarian family, poet and essayist, chose to spend the later part of her life there. Other academies were established at this time, all filled with dissenting principles, and some of them adopting Unitarian beliefs: Nailsworth (near Stroud), Attercliffe, Taunton, Hackney, Daventry. All these laid the foundation for the important principles of research and science present in universities founded in the following century. * * * During the eighteenth century much Unitarian energy was absorbed in working for the lifting of the penal statutes directed against them. They also found time to expand education. After the statutes had been amended in 1813, they participated fully in the life of the country, strengthening in

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many ways the fabric of society. The Burkean notion that they ‘weakened the bonds of society’ is a piece of empty political metaphysics, at variance with the observable Unitarian contribution to Britain. This contribution was foreshadowed in the spirited benevolence towards prisoners and street children undertaken by Thomas Firmin in the 1690s. It was not activated by what can be seen as the desultory morality of handing over responsibility to the state – though this can also be seen as the moralization of public life through legislation – but by the serious and energetic belief of individuals in the Christian Gospels and the improvability of the condition of humankind. When Oxford University re-emerged, in the following century, it was briefly to embark on the romantic fantasy of the Oxford Movement, a faction bonded by J. H. Newman’s professed belief in the submission of the intellect to faith, as well as the future cardinal’s keenness on smoking out ‘heretics’. (Newman also asserted, after his Catholic conversion, that any manifestation of the human mind being ‘bold and independent, the purpose free’ was the work of evil spirits, or ‘demons’ as they appeared in The Dream of Gerontius – an opinion perhaps puzzling for someone working in the world of education, but less so for one who had travelled from Calvinism to Catholicism.) The Tractarians (who strongly opposed religion tinged by reason) restored tastefully decorated devotion and looked back with antiquarian affection to the Laudian clerics of two centuries earlier. But they did not find the authority and unbending theology that the public, political life of Archbishop Laud might have suggested – rather, devotion shot through with reason. The Laudians whom the Tractarians said they admired were mythological figures, since in reality the theology of the ‘Caroline divines’ had held a rational content.22 The men of the 1830s and 1840s really only admired their forerunners in the seventeenth century on account of Laud’s rigid identification of Englishmen with a particular type of statedefined Christian. The followers of Newman and Pusey hoped that it might become blasphemous for an Englishman not to be a Christian, and usually just one type of Christian. In their struggles with German biblical criticism, the Tractarians found that their Laudian forerunners (such as Hammond) had not stressed the absoluteness of authorityderived belief, but had placed reason alongside religion. And now, in nineteenth-century Germany, all the arguments for looking critically at the faith, for textual enquiry into the Bible, were being put forward. This was the Socinian method at its fullest and clearest. Pusey had studied at Göttingen, and heard all the evidence and arguments. But rather than acknowledge, or confront, the truth of what he had heard, he stopped

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up his ears, and he and his fellow Anglo-Catholics slammed the door on the outside world and retreated into a comforting bath of ritualism. In Oxford new statutes were promulgated in 1854, which widened and secularized the teaching at the university, thereby minimizing the Tractarian effect at the university. We are left with the charge, promoted by J.C.D. Clark in his book English Society 1660–1832, that Socinianism was the forerunner of deism and ultimately atheism, which was the inevitable consort of republicanism, which would bring about the end of Britain as we know it. This is close to Burke’s position, and hard to maintain on the basis of what is known. In the first place, Dr Clark omits any reference to the theological background which was formative to the debates on religion, reason and society, such as Great Tew Circle and the Cambridge Platonists, let alone the miraculous prelude to Anglicanism seen in the friendship of Erasmus, More, Colet, Linacre and Grocyn. Admittedly, both the friends of Erasmus and the group at Tew stand outside his time frame; but they need a reference nevertheless. The latter constituted a group of people, devout and Royalist, who were attempting to work out, in a spirit of benevolent collegiality, the truth about religion and its relation to reason and to the state. No group could be less subversive. Falkland himself went on to lose his life at Newbury in King Charles’ service. Several of the scholar-clergymen who debated with him became leading men in the Anglican Church after the Restoration; indeed they were the mainstays of the defeat of Presbyterianism, which had been enthusiastically but ineptly plotted by the Scotsman Robert Baillie,23 and which might have succeeded in 1660 as the faith of England. So the influence of Great Tew created a triumph with the restoration of the Anglican Church. And yet many of the key texts which had been read and studied in the days of the 1640s were Socinian texts printed in Rakow, Poland. The Anglican establishment of the Restoration thus held an impress, to a greater or a lesser degree, of Socinian notions: so it is hard to maintain that this establishment was threatened by Socinianism. Nor is there any reference in the Tory interpretation of history to the Erasmian tradition in English Church and society: the modest, devout, mildly questioning attitude of combining faith with thought, sometimes laced with irony and wit – something which a divine as traditional as Edward Stillingfleet considered central to Anglicanism. The English Church has seldom had a taste for severity or holy anger. Boneheaded ultradevoutness, and ordering people to go to one church (their own), are not qualities with which most Anglicans, beyond irate Nonjurors, feel comfortable.

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There was no Socinian plot against society. The religious struggles of the 1690s were at their most acrid when disputes flared up among the orthodox (sometimes known as catholic) Anglican clergymen, and not owing to rippling subversion activated by dissenters. Socinianism was widely but probably thinly spread, probably owing to its prevalence in the army at the time of the Civil War; and in London it gained ground from open-minded preachers like John Goodwin, and energetic builders of society like Thomas Firmin – as well as through the solid and persuasive arguments put forward in the Unitarian tracts. If Anglicanism dwindled at this time, it was more likely as a result of the bitter dispute between Sherlock and South, the expulsion from Oxford of the young Joseph Bingham, and the inept partisan trickery shown in the antics of Charles Leslie. In the second place, the apologists for enforced Anglicanism are unenthusiastic about the Toleration Act of 1689, seeing it as a forerunner of the break-up of the organic unity of Church and state – as though England, so recently and challengingly divided during the Commonwealth and Protectorate years into many striking and exploratory sects, were a unitary country with a unitary religion. England, however, was never, nor could be, an ultramontane caesaro-papist dictatorship. Dissent – whether political, social or religious – was and still is England’s life-blood. Quotation marks – sometimes known as scare quotes – sometimes appear around the words ‘Toleration Act’; these are strictly accurate, since that was not its title; but the appearance of such marks on the page gives the impression of distance from unhealthy or taboo material. This does not seem to be a stance which could be considered by someone who understood religion, who had once swum – or did still swim – in the difficult and turbulent waters of belief, or who knew and had experienced the power of religious ideas: the manner in which conversion entails, to one person, becoming a Catholic, and to another becoming a Unitarian. Faith is something internally fought over, pondered deeply over, struggled over, anguished over, with love, fear, dread or hope. It is not the crafted shine on the shoes of a male person entering a gentlemen’s club, or a political or social accessory – or perhaps, to use the modish term, a signifier. The dissenters did not dissent because they sought the break-up of society; they dissented because their Bible, their observance, their reading of the Church fathers, their hope of heaven or fear of hell, and their conscience, told them so. Today, as religion and reason are often portrayed as being on different sides of the argument, it is essential to take a hard-edged and historically accurate view of the part played by reason as it operated alongside

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religion. First, by showing the untruth of the view that since the seventeenth century the two have been split apart, and have been following entirely divergent and incompatible agendas. And second, by encouraging the religious, or ‘men and women of faith’ (to use the terminology of the political moment), to use reason in their study and devotions, alongside faith, and, in the Erasmian manner, not to be frightened of using the methods of reason in offering criticism to sacred texts, beliefs, devotions and events.

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Notes Preliminary pages . John Goodwin, Imputatio Fidei, Epistle Dedicatory (London, 1642). . Stephen Nye, A Letter of Resolution concerning the Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation ... (1693), p. 1, in A Second Collection of Tracts ... (?1693). . Lord Acton, Lectures on Modern History (London, 1960), p. 25.

Chapter 1 ‘Yet Reason must assist too ...’ . P. Holmes (transl.), The Writings of Q.S.F. Tertullianus (Edinburgh, 1874), vol. ii, pp. 173, 9 (De Carne Christi, v; De Praescriptione, vii). . Augustine (transl. Henry Bettenson), Concerning the City of God (Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 437 [De Civ. Dei, XI, viii, 7], On the Trinity (transl. A.W. Haddon), (Edinburgh, 1873), p. 1 [I,i]. . Geoffrey Faber, Oxford Apostles (Harmondsworth, 1954), p. 345. . F. Cheynell, Chillingworthi Novissima (London, 1644), quoted in Robert R. Orr, Reason and Authority: the thought of William Chillingworth (Oxford, 1967), p. 159. . Gordon Leff, Medieval Thought (Harmondsworth, 1958), p. 95. . The King’s Book (London, 1932), p. 9; J. Hunt, Religious Thought in England (London, 1873), vol. i, p. 11. . Roland H. Bainton, The Travail of Religious Liberty (London, 1953), pp. 112–13. . H. John McLachlan, The Divine Image (London, 1972), p. 146. . Margaret Mann Phillips, Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance (London, 1949), p. 255. . Augustine, On the Trinity, p. 202 [viii, ii]. . Anne Fremantle (ed.), A Treasury of Early Christianity (New York, 1953), pp. 453–6. . Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘Laudianism and Political Power’, in Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans (London and Chicago, 1987–1988), p. 52. . Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. i, p. 50; The King’s Book, ibid. . Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. i, p. 11.

253

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. Trevor-Roper, ‘Laudianism’, pp. 45–6; DNB, ‘Peter Baro’; H.C. Porter, Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge, 1958), pp. 376 ff. . See Honderich, Ted (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford, 1995), ‘Fideism’. . See e.g. Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘Laudianism ...’, in Catholics, Anglicans ..., pp. 95–6. . John Strype, The Life and Acts of John Whitgift (Oxford, 1822), vol. ii, p. 280; also John Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy ... (Edinburgh and London, 1872), vol. i, pp. 43–5. . Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘Hugo Grotius and England’, in From CounterReformation to Glorious Revolution (London, 1992), p. 51. . Trevor-Roper, ‘The Great Tew Circle’, in Catholics, Anglicans ..., pp. 200–4. . Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland, A Discourse of Infallibility (London, 1660), sig. a1v. . Rufus M. Jones, Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries (London, 1914), pp. 239–54. . H. John McLachlan, Socinianism in Seventeenth-century England (London, 1951), p. 190n. . McLachlan, Divine Image, p. 139. . Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh’, in Catholics, Anglicans ..., p. 150. . Francis Mineka, The Dissidence of Dissent (Chapel Hill, NC, 1944), p. 8. . John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), book IV, xix, 4. . Isaac Disraeli, Calamities and Quarrels of Authors (London, 1865), p. 342. . Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, quoted in Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, p. 175. . Ibid., p. 177. . Ibid., p. 178. . G.R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason (Harmondsworth, 1960), pp. 157–73. . John Owen, ‘Of the Divine Original ...’, Works (London, 1859), vol. 16, p. 296. . George Huntston Williams, The Radical Reformation (London and Philadelphia, 1962), p. 9; Roland H. Bainton, Hunted Heretic (Boston, MA, 1960), pp. 10–11. . [Stephen Nye], ‘An Accurate Examination ...’ (London, 1692), p. 20, in A Second Collection of Tracts (?1693), p. 64; henceforward Tracts 2. . Patrick Blair, Thoughts on Nature and Religion, (Cork, 1774), p. 131. . Roland H. Bainton, Erasmus of Christendom (London, 1969), p. 22. . H.B. Wilson, ‘Séances historiques ...The National Church’ in Essays and Reviews, 1970 edn, p. 206. . Richard Hooker, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Everyman edn (London, 1925), vol. i, p. 102.

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. McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 52. . William Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation (London, 1854), p. 133. . Ibid., p. 132. . Ibid., p. 463. . Benjamin Whichcote, Moral and Religious Aphorisms (London, 1753), Aphorism 76. . Ibid., Aphorism 117. . Ibid., Aphorism 121. . Ibid., Aphorism 457; Maurice Cranston, John Locke (Oxford, 1985), p. 125. . Whichcote, Aphorisms, Aphorism 114. . Tulloch, Rational Theology, vol. ii, p. 71. . Ibid., p. 73. . Whichcote, Aphorism 109. . Ibid., Aphorism 1008, McLachlan, Socinianism, p.98. . Charles I, Eikon Basilike, 1648 (i.e. 1649), 1st edn, 3rd issue, p. 235. . Nathanael Culverwel, Of the Light of Nature (Edinburgh, 1857), p. 19. . Ibid., p. 20; also Peter Ure (ed.), The Pelican Book of English Prose: Seventeenth Century (Harmondsworth, 1956), p. 168. . Henry Hammond, Of the Reasonableness of Christian Religion (London, 1650), p. 28. . Jeremy Taylor, Theologia Eklektike: a Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying ... (London, 1647), pp. 169–70. . Abraham Cowley, Poems (Cambridge, 1905), pp. 46–7. . McLachlan, Divine Image, p. 146.

Chapter 2 ‘When Sin and Son were not’ . Theophilus Lindsey, An Historical View of the State ... (London, 1783), (repr. 2007), p. 58. . Anon [?H. Hedworth or J. le Clerc] Some Thoughts upon Dr Sherlock’s Vindication, in The Faith of One God, who is only the Father (London, 1691) [henceforward Tracts 1], p. 1/133ff. sig. A1r ff., esp p. 5/137 sig. A3r. . Williams, Radical Reformation, p. 779. . Thomas Rees (ed. and transl.), The Racovian Catechism (London, 1818 and reprint), intro, p. viii. . A.W. Benn, History of Ancient Philosophy (London, 1936), p. 107. . Williams, Radical Reformation, p. 610. . Hugh Lawson-Tancred, (transl. and ed.), Aristotle, Metaphysics, Penguin edn (London, 1998), p. xxvi. . Henry Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge, 1953), p. 213 (iv, 38). . Ibid. . Alvan Lamson, The Church of the First Three Centuries (London, 1875), pp. 247–8.

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. Chadwick, Origen, p. 153 (iii, 37). . Lucian of Samosata, Peri Tes Peregrinou Teleutes (‘On the Death of Peregrinus’), Loeb edn vol. v (London, 1936), pp. 12–15. . Plato, transl. R.G. Bury, Loeb edn vol. vii, Epistle II (London and Cambridge, MA, 1929), pp. 410–11 (312E ff.). . Plotinus, Ennead V, i, 3:8. . Benn, Ancient Philosophy, ibid. . [ John Bidle], The Testimonies of Irenaeus ..., 2nd edn (1691), p. 4; in Tracts 1, p. 72, sig. H3v. . Ibid., pp. 3–7; Tracts 1, sigs H2r–H4r. . F. L. Cross, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford, 1958), ‘Monarchianism’. . [Bidle], Testimonies, p. 7; Tracts 1, p. 75, sig. H4r. . Ibid., p. 10/78, sig. H3v. . Ibid., p. 15/83, sig. I4r. . Ibid., p. 14/82, sig. I3v, also p.16/84, sig. I4v. . Ibid., p. 15/83, sig. I4r. . On Theodotus, Praxeas, Noetus and the Muggletonians, see Cross, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, and the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religion; also ODNB, ‘Lodowicke Muggleton’. . On Arius, see Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edn (1912); on Alexander and Athanasius, see Cross, Oxford Dictionary. . DNB, ‘John Tillotson’. . On the flight of the philosophers to Persia, see Christopher J. Walker, Islam and the West (Stroud, 2005), pp. 54–5. . See the quotation from Gregory of Nyssa in S. Der Nersessian, Armenia and the Byzantine Empire (Cambridge, MA, 1945), p. 28. . H. M. Gwatkin, The Arian Controversy (London, 1889), p. 9. . On Augustine and Pelagius, see Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom (Oxford, 1997), pp. 49–50; Schaff-Herzog, arts. ‘Augustine’, ‘Pelagius’. . George Ostrogorsky (transl. Joan Hussey), History of the Byzantine State (Blackwell, 1986), p. 58. . On kalima, see G. von Grunebaum, Medieval Islam (Chicago and London, 1969), pp. 84–5; Encyclopedia of Islam, 1st edn [henceforward EI1], ‘Isa’. . On Bahira, see EI1, EI2, ‘Bahira’; Maxime Rodinson, Mohammed (Harmondsworth, Penguin books, 1971), p. 47. . On pre-Islamic Arabia, see Rodinson, ibid., pp. 11–37; P. Brown, Rise of Western Christendom, pp. 179–80; EI1, ‘Nasara’. . R.W. Thomson (transl.), James Howard-Johnston and Tim Greenwood (eds), The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos (Liverpool, 1999), vol. i, pp. xxii, xxv, 95. . R. W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (London, 1959), p. 211. . Leff, Medieval Thought, p. 95.

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. Roland H. Bainton, Hunted Heretic: the life and death of Michael Servetus (Boston, MA, 1960), p. 27. . Leff, op. cit., p. 90. . Ibid., p. 94. . Ibid., p. 92. . Bainton, Hunted Heretic, p. 24. . Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism: Socinianism and its Antecedents (Boston, MA, 1945), p. 12 [henceforward Wilbur, Unitarianism I]. . Bainton, Hunted Heretic, p. 25. . Ibid., p. 29. . Ibid. . Ibid., pp. 30–1.

Chapter 3

Radical Reformers: ‘He who loves is greater than he who believes’

. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 17. . Gaston Bonet-Maury, transl. E.P. Hall, Early Sources of English Unitarian Christianity (London, 1884), p. 5. . On the Waldenses, see Williams, Radical Reformation, pp. 520–9; Rees (ed. and transl.), Catechism, pp. i–iin. . Bonet-Maury, Sources, pp. 13–14. . Ibid., p. 16. . Ibid., p. 9. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 16. . Ibid., p. 29. . Williams, Radical Reformation, p. 158. . Ibid., pp. 176, 179. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 28. . Williams, Radical Reformation, pp. 192, 193. . Christopher Sandius, Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum (Freistadt (i.e. Amsterdam), 1684), p. 17. . Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography (London, 1850), vol. i, p. 413; Williams, Radical Reformation, pp. 92, 193. . Roland H. Bainton, Studies on the Reformation (London, 1964), p. 90. . Williams, Radical Reformation, pp. 458–9. . On Guillaume Postel, see William J. Bouwsma, Concordia Mundi: The Career and Thought of Guillaume Postel (1510–1581) (Cambridge, MA, 1957). . Joseph Lecler, Toleration and the Reformation (London, 1960), vol. i, p. 167. . Ibid., p. 168. . Williams, Radical Reformation, p. 463. . Ibid., 458. . Sebastian Castellio (ed. and transl. Roland H. Bainton), Concerning Heretics (New York, 1935), p. 93.

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. Ibid., p. 97. . Ibid., p. 96. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 37; Charles Beard, The Reformation of the 16th Century (London, 1883), pp. 215–24. . Lecler, Toleration, vol. ii, p. 273. . Ibid., p. 278. . Ibid., p. 280. . Ibid., p. 283. . Southern, Middle Ages, p. 93. . Jones, Spiritual Reformers, p. 237. . Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. ii, p. 21. . Ibid., p. 25. . Ibid., p. 26. . Ibid., p. 27; Roland H. Bainton, Studies on the Reformation (London, 1963), p. 135. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 194n. . On Acontius, see Bonet-Maury, Sources, pp. 161–77; William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York and London, 1957), pp. 195–9; also Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘The Great Tew Circle’, in Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans, pp. 189–90. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 206. . Haller, Puritanism, p. 195. . On Ochino, see Bonet-Maury, Sources, pp. 137–60; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. ii, pp. 44–63. . Karl Benrath, Bernardino Ochino (London, 1876), p. 188. . Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. ii, p. 59. . On Servetus, see especially Bainton, Hunted Heretic (Boston, MA, 1960). . Bainton, Religious Liberty, p. 71. . Bainton, Hunted Heretic, p.45. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 65; Williams, Radical Reformation, p. 270. . James MacKinnon, Calvin and the Reformation (London, 1936), p. 124. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, pp. 64, 66. . Ibid., p. 68. . Michael Servetus, De Trinitatis Erroribus Libri Septem (Hagenau, 1531), sig. 2a; see also E. M. Wilbur (transl.), The Two Treatises ..., Harvard Theological Studies XVI, 1932, p. 6. . MacKinnon, Calvin, p. 126. . Servetus, De Justicia ... (following Dialogorum), sigg. F3a, F5b; Wilbur transl., pp. 258, 261. . Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edn, art. ‘Servetus’ [by Alexander Gordon], Melanchthon, Opera (Brunswick, 1834–60), vol. ii, p. 640. . Richard Wright, An Apology for Dr Michael Servetus (Wisbech, 1806), pp. 98–9; William Henry Drummond, The Life of Michael Servetus ... (London, 1848), p. 12; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, 423–4.

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notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

259

Wright, Servetus, p. 101; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, p. 425. Bainton, Hunted Heretic, p. 94. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 120. Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, p. 427. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 126; Wright, Apology, p. 116. Messrs Bernard Quaritch (London, 2009), catalogue no. 1343 ‘Postel’, item 9. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 129. Bainton, Hunted, pp. 99–100, Wilbur, Unitarianism I, pp. 128–9. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 130. Ibid., pp. 132–3. Calvini Opera, Brunswick, 1870 (repr. New York, 1964), vol. viii, p. 481. Ibid., vol. xii, pp. 282–3; Drummond, Servetus, p. 31; Wilbur, Unitarianism I, pp. 134–5. Calvini Opera, viii, pp. 645–719; MacKinnon, Calvin, p. 131. Calvin, letter to Protector Somerset 22 October 1548, quoted in Charles Beard, The Reformation ..., p. 255. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 135; Calvini Opera viii, pp. 649 ff. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 136; R. Willis, Servetus and Calvin (London, 1877), pp. 172–90. Michael Servetus, Christianismi Restitutio, (Vienne, 1553/Nuremberg, 1790), p. 601. Calvini Opera, viii, pp. 750–1; Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 136; Bainton, Hunted, p. 147. Augustine, De Civitate Dei, XXI, 12; transl. Bettenson, City of God (Harmondsworth, 1972), p. 989. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 136. Ibid., p. 138. Servetus, Christianismi Restitutio, pp. 168–73; transl. in C.D. O’Malley, Michael Servetus: a Translation ... (Philadelphia and London, 1953), pp. 202–8. Bainton, Hunted Heretic, p. 151; Wright, Apology, pp. 132–5. Calvini Opera, viii, pp. 835 ff. Wright, Apology, p. 137. Calvini Opera, viii pp. 840–3. Bainton, Hunted, p. 153. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 146. Bainton, Hunted, p. 156. Calvini Opera, viii, p. 746 no. 5 also pp. 749, 788; Bainton, Hunted, p. 162. Bainton, Hunted, pp. 162–3; Calvini Opera viii 853; Wilbur, Unitarianism I, 158–9; MacKinnon, Calvin, p. 141. Wilbur, Unitarinism I, p. 162. Ibid.; Calvini Opera, viii, p. 770. Bainton, Hunted, p. 168. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall ... ch liv; Penguin complete edn (1997), vol. iii, p. 438.

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reason and religion

. MacKinnon, Calvin, p. 142, Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 166, Calvini opera viii, 727–73. . Williams, Radical Reformation, p. 311. . Bainton, Hunted, p. 168; MacKinnon, Calvin, p. 143. . Calvini Opera, viii, 496. . Ibid., viii, 759; Bainton, Hunted, pp. 187–8. . Ibid., p. 169. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 169n. . Ibid., p. 169. . Calvini Opera, viii, pp. 762 ff.; Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 170; MacKinnon, Calvin, p. 146. . Calvini Opera, viii, p. 762; Wilbur, p. 170; text in Drummond, Servetus, pp. 85–6. . Calvini Opera, viii, p. 762; MacKinnon, Calvin, p. 146. . Calvini Opera, viii, pp. 763–6. . Ibid., pp. 763 ff. . Ibid., p. 774; Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 170; Bainton, p. 190, Drummond, Servetus, p. 88; Emile Doumergue, Jean Calvin, (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1926), vol. vi, p. 326. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 171. . Calvini Opera, viii, pp. 767ff, 770 [21] 782. . Bainton, Hunted, p. 191. . Henricus ab Allwoerden, Historia Michaelis Serveti, Helmstadt, 1728, p. 77; Drummond, Servetus, p. 95n. . Albert Rilliet, (transl. and ed. W. K. Tweedie), Calvin and Servetus (Edinburgh and London, 1876), pp. 145–6; Calvini Opera, viii, pp. 766, 769 [no. 18 on marriage]. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 172; Bainton, Hunted Heretic, p. 192. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 172; Bainton, Hunted Heretic, p. 193. . Wright, Apology, p. 181. . Calvini Opera, viii, pp. 501–8. . Ibid, viii, pp. 517–18; Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 200; Bainton, Hunted, p. 195. . Calvini Opera, viii, p. 623; Bainton, Hunted Heretic, p. 195. . Wright, Apology, p. 202; Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 173; Bainton, Hunted Heretic, p. 196. . Calvini Opera, viii, pp. 519–53 [italic passages bet. paras]; Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 174. . Calvini Opera, viii, pp. 797; Bainton, Hunted Heretic, p. 197; Wright, Apology, pp. 206–7; Drummond, Servetus, p. 113. . MacKinnon, Calvin, p. 149. . Calvini Opera, viii, pp. 804, 806ff; Wright, Apology, pp. 207–8. . Calvini Opera, viii, pp. 804–5; Allwoerden, Historia, p. 102; Wright, Apology, p. 206; Drummond, Servetus, p. 144; MacKinnon, Calvin, p. 149.

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notes . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

.

261

Wright, Apology, p. 210. Bainton, Hunted, p. 198. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 176. MacKinnon, Calvin, p. 149. Calvini Opera, xiv 610ff; Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 176; Wright, Apology, 216 ff., MacKinnon, Calvin, p. 149; J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (London, 1964), pp. 82–3. Calvini Opera, xiv, p. 635; Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 177, Bainton, Hunted, pp. 204–6. Allwoerden, Historia, p. 87–93; Bainton, Hunted, pp. 206–7. Allwoerden, Historia, p. 105; Drummond, Servetus, p. 129, Wright, Apology, p. 211. Calvini Opera, xxi, p. 557. Drummond, Servetus, p. 144; Bainton, Hunted, p. 209. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 180. MacKinnon, Calvin, p. 151. Calvini Opera, viii, p. 460, xiv, p. 693. Ibid., viii, pp. 453–644; Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 190. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 193. Ibid., p. 230. Ibid., p. 232. Biblia, interprete Sebastiano Castalione (Basle, 1551), [Praefatio], sig. a3v. Martinus Bellius, [i.e S. Castellio], De Haereticis, an sint persequendi (Magdeburg [i.e. Basle,], 1554); see Castellio, Contra Libellum Calvini (Gouda, 1612); Bainton, Castellio (1935), p.27. See also Sotheby’s, London, Catalogue of the Library of the Earls of Macclesfield, pt. 8, 25 October 2006, Introduction and Lot 2556. François Wendel, Calvin (London, 1963), p. 98.

Chapter 4

Re-thinking Faith

. Faustus Socinus, Opera (Irenopolis (i.e. Amsterdam), post ad 1656 (c. 1665)), vol. ii, p. 535. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 85. . Williams, Radical Reformation, p. 569. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 241. . Williams, Radical Reformation, pp. 567 ff; 630–1. . Paul Robert Magocsi, Historical Atlas of East Central Europe (Seattle and London, 1993), p. 61. . Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England and America, (1952), p. 12 [henceforward Wilbur, Unitarianism II]. . Agnes Varkonyi, ‘Pro Quiete regni – For the Peace of the Realm: the 1586 law on Religious tolerance in the Principality of Transylvania’, Hungarian Quarterly, 34, (1993), pp. 99–112, quoted by Susan Ritchie, ‘The Islamic

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262

. . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ottoman Influence on the Development of Religious Toleration in Transylvania’, Seasons (spring–summer 2004), pp. 59–70. Wilbur, Unitarianism II, p. 14. Ibid., p. 20. Ibid., p. 21. On Biandrata (Latin, Blandrata), a controversial figure, see Alexander Gordon in EB11, Wilbur, Unitarianism I, pp. 223–6, 309–10; Rees, Racovian Catechism, Hist. Introduction, pp. xlv ff.; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. ii, pp. 140–7; S. Kot, ‘L’Influence de Michel Servet ...’ in B. Becker (ed.), Autour de Michel Servet et de Sebastien Castellion (Haarlem, 1953), pp. 93–104. John F. Fulton, Michael Servetus: humanist and martyr (New York, 1953), p. 86. Magocsi, Atlas, p. 50. Ibid., p. 64. Wilbur, Unitarianism II, p. 148; John Milton, Prose Writings, Everyman edn (London, 1965), p. 176. McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 2n. J.H. Elliott, Europe Divided 1559–1598 (London, 1971), p. 240. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 356. Ibid., p. 358. Norman Davies, God’s Playground (Oxford, 1981), vol. i, p. 184. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 390. Socinus, Opera, vol. ii, pp. 115–246. McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 15; also [Stephen Nye], Considerations on the Explications ... 1694), the second text of that name, p. 13, collected in A Third Collection of Tracts, 1695 [henceforward Tracts 3]. Nye, Considerations, ibid. Joshua Toulmin, Memoirs of ... Faustus Socinus (London, 1777), p. 470; Socinus, Opera, vol. ii, p. 539. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 395; Socinus, Opera, vol. i, pp. 428–33. George Ashwell, De Socino (Oxford, 1680), p.18; Toulmin, Socinus, pp. 15–16. Sandius, Bibliotheca, p. 229. Davies, God’s Playground, vol. i, p. 185. Catechesis Ecclesiarum... Rakow, 1609 (?London or Amsterdam, 1614), p. 48. Toulmin, Socinus, p. 225. McLachlan, Socinianism, pp. 14–15. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 403; Toulmin, Socinus, pp. 10–11; Socinus, Opera, vol. i, pp. 475–7. Davies, God’s Playground, i, p. 186. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, pp. 456 ff; also Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. iii, app. xv, pp. 580–5. Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 469; see also Marian Hillar, in www.socinian.org.

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notes

263

. Toulmin, Socinus, p. 161, Socinus, Opera, vol. i, pp. 432 col 2–433 col. 1; contrasting views are found in R. Woolhouse, John Locke; a Biography (Cambridge, 2007), p. 352; and Philip Dixon, Nice and Hot Disputes (London, 2003), p. 39. . Socinus, Opera, vol. i, p. 373, col. 1.

Chapter 5 ‘Trinunities, Coessentialities, Modalities ... monstrous terms’ . Alexander Gordon, Heads of English Unitarian History (London, 1895), pp. 16–17; Wilbur, Unitarianism II, pp. 176, 178. . Bonet-Maury, Sources, ch. vi, esp. pp. 126–31. . Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘Hugo Grotius and England’, in From CounterReformation to Glorious Revolution (London, 1993), p. 51. . Catechesis Ecclesiarum ..., ‘Rakow, 1609’ (?London or Amsterdam, ?1614) sigg. ¶2r, ¶2v. . Rees, Racovian Catechism, p. 15. . John Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy ... (Edinburgh and London, 1872), vol. i, p. 133; DNB, ‘Lucius Cary’. . McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 66; Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, Life (Oxford, 1827), vol. i, p. 49 of 1827 edn. . Clarendon (ed. G Huehns): Selections … (Oxford, 1978), p. 51. . McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 64; Clarendon, Life, p. 47 of 1827 edn. . McLachlan, ibid.; Haller, Puritanism, p. 237. . Trevor-Roper, ‘The Great Tew Circle’, in Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans, pp. 166–230. This long essay repays close attention. . William Chillingworth, The Religion of Protestants a Safe Way to Salvation (London, 1854), p. 371. . L.C. Knights, ‘Reflections on Clarendon’s History of the Rebellion,’ Scrutiny, xv, 2 (Spring 1948), pp. 105–16; Sir James Stephen, Horae Sabbaticae, 1st series, p. 319. . Trevor-Roper, ‘Great Tew’, in Catholics, Anglicans … pp. 188–9. . Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, Animadversions upon a Book ... (London, 1685), pp. 187–8. . Wilbur, Unitarianism I, p. 549. . W.H.C. Lecky, History of the Rise of Rationalism in Europe (London, 1913 edn), vol. ii, p. 45. . McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 167. . Ibid., p. 164. . Ibid., p. 42. . John Selden (ed. S.W. Singer), Table-Talk (London, 1847), p. 140 (‘Opinion’); Tulloch, Rational Theology, vol. i, p. 100. . McLachlan, Socinianism, pp. 150–1. . Thomas Edwards, Gangraena, 1646, vol. i, p. 33; McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 152.

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reason and religion

. McLachlan, Socinianism, pp. 158–60. . Ibid., p. 239; R. Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography (1850), vol. iii, pp. 215–16. . McLachlan, Socinianism, pp. 161–2. . [ John Farrington], ‘A Short Account of the Life of John Bidle, MA ...’ [1691], p. 5, in Tracts 1, p. 9, sig. A3r. . [Farrington], ‘Short Account’, ibid.; [Anthony Wood], Athenae Oxonienses (London, 1692), vol. ii, col. 197. . McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 172. . Ibid., p. 173; ‘Short Account’, p. 15,Tracts 1, p. 19, sig. A4r. . [Wood], Ath. Ox., vol. ii, col. 198. . DNB, ‘Biddle’; McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 173. . Wood, op. cit; McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 176; Tracts 1, p. 35, sig.C4r. . McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 176; text in Thomas Crosby, The History of the English Baptists (London, 1738), vol. i, p. 199. . DNB, ‘John Biddle’. . Wood, Ath. Ox., vol. ii, 1692, col. 199. . McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 178. . [ John Bidle], A Confession of Faith Touching the Holy Trinity … (London, 1691), in Tracts 1, sig. D4r; McLachlan, Socinianism, pp. 178, 179. . McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 195. . [ John Bidle], A Twofold Catechism, 1653, pp. 13–14. . McLachlan, Socinianism, pp. 90–2; text in The Phenix, or a Revival of Scarce & Valuable Pieces (London, 1708), vol. ii, no. 23, p. 348. . John Bidle, transl. Nathanael Stuckey, Duo Catecheses (1664), p. 210. . On Owen, see Hugh Trevor-Roper, ‘The Great Tew Circle’, in Catholics, Anglicans ... pp. 224–5. . McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 198; John Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae (Oxford, 1655), ‘The Preface to the Readers’, p. 69. . Owen, ‘Of the Divine Original ...’ in Works (London, 1822), vol. 16, p. 296. . Trevor-Roper, ‘Laudianism and Political Power’, in Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans, 1987–1988), p. 52. . Trevor-Roper, ibid., ‘The Great Tew Circle’, p. 225. . Crosby, English Baptists, vol. i, p. 206. . Ibid., pp. 208, 210–11. . Wood, Ath. Oxon, 1692, col. 202; also Crosby, English Baptists, vol. i, pp. 208–15. . DNB, ‘Biddle’ [on White Kennet, Firmin]. . McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 216. . Ibid. . [ John Farrington], Life of John Bidle, p. 11; = Tracts 1, 1691, sig. A2r.

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Chapter 6

265

A Climate of Repression

. Joshua Toulmin, A Letter to the Bishops ... for a Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (London, 1789), p. 24. . Daniel Neal, History of the Puritans (London, 1822), vol. iv, p. 288. . C. Gordon Bolam and others, The English Presbyterians (London, 1968), p. 75. . Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. i, p. 281; S.R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution (London, 1890), pp. 201–2. . C.P. Hill, Who’s Who in Stuart Britain 1603–1714 (Mechanicsburg, PA, 1988), p. 211. . Gardiner, Revolution, p. 117. . C.P. Hill, op. cit. . John Stoughton Ecclesiastical History of England: the Church of the Revolution (London, 1874), pp. 201–2. . Herbert S. Skeats, A History of the Free Churches of England (London, 1869), p. 126. . George Ashwell, transl., Eb’n Tophail [Ibn Tufayl], The History of Hai Eb’n Yockdan, an Indian Prince ... (London, 1686), sig. A4v. . George Ashwell, Theologia Ruris ... or, the Book of Nature [an appendix to the above], p. 200. . John Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, Bk IV, ch. xix, §4. . Skeats, Free Churches, p. 185. . Sherlock, Vindication, 1690), p. 26; Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, p. 204. . See the very full entry, ‘Lodowicke Muggleton’ in ODNB; also DNB, where Alexander Gordon is informative and excellent. . Bruce Mansfield, Phoenix of his Age: Interpretations of Erasmus 1550–1750 (Toronto, 1979), p. 263. . A Collection of Papers which passed between the late learned Mr Leibnitz and Dr Clarke ..., London, 1717.

Chapter 7 ‘Then is Christ the Father’: A Quaker Puzzle . William Penn, Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers; also Sandy Foundation Shaken, and Innocency ... (Philadelphia, 1855), p. 111 (p. 9). . Ibid., p. 112 (10). . Ibid., p. 113 (11). . Ibid., p. 116 (14). . Ibid., p. 117 (15). . Ibid., p. 120. . Ibid., p. 124. . Ibid., p. 153 (p. 9). . Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, pp. 160–9; Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, pp. 288–9. . Samuel Parker, A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie (London, 1670); Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, pp. 9–10.

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. . . . . . . . . . . .

. . .

Parker, Discourse, pp. 57–8. Ibid., pp. 86–7. DNB, ‘Herbert Croft’. Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, p. 11. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Bk i, ll. 598–9. Revelation ii, 6 and 14 ff. Andrew Marvell, ‘The Rehearsal Transpros’d’, quoted in Wilbur, Unitarianiam II, p. 213. John Dryden, ‘Religio Laici’, ll. 312–13. Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, p. 44. John Dryden, ‘The Hind and the Panther’, ii, ll. 154–5. See also i, ll. 52–16 and ii, ll. 150–3. Ibid., i, ll. 43–61. McLachlan, Socinianism, pp. 318–19; [M V de la Croze], ‘Historical and Critical Reflections upon Mahometanism and Socinianism’, in Four Treatises concerning the Doctrine, Discipline and Worship of the Mahometans (London, 1712), p. 185; sig. N5r; Gerard Wiegers, Romania Arabica, p. 410. George Bishop, New England Judged (London, 1661, repr. ?2011), pp. 19–20; DNB, ‘Mary Fisher’. Samuel [Horsley], Tracts in Controversy with Dr. Priestley ... (Gloucester [sic], 1789), p. 266 (Letter 16). Alexander Gordon, ‘The Primary Document of English Unitarianism, 1682’, ii, in The Christian Life and Unitarian Herald, 1 October 1892, p. 477 col. 2. The complete Unitarian document is printed as a prologue to Charles Leslie, The Socinian Controversy Discuss’d (London, 1708), pp. iii–xiii.

Chapter 8

A Conflict Erupts

. Alexander Gordon, Addresses Biographical and Historical (London, 1922), p. 51. . McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 321. . Ibid. . Wilbur, Unitarianism II, p. 217. . Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century, abridged (London, 1896), p. 169; ibid., unabridged (1878), vol. i, pp. 392–3. . Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, pp. 158–9. . Ibid., pp. 178–9. . Gilbert Burnet, A History of My Own Time (London, 1833), vol. iv, p. 387. . Maurice Cranston, John Locke: a Biography (Oxford, 1985), p. 127; Locke, Correspondence (Oxford, 1976), vol. i, letter 259 [the p.s.]. . Edward Stillingfleet, Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1697), p. i; William Sherlock, A Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity … (London, 1690), sig. A2v; ibid., An Apology for writing against

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . .

267

Socinians (London, 1693), p. 9; anon. [?F. Atterbury, B. Shower, or G. Hickes], A Letter to a Convocation Man (London, 1697), p. 6. [Stephen Nye], A Brief History of the Unitarians ..., 2nd edn (1691), p. 10 [sig. B1v in Tracts 1]. Ibid., p. 49, sig. G3r; see also Lecler, Toleration, vol. i, p. 52. Chillingworth, Protestants, p. 371. [Nye], Brief History, p. 9, sig. B1r. Ibid., p. 26, sig. D1v. Skeats, Free Churches, pp. 130–2. Wilbur, Unitarianism II, p. 248. McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 36n. Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, p. 192; Locke, Correspondence (1978) vol. iii, letter 1147 [Locke to Limborch, 6 June 1689]. Wilbur, Unitarianism II, p. 196. [Stephen Nye], The Acts of Great Athanasius: with Notes ... (1690), p. 13, sig. B3r. Ibid., p. 10, sig. B1v. Ibid., p. 12, sig. B2v. Ibid., p. 16, sig. B4v. Ibid., p. 17, sig. C1r. Ibid. William Sherlock, A Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity, and the Incarnation of the Son of God ... (London, 1690), pp. 48–9. Ibid., p. 67. Ibid. Ibid., p. 52. Udo Thiel, ‘The Trinity and Human Personal Identity’, in M.A. Stewart (ed.), English Philosophy in the Age of Locke (Oxford, 2000), p. 229. Ibid., p. 230. Sherlock, Vindication, p. 139; also p. 101. Ibid., pp. 70, 73. Ibid., p. 139. Ibid., p. 104. Ibid., pp. 47, 66. Ibid., p. 67. Ibid., p. 50. Nye, Acts of Great Athanasius, p. 27/sig. D2r, also St Augustine, De Trinitate, quoted in [?Henry Hedworth] Some Thoughts upon Dr Sherlock’s Vindication (London, 1691), pp. 9–10, sigg. B1r-v. The author calls the Athanasian creed ‘a full dictionary for theological gibberish’. Also Grotius, De Veritate Religionis Christianae, quote in ibid., p. 11, cols. 1–2, ref to 6th book. Sherlock, Vindication, p. 48. Arthur Bury, The Naked Gospel (1690), p. 29. Ibid., Preface, sig. A3v.

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reason and religion

. Gibbon Edward, History of the Decline and Fall. Penguin complete edn (1997), ch. xx, vol. iii, p. 336. . Thomas Long, An answer to a Socinian treatise ... (London, 1691), pp. 10–12, 19. . G. V. Bennett, The Tory Crisis in Church and State, 1688–1730 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 33–4. . DNB, ‘Jonathan Trelawney’. The episode is not mentioned in Trelawney’s ODNB entry. . William Nicholls, An Answer to an Heretical Book ... (London, 1691), p. 3; Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii., p. 200. . Bury, The Naked Gospel, 2nd edn (1691), preface by Le Clerc, sig. A2v. . John Wallis, The Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity briefly explained ... (London, 1690), p. 4. . Ibid. . Ibid., p. 11. . John Wallis, A Second Letter ... (London, 1691), p. 7. . Ibid. . Bainton, Hunted Heretic, p. 10; F.C. Conybeare, ‘Three Early Doctrinal Modifications of the Text of the Gospel’, Hibbert Journal, 1 (1902–1903), pp. 103–8. . Wallis, The Doctrine ... (1690), p. 3. . Ibid., p. 4. . Ibid., p. 5. . Ibid., p. 8. . Ibid., p. 9. . [Stephen Nye], Observations on the Four letters of Dr. John Wallis (London, 1691), p. 9; Tracts 1, p. 311, sig. B1r. . Wallis, The Doctrine ... (1690), p. 10. . Ibid., p. 12. . Ibid., p. 17. . Ibid., p. 18. . Ibid. . Wallis, A Second Letter ... p. 8. . Anon., A Discourse of Humane Reason (London, 1690), p. 67. . Ibid., p. 54. . Ibid., p. 51. . Stephen Nye, An Exhortation to a free … (London, 1691), p. 1; Tracts 1, sig. A1r. . Ibid. . Ibid., p. 3. . Ibid. . [Stephen Nye], The Acts of Great Athanasius ... (1690), p. 3, sig. A2v. . Ibid. . Ibid., p. 6.

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269

. . . . . . . . .

Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 9. Anon., Some Thoughts upon Dr. Sherlock’s Vindication, 2nd edn (London, 1691), pp. 4–5/Tracts 1, pp. 136–7, sigg. A2v–A3r. . Ibid., p. 10. . [Stephen Nye], A Defence of the Brief History of the Unitarians ... London, 1691), p. 4/Tracts 1, p. 210, sig. A2v. . Ibid., p. 5/Tracts 1, p. 211, sig. A3r.

Chapter 9

Anglicans Disunited

. Edward Wetenhall, An Earnest and Compassionate Suit for Forebearance (London, 1691), p. 1. . Ibid., p. 2. . Ibid. . Ibid., p. 5. . Ibid., p.7. . Ibid., p. 9. . Ibid., p. 11. . Ibid., p. 16. . Richard Hooker, Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie, Everyman edn (London, 1925), vol. i, p. 202. . [Stephen Nye,] ‘Considerations on the Explications of the Doctrine of the Trinity ...’ 1693, p. 28; in Tracts 2, p. 220, sig. D2v. . Ibid., p. 27 (Tracts 2, p. 219). . Ibid., p. 26. . Wetenhall, Earnest and Compassionate, p. 16. . Ibid., p. 17. . William Sherlock, An Apology for Writing against Socinians (London, 1693), p. 3. . Ibid., p. 6. . Ibid., p. 9. . Ibid., p. 10. . Wetenhall, Earnest and Compassionate ... p. 7; Sherlock, Apology, p. 18. . Sherlock, ibid. . Ibid., p. 19. . Ibid., p. 23. . Ibid., p. 19.

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270

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Ibid., p. 25. Ibid., p. 31. Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, p. 223. [Stephen Nye], A Letter of Resolution Concerning the Doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation ... [London, 1693] in Tracts 2, p. 1, sig. A1r. Ibid. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 15. William Freke, A Brief and Clear Confutation of the Doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1693), p. 11. Ibid., p. 15. The Parliamentary History, vol. v, 1688–1702 (London, 1809), cols. 810–11. See also Wilbur, Unitarianism II, p. 231, Skeats, Free Churches, p. 184.

Chapter 10

An Oxford Tempest

. Abbey and Overton, English Church, abridged, p. 172; unabridged, vol. i, pp. 396–7. . Gilbert Burnet, A History of my Own Time (London, 1833), vol. iv, p. 390. . Thomas Birch, The Life of ... Dr. John Tillotson (London, 2nd edn, 1753), p. 354. . DNB, ‘Robert South’. . Robert South, Animadversions upon Dr Sherlock’s Book ... (London, 1693), p. iii. . Ibid., p. xiv. . Ibid., p. 71. . Ibid.; also Thiel, ‘The Trinity and Human Personal..’ in Stewart, English Philosophy, pp. 226, 232. . South, Animadversions, p. 88. . Ibid., p. 34. . Ibid., p. 35. . Ibid., p. 36. . Ibid., pp. 62–3. . Ibid., pp. 64–5. . Ibid., p. 84. . Ibid., pp. 87–8. . Ibid., p. 216. . Ibid., p. 241. . Thiel, ‘The Trinity ...’ in Stewart, English Philosophy, p. 233. . [Stephen Nye], Considerations on the Explications of the Doctrine of the Trinity [i], 1693, p. 21 [Tracts 2, p. 213].

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. Ibid., p. 32 [Tracts 2, p. 224]. . John Howe, Works (London, 1822), vol. iv, pp. 299 ff. See also Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, p. 213. . Howe, Works, vol. iv, p. 320. . John Milton, Paradise Lost, VIII, 403–7. . Edward Fowler, Certain Propositions ... (London, 1694), p. 4 (Proposition 8). . Ibid., pp. 6–7 (Prop. 21). . Ibid., p. 9. . Edward Wetenhall, An Antapology of the Melancholy Stander-by ... (London, 1693), p. 5. . William Sherlock, A Defence of the Dean … in answer to the Antapologist ... (London, 1694), p. 10. . Ibid., p. 58. . William Sherlock, A Defence of Dr Sherlock’s Notion of a Trinity in Unity (London, 1694), p. 2. . See the summary of Sherlock’s views in South, Tritheism Charged ... (London, 1695), sigg. A4r, A4v, a1r-a4v; also William Sherlock, A Defence of Dr Sherlock’s Notion of a Trinity in Unity (London, 1694), p. 104. See also, ‘Animadversions on a Postscript to the Defence of Dr. Sherlock’ in Tracts 3. . [William Pittis], ‘The Battle Royal’, in Joshua Toulmin, An Historical View of the State of the Protestant Dissenters ... (Bath and London, 1814), p. 186. . Louis Locke, Tillotson: a Study in 17th-century Literature (Copenhagen, 1954), pp. 95, 97. . See Stephen Hampton, Anti-Arminians: the Anglican reformed tradition from Charles II to George I (Oxford, 2008), pp. 195–203, 211–20. . Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, p. 260. . Ibid., p. 275. . [Stephen Nye], Considerations on the Explications of the Doctrine of the Trinity, occasioned … (1694), in A Third Collection of Tracts ... (1695). Henceforward Considerations 2; Tracts 3. . Ibid., p. 4, col. 1. . Ibid., col. 2. . [ John Bidle], A Confession of Faith ... , The Preface, Tracts 1, sig. D4r, p. 43. . Anon, An Impartial Account ... (London, 1691), p. 23, Tracts 1, sig. D2r, p. 285. . John Bidle, A Twofold Catechism (1654), p. 14. . Anon., Impartial Account (London, 1691),Tracts 1, 263 esp p. 5/267. . Considerations 2, p. 45 col. i/Tracts 3. . Ibid., p. 50 col. ii.

Chapter 11

An Injunction and an Act

. Jonathan Edwards, A Preservative against Socinianism (Oxford, 1693–1703). . Ibid., pt. i, p. 7.

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reason and religion

. Richard Knolles, A Generall Historie of the Turkes (London, 1603); George Sandys, A Relation ... (London, 1616); see the discussion of this point in James Ellison, George Sandys: Travel, Colonialism and Tolerance in the 17th century (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 56–9. . Peter Partner, God of Battles (London, 1997). . [Matthew Tindal], A Letter to the Reverend the Clergy of both Universities ..., (1694), p. 4 col. i. . Ibid., col. ii. . Ibid., pp. 7–8. . Ibid., p. 9, para 25. . Ibid. . Ibid., p. 8. . Ibid., p. 10. . Ibid., p. 11. . Ibid., p. 14. . Ibid. . Ibid., p. 19. . Ibid., pp. 28–9. . Ibid., p. 32. . Ibid. . Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol i, p. 329; Toulmin, Protestant Dissenters, p. 182. . Toulmin, Protestant Dissenters, p. 182. . DNB, ‘Joseph Bingham’ [ODNB, St Peter-in-the-East]. . William Sherlock, A Modest Examination of the Late Oxford Decree ... (London, 1696), pp. 2, 14. . Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, p. 331. . Ibid., p. 352. . John Smith, A Designed End to the Socinian Controversy (London, 1793), pp. 51–2. . ODNB, ‘John Smith’. . Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, p. 293. . Robert South, Tritheism Charged ... (London, 1695), sig. A4v, p. 129. . Directions to the Archbishops and Bishops ... (London, 1695, i.e. 1696), p. 5. . Ibid., p. 6. . See the criticism in Stoughton, Ecclesiastical History (1874), pp. 223–4. . S[tephen] N[ye], A Discourse concerning Natural and Revealed Religion (London, 1696), pp. 87–8. . ‘Alexander Munro’ [i.e. Charles Leslie], The Charge of Socinianism against Dr. Tillotson Consider’d ... (Edenburgh, 1696), quoted in Thomas Birch, Life of Tillotson (1753), p. 297 (p. 323 of 1752 edn). . See Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, p. 300n. . Birch, Tillotson, pp. 297–8; p. 324 in 1752 edn.

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. ‘Munro’/Leslie, Charge of Socinianism, esp. pp. 1 (consubstantial), 3 (person), 4 (Philippians ii, 5), 4 (satisfaction), 12 (hell), quoted in Anon., Archbishop Tillotson Vindicated from the Charge ... (London, 1696), pp. 3, 6–7, 17–18, 21–3. . Maurice Cranston, John Locke (Oxford, 1985), p. 390. . John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity (Washington DC, 1998), pp. 2, 3. . Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. iii, p. 411 (letter to Philip Limborch, 10 May 1695). See also Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. i, pp. 453–5. . Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, pp. 311–12. . Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, p. 189. . Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. i, p. 453; see also Cranston, Locke, pp. 389 ff. . Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. i, p. 453. . McLachlan, Socinianism, p. 329. . Cranston, Locke, p. 39; D.J. O’Connor, John Locke (Harmondsworth, 1952), pp. 14–15. . Ibid., p. 40. . Locke, Essay, II, xxiii, 2. . Ibid., I, iii, 19. . Edward Stillingfleet, A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity ... (London, 1697), p. 234. . Ibid., p. 236. . Locke, Essay, IV, xv, 3. See also Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, p. 250. . Hunt, ibid.; see also DNB ‘John Locke’. . H.R Fox Bourne, Life of John Locke (London, 1876), vol. ii, p. 424; also Locke, Works, 1722 edn, vol. iii, p. 566 (Molyneux to Locke, 15 May 1697). . See Michael Hunter, ‘Aikenhead the Atheist’ in M. Hunter and D. Wootton, Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1992), p. 231; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, pp. 377 ff; J.H. Allen, An Historical Sketch of the Unitarian Movement ... (New York, 1894), p. 144; DNB ‘Aikenhead’; Wilbur, Unitarianism II (1969), pp. 231–2. . [ John Toland], An Apology for Mr Toland … (London, 1702); reprinted in Christianity Not Mysterious (Dublin, 1997), p.121; Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, p. 237. . An Impartial Account of the Word Mystery (London, 1691), p. 13 [=Tracts 1, p. 275, sig. B3r]. . John Toland, Christianity Not Mysterious, III, iv, 51 (p. 81 of 1997 edn). . Ibid., III, iv, 55 (p. 82 of 1997). . Ibid., III, iv, 67 (p. 87 of 1997). . Ibid., Preface, p. 11 of 1997; p. xxiv of ‘1696’. . Ibid, III, iv, 47, (p. 79 of 1997). . Peter Browne, A letter in answer to a book entituled ... (London, 1703), esp. pp. 14–21 164–9; DNB, ‘John Toland’; Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, p. 247. . See Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, p. 235.

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. See Trevor-Roper, ‘Religious Origins of the Enlightenment’, in Religion, the Reformation, and Social Change (London, 1967), pp. 193–236. . Joshua Toulmin, Protestant Dissenters, p. 166. . Abbey and Overton, English Church, abridged, p. 79; unabridged, vol. i, p. 183; Skeats, Free Churches, p. 194. . Skeats, Free Churches, p. 192. . J. Gailhard, The Blasphemous Socinian Heresie (London, 1697), Epistle Dedicatory, sig. a2r. Also Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. i, pp. 376–7, vol. iii, p. 394. . The Parliamentary History 1688–1702 (London 1809), cols. 1172–3. . Ibid., col. 1173. . William III, An Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Blasphemy and Profaneness (London, 1697 [i.e. 1698]); DNB, ODNB, ‘Edward Elwall’. . H. McLachlan, The Story of a Nonconformist Library (London, 1923), p. 59.

Epilogue . Skeats, Free Churches, pp. 199–201n; Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography, vol. iii, pp. 503–58. . Abbey and Overton, English Church, abridged, p. 452, quoting L. Aikin (ed.), A.L. Barbauld, Works, with a Memoir (London, 1825), vol. ii, p. 151. . Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. ii, p. 267. . [Stephen Nye], The Acts of Great Athanasius, p. 10; H. McLachlan, Story of a, 1923 p. 79. . Some Thoughts upon Dr Sherlock’s Vindication (London, 1691), p. 8 col ii; McLachlan, Story, p. 79. . See Alexander Gordon, Addresses Biographical and Historical (London, 1922), p. 127–8; Hunt, Religious Thought, vol. iii, pp. 21–3. . Skeats, Free Churches, p. 131. . Skeats, Free Churches, p. 310; Wilbur, Unitarianism II, p. 260. . Skeats, Free Churches, pp. 306–8; Wilbur, Unitarianism II, p. 261. . Wilbur, Unitarianism II, pp. 282–4. . H. Trevor-Roper, ‘Religious Toleration after 1688’, in From CounterRevolution to Glorious Revolution, p. 282. . Ibid. . The Parliamentary History ... (London, 1817), vol. xxix, cols. 1372–81, debate of 11 May 1792. . Edmund Burke, Works (London, 1816), vol. iv, p. 52; Parliamentary History, ibid., col. 1392. This reference to Burke’s ignorance is omitted from the 1826 edition of his Works (vol. x, pp. 41 ff ). . Burke, Works, vol. iv, p. 59; Parl. Hist., cols 1385–6n. . Ibid., Works, vol. iv, p. 59; Parl. Hist., col. 1393. . Ibid., Works, vol. iv, p. 57; Parl. Hist., cols. 1383–4n. . Ibid., Works, vol. iv, p. 59; Parl. Hist., cols. 1385–7n.

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. Ibid., Works, vol. iv, p. 63; Parl. Hist., cols. 1388–9n. . Edward Tagart, Sketches of the Lives ... of the Leading Reformers (London, 1843), p. 72n. . C. Gordon Bolam et al., The English Presbyterians (London, 1968), p. 225. See also H. McLachlan, The Unitarian Movement in the Religious Life of England (London, 1934), pp. 71–97; Ibid., Education under the Test Acts, 1931; Alexander Gordon, ‘Early Nonconformity and Education’, in Addresses ... (London, 1922), pp. 67–89. . H. Trevor-Roper, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans, p. 230. . Ibid., p. 226.

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Gailhard, J., The Blasphemous Socinian Heresie (London, 1697). Gardiner, S.R., The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution (London, 1890). Gordon, Alexander, Addresses Biographical and Historical (London, 1922). ———, Heads of English Unitarian History (London, 1895). ———, ‘The Primary Document of English Unitarianism, 1682’, three articles, Christian Life and Unitarian Herald, 24 September, 1 and 29 October 1892. Grunebaum, Gustave von, Medieval Islam (Chicago and London, 1969). Haller, William, The Rise of Puritanism (New York and London, 1957). Hammond, Henry, Of the Reasonableness of Christian Religion (London, 1650). Hampton, Stephen, Anti-Arminians: the Anglican Reforned Tradition (Oxford, 2008). Hooker, Richard, Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (London, 1925). Horsley, Samuel, Bishop, Tracts in Controversy with Dr. Priestley... (Glocester [sic], 1789). Howard, Sir Robert, History of Religion (1694). Howe, John, A calm and sober enquiry concerning the possibility of a Trinity in the Godhead... (1694). ———, Works (London, 1822). Hunt, J., Religious Thought in England, 3 vols. (London, 1870–1873). Hunter, M. and Wootton, D., Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford, 1992). Jones, Rufus M., Spiritual Reformers in the 16th and 17th Centuries (London, 1914). Kamen, Henry, The Rise of Toleration (London, 1967). ———, The Iron Century (New York, 1972). Lamson, Alvan, The Church of the First Three Centuries (London, 1875). Lecky, W.H.C., History of the Rise of Rationalism in Europe (London, 1913). Lecler, Joseph, Toleration and the Reformation, 2 vols. (London, 1960). Leff, Gordon, Medieval Thought (Harmondsworth, 1958). Leslie, Charles (aka ‘Alexander Munro’), The Charge of Socinianism against Dr. Tillotson Consider’d (Edenburgh [sic], 1696). Lindsey, Theophilus, An Historical View of the State ... (London, 1783; repr. 2007). Locke, Louis, Tillotson: a Study in 17th-century Literature (Copenhagen, 1954). Long, Thomas, An answer to a Socinian treatise ... (London, 1691). Lubieniecki, Stanislas, History of the Polish Reformation, transl. G.H. Williams (Minneapolis, 1995). Lucius Cary, Lord Falkland, A Discourse of Infallibility (London, 1660). MacKinnon, James, Calvin and the Reformation (London, 1936). McLachlan, Herbert, English dissenters under the test acts; being the history of ... (1931). ———, The Story of a Nonconformist Library (London, 1923). McLachlan, H. John, The Divine Image (London, 1972). ———, Socinianism in Seventeenth-century England (London, 1951). Magocsi, Paul Robert, Historical Atlas of East Central Europe (Seattle and London, 1993).

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Mansfield, Bruce, Phoenix of his Age: Interpretations of Erasmus, 1550–1750 (Toronto, 1979). Munro, Alexander, see Leslie, Charles. Parker, Samuel, A Discourse of Ecclesistical Politie… wherein ... the mischiefs and Inconveniences of Toleration are represented ... (London, 1670). Partner, Peter, God of Battles (London, 1997). Phillips, Margaret Mann, Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance (London, 1949). Neal, Daniel, History of the Puritans (London, 1822). Nicholls, William, An Answer to an Heretical Book ... (London, 1691). Nye, Stephen, A Brief History of the Unitarians, Called also Socinians. In Four letters Written to a Friend (1687, repr. 1691). ———, A Discourse concerning Natural and Revealed Religion (London, 1696). ——— (ed.), The Faith of One God, who is only the Father; and of One Mediator between God and Men, Who is only the Man Christ Jesus; and of one Holy Spirit, the Gift (and sent) of God, asserted and defended … (London, 1691); the tracts comprising: [S. Nye] ‘An Exhortation to a free and impartial Enquiry into the Doctrines of Religion’; [ J. Farrington] ‘A Short Account of the Life of John Bidle, M.A...’; [ J. Bidle] ‘XII Arguments drawn out of the Scripture, wherein the commonly received Opinion touching the deity of the Holy Spirit, is clearly and fully refuted’; [ J. Bidle] ‘A confession of Faith touching the Holy Trinity, according to the Scripture’ (1691); [ J. Bidle] ‘The Testimonies of Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Novatianus, Theophilus and Origen ... also of Arnobius, Lactantius, Eusebius, Hilary and Brightman; concerning that One God’; [?S. Nye] ‘The Acts of Great Athanasius, with Brief Notes on his Creed; and Observations on Dr Sherlock’s Vindication’; [?H. Hedworth or J. le Clerc] ‘Some thought upon Dr Sherlock’s Vindication … in a letter’ (London, 1691); [S. Nye] ‘A Brief History of the Unitarians, called also Socinians’ (1691); [S. Nye] ‘A Defence of the Brief History of the Unitarians against Dr Sherlock’s answer’ (London, 1691); ‘An Impartial Account of the Word Mystery, as it is taken in the Holy Scripture’ (London, 1691); ‘Doctor Wallis’s Letter touching the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity Answer’d by his Friend’; ‘Observations on the Four Letters of Dr John Wallis, concerning the Trinity and the Creed of Athanasius’ (London, 1691). ———, A Second Collection of Tracts, proving the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only True God; and Jesus Christ the Son of God, him whom the Father sanctified and sent, raised from the Dead and Exalted. And Disproving the doctrine of Three Almighty and equal Persons, Spirits, Modes, Subsistencies or Somewhats in God; and of the Incarnation ... [?1693]; the tracts comprising: [S. Nye] ‘A Letter of Resolution concerning the Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation’; ‘Two Letters Touching the Trinity and Incarnation’; [S. Nye] ‘An accurate Examination of the principal Texts ... occasioned by a Book of Mr L Milbourn’ (London, 1692); [S. Nye], ‘Reflections on two Discourses concerning the Divinity of our Saviour; written by Monsieur Lamothe in French’ (London, 1693); [S. Nye] ‘The Trinitarian Scheme of

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Religion’ (London, 1692); ‘Of worshipping the Holy Ghost expressly, as a Person equal to, and distinct from the Father’; ‘The Unreasonableness of the Doctrine of the Trinity’ (London, 1692); ‘The belief of the Athanasian Creed not required by the Church of England, as necessary to Salvation’; ‘Mr Chillingworth’s Judgment of the Religion of Protestants; of Scripture the only Rule; of Differences among Protestants; of using Force in Matters of Religion, &c.’; [S. Nye] ‘Considerations on the Explications of the Doctrine of the Trinity, by Dr Wallis, Dr Sherlock, Dr S—th, Dr Cudworth and Mr Hooker...’ (1693). ———, A Third Collection of Tracts ... disproving the Doctrine of Three Almighty real subsisting Persons, Minds or Spirits. Giving also an Account of the Nominal Trinity; that is, Three Modes, Subsistencies or Somewhats in God, called by the Schoolmen Persons; and of the Judgment of the Fathers and Catholick Church for the first 150 Years, 1695; the tracts comprising: [S. Nye] ‘Considerations on the Explications of the Doctrine of the Trinity. Occasioned by Four Sermons of Dr Tillotson ... Dr Burnet ... xxviii Propositions ... by Dr Fowler ... Mr How ... A Calm Discourse’ (1694); ‘Animadversions on a Postscript to the Defence of Dr Sherlock, against the Calm Discourse’; [M. Tindal], ‘A Letter to the Reverend the Clergy of Both Universities...’ (1694); [M. Tindal], ‘The Reflections on the xxviii Propositions ...’ (1695); ‘A Reply to the Second Defence of the xxviii Propositions’ (1695); ‘The Exceptions of Mr Edwards, in his Causes of Atheism, against The Reasonableness of Christianity’ (1695); [G. Clerke or T. Smalbroke] ‘The Judgement of the Fathers concerning the Doctrine of the Trinity; oppos’d to Dr G. Bull’s Defence of the Nicene Faith’ (1695); ‘A Discourse concerning the Nominal and Real Trinitarians’ (1695). Orr, Robert R., Reason and Authority: the thought of William Chillingworth (Oxford, 1967). Ostrogorsky, George, History of the Byzantine State, transl. Joan Hussey (Oxford, 1986). Owen, John, Vindiciae Evangelicae (Oxford, 1655). ———, Works (London, 1859). Parker, Samuel, A Discourse of Ecclesiastical Politie (London, 1670). Penn, William, Rise and Progress of the People Called Quakers; also Sandy Foundation Shaken, and Innocency ... (Philadelphia, 1855). Porter, H.C., Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge, 1958). Rees, Thomas (ed. and transl.), The Racovian Catechism (London, 1818 and reprint). Rilliet, Albert (transl. and ed. W.K. Tweedie), Calvin and Servetus, (Edinburgh and London, 1876). Rodinson, Maxime, Mohammed (Harmondsworth, 1971). Sandius, Christopher, Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum (Freistadt (i.e. Amsterdam), 1684). Selden, John, (ed. S.W. Singer), Table-Talk (London, 1847).

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Servetus, Michael, De Trinitatis Erroribus Libri Septem (Hagenau, 1531); transl. E.M. Wilbur (ed.), The Two Treatises ..., Harvard Theological Studies XVI, 1932. Sherlock, William, An Apology for Writing against Socinians (London, 1693). ———, A Defence of the Dean in answer to the Antapologist ... (London, 1694). ———, A Defence of Dr Sherlock’s Notion of a Trinity in Unity, with a Postscript Relating to the Calm Discourse (London, 1694). ———, The distinction between the real and nominal trinitarians examined (London, 1696). ———, The present state of the Socinian controversy (London 1698, but mostly written 1696). ———, A Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity ... (London, 1690). Skeats, Herbert S., A History of the Free Churches of England (London, 1869). Smith, John, A Designed End to the Socinian Controversy (London, 1793). Socinus, Faustus, Opera, two vols. (Irenopolis (i.e. Amsterdam), post ad 1656). South, Robert, Animadversions upon Dr Sherlock’s Book ... (London, 1693). ———, Tritheism Charg’d (London, 1695). Southern, R.W., The Making of the Middle Ages (London, 1959). Stewart, M.A. (ed.), English Philosophy in the Age of Locke (Oxford, 2000). Stillingfleet, Edward, A Discourse in Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (London, 1697). Stoughton, John, Ecclesiastical History of England: the Church of the Revolution (London, 1874). Strype, John, The Life and Acts of John Whitgift (Oxford, 1822). Taylor, Jeremy, Theologia Eklektike: a Discourse of the Liberty of Prophesying ... (London, 1647). Thomson, R.W. (transl.), James Howard-Johnston and Tim Greenwood (eds.), The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos (Liverpool, 1999). Tindal, Matthew, A Letter to the Reverend the Clergy of both Universities ... (1694). ———, The Reflections on the xxviii Propositions ... (1695). Toland, John, Christianity Not Mysterious (Dublin, 1997). Toulmin, Joshua, An Historical View of the State of the Protestant Dissenters … (Bath and London, 1814). ———, A Letter to the Bishops ... for a Repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts (London, 1789). ———, Memoirs of … Faustus Socinus (London, 1777). Trevor-Roper, Hugh, Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans: Seventeenth-Century Essays (London and Chicago, 1987–1988). ———, ‘Desiderius Erasmus’, Encounter, IV, 5 (May 1955), pp. 57–68. ———, From Counter-Reformation to Glorious Revolution (London, 1993). Tulloch, John, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy (Edinburgh and London, 1872). Wallace, Robert, Antitrinitarian Biography, three vols. (London, 1850).

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Wallis, John, The Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity briefly explained ... (London, 1690). Wetenhall, Edward, An Antapology of the Melancholy Stander-by ... (London, 1693). ———, An Earnest and Compassionate Suit for Forebearance (London, 1691). ———, A Vindication of the Antapologist (1695). Whichcote, Benjamin, Moral and Religious Aphorisms (London, 1753). Wilbur, Earl Morse, A History of Unitarianism: Socinianism and its Antecedents (Cambridge, MA, 1945). ———, A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England and America (Boston, MA, 1952). William III, An Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Blasphemy and Profaneness (London, 1697 (i.e. 1698). [9 & 10 W. III, ch. 32] ———, Directions to the Archbishops and Bishops for the Preserving of Unity in the Church ... (London, 1695 (i.e. 1696)). Williams, George Huntston, The Radical Reformation (London and Philadelphia, 1962). Woolhouse, R., John Locke; A Biography (Cambridge, 2007). Wotton, William, Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning (London, 1694). Wright, Richard, An Apology for Dr Michael Servetus (Wisbech, 1806).

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Index Abelard, 52, 54, 100 Abkarib Asad, converted to Judaism?, 49–50 Academies, Dissenting, 247 Acontius, Jacobo (Giacomo Conzio, Aconzio), 12, 23, 68–9, 112 his book read at Great Tew, 115, 150 Acton, Lord, vi, 117 Acts of the Apostles, 30, 32, 45 Addison, Joseph, 144 Agricola, Rudolf, German humanist, 91 Ahmed ben Ahmed, Moroccan ambassador, 154–5 Aikenhead, Thomas, executed, 230 Alba Iulia, 67, 97; see also Gyulafehervar ‘Alchoran’, 163; see also Quran Aldrich, Henry, Dean, Christ Church, 173 Alexander, of Alexandria, Bishop, 39, 181 America, Bidle urged to spread his ideas to, 128 Mennonites and Schwenkfeldians in, 63 Amsterdam, Socinian publications in, 153 Anabaptists, 55 chaos in Münster, 60 in Italy, 93 tendency to spiritual anarchism, 57 Andrewes, Lancelot, Bishop, 8, 242 Anglican Church, a partner of royalism and tradition, 152

became infused with Socinianism, 241 dispute among divines, 207 its Erasmian heritage, 242; see also English Church moderate, 90 Anne, Queen of England, continued toleration, 237 Anselm, 3 Antinous, 34 Antioch, 182 Anti-Trinitarianism, Polish, 99, 105 Anti-Trinitarians, English, in 1640s, 120–1, 129 public works, 109 silenced by 1698 Act, 138, 237 Apostles’ Creed, 150 Aquinas, Thomas, 3, 4, 48 Aramaic, 31 Aratus, 35 ‘Arian’ in Polish context, 99 Arian controversy, in England, 239, 242 Arians, 43 Ariminum (Rimini), 183 Aristotle, 3, 25, 174, 242 admired by Darwin, 136 against Plato, 35–6 and civic virtue, 36 not an Aristotelian, 136 on substance, 34, 33, 46 rediscovered in Europe, 52 Arius, 40, 42 Arles, council at, 182–3 Armenians, 47

285

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reason and religion

Arminians, at Dort, 49 Arminius (Harmensen), J., 9, 18, 20 Army, English Parliamentary, Independent by religion, 121 Arneys, Antoine, Lyon Catholic, 79 Arnoullet, Balthazar, Vienne publisher, 78 Ashwell, Reverend G., 102 on reason and revelation, 137 Assheton, John, 31 ataraxia, 36 Athanasian Creed, 9, 32 attempt to modify, 163 but falls out of favour, 241 criticized, 183 difficult, 45 it remains, 239 not by Athanasius, 42 Nye’s Notes on, 163–4 retained by reformers, 59 Sherlock and, 167 sidelined by Bishop Croft, 150, 158 Tillotson wishes to be rid of, 209 W. Freke and, 192 Wallis and, 177 Athanasius, 18, 32, 40, 41, 138 drunk?, 164 his conception of the Trinity, 175 his formulation rejected by Servetus, 73 S. Nye’s pamphlet on, 180–83 atheism, 110 F. Socinus’ text against, 106 J. Owen sees textual criticism leading to, 129, 233 Athens, 3, 102 atonement, Socinus rejects, 100, 104 English Church retains, 112 Atterbury, F., Bishop, 161, 234 Aubert, Noel, sieur de Versé, at Lambeth Palace, 154 Aubrey, John, on Falkland, 116 Augsburg, 60, 69 Peace of, 9 Augustine, 3, 4, 10, 20, 21, 44 and Pelagius, 47–8

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not a father in eastern churches, 48 opposed by Socinus, 100, 101 view of humanity similar to Calvinists’, 77 Augustus, Roman emperor, 64 Austerlitz, site of Ochino’s death, 70 Averroes, notion of the soul, 103 Avicenna, ideas attacked by Servetus, 75 Avignon, lures papacy from Rome, 64 Ayer, A,J., 126 Babylonian gods, Servetus compares Trinity to, 77 Bahira, 49 Baldwin, Mrs A., 237 Baptists, benefited from Toleration Act, 163 Barbauld, Mrs Anna Laetitia, 247 Baro, Peter, 8, 9 Barth, Karl, 40 Basle, 4, 20, 59, 60 Castellio in, 89–90 Curio in, 67 F. Socinus in, 97, 100 Ochino in, 69, 70 Oecolampadius in, 63 Servetus in, 71–2 verdict on Servetus, 85 Bathory, Stephen, King of Transylvania, 97 imprisons F. David, 101 Battle Royal, The, ballad, 206–7 Baxter, Richard, accuses Grotius of using Socinianism to mask Jesuitry, 130 Bellius, Martinus, pseudonym for Castellio, 89 Berengarius of Tours, 4, 52 Berkeley, George, philosopher, 32 Bernard of Luxemburg, Dominican inquisitor keen to get to work, 62 Berne, 74, 80 verdict on Servetus, 85 Berthelier, Philibert, Libertine leader in Geneva, 82 Berwick-upon-Tweed, 68

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index Best, Paul, career of radical dissent, 120–2 close study of the Bible, 109 Bethlehem, 39 Bethlen, Gabor, 97 Beza, Theodore, Calvin’s successor, attacks toleration, 90 opposes Ochino, 70 Biandrata, Giorgio, 96 Bibliander, Zürich printer, 83 Bidle, John, father of English Unitarianism, 13 career, 122–31 close student of the Bible, 109, 114 not a political radical, 140 sought to rein in language, 183 Bingham, Joseph, his 1695 sermon and expulsion, 217–18 Black Madonna of Czestochowa, icon of, 107 Blair, Patrick, Bishop, 19 Blasphemy Act (1697/8), 138, 236–7 Blount, Charles, deist, 224 Boethius, 42, 53 Bohemia, 13 Bologna, 1530 imperial coronation, papal adulation, 71 Bolsec, Jerome, 87 Bona, Queen of Poland, 94, 96 Borrhäus, Martin, 89 Boyle, Robert, 15, 16 Bradley, F.H., 41 Bradshaw, John, president, Council of State, Bidle’s enemy, 125 Breda, Declaration of, 133 Brenz, Johann, against execution for re-baptism, 58 Breslau, 94 Broad Church attitudes, 142 Brotherton Library, Leeds, houses Falkland’s books, perfunctorily disposed by All Souls, 173 Brown, Sir Richard, determined to jail Bidle, 130 Browne, Peter, Bishop, opposes Toland, 233

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287

Bucer (Butzer), Martin, 63 denounces Servetus, 72 Bull, George, Bishop, his Defence, 241 Bullinger, Heinrich, 70, 85 Burghley, William Cecil, 1st Lord, 8 Burke, Edmund, misrepresents Price, 244 bilious attack on Unitarians, 245–6 Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop, on Sheldon, 134 on Firmin, 160 Burnet, Thomas, master, Charterhouse, 189–90, 206 Bury, Arthur, and The Naked Gospel, 170–4, 176 Buzzali, Leonardo, Abbot, flees to Damascus, 94 Caligula, emperor, 199 Calvin, John, 7–8, 12, 15, 21, 48 acquires copy of Servetus’ book, Chr. Res., 79 angered by Servetus’ tone, 77 Biandrata flees from, 96 correspondence with Servetus, 76 death threat to Servetus in letter to Farel, 76 Defensio (1554), 88–9 early reservations about Trinity, 59 legal process against Servetus, 81–8 Ochino meets, 69 Cambridge Platonists, 11, 17, 21, 24 oppose Hobbes, 139 Wallis and, 178 Cambridge University, 7 Puritan, 8 Camerarius, J., 74 Campanus, Johann, Anabaptist leader, encouraged by Franck to free thought, 62 associated with Servetus by Luther, 75 Canterbury, Ochino in, 70 Capito, Wolfgang (in Strassburg), 63 provides accommodation for Servetus, 72 Carnesecchi, P., beheaded by R. Inquisition on account of correspondence, 65

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reason and religion

Cartwright, Thomas, early Puritan, 7 Casale, 66 Castellio, Sebastian, 63, 67 challenges Calvin, 89–90 De Haereticis, 90 meets Ochino, 69, 87 Cavalier Parliament, 14, 133, 142, 147 Cavalier spirit, herding populace into conformity, 152 Celsus, intelligent pagan, 33–4, 190 Cerberus, compared to the Trinity, 77, 78 Chalcedon, Council of (451), 47 Champel, 87 Champier, Symphorien, 75 Charlemagne, 51, 62 Charles I, King of England, 11 admonition to son, 173 Eikon Basilike, 23 regime in trouble, 119 Charles II, King of England, 14, 23 attracted by South’s witty preaching, 195 nebulous beliefs, 133 penchant alleged by South of offering knighthoods to all men he met, 199 presented with lions, 154 Charles III, of Savoy, 80 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, 66, 69 Quintana his confessor, 71 Charles X, ambitious and violent king of Sweden, 107 Charlieu, 75 Chartres, centre for new learning, 52 Chesterton, G.K., 17 Cheynell, Francis, extreme Puritan, 4, 14, 21 Chillingworth, William, 3, 22–3 against forcing religion, 161 at Great Tew, 115 besieging Gloucester in August 1643, 123 heritage, 242 Chmielnicki, Bogdan, Cossack leader, 107

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Christianismi Restitutio, book by Servetus, 78, 82, 85 Christoph of Württemberg, Duke, 58 Christotokos, 49 Christ’s Hospital, Firmin a governor, 141 Chur, 86 Church of England, 4, 249; see also Anglican Church Cicero, M.T., Roman values, 6, 174 Trinity, 201 circumincession, 19, 33, 127, 169, 183, 200, 220 Civil War, English, viii, 26, 114, 129, 142 Clarendon, Edward Hyde, 1st earl of, 11 bill for licensing books, 135 two meanings of Socinianism, 114–15, 140 Clarendon Code, 134, 136, 157, 241 Clarke, Samuel, and Leibniz, 144 Scripture Doctrine..., 242 Clement, Epistles of, 17 Clovis, 42 Cluj, see Kolozsvar Cogito ergo sum, misunderstood by Sherlock, 196–7, 201 performative, 168 Cole, Peter, Suffolk tanner, denied the Trinity, 111, 247 Coleridge, S.T., 18, 25 Colet, J., 7, 249 Colladon, Germain, Calvin’s associate, 82 Collins, A., 108 Cologne, 76 Colonna, Vittoria, in J. de Valdes’ circle, 65 Commonwealth, English, 26 Constance, 60 Constans, emperor (western, Athanasian), 182 Constantine, emperor, 9, 42, 83, 171 baptized a Unitarian, 182

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index Constantinople, Athanasius appeals to, 181–2 Constantius, emperor, semi-Arian, 182 Conventicle Act, 134 Conway, Anne, Cambridge Platonist, 12 Conybeare, F.C., and inauthenticity of Bible verse, 176 Coornheert, Dirk, Dutch spiritual humanist Catholic, 63–4 Copts, 47 Coram, Thomas, foreshadowed by Firmin, 141 Cotterell, Sir Charles, Charles II’s MC, 154 Couet (Covetus), Jacques, 100 Counter-Reformation, 7, 65 Cowley, Abraham, 25 at Great Tew, 115 Culverwel, N., 24 Curcellaeus (Etienne de Courcelles), 184 Cranmer, Thomas, Archbishop, invites Ochino and Peter Martyr, 70 Crell(ius), Johann, 117 arguments appeared unaswerable to Grotius, 129 on God’s nature, 208–9 Cressy, Hugh, 115 Croft, Herbert, Bishop, The Naked Truth, 150, 170 Cromwell, Oliver, Independent, tolerant towards other dissenters, 121, 123 protects Bidle, 126, 130 Cudworth, Ralph, Cambridge Platonist, 12, 166 pre-Christian ideas of Trinity, 192 Trinity seen as Platonic, theologically Arian, 201–2 Curione, Celio Secundo, radical protestant, exploits, 66–7 in Basle, 89 Cyrus, the elder, king of Persia, 76, 82 D’Ailly, Pierre, 55 Damascus, 78

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289

Damascus, John of, 33, 40, 45, 138, 201, 220 Darwin, Charles, admired Aristotle as a biologist, 136 davar, 31 David, Francis, 96, 100–1 Davies, Professor Norman, 99 Declaration of Indulgence, (1672), 133; (1687), 158 Defoe, Daniel, 247 De Haereticis, an sint persequendi, 89–90 deism, -sts, 109–10 Locke opposed to, 225–6 possible origin in Muggletonianism, 141, 179 Tindal and, 214 unlike Socinians, 141 Del Corro, Antonio, 8, 9 Delphi, 89 Denck, Hans, German spiritual humanist, 59–60 Descartes, René, founder of modern philosophy, 3, 168, 196–7, 201, 242 Dhu Nuwas, Jewish king in South Arabia, 50 Discourse of Humane Reason, A, (anon.), 179 Dissenting Academies, 247 Divine Right, doctrine of, 24, 227 ‘Donation of Constantine’, religious fabrication, 17, 65 Donatists, 44 Dort, Synod of, 1619, 49, 112, 115 Draconic Ordinance (1648), against heresy, a dead letter, 124–5 attempts to revive, 130 Driffield, 120 Dryander, Francis (Francisco de Enzinas), 70 Dryden, John, poet laureate, attacks dissenters, 151–2 attacks Socinianism, 136 Dublin, Emlyn in, 240 Dugard, William, friend of Milton, 113

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290

reason and religion

Dürer, Albrecht, 60 Dury, John, 18 Ecclesia Peregrinorum, 26, 68, 111 Ecclesia spiritualis, 61 Earle, John, at Great Tew, 115 Edessa, Syrian academy, 49 Edward VI, King of England, 26, 65, 70 dedicatee of Castellio’s 1551 Latin Bible, 89 established Strangers’ church, 111 Edwards, John, Locke’s antagonist, 213, 224 Edwards, Jonathan (of Jesus College, Oxford), 213 Edwards, Thomas, author of Gangraena, 119 Einhard, on Charlemagne, 51 Elect, the, (Calvinistic), 4, 6, 9, 12, 18, 20, 27, 48, 119, 187 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 7, 27, 63, 68, 241 considers inviting Ochino back, 70 rejects Lambeth Articles, 10 unable to tolerate anti-trinitarianism, 111 Elwall, Edward, prosecuted, 240 Emanuel, Don, van Portugal, 154 Emlyn, Thomas, dissenting minister, prosecution, fine and imprisonment, 239–41 Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 12, 24 England, from doubt to reason, 10–11 growth of anti-trinitarianism in, 111ff. infused with moderation, 90 L. Socinus in, 94 turns against Calvinism, 10 English people, see themselves as God’s Elect, 113 English Polyglot Bible (1655–7), attacked by Owen, 129 ‘enthusiasm’, Evangelical bombast, need to deflate, 142 Epicureanism, 36

15_ReasonReligion_Index_285-302.indd 290

Erasmus, vii, 5–6, 11, 22, 62 biblical criticism, 176 critical outlook, 116 forerunner of Arminianism and Socinianism, 233–4 legacy, 91 quiet about tritheism, 55 spiritual forebear of Anglicanism, 143, 249 Valla a forerunner, 65 works on Index, 71 error, sin of, 44 Essays and Reviews (1860), 21 Ethiopian Christians, 57 Eusebius of Nicomedia, 182 Everard, John, 11 Exeter College, Oxford, 170 Fabian, Mary, Unitarian, 237 Falkland, Lucius Cary, Viscount, 11, 18, 134 and the Great Tew Circle, 114–16 ideas re-emerge, 172–3, 224, 249 Farel, G., 59, 76, 80, 82 accompanies Servetus to the stake, 87 Farrington, John, author of Bidle’s Life, 131 Feathers’ Tavern petition, 1771, 243 Felbinger, Jeremiah, Socinian, writes to Bidle, 128 Ferdinand I, emperor, 95 Fernel, Jean, 75 Ferrar, Nicholas, founder of Little Gidding, translates J. de Valdes’ book, 65 Ferrara, Renata, Duchess of, 67 Fifth Monarchy Men, 11 Filmer, Sir Robert, Patriarcha, 223, 227 Filioque, credal interpolation, 41, 191 Firmin, Thomas, Unitarian merchant, 109 a strengthener of society, 144 abandons Calvinism, 159 charitable activities, ibid. final campaign and death, 236

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index hardly a political radical, 140–1 meets Bidle, 130 Fisher, Mary, Quaker, meets Sultan Mehmet IV at Adrianople, 155 Five Mile Act (1665), 134 Flamsteed, John, astronomer, and T. Burnet, 189 Florence, 113 Fowler, Edward, Bishop, 160 Propositions, 203–4 Fox, C.J., brave stance for toleration, 244–5 France, origin of Athanasian Creed, 41 Servetus settles in, 74 Franck, Sebastian, expelled from Strassburg, 62 rejects formalities of religion, 61–2 translates Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, 62 Frazer, Sir, J., The Golden Bough, 104 free-thinking, nature of, 108 Freke, William, 157 pamphlet, 192–3 Frellon, Jean, bookseller, 76 Fry, Capt. John, anti-Trinitarian, 122 Fuchs, Leonardo, botanist, 75 Fulbert of Chartres, 4, 52 Gailhard, J., anti-Socinian, 235–6 Galen, Servetus supports, 75 Gamaliel, in the synagogue, 45 Gardiner, S.R., on Gilbert Sheldon, 134 Gauden, J., Bishop, 23 Geneva, before Calvin’s arrival, 80–1 Calvin’s web of fear, 88 Ochino flees to, and from, 69–70 Servetus seeks to travel through, 80 Servetus’ arrest, trial and execution in, 81–8 Gennadius, quoted by Nye, 163 Gentile, Valentino, 54, 88–9, 218 George of Cilicia, said by Nye to have replaced Athanasius, 183 Gerbert, Pope Sylvester II, 52 Germany, seat of radical reformation, 59 classical consciousness, 91

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291

Gibbon, Edward, 108 deplores arrest of Servetus, 81 ponders Islam in Oxford, 172, 231, 247 Glorious Revolution, 14, 142, 222, 244 Gloucester, J. Bidle in, 123 gnosticism, 41 Gonzaga, Giulia, in J. de Valdes’ circle, 65 good works, Anglican characteristic, 241 Goodwin, John, Independent, vi, 18 attacked by Owen, 128 may have supported P. Best, 121 sermons lead Firmin to quit Calvinism, 159, 250 translates Acontius, 69 Gordon, Alexander, leading Unitarian scholar-historian, 157 Great plague and fire of London, 159 Great Schism (1054), 41 Great Tew Circle,11, 16, 21, 24, 25, 134, 172, 224 anticipated by Valla’s circle, 65, nature of discussions, 114–16 omitted from historical narrative, 249 popularity of Acontius’ book, 69, 115 Greek fathers, preferred by James I, 112 Gregory, Francis, attacks J. Smith, 219 Grindal, Edmund, Archbishop, 68, 112 Grisons, 59 Grocyn, W., 7, 11, 249 Grotius, Hugo, Dutch legal thinker and theologian, attacked by J. Owen, 129–30 on Erasmus, 6–7, 18, 117 on the Word, 162, 223 Growth of Error, The, Calvinist pamphlet, 233–4 Gruet, J., executed for insulting Calvin, 7 Gyulafehervar, 67; see also Alba Iulia Haarlem, birthplace of Coorheert, 63 Hackney Academy, 244, 247 Haetzer, Ludwig, 60 Hales, John, the ‘ever-memorable’, 115

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292

reason and religion

Halifax, George Saville, 1st Marquis of, 133 Haller, Berthold, 85, 89 Hammond, Henry, 24 appeal to reason ignored by Tractarians, 248 at Great Tew, 115 attacked by Owen, 128–9, 173, 223 his Reasonableness, 224 Hamont, M., ploughwright, 111, 247 Hamstede, Cornelis Adrian van, 68, 112 Harun al-Rashid, 51 Harvard College (later University), 247 Harvey, William, and circulation of blood, 78 Hedworth, Henry, reclusive yet active anti-Trinitarian, 122, 161, 183, 209, 219, 231 Hegel, G.W.F., 126 Henri of Ghent, 54 Henrietta Maria, Queen of England, 11 Heraclius, emperor, 50 Herbert, Edward, Lord, of Cherbury, De Veritate, 225–6 heresy, etymologically connected to ‘choice’, 43, 120 Hermes Trismegistus, 62 Hickes, George, Nonjuror, 165 high-church attitudes, 137 party, 142–3 High Commission, court, abolished, 119 Hoadly, Benjamin, Bishop, on Emlyn affair, 240–1 Hobbes, Thomas, 12–13 at Great Tew, 114, 115 his materialism, 139 views worried Sherlock, 166 Holcot, Robert, 55 Holland, 90 Polish refugees, 107 Transylvanian refugees arrive, 97 homoousios, 19, 32, 40, 45, 138 Bishop Alexander and, 181 term disliked by Luther, 59

15_ReasonReligion_Index_285-302.indd 292

Hooker, Richard, 5, 22 contradictions, 201–2, 242 on the Trinity, 185–7 Howard, Sir Robert, 223 Howe, John, ejected minister, on Trinity, 202–3 answered by Sherlock, 205 criticized by Tindal, 217 Hoxton, Firmin’s house in, 159 Huguenot refugees, 131, 159 Hulme, T.E., 41 Hume, David, philosopher, 38 impressions, 200 on cause, 169–70 Hus, Jan, 13, 60 Hypatia, Alexandrian mathematician, 44 hypostasis (person), 32, 37, 73, 74, 88, 166–7, 183, 186, 219 Ignatius of Antioch, published, 72 Independents, 18, 21, 158 benefited from Toleration Act, 163 grow stronger than Presbyterians, 121–2, 124, 135, 143 Indians (Native Americans), Narragansett, 141–2 indulgences, papal, 191 Inquisition, 71, 91 Roman, 58, 65, 79, 86 Spanish, and Coornheert, 62–3 Instrument of Government (1653), empowers Bidle, 126 Ipswich, Firmin’s linen factory, 159 Irenaeus, Bishop, 37, 72, 124, 138 Irenopolis, see Amsterdam ‘is’, contentious term, 177–8 Isabella, Queen of Hungary, 95–6 Islam, A. Bury and, 171–2; see also Muslims and Unitarianism, 154, 213–14 in Syria, 45 L. Socinus inclusive towards, 94 Italy, 42, 64–5, 69, 93 Reformation in, stressed reason, 58 Ivory, Thomas, architect of Octagon Chapel, 246

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index J.W., identical with William Jane?, 175–6, 178, 198 James VI and I, King of Scotland and England, 10, 112 dedicatee of ‘1609’ Racovian catechism, 113 James II, King of England, 14, 157 Jan Casimir, King of Poland, former Jesuit priest, 107 Jane, William, 173, 175 Jerome, 6, 13, 19, 42, 76, 105 Jesuits, in Poland, coordinate mob attacks on non-Trinitarians, 47 destructive and violent, 98 smash up the Rakow community (1638), 106, 235 Jews, a Cabbalistic quasi-Trinity, 192 a place in the Christian Church?, 189 alienated by Athanasian Creed, 164 Castellio and, 89 in Arabia, 50 L. Socinus seeks inclusion of, 94 might win disputes on Trinity, 55 Servetus and, 83 Joachim of Fiore, 54 Joanna, Venetian virgin, focus of Postel’s adoration, leading him to see God as woman, 62 John Sigismund II Zapolya, Unitarian King of Transylvania, 95–6 Joris, David ( Jan van Brugge), humane dissenter from religious execution, 86 in Basle, 89 ‘judicial astrology’, 75 Jurieu, Pierre, Calvinist heresy-hunter, 117–18 Justin Martyr, 38, 82, 138 Justinian, emperor, 42, 85, 91 kalima, Arabic term for logos, 49 Kennet, White, Bishop, 130

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293

kethibh (text as written), 17 Kett, Francis, burned for disbelief in Trinity, 111 Khorenatsi, Movses, the Whistons’ bilingual edition of, 242 Kiev, 107 King’s Book, The, 4, 7 King’s College, Cambridge, 12, 31, 160 Kippis, Andrew, commemorates Glorious Revolution, 244 Kisielin, 107 Knights, L.C., Marxist critic, admirer of Clarendon, 116 Knolles, Richard, 213 Knowles, John, anti-Trinitarian, 122 Kolozsvar, Transylvanian city, 96 Socinus in, 100–1 Krakow, 70, 96, 98, 107 La Fontaine, Nicholas de, 81–2 Lambeth Articles (1595), 10 language, enchantment of, 33, 220 and ridicules theological terminology, 127 Bidle attacks metaphysical, 125–6 Łaski, Jan, 111 Latitudinarianism, see Broad-church Laud, William, Archbishop, 18 clerically coercive, 28, 115, 117, 119, 150 on reason, 22 promotes rational Arminianism, 21 the beauty of holiness, 231 Tractarians misunderstand, 248 Lausanne, 67, 78 le Clerc, Jean, (Clericus), Remonstrant pastor, 174, 183 Legate brothers, Bartholomew and Thomas, burned for disbelief in Trinity, 111, 235 Leibniz, G.W. von, 144 Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of, 8 Leslie, Charles, able and unscrupulous Nonjuror, 165, 209 attacks Tillotson ventriloquially, 223–4

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294

reason and religion

Letter to a Convocation Man (1697), 234–5 Lewes, John, Suffolk man, 111, 247 Libertines, in Geneva, 80–1, 85 Licensing Act (books, 1662–95), 135 Limborch, Philip, 225 Linacre, T., 7, 11 Lindsey, Theophilus, in Essex Street, 243 Lipsius, Justus, opponent of Coorheert, 64 Locke, John, 5, 14, 24, 173–4 and Popple, 151 and Stillingfleet, 143, 227–30 anti-deist, 225–6 friend of Firmin, 160 his Reasonableness, and John Edwards, 224–5 not liked by Tory theorists, 227 not Socinian, 226 on infinities, 40 on reason and revelation, 137–9 on substance, 32, 227–30 on Toleration Act, 163 the basis of knowledge, 210 logos, meaning of 30–1, 34, 38, 49, 198 Lollards, 26 Lombard, Peter, 54, 187 Long, Thomas, opponent of Bury, 172 Long Parliament, 13 difficulty in dealing with anti-Trinitarians, 121–7 dominated by Presbyterians, 121 summoned, 119 Lucian of Samosata, 34 Luther, Martin, 4, 9, 13, 21, 26, 48 a new way to success?, 57 first mentioned Servetus, 75 hardens Charles V’s Erasmianism, 71 his attitude different from Servetus, 72–3 not the progenitor of the Anglican Church, 143 on the Trinity, 59 opposed by Denck, 60 Lyceum, at Athens, closed by Justinian, 44

15_ReasonReligion_Index_285-302.indd 294

‘Lyncurius, Alfonso’, pseudonym, 67 Lyon, 59 Servetus in, 71, 74–5 Magyars, in Transylvania, 96 Major, John, 55 Manichaean beliefs, 20 Marsh, Narcissus, Archbishop, greedy and unforgiving, 240 Martyr, Peter, approves Servetus’ burning, 88 in J. de Valdes circle, 65, 69 Marvell, Andrew, ambivalent towards Socinianism, 136, 151 Mary Tudor, 63 accession, 70, 111 Mary II, Queen of England, 165 on Firmin’s generosity and theology, 209 Masoretic scholars, 17 Massey, John, Dean of Christ Church, 143 Maugiron, Guy de, governor of Vienne, 79, 84 Maurice of Nassau, United Provinces negotiator, 154 Medici, Isabella de’, 100 Melanchthon, Philip, 59, 63 approves S.’s burning, 88 reads Servetus, 74 Mennonites, 57 Michelangelo, 65 Milan, 66 Milton, John, 113 heterodox on the Trinity, 123 on Church fathers, 13 recalls Transylvanian religious openness in Areopagitica, 97 view of the Godhead in P. L., 203 Minor Church, in Poland, 18, 99 Monarchianism, 37 Montaigne, Michel de, inspiring humanist, 75, 99 More, Thomas, 7, 11, 249 Moscorzowski, J., author of dedication of ‘1609’ Racovian catechism, 113

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index Muggleton, Lodowicke, followers’ beliefs and practices, 39, 141 Muggletonianism, possible link to deism, 141 Muhammad, his message anti-Trinitarian, 49 Socinus compared to, 213 Munro, Alexander, 223 Münster, centre of crazed Anabaptist uprising, 75, 82, 104 Musculus, Wolfgang, 88 Muslims, a place in the Christian Church?, 189 alienated by Athanasian Creed, 164 included by Franck, 61 might win disputes on Trinity, 55 ‘the other’, 225, 235 mystery, within Christianity, 211 al-Nafis, Ibn, and circulation of blood, 78 Naked Gospel, The, 170–3 Naked Truth, The, 150 Naples, Ochino in, 69 Servetus aims for, 80 Naseby, battlefield, 175 Neal, Daniel, historian of the Puritans, 133 Neoplatonism, Fowler’s, in attempt to heal rift, 202, 204 in the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds, 158–9 intellectual fog, 178, 192, 200 nature of, 11, 20, 27, 36, 216 Socinians keep distance from, 103 Nero, Roman emperor, 64 Netherlands, new centre of Socinianism, 153 New Testament, Erasmus’ version, 5–6 texts, 29–31 Newington Green, Academy, 247 Newman, J.H., 3, 248 Newton, Isaac, vii, 15, 136, 144, 154, 242 Nicaea, Council of, 20, 47, 82

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295

Nicene Creed, 39, 41, 43, 158, 165, 216 Nicholls, W., attacks Bury, 174 Nisibis, Syrian academy, 49 Noetus, 38 Nominalism, 52–3 non-Chalcedonians, 47 Nonconformity, popularity in England, 143 Nonjurors, peppery, 22, 24, 109, 143, 207, 227, 234, 249 Norwich, Octagon Chapel, 246–7 Nuremberg, 60 Nye, Philip, Independent, 158 Nye, Stephen, rector of Little Hormead, anti-Trinitarian, vi, 131 and the tracts, 180 criticizes South’s term ‘postures’, 200 Discourse (1696), 222, 241 negotiates at Lambeth Palace, 154 not a political radical, 140 ?observing Wallis, 178 on Athanasian Creed, 163–4 on Athanasius, 181–3 on Hooker, 186–7 on reason and revelation, 191 on the opening of the Fourth Gospel, 162 on Tillotson’s Four Sermons..., 211 Oblivion, Act of (1652), restores Bidle’s liberty, 126 Ochino, Bernardino, 67, 69–70 in Basle, 89, 94 Ockham, Wm of, 25–6, 54, 126 Oecolampadius, Johannes, 60, 63 Servetus’ host in Basle, 1530, 72 One, The, Neoplatonic notion, 103 Oporinus (Herbst), Basle printer, 89, 90 Origen, 33–4, 190 original sin, Augustine and, 3, 84, 103, 155 notion attacked by Locke, 225 Orpheus, 62 Orsini, Duke Paolo Giordano, 100 Orthodox Church, eastern, 21, 28, 41 view of Trinity, 51

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296

reason and religion

Ory, Matthew, Dominican inquisitor in Lyon, 79 Osiander, Andreas, strict Lutheran, 60 Outram, William, 159 Owen, John, Calvinistic Independent, vice-chancellor of Oxford U., 16, 17, 118 opponent of Bidle, 128–9 Oxford Movement, theologically intolerant, politically stone-age, 240 Oxford University, Bingham driven from, 218 Bury’s pamphlet burnt, 173 Calvinist, 8 in eighteenth century, 247 Newman and, 248–9 Peter Martyr in, 70 Padua, University of, 94, 98, 103, 113 Pagnini, Santes, Bible of, 76 Palestine, in Ptolemy’s Geography, 75, 82 Palmier, Pierre, Archbishop, friend of Servetus, 75, 79 Paradise Lost, escapes ban, 150–1 Parker, Samuel, 135 forcefully attacks liberty of conscience, 149–50, 246 Partner, Peter, 214 Pastor, Adam, Anabaptist, 31 Peasants’ War, 1525–7, 57 Pelagius, -ianism, 20, 48 Penn, William, Quaker leader, 147–9 perichoresis, 19, 33, 201, 220; see also circumincession Perrin, Amied, 87 Perrin, B., servant of Servetus, 79 person, Bidle and, 125–7 Blasphemy Law and, 236 Nye and, 161, 164 Penn and, 147–8 puzzling, 18–19, 27, 32–3, 37, 42, 54 Servetus and, 73, 77 Sherlock and, 165–70 South and, 198–201, 219

15_ReasonReligion_Index_285-302.indd 296

Tindal and, 215–16 unscriptural term, 9 Wallis and, 176–8 Wetenhall and, 186–7 Perugia, 69 Peter Waldo, 58 Petrarch, F., supports Rienzi’s secular Rome, 64 Philip II, King of Spain, 64 Piccolomini family, 99 Pindar, Greek heroic poet, 190 Pittis, William, 205 Pius II, Pope, Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini, founder of liberal University of Basle, 99–100 Plato, 35–6, 62, 242 Second Letter (spurious), 34–5 Platonists, Cambridge, see Cambridge Platonists Plotinus, 12, 35, 36 Plumstead, 68 Plutarch, 223 Pococke, E., Oxford Laudian professor of Arabic, protected by J. Owen, 128 Poland, L. Socinus in, 94 overrun by Swedish invaders, 107 P. Best in, 120 religious freedom in, 98 Socinian community in, 101–6 Polish Reformed Church, split into Greater and Minor, 98 Popple, William, merchant, nephew of Marvell, Unitarian, 136, 151 Postel, Guillaume, passionate Catholic humanist and scholar, adorer of Joanna, 61–2, 90 Pouppin, Abel, Calvin’s Geneva colleague, 77 Prague, 94 predestination, Augustine and, 3–4 Calvinist, 8–10, 18, 20, 28, 48, 187–8, 153–4 Curione and, 67, 74 Denck and, 60

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index rejected by Socinus, viii, 100, 103–4, 116 Servetus and, 77, 85, 89 Tillotson and, 208, 233–4, 241 pre-existence of Christ, a difficult notion, 118 Presbyterians, and reason, 21, 28 benefit from Toleration Act, vanish from England, 163 demand uniformity, 119 lose out to Independents, 121 Price, Richard, and French Revolution, 244 priestcraft, Toland and, 232 Priestley, Joseph, 247 Protestantism, fluid boundaries with Catholicism, 63 Pseudo-Dionysius, devout author, 6, 20 psychopannychism, 103 Ptolemy, Geography, edited by Servetus, 75, 82 Pusey, E.B., 248 Putney, Debates, 28 Toland in, 232 Pyrrhonist crisis (1620s), 10–11 qeri (text to be read), 17 Quakers, 63, 147 and reason, 5 inner light, 26 Quaternity, 4, 54, 88 Quintana, Juan de, Spanish Erasmian, 71 Quixote, Don (Cervantes), 200 Quran, indivisibility of God, 45 Sale’s edition, 172 Servetus had read, 83 Venetian edition of 1537–8, 76 Zürich edition of 1550, 83 Racovian catechism, 103, 113 edition of 1650s, 126 Radcliffe, Dr John, 218

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297

Radecki, M., F. Socinus’ letter to, 108 radicalism, theological, contrasted with political, 116, 140 Radziwill, Prince Nicholas, 98 Rain(s)borough, Col. William, Republican, 140 Rakow, 98 academy at, 102, 117 books printed in at Great Tew, 115 nature of community, 102–6 Randall, G., spiritual mystic, 11 Ranelagh, Catherine Jones, 2nd Viscountess, 115 ratio sana (sound reason), 103, 113 Ravenna, Arian Baptistery, 40 Realism, 52, 54 reason, and its Restoration opponents, 136 balanced with faith, 15–16 devout endorsements, 22–5 differing views, 3–5 sound, 103, 113 the voice of God?, 173 Reformation, Protestant, viii, 57 ff. incomplete, 26 Italian, brief but intense, 65 Renaissance, humanism, 60 Servetus a man of the, 73 spirit of Racovian catechism, 113 Renée of France, daughter of Louis XII, 67, 69; see also Ferrara Restoration (1660), 13, 130, 133 ff. Revelation, book of, 151 revelation, Locke on, 137–8 nature of, vi, 13–15, 112 paired with reason, 137 Revolution Society, constitutional and moderate, 244 Rienzi, Cola di, tribune of revived Roman republic, 64 Rigot, Claude, Genevan attorneygeneral, 82 Rimini, Gregory of, 55 Rhône, river, Servetus escapes across, 80

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298

reason and religion

Richard of St Victoire, 54 Rochester, Laurence Hyde, earl of, 195 Rome, 69, 182 Rous, John, Milton’s amanuensis, 123 Royal Injunction (1695/6), 138, 220–1 Royal Society, 15, 17, 154 Sabellianism, 38–9, Servetus’ beliefs like, 73 Wallis’s analysis approaches, 178, 202 Salters’ Hall, meeting (1719), 243 Salvian of Marseille, on Arians, 161 Sandys, George, 213 Sardica (Sofia), 182 ‘Sarmatian Athens’, 102 Sarpi, Paolo, attempted papal assassination of, 234 Sasanid Persia, 44, 50 satisfaction, and by Nye, 192 doctrine attacked by Wm Penn, 148 not seen as Christian by Socinians, 100, 104 Sattler, Michael, Anabaptist, tortured, 58 Savile, Henry, 15 Savonarola, 101 Saxons converted by Charlemagne, 62 German-speakers in Transylvania, 96 Schaffhausen, 85 scholasticism, 53; shaken by L. Valla, 65 Schwenckfeld, Caspar, encounters Servetus, 72 Stillstand, 61 Schwenkfeldians, 57 Scilly, Isles of, Bidle banished to, 130 Scutum Fidei, misses the point about the Trinity, 53 Sebeos (or pseudo-), account of early Islam, 51 ‘seeking assurance’, Calvinistic practice of checking for signs of Election, 27, 119 Selden, John, 28, and heresy, 119–20 Semi-Judaizers, 101 Septuagint, Bidle proofreads, 125

15_ReasonReligion_Index_285-302.indd 298

Sergius (Bahira), 49 Servetus, Michael, viii, 8, 55, 61, 67 correspondence with Calvin, 76–7 escape to Geneva, 79–81 first arrest and trial, 79–80 legacy, 90 life and works, 71–9 Ochino shocked at death, 70 P. Best discovered ideas, 120 publishes De Trin. Errori., 72–3 second arrest, trial, execution, 81–8 view on conversion echoed by T. Long, 172 Sforza, Gian Galeazzo, 94 Sheldon, Gilbert, at Great Tew, 115 develops narrow clericalism, 134, 173 Shepherd of Hermas, The, 17 Sherlock, William, Dean of St Paul’s, 139 answers South, 205 answers Wetenhall, 204–5 Apology, 188 attacked by South, 196–200 complains about tracts, 161 continues to write, 237 Nye calls his Trinity Cartesian, 201 supports Bingham, 218 Vindication (1690), 164–70, 174 Siemichovia, Sophia, F. Socinus’ letter to, 108 Sieninski, Jan, Calvinist magnate, 98 Sigismund I, King of Poland, 94, 95 Sigismund II, King of Poland, 106 Silvius (du Bois), Jacques, 75 Simon Magus, 84, 86 sin, sense of, Servetus had little, 73, 84 Sirmium, council at, 183 Skeats, H., on dissent and Anglicanism, 135 Slavkov, location of Ochino’s death, 70 Smith, John, Cambridge Platonist, 12 Smith, John, clockmaker, pamphlet, 218–9 Smith, William, Unitarian and abolitionist, 239

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index Socinianism, and atheism, 109 creates anxiety, 117 differs from Arianism, 99 two meanings of, 116–17 Socinus, Faustus (Fausto Sozzini), vi, viii, 9, 95 in Poland, 97–106 moral qualities, 102 published works, 108 read by Bidle in prison, 125 refuses adult baptism, 101 text against atheism, 106 Socinus, Laelius (Lelio Sozini), 67, 89 life, 94–5 papers, 100 Somers, John, Lord, promotes Toleration Act, 162 Somerset, Edward Seymour, Duke of, Lord Protector, receives Calvin’s advice on execution, 77 somewhat, Wallis’s term for person, 177 Song of Roland, rancorous epic, 51 soul, theories of the, 103 South, Robert, 15 a person a posture, 200 able but acerbic, 195 Animadversions, 196–200 criticized in Royal Injunction, 221 his Trinity seen by Nye as Aristotelian, 201 in ballad, 206 mocks Sherlock over his marriage, 220 ousts Bingham for Sherlockism, 218 Tritheism, 219–20 spiders, Burke sees Unitarians as giant, 245–6 Spiritual Christianity, 58 Star Chamber, court, abolished, 119 Stephen, Sir James, on religious liberalism, 116 Stewart, Sir James, Scottish crown prosecutor, 230 Stillingfleet, Edward, Bishop, and Locke, 227–30

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299

complains about tracts, 161 Nye’s criticism of, 210 sees Erasmus as the father of Anglicanism, 143 Stoicism, 31, 36 Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of, 28, 114 Strangers’ church, see Ecclesia Peregrinorum Strassburg, 26, 60, 62, 68, 69 Stuckey, Nathanael, youthful translator of Bidle, 153 subscription to the Articles, 243 subsistence, theological meaning of, 167 substance, 32, 39–41, 52, 73, 112 Locke and, 228–9 not scriptural, 9 term not liked by Sherlock, 167 Suleyman I, ‘the Magnificent’, Ottoman sultan, 95–6 Sulzer, Simon, 85 Switzerland, Anabaptists in, 58 Syrian Christianity, 17, 45, 47, 48, 49 Szeklers, Transylvanian Hungarianspeakers, committed Unitarians, 96 Tacitus, C.C., 64 Tangier, diplomatic status, 154 tares, parable of the, 45 Tauler, Johann, 14th-century Strassburg preacher, 60 Taylor, Jeremy, 18, 25 Taylor, Dr John, leans towards religious liberty, 246, 247 Tenison, Thomas, Archbishop, 142, 221–2 Tertullian, 3, 38, 138, 232 published, 72 textual criticism, J. Owen threatened by, 129 Thames, river, land reclaimed by Acontius, 68 Theodora, empress, 42 Theodoric, tolerant and largely enlightened ‘barbarian’ king, 42 Theodosius I, emperor, bigot, 42–3

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300

reason and religion

Theodotus of Byzantium, 38 Theotokos, mystical appellation rejected by Syrian Jacobites, 47 Thirty Years War, James I refused to join, 112 P. Best served in, 120 Tillotson, John, Archbishop, attacked by Leslie ventriloquially, 223–4 friend of Firmin, 160 generous broadchurchman, 134, 142 on God’s nature, 208 opposition to predestination, ibid. viewed by Nonjurors, 208 wishes to be rid of the Athanasian Creed, 42, 209 Tindal, Matthew, 148 pamphlets, 214–7 Tissot, Pierre, Genevan council leader, 81 Toland, John, 229, and Christianity Not Mysterious, 230–3 Toleration, Edict of, (313), 39, 43–4 toleration, religious, vi, 9, 18, 21, 25 and Convocation, 234 Castellio the originator of, 63, 89–90 end of, in Poland, 106–7 Fox and, 244–5 in Transylvania, 96–8 James II and, 158 Socinian call for, 117 Socinus committed to, 108 Toleration Act (1689), 162, 237, 250 Tomkyns, Thomas, 135, 246 assails H. Croft, 150–1 Torda, Edict of, 9, 96–7 Tory Interpretation of history, paralleling the Whig, 139, 141, 249 Toulouse, Servetus in, 71 Tournon, François de, Cardinal, 79 Tours, battle of, 172 Tractarians, 22, 24, 227, dismiss Socinians as non-Christian, 109 ignore Laudians’ rationality, 248

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Tracts, Unitarian, 160–1 first collection (1691), 179–80 volumes continue to appear, 237 transubstantiation, 191 Transylvania, 67 a haven for Socinians ethnically cleansed from Poland by Jesuits, 107 Best in, 120 crushed by monopolistic Habsburgs, 214 radical reforms, 9, 95–6 Socinus in, 100–1 Trechsel, M. and K., printers, employed Servetus, 74–5, 76 Trelawney, Sir J., Bishop, 173 Trent(o), Council of, 76, 98, 234 Trento, 68 Trie, Guillaume de, ardent Genevan Protestant, 79, 86 Trier, Athanasius banished to, 182 Trinitarian proof text (1 John v, 7), inauthentic, 18, 59, 176 Trinity, Athanasian, adumbrations, 34–6 and reason, 6 doctrine attacked by Wm Penn, 147–9 doctrine in danger if substance illusory, 227–8 ?inherently contradictory, 210–11 Locke ignores, 225 not necessary according to Acontius, 68 questioned, 18–20 rejected by Socinians as contrary to reason and scripture, 233 Sherlock and the, 164–70 Tindal’s criticism, 215–16 unscriptural, 13 V. Gentile condemned for heresy concerning, 88 Wallis and the, 175–9 Tritheism, Sherlock edges towards, 169, 202 Turin, 66

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index Turner, John, of Christ’s, Cambridge, inspirer of Sherlock, 165–6 Turks, Muslim, Castellio and, 89 Franck believed Europeans could learn from, 62 Servetus and, 83 Turrettini, F., dogmatic Calvinist, 225 Tyndale, W., 13 Tyre, council at, 182 Ukraine, Socinians in, 107, 153 Ulm, 60, 62 Uniformity, Act of (1559), 112; (1662) 134 ‘Unitarian’, origin of name, 157 Unitarians, attacked by Sherlock, 164–8 Brief History of, 157–8, 161, 180 by Wallis, 175–8 first chapel (1774), 243 in 1682 hint at Moroccan protection, 155 Nye’s exposition of views, 190–1 silenced by Blasphemy Act, 236–7 USA, see America Ussher, James, Archbishop, 123–4 utopianism of the Rakow community, question of, 106 Valdes, Juan de, circle in Naples, 65, 69 link to radical reform, 94 Valla, Lorenzo, 65 Valois king, in Poland, 98 Vane, Sir Henry, the Younger, 124 Venice, 1550 meeting of radicals, 93 Ochino’s sermons, 69 Vergerio, Pier Paolo, 86 Vermigli, Pietro Martire, see Martyr, Peter Vicenza, centre for heterodoxy, 93 Vienna, 67 Vienne, 75, 78 Servetus’ trial in, 79, 82

15_ReasonReligion_Index_285-302.indd 301

301

Villanovus, Servetus’ pseudonym, 74, 76 Villanueva de Sijuena, Servetus’ birthplace, 71 Vilna, Vilnius, 98 Viret, Pierre, of Lausanne, 78 Voltaire, 108 Vulgate bible text, 6, 13, 76 Waldenses, L. Socinus among, 94 rejected religious authority, 43, 58 Wallis, John, mathematician, Royal Society, 15 ‘Ciceronian’, acc. Nye, theologically Sabellian, 201–2 criticized by Tindal, 217 his arguments for Trinity, 175–9 Walwyn, William, Leveller, Independent, 121 Ward, S., 15 Warrington Academy, 247 Weissenberg, 67, 97 Wesley, John, 144 Westminster Assembly, 12, 120, 121, 125 Wetenhall, Edward, Bishop, 185–90, 204 Whichcote, Benjamin, 12, 160 aphorisms, 23 Whiston, William, Arian, professor, expelled from Cambridge, vii, 242–3 Wightman, Edward, 111, 235 Wilkins, John, Bishop, and Firmin, 160 and the Royal Society, 15, 136 William III, King of England, and Blasphemy Act, 236 and Royal Injunction, 221–2 Sherlock takes oaths to, 165 Williams, Roger, conservative theology and radical anticolonialist political practice, 141–2 inspirational founder of Rhode Island, 28 Wilno, 98

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302

reason and religion

Wilson, H.B., 21 Winstanley, Gerrard, Digger, 26, 140 Wittenberg, 72 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 247 Wood, Anthony (à), on Bidle, 123–5, 130 on Falkland, 116 on H. Croft, 150 Word, 105; see also logos Worthington, John, 160 Worms, 60 Wotton, William, rediscovers Servetus in 1694, 78 Wren, Sir Christopher, 135 Wycliffe, J., 13, 26

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Zamoyski, Jan, chancellor of S. Bathory, 98, 107 Zapolya, John, of Hungary, contender with Ferdinand I, 95 Zürich, L. Socinus in, 94, 95 Ochino in, 70 Oecolampadius in, 72 verdict on Servetus, 85 Zweig, Stefan, 90 Zwingli, Huldrich, 57, 59, 61 advises Oecolampadius to evict Servetus, 72 not seen as progenitor of the Anglican Church, 143

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