Chapter III: The Deformation (2)

§ 147.8. So far in respect of place and time as the influence
of Hoffmann reached,--and it seems down to the time of his
imprisonment to have been widely predominant throughout the
whole of the north-western district,--the life and movement of
the Anabaptists there kept clear of any social revolutionary
tendencies, and in their aberrations from the ways of the
reformers were restricted to the purely religious domain.
In the beginning of the year 1530, however, a movement broke
forth again in =Holland=, in which there was a resurrection of
the spirit of Thomas Münzer, and the demand for a thoroughly
radical and revolutionary reconstruction of social and political
relations was brought into prominence. The most important
representative of this tendency was a baker, =Jan Matthys=
of Haarlem, who, claiming to be a prophet, proclaimed the
introduction of the millennium of glory as the proper and
principal task of the Baptists. For the fulfilment of this
task he insisted upon the overthrow of the present order in
church and State, resistance to their enemies with weapons
in hand, even the destruction of all “the ungodly” from the
face of the earth, in order that “the saints,” as promised in
Scripture, should rule over the world, and lead to completion
the kingdom of God. The doctrine of the new prophets may even
already have taken root in the minds of the Baptists, roused and
excited by continued persecution, without their having clearly
perceived what it would ultimately lead to if successfully
carried out. But when in Münster these fanatical theories were
shown forth as actual realized facts, when John of Leyden set
up his pretentious kingdom in that “New Jerusalem,” and sent
out into all the world his numerous apostles with the demand
for adhesion, in many cases they found a too willing audience.
The miserable collapse of the Münster kingdom was the first
thing that again called people back to their senses, and
rendered their remnants susceptible to the purification of
Anabaptism to which Menno Simons devoted his whole life.

§ 147.9. =The Münster Catastrophe, A.D. 1534, 1535.=--The
preacher Rothmann of Münster had for some time maintained
the Zwinglian theory of the Lord’s Supper, and then he took
a further step in the repudiation of infant baptism. A public
disputation in A.D. 1533 yielded no result, and he refused
to obey an order to retire into exile. He now sought, and
that successfully, to increase his following, by the adoption
of new elements of the Anabaptist creed. On the festival
of the Three Holy Kings in A.D. 1534, =John of Leyden= or John
Bockelssohn made his entrance into the city. An illegitimate
son of a girl in the Münster province, brought up by relatives
in Leyden, whither he returned after several years spent in
travelling about as a journeyman tailor, he was in the autumn
of A.D. 1533 converted by the prophet Matthys, and soon became
his most zealous apostle. In Münster the young man, now in his
twenty-fifth year, handsome in appearance and endowed with rich
intellectual abilities, was favourably received in the house of
a rich and respectable cloth merchant, Bernard Knipperdolling,
who had been long interested in the religious movement, and
married his daughter. In the meantime Jan Matthys also was
called from Amsterdam to Münster. Both now wrought in common
among the inhabitants of the city. Their sermons, delivered
with glowing eloquence, produced a great impression, especially
among the women, and their following grew to such an extent
that they believed they might act in defiance of the council.
In consequence of a riot the magistrates were weak and yielding
enough to enter into an agreement with them by which they
obtained legal recognition. Then from all sides Anabaptist
fanatics crowded into Münster. After some weeks they secured
a majority in the council, and Knipperdolling was made
burgomaster. The prophet Matthys declared it to be God’s
will that all unbelievers should be expelled. This was done
on 27th February, 1534. Seven deacons divided among the
believers the property of those who had been banished. In
May the bishop began the siege of the city. This much at least
resulted from that proceeding, that the epidemic was confined to
Münster. After all images, organs, and books, with the exception
of the Bible, had been destroyed, they introduced the principle
of community of goods. Matthys, who regarded himself as called
to slay the besieging foes, in a sortie fell by their swords.
Bockelssohn took his place. The council in consequence of his
revelations was dissolved, and a theocratical government of
twelve elders, who were ready to receive their inspiration
from the new prophet, was set up. In order that he might marry
Matthys’ beautiful widow, he introduced polygamy. He took
seventeen wives; Rothmann satisfied himself with four. In vain
did the remnants of moral consciousness existing still among
the inhabitants protest. The discontented, who gathered round
the smith Mollenhök, were overcome and all of them were put to
death. Bockelssohn, proclaimed by one of his fellow prophets,
John Dusendschur, king of the whole earth, set up a splendid
court, and perpetrated the most revolting iniquities. He
regarded himself as called to bring in the millennium, sent
out twenty-eight apostles to spread his kingdom, and appointed
twelve dukes to govern the world under him. The besiegers had
meanwhile, in August, 1534, made an utterly unsuccessful attempt
to storm the city. Had they not toward the end of the year
received assistance from Treves, Cleves, Mainz, and Cologne,
they would have been obliged to raise the siege. Even then they
could only think of securing the surrender of the city by famine.
It had already been reduced to sore straits. But on St. John’s
night, 1535, a deserter led the soldiers to the wall. After a
most determined struggle the Anabaptists were utterly overthrown.
Rothmann rushed into the hottest of the battle, and there met
his death. King John and his premier Knipperdolling and his
chancellor Krechting were taken prisoners, and on 22nd January,
1536, were pinched to death with redhot pincers and then hung
in iron chains from St. Lambert’s tower. Catholicism was finally
restored to absolute and exclusive supremacy.

§ 147.10. =Menno Simons and the Mennonites.=--Menno Simons,
born at Wittmarsum in Friesland in A.D. 1492, from A.D. 1516
a Catholic priest, had from careful study of Holy Scripture
come to entertain serious doubts as to the Romish doctrine.
The martyr courage of the Baptists called his attention to
the Baptist views of this sect, and soon he came to feel
convinced of their correctness. He resigned his priest’s
office at Wittmarsum in A.D. 1536, and had himself baptized.
Amid indescribable difficulties and with unwearied patience
he laboured on, wandering from place to place, devoting all his
powers to the reorganization of the sect. He gave it a definite
doctrinal formula, “The Fundamental Book of the True Christian
Faith,” in A.D. 1539, which in point of doctrine attached
itself to the Reformed confessions, and was distinguished
from these only by the rejection of infant baptism, and by
an unconditional spiritualization of the idea of the church as
a pure communion of true saints. It distinctly forbade military
and civil service, as well as all taking of oaths, introduced
feet washing in addition to baptism and the Lord’s Supper,
and by severe church discipline maintained a simple manner
of life and strict morality. The quiet, pious demeanour of
the Mennonites soon secured for them in Holland, and later
also in Germany, toleration and religious freedom. Menno
died in A.D. 1559.--Even during Menno’s lifetime his Dutch
followers split up into two parties, called “the Fine” and
“the Coarse.” The former enforced in all its severity Menno’s
strict discipline, and indeed went beyond it by prohibiting
all intercourse with the excommunicated, even should these be
parents or husbands and wives. The latter wished to allow to
the ban only ecclesiastical and not civil disabilities, and to
have it exercised only after repeated exhortations had proved
ineffectual.--Continuation, § 162, 1.

§ 148. ANTITRINITARIANS AND UNITARIANS.[422]

The first to contest the doctrine of the Trinity arose from among the German Anabaptists. The Spaniard Michael Servetus wrought out his Unitarianism into connection with a system that was fundamentally pantheistic. The real home of Antitrinitarianism, however, was Italy, a fruit of the half-pagan humanism that flourished there. Banished the country, its representatives sought refuge in Switzerland. Expelled by-and-by from these regions, they betook themselves mostly to Poland, Hungary, and Transylvania, where they found protection from the princes and nobles. A thoroughly developed system of doctrine, elaborated by Lælius and Faustus Socinus, uncle and nephew, was now accepted by them, and by this means they were consolidated into a corporate society.

§ 148.1. =Anabaptist Antitrinitarians in Germany.=

1. =John Denck= from the Upper Palatinate, was, on
Œcolampadius’ recommendation, whose lectures he had
attended at Basel, made rector of St. Sebald’s school
in Nuremberg in A.D. 1523. On account of his maintaining
views inconsistent with Lutheran orthodoxy, he came into
collision with the reformer of that place, Andrew Osiander,
in A.D. 1524, and on the ground of a written confession
of faith extorted from him he was deposed from his office
and expelled the city. Nor did he find a permanent abode
in Augsburg, to which he went in A.D. 1525; for Urbanus
Rhegius, who at first received him in a friendly manner,
was obliged at last to turn against him on account of
his Anabaptist views and the great scandal he caused
by maintaining the belief that the devil and all the
ungodly would finally repent. He now, in A.D. 1526, went
to Strassburg, where Hätzer induced him, as a zealous
student of Hebrew, to assist him in his translation of
the Old Testament prophets. When here also his influence
assumed dangerous proportions, a disputation was arranged
for between him and Bucer, in consequence of which he was
expelled also from Strassburg. Like treatment awaited him
at Bergzahern and also at Landau. He then went to Worms
along with Hätzer, who had meanwhile been banished from
Strassburg. There they completed their translation of the
prophets, but from this retreat also after three months
they were again driven out. Denck now once again, through
Œcolampadius’ mediation, who unweariedly endeavoured, but
in vain, to win him back from his errors, found a fixed
abode among the more liberal-minded citizens of Basel;
but he died there of the plague in A.D. 1527. Denck was
indeed one of the most talented men of his day. His high
intellectual endowments and his pure and noble moral life
were acknowledged by his most bitterly prejudiced orthodox
opponents. Of his numerous tracts and pamphlets only that
“On the Law of God, how the Law is Abolished and yet must
be Fulfilled,” is still accurately known. It is rich in
deep thoughts cleverly put, as is also the confession of
faith already mentioned, but in direct antagonism to the
Lutheran doctrine on several most vital and cardinal points.
He placed the inner word of God above the outward, taught
that man had a natural inclination toward good, attached
a fundamental importance to the fulfilling of the moral
law for the attainment of salvation, gave the person of
Christ only the significance of a pattern and exhibition
of the Divine love, resolved the doctrine of the Trinity
into pantheistic speculative ideas, and by his rejection
of infant baptism became the acknowledged head of the whole
German Anabaptist movement of his age, so that Bucer could
designate him “the pope of the Baptists.”

2. =Louis Hätzer=, from Bischopzell in Thurgau, was priest at
Wädenschwyl, on the Zürich lake. At first an enthusiastic
follower of Zwingli and his fellow labourer, he soon
transcended the Zwinglian reforming tendencies, and with
fanatical radicalism launched out into fierce iconoclasm,
and attached himself to the Anabaptists, residing partly
in Switzerland, in Zürich, Basel, St. Gall, etc., partly
in Germany, in Augsburg, Strassburg, Worms, etc., but
soon driven out of every place, and meanwhile leading
a wandering, unstable life, until at last, in A.D. 1529,
he was beheaded at Constance as a bigamist and adulterer.
From Denck, who far excelled him in originality and depth
of thought, he derived his peculiar views. Among his
literary productions only his German translation of the
Old Testament prophets, which he produced in conjunction
with Denck, is of any importance. It was published at Worms
in A.D. 1527, two years before the Zürich version, and five
years before that of Luther, and passed through several
editions until it was displaced by Luther’s. He also holds
no mean position as a composer of spiritual songs.

3. =John Campanus= of Jülich was expelled from Cologne,
where he had studied, and went to Wittenburg [Wittenberg],
as tutor to some young noblemen, in A.D. 1528. He
accompanied the reformers to Marburg, where he sought
to unite different parties by explaining “This is My
body” to mean the body created by Me. But when he began
to spread Anabaptist and Arian views in Wittenberg, and
to calumniate the reformers by speech and writing, he was
obliged, in A.D. 1532, to quit Saxony. He now returned to
Jülich, but after labouring there for a considerable time,
he was arrested on a charge of preaching revolutionary and
chiliastic sermons, and died in prison after twenty years’
confinement at Cleves about A.D. 1578. His Arian-trinitarian
doctrine of God was just as peculiar as his doctrine of
the supper. He would acknowledge in the Godhead only two
Persons, just as its type marriage is a union of only two
persons. He regarded the Holy Spirit, on the one hand, as
the Divine nature common to both, and, on the other hand,
as the operation of these upon man.

4. =David Joris=, a painter on glass in Delft, received
his first impulse from Luther’s writings about A.D. 1524,
but soon plunged into wild excesses of iconoclasm and
anabaptism. After the overthrow of the short-lived rule
of the Münster fanatics (§ 133, 6), he travelled up and
down through the whole of Germany, in order to gather
together the scattered remnants of the Anabaptists, and
to proclaim his revelations. He was not to be deterred
or terrified by imprisonment, scourging, or banishment.
At last he was pronounced an outlaw, and a price was set
upon his head. He went now, in A.D. 1544, to Basel, and
lived there under the assumed name of John of Bruges,
outwardly professing attachment to the Reformed church,
but in secret, by the diligent circulation of letters and
treatises, working for his own ends, till his death in
A.D. 1556. When afterwards his true name was discovered,
the authorities had his bones dug up and burnt by the
public hangman. In theory and practice an antinomian,
he taught in his fantastic production, “T’Wonderboek”
of A.D. 1542, on the ground of the most naked naturalism,
how the perfection of the spiritual life and the true
reconciliation of all things must be brought about. He
conceived of the Trinity as the self-revelation of God
in three different ways. That of the Holy Spirit came to
pass with himself; the end and aim of that dispensation
he represented as consisting in the gathering together of
the people of God, _i.e._ all Anabaptists, who were to take
possession of the whole earth, as before Israel had of the
land of Canaan.

§ 148.2. =Michael Servetus= was born in A.D. 1509 at
Villanueva in Arragon. He was a man of rich speculative ability,
wide knowledge of science, and restless, inquiring spirit. At
Toulouse he devoted himself first of all to the study of law,
but soon after turned his attention with great eagerness to
theological questions. He became convinced that the fundamental
Christian doctrine of the Trinity in its accepted ecclesiastical
form is equally opposed to Scripture and to reason, and that in
this quarter pre-eminently a reformation was needed. At a later
period in Paris he gave himself to the study of medicine, and
is reputed the first discoverer of the circulation of the blood,
and secured for himself an eminent rank as a practical physician
and a writer on medical subjects. He began his polemic against
the prevailing doctrine of the Church at Strassburg in A.D. 1531
with the treatise _De Trinitatis erroribus, ll. vii._ Next in
order appeared at Hagenau, in A.D. 1532, his palliating and
to some extent retractational _Dialogorum de Trin., ll. ii._
In A.D. 1553 he issued anonymously at Vienne his radical and
revolutionary principal work, _Christianismi Restitutio_, which
was the means of bringing him to the stake. As he succeeded in
escaping from his prison in Vienne they were able there only
to burn him _in effigie_; but at Geneva he was, at Calvin’s
instigation, arrested again, and on his refusing to make a
recantation was sent to the stake on 27th Oct., A.D. 1553.
The last words heard from the dying man in the flames were,
“Jesus, Thou Son of the eternal God, have mercy upon me.”--The
reformatory aim of Servetus in his doctrinal system was to
raise God as high as possible above the creature. In its very
earliest form it was fundamentally pantheistic, yet even here
God is thought of as the original substance, and everything
existing outside of Him is conceived of as conditioned by
a substantial emanation from His being. Those pantheistic
principles, however, make their appearance in a much more
decided form in the later and more complete developments
of his system which are completely dominated by Neoplatonic
speculations. In particular he regards the Logos as an emanation
of the Divine element of light, which first came into possession
of personal existence in the incarnation of Christ. The gross
matter of His corporeity He received from His mother; the
place of the male seed was taken by the Divine element of
light. In both respects he is ὁμοούσιος, for even the earthly
matter is only a grosser form of the primal light. Son and
Spirit are only different _dispositiones Dei_, the Father alone
is _tota substantia et unus Deus_. And as the Trinity makes its
appearance in connection with the redemption of the world, it
will disappear again when that redemption has been completed.
The polemic of Servetus, however, extended beyond the doctrine
of the Trinity to an attack upon the church doctrine of original
sin, and the repudiation of infant baptism. He also set forth
a spiritualistic theory of the Lord’s Supper, contended against
the Lutheran doctrine of justification and the Calvinistic
doctrine of predestination, sketched out a scheme of chiliastic
expectations, etc. Amid all these vagaries he maintained his
high estimate of Christ as the Logos, become Son of God by the
incarnation, and the centre and end of all history; he also
continued to reverence Holy Scripture as that which from its
first book to its last testifies of Christ. His mystical piety,
too, was deep and sincere. But owing to the immoderate violence
with which he denounced views opposed to his own as doctrines
of devils, among other reproachful terms applying to the church
doctrine of the Trinity the name of “_triceps Cerberus_,” the
three-headed dog of hell, his contemporaries were prevented
from getting even a glimpse of the bright side of his life and
endeavours, so that all the most notable theologians voted for
his death as salutary and necessary (§ 145, 1).[423]

§ 148.3. =Italian and other Antitrinitarians before
Socinus.=--=Claudius of Savoy= in A.D. 1534, at Bern, brought
forward the idea that Christ is to be called God only because
the fulness of the Divine Spirit has been communicated to Him.
He was on this account expelled from that city, and soon after
even from Basel, and was very coldly received at Wittenberg. He
retracted before a synod at Lausanne in A.D. 1537, afterwards
played the part of a popular agitator at Augsburg, and was
regarded in Memmingen down to A.D. 1550 as a prophet. After
that no further trace of him is found.--Closely connected with
the previously named Tiziano, by bonds of friendship and of
spiritual affinity, and subsequently also with Lælius Socinus,
was the Sicilian exile from his native land, =Camillo Renato=.
In A.D. 1545 he obtained at Chiavenna in Veltlin, which then
belonged to the country of the Grisons, a situation as a private
tutor, and soon became highly respected. He by-and-by, however,
involved himself in a violent controversy with the evangelical
pastor there, Agostino Mainardo, about the sacraments, which led
to his being excommunicated by the Grison synod in A.D. 1550. The
central point in his theology is the doctrine of predestination.
Only the elect are by God’s Spirit awakened into life, and
while the children of the Spirit only slumber in death, and
in the resurrection assume a renewed, purely spiritual form
of being, the soul of the non-elect die just like their bodies.
Although a decided opponent of infant baptism, he did not go so
far as to insist upon rebaptism, because he depreciated baptism
generally as a mere outward sign, and therefore not necessary.
And although he carefully avoided any express repudiation of
the doctrine of the Trinity, it can scarcely be doubted that
he and all his friends and followers favoured antitrinitarian
views.--=Matthew Gribaldo=, a jurist of Padua, the physician
=George Blandrata= of Saluzzo in Piedmont, and =Valentine
Gentilis= of Calabria, fugitives from their native lands, took
up a position of hostility to Calvin in Geneva after Servetus’
death. When Calvin proposed to have them brought before a legal
tribunal Gribaldo and Blandrata retired from Geneva and went to
Poland. Only Gentilis remained, and he subscribed a confession
of faith which Calvin laid before him, but soon declared
that he could not continue to hold by it, and set forth as
consistent with Scripture doctrine the opinion that the Father
as _Essentiator_ is not a person in the Godhead, but the whole
substance of the Godhead, and that the Son as _Essentiatus_
proceeding from Him, is only the perfect reflex and highest
image of the one deity of the Father. Having been cast into
prison and condemned to death he retracted once again, and then
withdrew also to Poland. Subsequently, however, he returned to
Switzerland, was arrested at Bern, and beheaded as an apostate
in A.D. 1566.[424] Blandrata had meanwhile betaken himself
to Transylvania, was there appointed physician to the prince,
secured the interest of Zapolya II. and many of the nobles
for his Unitarianism, so that public recognition was given to
it as a fourth confessional form of religion. According to the
doctrine set forth by him worship is rendered to Jesus as the
man endowed by God with grace beyond all others and raised to
universal dominion. But in A.D. 1588 he was murdered by his
own nephew, who had remained a Catholic, as he had not patience
to wait for his death in order to secure possession of his
property. Besides Blandrata we may also mention as one of the
chief founders of the Unitarian sect in Transylvania =Franz
Davidis= of Clausenburg. From A.D. 1552 Lutheran pastor,
he became a Calvinist in A.D. 1564, and was made a Reformed
superintendent, and, at Blandrata’s recommendation, Zapolya’s
court preacher. He then openly attached himself by word and
writing to the Unitarians, and became, in A.D. 1571, first
Unitarian superintendent of Transylvania. On account of his
opposing the doctrine of the supernatural conception of Christ
and His right to be worshipped, he was repudiated by Blandrata,
and was, in A.D. 1579, condemned by Prince Christopher Bathori,
as a blasphemer and enemy of Christ, to imprisonment for
life. After three months he died in prison.--The Italian
Antitrinitarians who had fled to =Poland= attached themselves
there to the Reformed church, and secured many followers not
only among the nobles, but also among the Reformed clergy.
At their head in Cracow stood the pastor Gregor Pauli, and
in Princzov George Schomann. At the Synod of Patrikaw, in
A.D. 1562, they first appeared as a close phalanx, making a
regular attempt to have the doctrine of the Trinity set aside.
Their attack, however, was repelled. A royal edict of A.D. 1564
enacted that all Italian Antitrinitarians should be banished,
and a second synod at Patrikaw, in A.D. 1565, excommunicated
all their followers. A final endeavour to arrive at a mutual
understanding by means of yet another religious conference,
while a diet was summoned in connection with this matter at
Patrikaw, led to no successful result. From this time forth
the Polish Antitrinitarians, who have generally been called
Arians, occupy a distinct position as a separate religious
denomination.--In the Reformed church of the Palatinate, too,
this Unitarian movement ended in an equally tragical scene. The
pastor =Adam Neuser= and the Reformed inspector =John Sylvanus=
took their place about A.D. 1570 along with the Transylvanian
Unitarians. During an investigation into their doctrinal views,
a manuscript written out by Sylvanus in his own hand was found:
“A Confessional Statement against the Tripersonal Idol and
the Two Natures of Christ.” He was beheaded in A.D. 1572 in
the market-place of Heidelberg. Neuser fled to Transylvania,
and at a subsequent period went over to Mohammedanism.--Out
of the Italian infidelity of this age probably also arose
that renewal of an idea that had already appeared during the
Middle Ages (§ 96, 19) in the book _De tribus impostoribus_,
Moses, Jesus, Mohammed. Of a similar tendency is the _Colloquium
Heptaplomeres_ of the French jurist =Jean Bodin= (§ 117, 4),
who died in A.D. 1597. He was one of seven freethinking Venetian
scholars who carried on a discussion upon religion, in which
he maintained that deficiencies and mistakes are inherent in
the same degree in all positive religions. But an ideal deism
is commended as the true religion.

§ 148.4. =The Two Socini and the Socinians.=--=Lælius Socinus=,
member of a celebrated family of lawyers in Siena, and himself
a lawyer, became convinced at an early period that the Romish
system of doctrine was not in accordance with Scripture. In
order to reach an assured and certain knowledge of the truth,
he learnt the original languages in which Scripture was written,
by travelling made the acquaintance of the most celebrated
theologians in Switzerland, Germany, and Poland, and wrought
out for himself a complete and consistent theory of Unitarian
belief. He died in Zürich in A.D. 1562 in his thirty-seventh
year. His nephew, =Faustus Socinus=, born at Siena in A.D. 1539,
was from his early days trained by personal intercourse and
epistolary correspondence with his uncle, and adopted similar
views. He was obliged in A.D. 1559 to make his escape to Lyons,
but returned in A.D. 1562 to Italy, where for twelve years
he was loaded with honours and offices at the court of the
Grand-duke Francis de Medici. In order that he might carry on
his studies undisturbed, he retired in A.D. 1574 to Basel, from
whence in A.D. 1578, at Blandrata’s request, he proceeded to
Transylvania to combat Davidis’ refusal of adoration to Christ.
In the following year he went to Poland in order to unite, if
possible, the various sections of the Unitarians in that country.
At Cracow they insisted that he should allow them to rebaptize
him, and when he firmly refused they declined to admit him to
the communion table. But the decision of his character, his
unwearied endeavours to secure peace and union, as well as the
superiority of his theological scholarship, in the end won for
his ideas a complete victory over the opposing party strifes.
He succeeded gradually in expelling from the ranks of the Polish
Antitrinitarians non-adorationism as well as Anabaptism, and all
their ethical, social, and chiliastic outgrowths, and finally at
the Synod of Racau, in A.D. 1603, he secured recognition for his
own theological views as he had developed them in disputations
and in writings. Persecutions and ill-treatment on the part of
the Catholics were not wanting; as, _e.g.,_ in A.D. 1594 by the
Catholic soldiers, and in A.D. 1598 by the Catholic students
at Cracow, who dragged him from a sick-bed on Ascension Day,
drew him half naked through the city, beat him till the blood
flowed, and would have drowned him had not a Catholic professor
delivered him out of their hands. He died in A.D. 1604.--The
chief symbol of the Socinian denomination is the Racovian
Catechism, published in the Polish language in A.D. 1605.
Socinus himself, in company with several others, compiled
it, mainly from an earlier short treatise, _Relig. christ.
brevissima institutio_. It was subsequently translated into
Latin and also into German.[425]--=The Socinian system of
doctrine= therein set forth is essentially as follows: The
Scriptures are the only source of knowledge of saving truth,
and as God’s word Scripture can contain nothing that is in
contradiction to reason. But the doctrine of the Trinity
contradicts the Bible and reason; God is only one Person.
Jesus was a mere man, but endowed with Divine powers for the
accomplishment of salvation, and as a reward for his perfect
obedience raised to Divine majesty, entrusted with authority
to judge the living and the dead, so that to him also Divine
homage should be paid. The Holy Spirit is only a power or
attribute of God. The image of God in men consisted merely in
dominion over the creatures. Man was by nature mortal, but had
he remained without sin he would by the supernatural operation
of God have entered into eternal life without death. There is
no such thing as original sin, but only hereditary evil and an
inherited inclination toward what is bad, which, however, does
not include in it any guilt. The idea of a Divine foreknowledge
of human action is to be rejected, because it would lead to the
acceptance of the idea of an absolute predestination. Redemption
consists in this, that Christ by life and teaching pointed
out the better way; and God rewards every one who pursues this
better way with the forgiveness of sins and eternal life. The
death of Christ was no atoning sacrifice, but merely attached
a seal to the teaching of Christ and formed for him a pathway
to Divine glory. Conversion must begin by the exercise of one’s
own powers, but can be perfected only through the assistance of
the Holy Spirit. The sacraments are only ceremonies, which may
even be dispensed with, though it is more becoming to retain
them as old and beautiful customs. The immortality of the pious
Christian is conditioned and made possible by the resurrection
of Christ. But the ungodly, along with the devil and his angels,
are annihilated; and because in this their punishment consists,
Holy Scripture designates the annihilation as eternal death
and eternal condemnation. There is no resurrection of the
flesh; the living indeed have their bodies restored in the
resurrection; but these are not fleshly, but, as Paul teaches
in 1 Corinthians xv., spiritual.[426]--Continuation, § 163, 1.