UNITARIAN. 



719 



Sigismuntl II. A large portion of the reformed 

 clergy of Poland ranked themselves in their num- 

 ber, as early as 1565, in which year they were 

 separated from the communion of the Calvinists 

 and Lutherans. The period of their prosperity 

 now began. They were included within the pacta 

 conventa, or grant of freedom of worship. Their 

 discordant opinions on minor points became har- 

 monized, partly under the influence of Faustus 

 Socinus, nephew of Laelius, who established him- 

 self among them in 1579, and, though at first re- 

 ceived coldly, soon acquired the ascendency due to 

 an earnest and disinterested character and singular 

 powers of mind. From their settlement at Racow, 

 where they had a college, which, at one time, num- 

 bered more than a thousand students, and from 

 other places, they sent out numerous learned pub- 

 lications, spreading their views of the Christian 

 system far and wide. In every part of the kingdom 

 they had churches; and among their adherents 

 were numbers of the principal nobility. The most 

 accessible monument which remains of the abilities 

 and erudition of their writers is in the collection 

 called Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, made in 8 

 vols., folio, by Andrew Wissowatius and others, 

 and containing works of the two Socini, Schlicting, 

 Wolzogen, Crellius, Przipcovius and Wissowatius; 

 to which, in some -copies, is found added a volume 

 of writings of Brenius. Measures which followed, 

 of combined hostility against them on the part of 

 Catholics and other Protestants, were favoured by 

 the unsettled state of Poland during the seventeenth 

 century. The disorderly conduct of some students 

 of the college at Racow, who had broken down a 

 cross at one of the gates of the town, was seized 

 on for the occasion of severe measures of coercion ; 

 snd, though the offenders were punished, and every 

 satisfaction for the outrage offered by their parents 

 and the governors of the college, this did not pre- 

 vent the passage of a decree, by the diet of Warsaw, 

 for the church and college to be closed, the press 

 to be stopped, and the professors sent into exile. 

 This decree was followed, through the twenty suc- 

 ceeding years, by others, with provisions more 

 severe, till, in 1658, the Unitarians were forbidden, 

 under pain of death, publicly to solemnize their 

 worship, or profess their sentiments, and required 

 to attach themselves, within three years, to the 

 Catholic, Lutheran, or Calvinistic communion, or 

 quit the kingdom; and, in 1660, the time allowed 

 in this alternative for disposing of their property, 

 iind making other arrangements for expatriation, 

 was further abridged by a decree making immediate 

 outlawry the penalty of delay. In the dispersion 

 which followed, some went to England, some to 

 different states of Germany, some to Holland, 

 (where the Bibliotheca, above mentioned, was pub- 

 lished, and where, before long, they became merged 

 in the body of Remonstrants), and some to Tran- 

 sylvania. 



They continued to be known as a distinct com- 

 munity, only in this latter country, where, under 

 the auspices of George Blandrata, a Piedmontese 

 physician, and a friend of Faustus Socinus, their 

 doctrine had appeared not long after the period of 

 its rise in Poland, and had been favoured, in like 

 manner, by a system of toleration, pursued by two 

 successive monarchs. But, whether from other 

 causes, or owing to the toleration being limited to 

 a particular form of the Unitarian doctrine (involv- 

 ing the obligation of invoking Christ), the number 

 of professors never became large. The Unitarian 



still remains one of the four communions recognised 

 by the Austrian government of Transylvania. 

 According to the Conversations-Lexicon, it consists 

 of 50,000 persons, divided among 164 churches, 

 governed by a superintendent and two consistories. 

 At Clausenburgh, their principal seat, and at 

 Thoarda, they have schools. The most consider- 

 able publication which has proceeded from them, 

 is the Explicationes Locorum Vet. et Nov. Test, ex 

 quibus Trinitatis Dogma stabiliri solet, by George 

 Enjedinus, their third superintendent. The most 

 recent formal exposition of their views is believed 

 to be found in the Summa Universce Theologies 

 secundum Unitarios (Clausenburg, 1784), attributed 

 to professor Marcos. 



In Holland, Erasmus John, rector of the college 

 of Antwerp, published, in 1585, an anonymous 

 work, favouring this system, entitled Antithesis 

 Doctrince Christi et Antichristi de Una Vero Deo. 

 He was forthwith banished. Thirteen years after, 

 Ostorode and Voidove, for similar publications, 

 were ordered, by the states-general, to leave the 

 United Provinces within ten days, and their writ- 

 ings to be burned. Brandt, as quoted by Mosheim, 

 says that, when the multitude had assembled to 

 witness the execution of the latter part of the 

 sentence, the books were no where to be found. 

 The magistrates were curious to examine them, 

 and had divided them among themselves and their 

 friends. In 1627, Adolphus Venator, minister of 

 Almaer, was banished for composing a work which 

 savoured of Socinianism, quod portenta Sarmatica 

 saperet. It being still found, however, that there 

 were many Unitarians in Holland, masnam in his 

 terris Socinianorum messam esse (L'Amy), the 

 synod of the Seven Provinces sent a delegation to 

 the states-general, urging the necessity of further 

 measures ; whereupon that body, after consulting 

 the divines of Leyden, issued an edict, bearing date 

 September 19, 1653, forbidding the profession of the 

 Socinian heresy, and the holding of its assemblies, 

 under pain of banishment for the first offence, and 

 punishment at discretion for the second. But 

 whether it was owing to impressions made by the 

 Apology of Schlicting, published in the next 

 year, to the opposition of public sentiment, to the 

 numbers of the Unitarians themselves, or to the 

 apparent inconsistency of the edict with the prin- 

 ciples of toleration already asserted by the states- 

 general in several treaties, as well as in their 

 articles of union it does not appear to have been 

 carried into rigid execution. To mention no other 

 single names than those of Episcopius, Grotius, Le 

 Clerc, and Wetstein, there has probably been al- 

 ways a large number of Unitarians among the Re- 

 monstrants of Holland. But the Remonstrants 

 have not published their opinions freely, being, at 

 all times, a depressed sect. Their ministers at one 

 period were deprived, and at another banished; and, 

 till the Dutch revolution in 1795, no Remonstrant 

 could hold a public office, or be a professor in the 

 universities, or a teacher in the public schools. A 

 relaxation of attachment to hitherto current opinions 

 may be inferred from the fact, that, in 1817, on the 

 recovery of Dutch independence, an assembly of 

 professors and divines was convened, which per- 

 mitted candidates for the ministry to profess and 

 teach the articles of the synod of Dort, as far as 

 they are in accordance with the Bible. More recent 

 publications of that country show that Unitarian 

 opinions have there disseminated themselves to no 

 inconsiderable extent. 



