UNITARIANSUNITED BRETHREN. 



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England, though a small society, dating from the 

 visit of doctor Priestley, in 1794, existed in Phila- 

 delphia. In 1819, a congregation was gathered in 

 Baltimore ; and others now exist in New York, 

 Philadelphia, Washington, Charleston, Pittsburg, 

 Cincinnati, and other principal cities of the Union. 

 The number of churches organized according to the 

 Congregational form is reckoned at from 170 to 

 200. Their ministers are chiefly furnished from 

 the divinity college of the university of Cambridge, 

 in Massachusetts. The annual reports of the 

 American Unitarian Association, the government 

 of which is established in Boston, circulate infor- 

 mation respecting the progress of the doctrine. 

 Besides the Congregational Unitarians, the deno- 

 mination called Christians, which is numerous, 

 particularly in the Western States, reckoning, in 

 1827, from 700 to 1000 churches (letter of General 

 Christian Conference, in Christian Examiner, vol. 

 iv), maintains Unitarian opinions ; and they are un- 

 derstood also to prevail in the large sect of the Re- 

 formed Baptists, in the same region of the country. 

 In France, many of the Protestant clergy reject 

 the Trinitarian scheme of Christian doctrine. The 

 tone of their principal publication, the Revue Pro- 

 testante, is hostile to it ; and the principal sources 

 of supply for the ministry of the French churches, 

 are the schools of Geneva and Montauban, where 

 the Unitarian system has ascendency. A society 

 was formed lately, at Paris, called the Unitarian 

 Association of France. 



In British Asia, a native society of Unitarian 

 Christians has existed, for several years, at Madras, 

 under the care of William Roberts, a native ; but a 

 much more remarkable developement of opinion of 

 this kind occurred in the case of the distinguished 

 Bramin, Rammohun Roy, of Calcutta, who, in his 

 publications in English, called the Precepts of 

 Jesus, and First, Second and Final Appeal to the 

 Christian Public, has directed the thoughts of num- 

 bers of his countrymen to the subjects therein pro- 

 posed. 



Unitarians profess to derive their views from 

 Scripture, and to make it the ultimate arbiter in 

 all religious questions, thus distinguishing them- 

 selves from the Rationalists (otherwise called the 

 Anti-supernaluralists) of Germany. They undertake 

 to show that, interpreted according to the settled 

 laws of language, the ixiiform testimony of the 

 sacred writings is, that the Holy Spirit has no per- 

 sonal existence distinct from the Father, and that 

 the Son is a derived and dependent being, whether, 

 as some believe, created in some remote period of 

 time, or, as others, beginning to live when he ap- 

 peared on earth. Three of the passages of the New 

 Testament, which have been relied on to prove the 

 contrary (1 John v., 7 ; 1 Tim. iii., 16; and Acts 

 xx., 28), they hold, with other critics, to be spuri- 

 ous. Others (as John i., 1, &c. ; Romans ix., 5) 

 they maintain to have received an erroneous inter- 

 pretation. They insist that ecclesiastical history en- 

 ables them to trace to obsolete systems of heathen 

 philosophy the introduction of the received doc- 

 trine into the church, in which, once received, it 

 has been sustained on grounds independent of its 

 merits ; and they go so far as to aver that it is 

 satisfactorily refuted by the biblical passages, when 

 rightly understood, which are customarily adduced 

 in its support. According as their distinguishing 

 doctrine has been professed in different times and 

 places, it has been found in connexion with various 

 others, which have been prominent subjects of con- 



troversy in the church, as those which respect the 

 manner of baptism, philosophical liberty and neces- 

 sity, the methods of Christ's mediation, &c. The 

 Unitarians (sometimes called Socinians) of Poland 

 held to the obligation of invoking Christ a view 

 which no Unitarians of the present day, out of 

 Transylvania, are believed to entertain. In Ame- 

 rica, Unitarian opinions are much divided upon the 

 point of Christ's pre-existence ; while, on the other 

 hand, the rejection of the tenet of his vicarious 

 Suffering (or suffering as men's substitute), along 

 with that of his supreme Deity, appears to be uni- 

 versally characteristic of the sect. See Bock, 

 Historia Antitrinitariorum ; Lubieniecius, Historia 

 Reformations Polonicee ; Lampe, Historia JEcclesice 

 Hungaricce ; Benko, Transylvania ; Maimbourg, 

 History of Arianism ; L'Amy, History of Socini- 

 anism ; Rees, Racovian Catechism. 



Unitarians is also sometimes used, in politics, to 

 designate a party in favour of a central government, 

 in contradistinction to one in favour of a federal 

 government. Thus we hear of the Unitarians in 

 Buenos Ayres. 



UNIT AS FRATRUM. See United Brethren. 

 UNITED BRETHREN (Protestant), OR UNI- 

 TAS FRATRUM; the official denomination of the 

 religious society commonly known by the name of 

 Moravians. This society was originally formed by 

 descendants of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren 

 (see Bohemian Brethren), who, being persecuted 

 for their religious tenets, and non-conformity in 

 their native country, founded a colony, under the 

 patronage of count Zinzendorf, on an estate of his, 

 called Berthelsdorf, in Upper Lusatia, in the year 

 1722, to which colony the name of Herrnhut was 

 given, on account of its situation on the southern 

 declivity of a hill called the Hutberg. It was not 

 until the number of emigrants from Bohemia and 

 Moravia, who there found an asylum, had consi- 

 derably increased, and many religiously disposed 

 persons from other quarters, attracted by their pious 

 zeal and their sufferings, had settled along with 

 them, that the diversity of sentiments, perceptible 

 among so many zealous Christians of various modes 

 ot thinking, suggested to them the propriety of 

 some general agreement concerning faith and rules 

 of conduct. Accordingly, under the guidance of 

 count Zinzendorf, who, from an early age, had en- 

 tertained an idea of constituting a Christian com- 

 munity, on the model of the primitive apostolic 

 congregations, certain articles of union were pro- 

 posed among them, which, leaving all the distinc- 

 tive doctrines of the various Protestant denomina- 

 tions of Christians entirely out of the question, 

 adopted, as articles of faith, only those fundamental 

 Scripture truths in which they all agree, and, at 

 the same time, introduced a system of social com- 

 pact and church discipline resembling that of the 

 ancient church of the Moravian Brethren, and in- 

 tended to form a society in some degree such as 

 the primitive churches are represented to have been. 

 All the inhabitants of Herrnhut, after mature con- 

 sideration, adopted this social scheme and these 

 statutes, by the name of a brotherly agreement, and 

 pledged themselves mutually to its observance, in 

 the year 1727, and thus formed the first stock of 

 the present society of United Brethren. Count 

 Zinzendorf was justly, in some measure, considered 

 the founder of the society, to which he thencefor- 

 ward devoted his whole life, property and energy. 

 It will be readily conceived, however, more especi- 

 ally after observing that further emigrations from 

 2z 



