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the practice of piety and virtue is agreeable to our reason, so 
is it for the interest of private persons and public societies. 
Tillotson. —Company; converse. 
To make society 
The sweeter welcome, we will keep ourself 
Till supper-time alone. Shakspeare. 
Whilst I was big in clamour, came there a man. 
Who having seen me in my worser state, 
Shunn’d my abhorr’d society. Shakspeare. 
Solitude sometimes is best society. 
And short retirement urges sweet return. Milton. 
Partnership; union on equal terms.—Among unequals 
what society can sort ? Milton. 
Heaven’s greatness no society can bear; 
Servants he made, and those thou wan’st not here. Dry den. 
SOCIETY HILL, a post village of the United States, in 
Iredell county, North Carolina. 
SOCIETY ISLANDS, a cluster of islands in the South 
Pacific Ocean, so named by Captain Cook, in the year 1769. 
They are Ulietea, Otaha, Bolabola, Huaheine, Tubai, and 
Maurua; the two last are very small. Captain Cook says 
he called them thus because they lay contiguofls to each 
other, but did not think it proper to distinguish them sepa¬ 
rately by any other names than those by which they were 
known to the natives. They are situated between the lati¬ 
tude of 16. 10. and 16. 55. S. and between the longitude of 
150. 57. and 152. W. from the meridian of Greenwich. 
Ulietea and Otaha lie within about two miles of each other, 
and are both inclosed within one reef of coral rocks, so that 
there is no passage for shipping between them. This reef 
forms several excellent harbours; the entrances into them, 
indeed, are but narrow, yet when a ship is once in, nothing 
can hurt her. The inhabitants, climate and produce are si¬ 
milar, in many respects, to those of Otaheite, from which 
island they are not above fifty leagues distant towards the 
north-west. Huaheine seems to be a month forwarder in its 
productions than Otaheite. Of the cocoa-nuts the inhabi¬ 
tants make a food which they call poe, by mixing them with 
yams; they scrape both fine, and having incorporated the 
powder, they put it into a wooden trough, with a number 
of hot stones, by which an oily kind of hasty-pudding is 
made, that the English Seamen relished very well, especially 
when it was fried. 
The inhabitants of these islands are generally considered 
taller and more robust than those of Otaheite, and the wo¬ 
men more handsome. They are similar in their manners, 
being addicted to the same superstitions and customs; and 
being also under a similar climate, their mode of living is 
generally the same. The islands are fruitful, and the inha¬ 
bitants trust to the spontaneous produce of the earth rather 
than to their own labours; but w T hen this fails, they are in 
the greatest straits. These islands so much resemble Ota¬ 
heite in their climate and productions, and in the manners 
of the inhabitants, that any farther account of these would 
only be to repeat what has been already stated in our account 
of that island. 
In the account of Otaheite, the persevering and success¬ 
ful labours of the missionaries to civilize and convert the 
natives from their superstitions, were noticed. Though long 
disappointed, and though their lives were also frequently en¬ 
dangered by the contests and revolutions which agitated 
those islands, the missionaries would not relinquish their 
task, and their efforts have been at length so far crowned 
with success, that the sovereigns of many of these islands, 
together with a large proportion of the inhabitants, have re¬ 
linquished the superstitions of their forefathers, and pro¬ 
fessed their belief in the truths of Christianity. This change 
has extended to several of the Society Islands, viz., Hua¬ 
heine, Raiatea or Ulietea, Talia or Otaha, and Borabora or 
Bolabola. The principal chief of these islands had relin¬ 
quished his old and idolatrous creed, and had embraced the 
new faith. At the two latter islands, two of the chiefs had 
distinguished themselves by their zeal in destroying all ido¬ 
latrous places of worship, and erecting a Christian church 
in their place. In Raiatea, Tapa, one of the chiefs, was 
proceeding to destroy the ancient idols which he had been 
accustomed to worship, when the idolaters rose upon him. 
They were in the end, however, completely subdued, and 
though they still continued to plot new schemes for the re¬ 
storation of the old religion, flit re was no probability that 
they would accomplish their object. The missionaries will 
therefore proceed with fresh vigour in their task of instruct¬ 
ing these ignorant natives, and of reclaiming them from their 
barbarous superstitions and customs. They had made tours 
round Huaheine, Raiatea, Taha, and had visited Borabora, 
and they calculated that in these islands there were nearly 
4000 converts to Christianity. They were, however, with,- 
out instruction, except from books, with which they were 
supplied by the missionaries. 
SOCI'NIAN, ad). Of or belonging to Socinianism. 
SOCI'NIANISM, 5. The tenets of Socinus. 
SOC1NIANS, a sect of Antitrinitarians, who are said to 
have derived this denomination from the illustrious family of 
the Sozzini, which flourished a long time at Sienna, in 
Tuscany, and produced several great and eminent men; 
and, among others, Lae I ms and Faustus Socinus, who are 
commonly supposed to have been the founders of this sect. 
Lselius was the son of Marianus, a famous lawyer, and dis¬ 
tinguished by his genius and learning, as well as by the lustre 
of an unblemished and virtuous conduct. Having con¬ 
ceived a disgust against popery, and disapproving many 
doctrines of the church, he left his Country in 1547; and 
having passed four years in visiting France, England, Hol¬ 
land, Germany, and Poland, he at last fixed his residence at 
Zurich, in Switzerland, where he died in 1562, in the 
thirty-seventh year of his age. Although he adopted the 
Helvetic confession of faith, and professed himself a member 
of the church of Switzerland, he entertained doubts with 
respect to certain doctrines of religion, which he communi¬ 
cated to some learned men, whose judgment he respected, 
and in whose friendship he could confide. However, his 
sentiments were propagated in a more public manner, after 
his death; as Faustus, his nephew and his heir, is supposed 
to have drawn from the papers he left behind him, that re¬ 
ligious system, upon which the sect of the Socinians was 
founded. This Faustus Socinus was bom at Sienna in 1539; 
and having continued many years in his own country, twelve 
of which he spent in the court of the grand duke of Tuscany, 
he determined, in the year 1574, and the thirty-fifth of his 
age, to withdraw from Italy into Germany. During this 
period he had laboured under many disadvantages in the pur¬ 
suit of knowledge, and his studies had been chiefly confined 
to the rudiments of logic and jurisprudence; but at Basil, 
where he first resided after his voluntary exile, he devoted 
himself for three years to the study of theology, under the 
direction and assistance of the wrtings of his uncle Lselius; 
and in 1577 he began to propagate his religious opinions 
without reserve or disguise. In 1578 he was invited by 
Blandrata, a person of eminence in Transylvania, to compose 
the commotions which were occasioned by a party under the 
lead of Francis David, in the Antitrinitarian churches of that 
country. But failing of success, he removed to Poland in 
1579, zealously wishing to join himself to the Unitarian 
churches; but here he suffered many vexations, and much 
opposition, from a considerable number of persons, who 
looked upon some of his tenets as highly erroneous. At length, 
however, he vanquished the animosity of his enemies by his 
gentleness and firmness, by his address and eloquence, and 
the favours and protection of the nobility, with which he was 
honoured, and lived to form the Unitarians into one com¬ 
munity, under his own superintendency and direction. 
Having retired to a village about nine miles from Cracow, 
he there closed his life, in the year 1604; and the following 
epitaph was inscribed on his tomb: 
“ Tota licet Babylon destruxit tecta Lutherus, 
Muros Calvinus, sed fundamenta Socinus:” 
i. e. Luther destroyed the houses of Babylon, Calvin the 
walls. 
