Baptist Unitarianism in the

17th and

18th Centuries In Britain and

America.

This paper shall begin with a short introduction of Unitarianism in

Europe and Great Britain before 1650 to form a historical background and a

broad theological context for explaining why Unitarianism infected the

Baptists in England and America from about 1675-1815. Unitarianism

heresy particularly affllicted the General Baptists in England and those

Baptists affected by the related heresy of Universalism in Colonial America.

This study will doubtlessly contain many unfilled gaps, important unseen

historical connections, and inadequate theological analyses of the issues, but

the writer does hope to sketch at least a few solid markers for future in-

depth studies in the primary sources as well as secondary sources. Since

this is a seminary term paper, it is realized that it will be hardly impressive

to scholars acquainted with 17th, 18th, and 19th century primary sources

and to those who have actually visited important historic sites and have

immediately perceived their connection to the historic milestones of the

Unitarian controversies among the Baptists. But we pledge to do our best

and let the reader decide for himself.

I. Early Unitarianism Until 1600.

In the history of Christianity erroneous attempts have been made to

have a religion " of Jesus " without having a religion " about Jesus ". This

really an old heresy card which has been played many times in the march of

Christ's Church through time. The history of Unitarianism certainly has

exemplified this tendency repeatedly. Jack W. Traylor, distinguished

professor of history at William J. Bryan College in Tennessee, succinctly

introduces the main points of historic Unitarianism. So we begin with his

analysis of the Unitarian movement prior to the Protestant Reformation:

Unitarians. A monotheistic religion born within Christianity which recognizes

the existence of a transcendent God, but denies the deity of Jesus Christ and the

Holy Spirit. The term "Unitarian" refers to belief in God as one Person in a unified

Godhead rather than three Persons or a Trinity in the Godhead. The Unitarian

conception of Christ's Atonement is that it was not a literal vicarious substitute to

pay for human sins but rather was a moral act by a man chosen by God that was

designed to bring unity between God and man. Arius (d. 336), a priest in Alexandria , Egypt, may have been the first to

pop-ularize the antitrinitarian views that came to characterize later Unitarians.

His teaching that Christ was a created being rather than coequal and coeternal

with God the Father led to the Arian controversy whose doctrines the Council of

Niceacondemned in A.D. 325. Arianism nearly extinguished Western orthodoxy

when it was championed by rulers in the 330s and 340s.1

1

2

The famed Yale historian of Christianity, Kenneth S. Latourette,

observed this about Unitarianism of the Renaissance and Reformation era: "

Others, usually humanists, made much of the rational approach to

Christianity, emphasized the ethical aspect of New Testament teaching, and

were inclined to be anti-Trinitarian and to regard Christ as an example and a

leader to be followed rather than the divine-human redeemer. "2 There were

Endnotes

1"Unitarians," In J.D. Douglas, ed., New 20th-Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (Second Edition; Grand Rapids, Michigan: 1991), pp. 841-842. Perhaps the best brief article written prior to 1960 on Unitarianism is that contained in F. E. Mayer's compendium, The Religious Bodies of America. Revised by Arthur C. Piepkorn. (4th Edition; St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1961), Pt. X, pp. 511-519. A more secular analysis of Unitarianism as a philosophical viewpoint is covered in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2nd Edition; New York: Macmillan and Free Press, 1989). B.K. Kuiper in his classic book, The Church In History ( Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans / Christian Schools International Publications, 1964), Ch. 35, pp. 280-283 also has a clear short historical description of modern Unitarianism / Socinianism. 2A History of Christianity (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1953), chapter xxxv, p. 788. Cf. also his comments on pp. 792-795 and passim. 3See the article on "Unitarianism" in F.L. Cross and E.A. Livingstone, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (3rd Edition; London and New York: 1990), pp. 1408-1409. We have obtained supplemental information from The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XV; New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1912. Cf. also the online Edition, 1999 by Kevin Knight at www.newadvent.org. In the article from the Oxford Dictionary above it is noted that George Blandrata, a Piedmontese physician, became the leader of a small group of Unitarians in Poland in 1558. By 1565 this group had grown, but was now excluded from the Reformed Church and held its own synod as the "Minor Church" (Ibid.) Perhaps the most famous and definitely the most scholarly works is E.M. Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism : Socianism and its Antecedents (2 Vols: Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard

3

perhaps a few ardent "unitarians" between the fourth and the sixteenth

centuries, but for the most part, heresy had moved in different directions

within European Christian thought in the Middle Ages. This is to say, that

other than the Gnostic type heresies of the Cathari and the Paulicians, most

of the non-Trinitarians were outside of the Christian faith altogether, i.e.,

unbelieving Jews and Muslims. However, merely because a stream of

University Press, 1945-1952). Earlier, the account of Joseph Henry Allen, An Historical Sketch of the Unitarian Movement Since the Reformation, Vol. 2 in the American Church History Series (New York: The Christian Literature Co., 1894) is also a worthy tome, despite its pro-Unitarian bias. In chapters I-V, Allen, like Wilbur later, has a thorough survey of the Valdes and Bernard Ochino in Northern Italy, Servetus and his martyrdom in Geneva, the Unitarianism of Faustus Socinus, the spread and development of Unitarianism in Poland, and finally, its survival in the seventeenth century in Transylvania, pp. 1-120. The weakest aspect of both Allen and Wilbur's accounts are certain facts they deliberately leave out and their appeals to emotion in respect to Servetus' martyrdom. Two examples from Allen may suffice here. For instance, Allen hearty defense Ochino's view of Justification (Cantu, vol. ii., p. 380-381) on p. 15 against the " Lutheran assertion of a faith wholly independent of works" is a glaring instance of refusing to note the context here of forensic justification before God and the balance of the doctrine in the Lutheran confessions which teaches clearly that saving faith is never without good works, inspired by the Spirit (Augsburg Confession, XX, Melancthon's Apology to the Augsburg Confession, Luther's Large Catechism, Pt. I, The Ten Commandments, etc.). More serious, however, is Allen's attempt to draw sympathy for anti-Trinitarianism from the youthful Philip Melancthon's Loci Communes, first published in 1521, about which work Allen implies that Melancthon did not seek "metaphysical grounds of the doctrine then deemed orthodox" (i.e, a reference to the Trinitarian model of belief) (p. 27). Yet, all of Allen's attempts in the text and footnotes of the next several pages to show or imply that Melancthon sympathized with a non-Trinitarian interpretation of the Bible can hardly be substantiated in light of his Reformation work with Luther, his sermons at Wittenberg , his work on the Augsburg Confession of 1530, nor his very own words in The Apology 0f 1531, where he plainly states that his Catholic opponents approved of his Article I on " God. " There, he says plainly " This asserts our faith and teaching that there is one undivided divine essence, and that there are nevertheless three distinct and coeternal persons of the same divine essence, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have always taught and defended this doctrine and we believe that the Holy Scriptures testify to it firmly, surely, and irrefutably. We steadfastly maintain that those who believe otherwise do not belong to the church of Christ but are idolaters and blasphemers. " (Louis Tappert, ed., The Book of Concord. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1959, p. 100). While Melancthon himself labored diligently to work out a more simple, logical, and Scriptural statement of the Trinity (and rejected much Medieval speculation), he never held with rationalistic or heretical reductions of the Godhead to man's rational capacity and he fervently held to the early creeds (Apostles, Nicene, and Athanasian) as sound expositions of God's revelation of Himself. To suggest that because Melancthon pursued the immediate and practical purposes of reconciling Protestants and Catholics on this key doctrine that he had a "disturbing consciousness" when it came to Servetus' attacks on this (p. 29) is ridiculous. Undoubtly, he would have agreed with Oeclampadius, who urged against

4

thought goes underground, it does not mean it is obliterated - for old

heresies have often reappeared in new outlets since Reformation times.

Thus, an incipient unitarianism, which stressed the impersonality of God,

became a fixed notion in the minds of certain radical critics of the Church.

One of these was a pupil of Johann Reuchlin, Martin Cellarius (1499-1564),

who was perhaps the first explicit exponent of Unitarian views in his De

Servetus that he really did not accept a true Incarnation: " You do not admit, then, that the Son of God was to be a man, but [hold] that a man was to be the Son of God. " (Cited on p. 30, Allen). Later, both Calvin and Melancthon endeavored to win Servetus from his errors and the soul-damning propositions of his De Trinitatus Erroribus (Hagenau, 1531), but Servetus blindly and insanely pursued his human rationalism against all Biblical and theological evidence to the contrary. We do accept, however, the characterization of Professor Harold O.J. Brown: " A different fate [from Menno Simons] awaited one of the most brilliant and eccentric advocates of a heavenly-flesh doctrine, the Spanish physician Michael Servetus (1511-1553). Servetus has gone down in church and secular history as a martyr to Calvinistic intolerance; his execution in Geneva represents a stain that Reformed Protestantism has never quite been able to efface. " (Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrikson Publishers, 1988, ch. 16, p.330. See further, pp. 331-352). 4"Unitarians," in J.D. Douglas, Op. Cit.. Actually, the first "Unitarians" in Christian history may have been the "Monarchists" of the early 3rd century. Here we think of the "Dynamic Monarchism" of the Ebionites, Theodotius of Byzantium, and Paul of Samosata (bishop of Antioch, A.D. 260). Generally, these "unitarians" believed that Jesus Christ was a special man (some accepted his Virgin Birth) who received the "Christ Spirit" either at his Baptism or in His Resurrection, or that he was an ordinary man endowed with Divine powers. In either case, Deity was not naturally the possession of Jesus, but something bestowed on him in some sense or degree. The other form of "primitive Unitariansim" or Socinianism was exhibited by the "Modalists" (also a form of Monarchism) by Noetus of Rome , Praxeas, and later Sabellius who envisioned the Father , Son, and Spirit merely as"modes" or historical manifestations of the One Deity in various guises. Some of these tendencies reappeared in sixteenth century Socianism and in the Unitarianism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Fausus Socinius, for example, was a theology student at Basel, when his uncle's unpublished manuscript came into his hands. His conversion to this view was a crucial historical step. See Bengt Hagglund, History of Theology, translated by Gene J. Lund ( 3rd edition; St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1968). More recently Harold O.J. Brown has explored these historical connections in his lively study: Heresies: The Image of Christ in the Mirror of Heresy and Orthodoxy from the Apostles to the Present (Doubleday 1984), chapters 3-5. 5See the references in the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church and The Catholic Encyclopedia above, Ibid. See also list of Latin collections by L. Wolzogen, F.S. Bock, and F. Trecshsel in the bibliography in the first reference. One key work in German is that of Otto Fock, Der Socinianismus nach seiner Stellung in der Gesammtenwickelung des christlichen Geistes (2 Vols.; Kiel, 1847). 6Mayer (Piepkorn), Religious Bodies in America, Pt. X, Section 1, " Unitarian-Universalist Association, " p. 511-12. In a footnote on the same page, Dr. Mayer

5

Operibus Dei published in Strassburg in 1527. Other early Unitarians

included J. Valdes, Michael Servetus, and Bernardo Ochino who were

actively influential in fostering Unitarianism as a sectarian community

within European Christendom. Excepting Servetus, their story finds its life

adds, " There were several Unitarians prior to Socinus, such as the German Anabaptists Denk and Hetzer, the Dutch mystic Campanus, the Italian free-thinkers Blandrata, Garibaldo, and Gentile (executed in Bern, 1556). "7In J.D. Douglas, New 20th-Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Op. Cit. It should be recalled that Faustus Socinus had been somewhat more discreet about his anti-Trinitarianism, possibly realizing that it was definitely against the mainstream of Christian tradition and Biblical exegesis. He had outwardly conformed to the Roman dogma and forms of worship while he was a secretary in the court of the Medici in Florence. Then, eventually , he revealed his sentiments when he lived in more tolerant Basel, where he wrote his notorious treatise, De Jesus Christo Salvatore which explicitly denied the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, God's Son, for sin. Rather, Socinus believed, man must be his own savior by imitating the perfect life that Jesus lived and his pattern of the way of salvation. Later, he would take his anti-Trinitarianism and moralistic Gospel to Transylvania, and finally to Poland, where he died in 1604. See the comments of Kenneth Latourette on the later Polish Socinians' heretical missionary activity and the Socianism of the racial Transylvanian Cossacks, the "Szeklers"in A History of Christianity , chapter xxxv, pp. 793-795. See also Earl M. Wilber, editor and trans., Stanislas Kot, Socianism in Poland: The Social and Political Ideas of the Polish Anti-Trinitarianians in the Sixteenth Century (Boston: Starr King Press, 1957).8See Latourette, Op Cit., p. 793 and Spitz, The Renaissance and ReformationMovements. Vol. II, The Reformation. (Revised Edition; St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1987), pp. pp. 396, 405, 437-438. 9"Unitarianism", The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, pp. 1408-1409.10 This is especially seen by reading carefully the citations from the respective confessions in the text and elsewhere. The three Ecumenical Creeds, which also the Catholic and the Greek Orthodox accept are the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. These come from the second, early fourth and late fourth centuries, respectively. 11See also Lewis W.Spitz, The Renaissance and Reformation Movements. Vol. II, The Reformation. (Revised Edition; St. Louis, Mo.: Concordia Publishing House, 1987), pp. 374, 396. One who does justice to the civic concerns of the unorthodox while recognizing the value of Protestant Orthodoxy is the late Quaker scholar of Yale, Roland H. Bainton, in his work, The Travail of Religious Liberty ( Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1951). A sympathetic account, based on fairly extensive research, can be found in E.M. Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism: Socianism and its Antecedents (2 Vols: Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1945-1952). 12It is probable that the new Unitarian impulse in England ca. 1650 and after came as much from the influence of Deism as the direct contact with traditions of Socianism in Continental Europe. Although this writer does not presently have access to them, there are some bibliographical collections at Harvard and Andover

6

setting in the small Unitarian communities which were established for a time

in Hungary, Poland, Transylvania and England.3

One form of Unitarianism known as Socinianism was a particular

Reformation phenomenon, a reaction to Biblical Protestant thought as much

as Roman Catholic. Two Italians, Laelius Socinus and his nephew, Faustus,

were the key figures. Although Laelius outwardly conformed to the Catholic

Newton Theological Seminary which have leads into the remote history of European Unitarianism from the Reformation to ca. 1700. But Cf. Earl Morse Wilber, A Bibliography of the Pioneers of the Socinian-Unitarian Movement in Modern Christianity, in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland (Sussidi eruditi Vol. 1; Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1950); Christoph Sand, Biblotheca antitrinitariorum, 1684 (Reprint, Instytut Filozofiii Socjologii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Biblioteka prisarzy reforma-cyjnynch, 6. Varsoviae [Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1967]); Robert Wallace, AntiTrinitarian Biography (3 Vols.; London: E.T. Whitefield, 1850). 13One mayconsult the article on " Socianism" by Robert G. Clouse in J.D. Douglas, New 20th-Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge,, p. 912. The best books on the overall topic may be E.M. Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism: In Transylvania, England, and America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1952), and H.J. MacLachlan, Socianism in 17th Century England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957. Originally published : Oxford University Press, 1951), Cf. especially chaps. I-III, pp. 1-44. See, moreover, George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962). The most detailed account of various individuals in England during the 1600s who partially or wholly embraced is found in Earl Morse Wilbur, Our Unitarian Heritage. Boston: Beacon Press, 1925, Pt. V., Chapters XXVII and XXVIII.14See the accounts in The Science of Theology, edited by Gillian R. Evans, Alister E. McGrath, and Alland D. Galloway in Paul Avis theological series, The History of Christian Theology (Basingstoke, U.K.: Marshall Pickering/ Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1986), Vol. I, pp. 280-284. There is trenchantly observed, " In the eighteenth century, Jonathan Edwards had already exercised a powerful transforming influence on Calvinism. In reconciling it with rationalism and Newtonian science, he had changed its ethos. He integrated into it the revivalist emphasis on emotion and personal decision. This weakened the doctrine of predestination " (p. 282). In more general terms, the degeneration of the Reformation/Puritan ethos is discussed in Marshall and Manuel, The Light and the Glory, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Fleming H. Revell, 1977), pp. 277-278; 345-353; and in Latourette, A History of Christianity , pp. 1035-1046. 15"Unitarianism, " The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Ibid. But at least ten years previous to this ( and in respect to social roots, probably the whole previous generation of forty years) Reverend Samuel Langford, then President of Harvard College, had prophesied, " We have rebelled against God. We have lost the true spirit of Christianity, though we retain the outward profession and form of it. We have neglected and set light by the glorious Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and His holy commands and institutions. The worship of many is but mere compliment to the Deity, while their hearts are far from Him. By many the Gospel is corrupted into a superficial system of moral philosophy, little better than ancient Platonism." Sermon reprinted in Plumstead, ed., The Wall and the Garden, Selected

7

Church, he taught his nephew and others a doctrine which thoroughly

contradicted basic truths which it held. Laelius had been a student of law,

but he turned to theology and from 1550-1551 he lived in Wittenberg, where

he was acquainted with Philip Melancthon. During his early life, the tragedy

of Michael Servetus' death in Geneva moved him to reconsider both the

doctrine of the Trinity and the Reformation view of Christ's redemption,

Massachusetts Election Sermons, 1670-1775 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1968), cited in Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Light and the Glory, chapter 15, pp. 277-278. 16"Unitarianism, "Op. Cit. Kenneth S. Latourette in his chapter xliv, " Repudiation and Revival, A.D. 1750-A.D. 1815, " discusses in some detail how the effect of Rationalist "Pietism" ( e.g., Christian Wolff of Halle, 1679-1754 ) opened up the way for Deism and Unitarianism among Evangelical Protestants. Much more damaging , of course, was the more extreme Deist and Rationalist views of Herman Samuel Reimarus of Hamburg (1694-1768) and the famous dramatic critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) who tended to argue that religion "evolved" and that Deism/Unitarianism was the natural state of civilization in an Enlightened Age (Cf. p. 1005). We have already mentioned the receptive mood of England to new notions. There were some Unitarians among the Scots as well, and the General (Arminian) Baptists of England tended in this direction. It was with this latter group that Joseph Priestly eventually ministered. 17"Unitarians," in J.D. Douglas, New 20th-Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, pp.841-842. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, the highly regarded authority on American Religion at Yale, in an earlier essay had stated, " Just as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams stand in their own right as flowerings of the Enlightenment comparable to any men of their age, in the same manner a long train of American theologians play important roles in the history of Christian thought even though their predicament often makes their work too American in its focus to allow wide international assimilation of it. Cited in " Theology In America: A Historical Survey, " in James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison, eds., The Shaping of American Religion (Volume I, "Religion In American Life"; Princeton Studies in American Civilization, No. 5; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 318. But see also pp. 183, 323, 341-343, 350, 351-352, 353, 357, 359, 403, etc. See also the revealing quotations in Nelson Manfred Blake, A History of American Life and Thought (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), chapter 14, pp. 189-202, and passim . On Thomas Jefferson's animosity to confessional, historic Christianity, see my essay, " A Historical and Philosophical Critique of Thomas Jefferson's View of Christianity, " Graduate Paper at Stephen F. Austin State University, Fall, 1997. Generally speaking, Peter Marshall and David Manuel's last three or four chapters in The Light and the Glory, Op. Cit., adopt a similar stance on the incipient Unitarianism of some of our American Founding Fathers. 18"Unitarians," in J.D. Douglas, New 20th-Century Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Ibid. See also David Robinson, The Unitarians and the Univeralists in Henry W. Bowden, General Editor, Denominations in America, Vol. I (Westport, Connecticutt: Greenwood Press, 1985), Ch. 2, " American Unitarians Origins, " pp. 21-23. 19Essentially, the writer has paraphrased Ahlstrom's account in " Theology In America, " , Op. Cit., pp. 251-252. The direct quote is from p. 252. Ahlstrom himself

8

though he did not publish his real beliefs openly for fear of persecution.

Thus, in his teaching and circle of influence, he attempted to undermine

confidence in the historic teaching of the Church without directly attacking

the Creeds as such. Dr. Traylor describes then the second phase of the

Unitarian phenomena which began in the later part of the sixteenth century.

cites the authoritative source of Conrad Wright, The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America ( Boston: Beacon Press, 1955). See also Latourette, Op Cit., p. 794-5 and in his chapter xliv, "Repudiation and Revival, A.D. 1750-A.D. 1815, " who discusses in some detail how the effect of Rationalist "Pietism" (e.g., Christian Wolff of Halle, 1679-1754 ) opened up the way for Deism and Unitarianism among Evangelical Protestants. Much more damaging , of course, was the extreme Deist and Rationalist views of Herman Samuel Reimarus of Hamburg (1694-1768) and the famous dramatic critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) who tended to argue that religion "evolved" and that Deism/Unitarianism was the natural state of civilization in an Enlightened Age (Cf. p. 1005). We have already mentioned the receptive mood of England to new notions. There were some Unitarians among the Scots as well, and the General (Arminian) Baptists of England tended in this direction. It was with this latter group that Joseph Priestly eventually ministered. 20H.J. Maclachlan, Op. Cit. has a quite detailed discussion of the growth of heresy among Anglicans, Puritan Non-Conformists, and others in his Socinianism In Seventeenth-Century England, pp. 30--38. There he mentions such individuals as Matthew Hamont, John Lewes, Peter Cole, George von Parris, Justius Velsius, Francis Kett, Bartholomew Legate, William Sayer, and others in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century. He also notes the powerful influence among Anabaptists and some Non-conformists of the Racovian Catechism and the English translation of Konrad Vorst' De Deo and Apologetica exegesis pro tractatu de Deo by the autumn of 1611(!).21Maclachan, Socinianism In Seventeenth-Century England, p. 32. Another man, Edward Wightman, was burned at Lichfield in 1612. The manuscript of his trial (dated December 5, 1611) is in the Bodleian library in Oxford (Ashmole Manuscript, No. 1521, vii). According to McLachlan, he had wrote a small folio book of 18 pages which he dedicated to King James. According to MacLachlan, " he held ' that Jesus Christ is only mann and a mere Creature, and not both God and man in one person. ' He began to hold new views about the Trinity in 1609. " (Ibid.)22McLachlan, Ibid., pp. 38-39. This correspondence is contained in the historical work by B. Evans, Early English Baptists, 2 Vols.; London, 1862-64, Vol. II, pp. 21-51. Despite McLachlan and other pro-Unitarian historians protests about the "Biblicism" of the early Socinians/Unitarians, it is clear that such loose "tolerance" obviously ignores the statements of Jesus himself about his coinherence ("remaining in")and eternal unity with the Father (Cf. Johns 5: 24-40; 7:28-29; 8:14ff.; 8:27-29, 58; 10:25-38; 14:9-11, 14:15-19; 15:26ff.; 16:25ff.; 17:1-5, etc.). It also totally ignores scores of other statements about Christ's equal deity with the Father and Spirit in the New Testament epistles which are too numerous to enumerate here. Anti-Trinitarianism is not the result of unprejudiced exegesis, but rather a reluctance of human sinners to acknowledge Christ's absolute perfect Godhood and manhood. It is sinful rationalism.

9

He picks up the story with the main player, Faustus Socinus (1539-1604),

Laelus' more famous nephew:

. . . Faustus Paulus Socinus, 16th-century Italian antitrinarian theologian, is often regarded as the first "modern" Unitarian. He was forced to flee Italy frequently because of the charges of heresy lodged against him as a result of the expression of his position. After 1579 he spent much of his time working among the infant Unitarian societies then forming in Poland, although he encountered considerable opposition there also. Because of his influence in the development of the doctrine, Unitarians in Europe are often referred to as Socinians.4

23Ibid. See Leon Macbeth, The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness. ( Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman Press,1987), Ch. 5, pp. 154-158. 24A History of the English Baptists (3rd edition; London: The Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland, 1961), pp. 54-55. The first quotation is from Philip Schaff, ed. , The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1908), Vol. I, p. 161, and the citation from Ernest Troletsch is from the English translation of his Die Sozallehren der Christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1902), The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches. 2 Vols. (London: Herder and Herder, 1931), p. 708.25Socinianism In Seventeenth Century England, pp. 39-43. He further comments, " For example, in 1639, at the suggestion of the English Ambassador the States of Holland were warned of the probable arrival of some Socinianism from Poland, after their expulsion from Rakow, and were exhorted ( ' tout de bon ') to anticipate the evils that might arise by suitable decrees." In Holland itself in 1653 the States General at the instance of the National Synod issued a very stringent edict against Socinianism. But this only temporarily affected the spread of this theological infection. (JR)26Mclachan, Ibid. 27H.L. McLachlan, whom we have already cited frequently, discusses several issues related to the cultural and social milieu of English Unitarianism and these include (1) the dissolution of high Calvinism and the genesis of Liberal theology; (2) the school of "rational theologians " at Oxford; (3) the growth and development of "Cambridge Liberals" in the pre-Enlightenment age; (4) the Socinianizing teaching of John Webberly and Thomas Lushington in thelater seventeenth century; (5) the immense distribution and currency of Socinian books and tract literature; (6) the Socinian missionary "evangelism" of Paul Best (1590 ? - 1657); (7) and finally, the work of John Bidle himself (1616- 1662), who is considered to be the father of English Unitarianism. For the details of these important simultaneous events in the historical context, cf. Socinianism In Seventeenth-Century England, chaps. IV-X, pp. 45-218. 28Cf. F. Cheynell, The Rise, Growth, and Danger of Socinianism (London, 1643), p. 17, cited in McLachlan, Op. Cit, p. 120. Another famous Anglican treatise against the evil propaganda of Socinianism/Unitarianism was that of Samuel Maresius, Hydra Socinianismi expugnata (1651-1662) who described this heresy as " a venomous poison, a monstrous hydra, and a murderous weapon of Satan. " In light the destructive effect on the Christian faith and the moral life of America in the last three and one-half centuries, and the bizzare sycretism of twentieth-century Unitariansim with the New Age, Wiccan witchcraft, and modern Paganism, it appears to me that the judgment of those like Maresius and Cheynell were both theologically correct and indeed prophetic.

10

One other bit of interesting historical lore concerns George Blandrata,

a Piedmontese physician who had led a Unitarian sect in 1558 (eventually

settling in Poland until 1565), spent some time in Hungary in 1563 and

incited an anti-Trinitarian movement there in which even the King himself,

John Sigismund, was converted. But this sect of gypsy Unitarians was

severely persecuted after the King's death in 1570, and they had no

recognized religious status until 1638 when they brought forward a common

confession and were recognized as form of Protestantism.5 Closely

paralleling the Hungarian heretics were those led by Franciscus Davidus

(1510-1579), who is called a "non-adorationist" because, unlike the more

reverent Blandrata, he and his followers refused to worship Jesus Christ,

God's Son, in any meaningful sense. Davidus' group spread in a limited

number of hamlets in Transylvania after 1568, and it is said that there are

still about 170 churches there until this day.6

29McLachlan , Socinianism In Seventeenth Century England, pp. 208-211. McLachlan further notes that about 1655 Jeremy Ives with a group of Baptists circulated a petition asking that the Blasphemy Ordinance of 1648 " be declared null and void" and that Bidle be set at liberty. This petition was presented to the Lord Protector on September 28 of that year. Essentially, the petition stated that Bidle was a man of good conscience and should not be punished merely for his unorthodox opinions. (Ibid.) 30Cf. Mecurius Politicus, 28 Sept. 1655 and also Masson, Life of Milton, v.65-66 in the Clarke Papers, edited by C.H. Firth (London: Camden Socinians N.S. 61, 1899), iii, 53 cited by McLachlan, Op. Cit., p. 210. Cromwell did intervene with the Parliament so that Biddle was taken out of Newgate by special warrant and sent to wile away for over three years his exile in the dungeon of St. Mary's castle on the Isle of Scilly. While there he was allowed books and visitors and given ten shillings per week by the authorities. This also doubtlessly saved him from execution.31McLachlan, Ibid., pp. 212-217. It appears to me that John Bidle was not a martyr for Christ and the Gospel, but that he was only (possibly) an honorable man with his own erroneous convictions.

11

This early modern form of Unitarianism was also paralleled in the

career of that infamous and tragic heretic, Michael Servetus (1511-1553).

Professor Traylor continues:

Michael Servetus was another prominent Unitarian proponent of the 16th cen-tury. Although he did not form a national Unitarian body as Socinus, he spread anti-trinitarian ideas throughout the Continent. A renowned Spanish medical doctor, Servetus had gained prominence as a Unitarian thinker in a 1531 article he published in which he questioned the Trinity and denied original sin. Denounced throughout Europe for his views, Servetus fled from one city to another support-ing himself through the practice of medicine. While living in Vienna in 1553 he published Christianismi resttutio, a complete denial of all Christian orthodoxy. Con-demned to death by the Roman Catholic authorities, he was burned as a heretic inGeneva later that year.7

There seems to be no doubt among Christian historians that Servetus'

faith was deep and personal, but his overall sanity seems to be debatable.

Despite Servetus' piety, he was not above deception, maliciousness, and

outright antisocial behavior (somewhat reminiscent of the later Quakers and

Spiritualists, or even modern cultist leaders in the twentieth century). He

was a radical who, on the basis of his own opinions, denied what all other

Christians, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, and even the Anabaptists

affirmed. He was a rabid controversialist, and everywhere that he went, he

got into trouble with the authorities. When he fled to Calvin's Geneva in

1553, he already knew that Calvin, no more than the Romanist authorities of

Vienna, would support his attacks on established Christian belief. Moreover,

because he allied himself with Calvin's political enemies in Geneva, he

threatened to undo the ongoing Reformation in that city. Finally, when this

12

heretical "foreigner" demanded that Calvin himself be arrested as a false

accuser (a trumped up charge) and his house and goods be given to him, this

was simply too much for even gentle Jean Calvin to endure. Latourette

remarks sadly:

Servetus was condemned by the civil authorities on the charge that he denied theTrinity and rejected baptism, offenses punishable by death under the Justinian Code. In spite of Calvin's pleas for a more merciful form of ex-ecution, Servetus was burned at the stake (October 27, 1553), crying through the flames: " O Jesus, thou Son of the God, have pity on me."8

The most ironic thing here, other than the uselessness of burning

heretics, is that when the circumstances (or stakes, if you will) are perilous,

men seem to exhibit both a high Christology and sense of the value of the

great transaction of Calvary. Still, the tragic death of Servetus moved others

in the direction of doctrinal "latitudinarism" and civil tolerance of religious

dissent. In this case, Sebastion Castellio (1515-1563), a professor of Greek in

Basel, was so incensed at Calvin and Geneva that he wrote his now

influential book, On Heretics, Whether They Ought To Be Persecuted, in

which he maintained that since no one group of Christians has a monopoly

on truth, punishment of "heretics" is premature and unjustified. While this

had less influence during the Reformation era, its key ideas were picked up

by Enlightenment rationalists like John Locke and Deist writers in the late

seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Liberal and modernist

theologians usually bring these things up when criticizing Protestant

Orthodoxy and the Reformation. 9

Nevertheless, there can be no doubt that the Reformation leaders like

Luther and Calvin were righteously anxious to protect the rediscovery of the

Gospel and the glory of Christology from spurious attacks by those indulging

in a humanist hermeneutic. And thus Calvin and the Geneva Reformers,

13

much like the Lutherans, felt an urgent need to define confessional Christian

orthodoxy, both irenically in respect to other Protestants and polemically in

respect to positions they viewed as less than Biblical. Thus, the Helvetic

Confessions and the Heidelberg Confessions condemn

Socianism/Unitarianism as do the Lutheran Augsburg Confession ( Articles I

& III), and Formula of Concord (Epitome , Article XII, "Errors of the New

Arians"; Solid Declaration, Article XII, 1.2). Even though the Lutherans and

Calvinists had lengthy and hot debates over the details of the relationship of

Christ's two natures in His one indivisible person, especially in respect to

the Lord's Supper, both fully agreed that Jesus Christ was true God and true

man in accord with ancient Ecumenical Creeds.10

The Socianian and Unitarian "sects" of the sixteenth and early

seventeenth centuries (often referred to collectively as the "Anti-

Trinitarians" or the "New Arians") had a curious history. The followers of

Lelio Socino (Sozzini) and his nephew Faustus (1539-1604) moved from

northern Italy to Transylvania to Poland, but nowhere warmly welcomed by

the majority of devout Christians. Eventually, they settled in Racow, Poland

where they formed their own church school and published their own non-

Trinitarian catechism and confession of faith (The Racovian Catechism of

1605). But as the Polish Socinian movement gained attention, they became

strongly opposed by the middle the seventeenth century, and Jesuit

authorities caused the Unitarian college at Racow to be suppressed and by

1658 all Socinians were expelled from Poland. All of the disciples of Socinius

were driven out of predominantly Roman Catholic Poland, itself nervously

14

caught between the Orthodox Russians to the East and the Lutheran

Prussians of the emerging Empire to the West.11

II. Unitarianism Among British & American Protestants ca.

1675-1815.

Yet, the modern chapters on the history of Unitarianism do not really

focus so much on the waning impact of the movement in Continental Europe

as its spread to England in the late 1500s and to Colonial America in the late

1700s and afterward. After being driven out Poland, bands of Socinians

found refuge at times back in Transylvanian Carpathia, the Netherlands, the

Rhenish Palatine, and finally in England. Actually, for about a century pure

Socinians were rare, but Socinian ideas sometimes found a home among the

more radical Arminians (Remonstrants) and Mennonites.12

Let us now return to the article by Professor Traylor. He does not

discuss how the Unitarianism began in England (where and when), but he

picks up the historical strain in 1774 when the former Anglican priest

Theophilius Lindsey organized the first distinctly Unitarian congregation in

Essex Chapel, London. Yet, long before this, John Biddle (1615-1662) is

actually reckoned as the "father" of English Unitarianism since he published

numerous anti-Trinitarian/Socinian tracts from 1658-62, and had held

evangelistic conventicles in London from 1658-1662. Obviously, Unitarianian

ideas and traditions must have existed in the previous generations before

1700. Previously, scholars had been left primarily with the speculation that

perhaps a few eccentric individuals held to this doctrine due to Radical

Remonstrant and Latitudinarian strains in the English Reformation in the

15

previous two centuries. But recent evidence in the twentieth century (re-

evaluating some 19th century sources) has shown that there was a definite

historical link between Poland and England and Scotland in matters of

heretical Christian ideas.13 During this period one may also consider the

direct or indirect impact of Herbert of Cherbury's "natural religion" (De

Veritate, 1625); John Tilliston's "Latitudinarianism" (1630-1694), John

Locke's "Rational Christianity" (The Reasonableness of Christianity, 1693);

John Toland's notorious religious historiography (Christianity Not

Mysterious, 1696); and most certainly, the nearly full blown Deism of

Matthew Tindal (Christianity As Old As Creation, 1730). From here it really

is a short leap historically and philosophically to Voltaire's anti-Christian

sentiments, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile, and Thomas Paine's vitriolic

anti-Christian tract, Age of Reason (1794).14 Yet, ironically, it was the

devout scientist and cleric, Joseph Priestley, who first publicly defended

Unitarian principles in widespread debate, following his publication of

Appeal to Serious and Candid Professors of Christianity (1770).

Meanwhile in the British colonies, the Puritan epoch in American

history probably ended sometime between 1702 and 1726, or roughly

between the time that Cotton Mather published his significant historical

tome, the Magnalia Christi Americana and the celebrated printing of Samuel

Willard's articulate summation of Puritan theology in The Compleat Body of

Divinity. At this point then came the Scientific Revolution of Sir Isaac

Newton (Cf. his Principia Mathematica, 1686) and the new Political

Philosophy of John Locke (1632-1704) caught on (see his Essay on Human

Understanding, 1690 ; his Treatise on Government, etc.). But not long

16

afterward, for a period of at least two if not three decades, American

religion experienced the traumatic effects of the Great Awakening with the

preaching of Jonathan Edwards in Connecticut, the American tour of George

Whitefield, and the rapid growth of Presbyterian and Reformed churches in

the Middle and Southern Colonies. In one sense, Edwards' preaching was

itself a reaction to the loss or dilution of Puritanism in the "Half-Way

Covenant", but it was also an attempt at modifying the pure stalwart

predestinarian Calvinism of the original Puritan divines. Hence, with

Edwards we have the "New Divinity" and the foundations of Princeton

University and Seminary as fiery mission outpost for Congregationalism and

Presbyterianism. Yet, at the same time, not all is well.15

It is sometime then, during the early to mid-eighteenth century, that

Unitarianism is formally introduced into the American Colonial scene. Most

scholars would view the life and work of Charles Chauncy, minister of the

First Church in Boston from 1727-1787, as the first crucial turning point.

Reverend Chauncy was to become the leading figure in the liberal or

"Arminian" party of Bostonian congregationalism, and his Arminianism was

itself far removed from the original Reformed ideas of the Dutch

Remonstrant theologian, Jacob Arminius, who had lived in the first half of

the previous century in Holland. Though his family heritage had been that of

conservative Puritanism, Chauncy moved to what he viewed as a much more

enlightened position on Christianity for his times. He not only was an

outspoken critic of the "Great Awakening" in the early decades of the

century, but he also was a most thoroughgoing opponent of the intellectual

and spiritual thrust of Jonathan Edwards. In his person he reveals the steady

17

if barely perceptible transformation of New England Christianity toward

"Arianism", "Universalism", and "Arminianism" ( i.e., a much more

optimistic view of human nature).16

Thus in America (and the later early United States), Unitarian

sentiments seemed to grow with the demise of Puritan and Reformed

Biblicism, suffering the attacks of Deism from abroad and at home. And, as

Traylor correctly states, there were numerous Unitarians in late eighteenth

century America. He marks as the official beginning of organized

Unitarianism with the 1785 congregational meeting at King's Chapel,

Boston.17 This a particularly interesting situation, because in 1782 the

Episcopalian proprieters of the Chapel had invited the youthful James

Freeman, a recent Harvard graduate to serve as liturgical reader. But then,

in deference to Freeman's Unitarian scruples, they had eliminated all

references to the Trinity from the liturgy and omitted the reading of the

Athanasian and Nicene creeds. Thus, the first Unitarian congregation was

formed. Traylor explains the perhaps second most important set of events in

the next decade:

. . . English minister and chemist Joseph Priestly was the most prominent Uni-

tarian of that period, arriving in 1794 from England where his support of theFrench Revolution had stirred hatred. A follower of Lindsey, he continued to pursue his two-faceted career of medical research and the preaching of Uni-tarian doctrines until his death in 1804. 18

Two of the most famous Unitarians in the early American Republic

were, of course, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both U.S. Presidents.

Adams was the more "evangelical" (i.e., Bible and Gospel based) of the two.

18

There was also Benjamin Franklin, statesman and philosopher, who fits in

somewhere along the Unitarian to Deist spectrum. 19

III. Unitarianism Among British Baptists, ca. 1650-

1815.

632A.C. Underwood suggests that the General Baptists, though professing a purely derived Biblicism, were nevertheless the victims of their own "old ways" (i.e., traditions) which included " some of the Sect-type ideas which they had inherited from the Mennonites or derived from their biblicism." Cf. A History of the English Baptists, ch. VI, " Toleration and Decline, " pp. 126-127. Leon McBeth, moreover, emphasizes the negative influence on General Baptist theology by the Quakers (e.g., George Fox), who had a tendency " to put more emphasis upon the ' mystery ' (the inner, mystical elements of faith) to the neglect of the ' history ' (the written Scriptures) [which] could only undermine Baptist views. " See The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness, Ch. 5, pp. 154-155. McLachlan observed that from the time of Elias Tookey's friends in the Baptist Church at Spitalfield's, London some were not sound on the matter of the Trinity. And he follows other modern researchers in asserting that from this point onward " ' Socinian influences were making themselves felt. ' " Op. Cit., p. 218. 833McLachlan, Socinianism In Seventeenth Century England, p. 219. A.C. Underwood , describing the decline of the General Baptists, states: " But, above all, their vitality was drained away when their body was prevaded by Socinianism. Their belief in a universal redemption had made them earnest in preaching the Gospel to all. Their Messengers were travelling evangelists, but now they either died out or ceased to itinerate. In spite of their connexional organization, ruin came when they gradually adopted Arian and Socinian views of the Person of Christ. " A History of the English Baptists, Op. Cit.34History of the English General Baptists (2 Vols.; London: Thomas Bore, 1818), Part I, 2, p. 1, cited in McLachlan, Op. Cit. , p. 219. 935See the accounts of McLachlan and Underwood, Op. Cit., pp. 219ff. and 126-127, respectively. On Caffyn's early Socinian musings at Oxford, see Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 375. The closest the author to come to a primary source on Caffyn, was Thomas Crosby, The History of the English Baptists From the Reformation To the Beginning of the Reign of King George I (4 Vols.; London: John Robinson Bookseller, 1740), IV, pp. 328-342. 136Cf. History of the English General Baptists, Op. Cit., Vol. I., p. 464. 37Socinianism In Seventeenth Century England , pp. 219-220 and A.C. Underwood, A History of the English Baptists, p. 127.Melchior Hoffmann (ca. 1498-1543/4) was an Anabaptist whose Christology was Valentinian, as he regarded the human nature of Jesus a direct creation of God.38A.C.Underwood, Ibid. See also W.T. Whitley, Minutes of the General Assembly of the General Baptist Churches in England (2 Vols; London: Kingsgate Press, 1909), Vol. I, p. ix.139See Macbeth, The Baptist Heritage, p. 157-8. See also W.T. Whitely, ed., Minutes of the General Assembly of the General Baptist Churches in England, Op. Cit., Vol. I: 84. McLachlan summarizes his main views: " In 1653 he adopted a very

19

But now we turn from the Introduction to our main topic, the growth

of Unitarianism among the Baptists in Great Britain and in America during

the later seventeenth century and through the eighteenth. The significance

of these developments, of course, spill over into the early nineteenth

century, which will be sketched out briefly in the conclusion of this paper.

anthromorphic view of the body of Christ, and from 1661 on he maintained that God is ' in the shape of man or some such kind of form or shape '. This anthromorphism is not unlike that found among the early English Socinians, but says Gordon, ' with Socinians Caffyn had no sympathetic relations, and did his best to convert them to his own point of view '. " Socinianism In Seventeenth-Century England, p. 220. The article by Arthur Gordon on Matthew Caffyn is found in Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1917, 1954), Vol. III.140Socinianism In Seventeenth-Century England, Ibid. McLachlan also records that he was the cause of a riot in Newport Pagnell and that " ' For setting up a conventicle ' and absenting himself from ' the public thanksgiving service for the victory at Naseby ', he was arrested and imprisoned by the governor of the garrison. "(Ibid.).141McLachlan, p. 221. 142Ibid. This writing was titled Innocency, Though under a Cloud, Cleared. By P.H. a poor Prisnoner, when almost sunk under pretended Friends Censures in the day of his Sufferings, And also, A Discovery of the Comforts that attend Innocency in a Prison (1664). In what is stated immediately afterward, much is draw from page 23 as cited by McLachlan.143McLachlan, Ibid., p. 222. 144McLachlan, Ibid. Hobson's exegesis is loose and free and it ignores the context entirely. The plain meaning of the Old Testament Hebrew and the New Testament Greek is that Jesus was God's unique Son ( ho uios and ho monogenes uios). The Socinian objections to the literal and grammatical-historical interpretation of the multitude of Christological passages in New Testament are not based on biblicism but rationalism. Furthermore, a leading patristics scholar such as J.N.D. Kelly can assert that despite the lack of the word "Trinity"in the New Testament, there are scores of passages in the New Testament that are "triune" in structure. In the first through third centuries the orthodox fathers bound by both the radical monotheism of the Old Testament and the undeniable revelation of the Deity of Christ and the personality of the Divine Spirit, simply expressed that truth in the most obvious way. Cf. J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (Revised Edition; London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), chaps. I-III.45His interpretation of 2 Corinthians 5:19,20, etc. On the positive side was Arminianism with the note of God's free grace, yet it was radical and Socinian in that it was based purely on a moral theory of the Atonement. Thomas Edwards in his Gangraena, Part I, 2, p. 33 draws out a phrase from Hobson's sermons, " Christ is the effect not the cause of the love of God. " In other popular literature circulated at the time, it was said: " ' Yea, Christ came not to reconcile God to men, but men to God. For though Christ do hold forth love and life, yet he did not purchase it, but was purchased by it. . . . ' " Cited in McLachlan, Ibid.

20

According to historians favorable to Unitarianism (McLachlan,

Robinson, Wilbur, etc.) the growth of anti-Trinitarianism in England was not

a direct result of Dutch Anabaptist influences, but they do acknowledge that

Dutch influences were not neglible in mediating Socinian (Unitarian)

beliefs.20 These developments antedated the heretical work of John Bidle,

previously mentioned, more than fifty years. During the early reign of James

I, Bartholomew Legate was burned at the stake in Smithfield and his brother

Thomas perished at Newgate prison in 1607. They were reckoned by the

Anglican authorities as Anabaptists of anti-Trinitarian sentiments.21 H.L.

McLachlan furthermore explains the important influence of Dutch sectarians

and the more radical English Separatists on the development of Socinianism

among the early Baptists:

Early in 1624 a certain Elias Tookey led a small secession (seventeen in all) of

people out of the first Baptist church in London, originally founded by Thomas

Helwys and John Murton on their return from Amsterdam in 1613 [ or (1611? )

writer's note!]. Before long this small small group meeting at Southwark, feel-

ing isolated, sought to be received into communion by the Waterlander Baptist

Church at Amsterdam, a liberal wing of the Mennonite Baptists which based its

doctrines on the Scripture and in general was opposed to the use of creeds and

2

46McLachlan, Ibid., p. 223. By 1660 Hobson was classified with Paul Best and John Bidle as a heretic. This is why that when he returned from Holland in 1661 that the Baptist churches gave him a cold and hostile reception.247This account is generally a paraphrase of the facts given in Arthur Gordon's article on John Gale in Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1917, 1954), Vol. VII [?], p. 721 [?]. Because of his distinction in learning he became known to William Whiston and through him and possibly Barrington Shute (late Viscount Barrington), he came to know influential people like the Whig bishop Hoadly and Bishop Bradford of Rochester. Like Saul of old, he was a tall, handsome young man with the distinctiveness of genius and a dynamic gift for speaking and writing.

21

formularies. Apparently, some members of Tookey's church held rather unorth-

odox ideas on the deity of Christ, and felt that the Waterlanders, with their tol-

erant attitude towards differences in doctrinal matters, were the group of Christians most nearly kin to them in spirit. Correspondence still extant in the archives of the Amsterdam Mennonites shows that though none ofnone of Tookey's congregation explicitly denied the deity of Christ, never-theless on this subject there were ‘two or three who have a somewhat dif-ferent opinion than we maintain in general, though we think that after allit comes to the same end'. Several letters passed between London and Am-sterdam, and the Waterlanders put the question how they were to under-stand the words of their English colleagues, viz., ' We do not compel one to believe of Christ what we do, but bear with each other. ' They wished toed to know whether this was said only of the origin of Christ's body, or whether it covers covers the article of the deity of Christ'. To this pointed inquiry Elias Tookey ' and sincere friends 18 in number living in London, March 17, 1625 ', replied. They admitted differences of opinion, but said that they could ' bear with each other in peace ', for ' Christian tolerance ' was a better preservative against discord in the Church than ' minute ex-aminations, limitations, censures, and condemnations only for opinion '. They claimed that they held the same belief as the Mennonites upon the deity of Christ, ' unless you would compel us to believe three different per-sons in the Deity which manner of speaking is not found in the Scriptures '.22

McLachlan further notes that the incipient Socinianism here with its

criticism of the doctrine of the Trinity is not that of Bidle and his followers in

the mid-sixteenth century. While he views it as merely a rejection of the

categories of Medieval scholastic theology, he yet tacitly acknowledges that

the little circle in Tookey's congregation and their Mennonite

correspondents were promoting " a kind of Modalism. "23 Unfortunately,

some of the early General Baptists imitated what they believed to be

"Biblical" among the Dutch Anabaptists and Quakers such as not taking

oaths, pacifism, civil non-involvement , etc. And along with these less

harmful sectarian tendencies also absorbed some of other weaknesses of the

more radical Anabaptists in theology. A.C. Underwood offers both a caution

and a clarification here :

248Cf. A.C. Underwood, A History of the English Baptists, p. 137. Thomas Crosby, The History of the English Baptists, Op.Cit. has a long litany of praise for his spiritual integrity and pastoral virtues, Vol. IV, pp. 366-373. Evidentally, his preformance as an expositor was excellent and he displayed a high moral character.

22

. . . On the other hand, that weakness on the question of the Incarnation,

which afflicted the General Baptists, and the way in which Matthew Caffyn absorbed certain points of the Hoffmannite Christology, seem to be due to persistent Mennonite influences . . . .

Where there are so many probabilities to be weighed, it is not wise to be

too dogmatic. One point which must never be forgotten is that " there were

were two kinds of Anabaptists, the sober and the fanatical. Failure to make

this distinction has done mischief and caused modern Baptists to deny their

connection to the Reformation, whereas they are the lineal descendents of

the sober kind and have no reason to be ashamed of their predecessors. " This distinction was evidently in the mind of Troletsch when he

suggested that the counterpart in England of more extreme continental Anabaptists

isthe confused medley of radical sects, which sprang to life during the

Com-monwealth and caused Cromwell so much trouble. The General Baptist

re-presented the the more moderate form of the Anabaptist Movement, with characteristic differences due to a different milieu. In England the sober

va-riety appeared before the more extreme, because the common man had

to wait a hundred years before got a real chance of taking his share in the

Re-formation Movement. . . .24

Again, McLachlan observes that throughout both of the reigns of the

first two Stuarts (James I and Charles I), many English students resorted to

Dutch Universities where they picked up both Arminian and Socinian ideas,

especially at Leiden. This steady influx of new and often heretical views soon

moved Archbishop Laud (not a friend to either Separatists or Baptists) to

pass censures on émigré religious literature and by 1640 to begin to pass his

Canons against the Socinian heresy. This understandable but desperate

measure was frustrated by the widespread general dissent against the

Established Church, however.25 About the same time (in 1639) a certain Dr.

Samuel Johnson, chaplain to the Queen of Bohemia at the Hague was

23

accused of commending and propagating the writings of known Socinians.

This Dr. Johnson (not the later famous English literary critic) complained

that he had been misrepresented, but McLachlan's research indicates he

was quite sympathetic to the new heresy.26

The story of the development and growth of the Socinian/Unitarian

heresy among the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and the Independents is an

interesting one, but the focus here is on those English and later American

Baptists who were already influenced by the trends which have been

discussed.27 It is said that during the Commonwealth era (ca. 1638-1660)

that Baptists like Paul Hobson became acquainted with Socinian literature,

and sympathized with its insistence on a purely Scriptural basis for theology,

and liberal rationalism.28 Later, the writer shall raise serious doubts about

the first rationale, and shall show that the second one is the abandonment of

God's revealed authority and truth.

During the period of John Bidle's arrest and trial for making a public

denial of the deity of Jesus Christ in 1648, some Baptists who had suffered

for their particular Christian beliefs, began to perceive that the official

suppression of Socinianism was another example of persecution of those

desiring religious liberty. But the controversy of William Kiffin with the

Anglican authorities over Infant Baptism was really an internicene

controversy among Christians over a less absolutely vital doctrine of the

Gospel. John Bidle's Socinian propaganda which denied Christ's deity and

the Incarnation, was undercutting the foundation of Christian society and

believing culture itself. Yet, the harshness and frequent hypocrisy of the

English State and Church in persecuting and punishing Bidle in Newgate

24

prison (already infamous for being the residence of many Non-conformists

and Baptists), moved some previously orthodox Baptists to identify

Trinitarian belief with oppression and to strongly protest against the State

forcing people to believe or confess against their will.29 Yet, many Baptists

(and other genuine Christians) in the twentieth century might be more

sympathetic to the theologically seasoned wisdom of Oliver Cromwell whose

ears were burned by the petition and who sternly lectured the protestors

about rightful restraint of unbelievers.30 And three years exile and

restriction of liberties (which was merciful for the time), Bidle was granted a

writ of habeas corpus by the King's Bench at Westminster and he was set at

liberty in 1658. But in 1662, after preaching and teaching his Socinianism in

London, and winning the support of philanthropists like Thomas Firmin and

barristers such as John Farrington, Restoration authorities (undoubtably

pressed by Presbyterians in the Parliament) brought about his last arrest at

small meeting in London. Bidle later died from stark and unsanitary

conditions in the notorious Newgate in September, 1662. To his Socinian

disciples, and probably to some Baptists, he appeared to be a Christian

martyr.31 And the influence of his circle and his religious publications

affected many English sects and would some be the immediate catalyst of

the cancer of Socinianism within the General Baptists.

Early Baptists (like early Quakers) with their aversions to creeds,

early Church Councils, and especially to eccesiastical powers wedded to the

State, may have been setting themselves a treacherous loophole for

unorthodox beliefs.32 According to McLachan, there were Baptists in Bath

and Bristol in 1644 who held unorthodox Christology. This claim is based on

25

a letter reprinted in Thomas Edwards' Gangraena: or a Catalogue of Many of

the Errours, Heresies, and Pernicous Practices of the Secretaries of this

Time (London, 1646), who was an Anglican critic of the Baptists, who may

have lacked objectivity here (as he reckoned Anabaptists and Baptists

virtually the same). Supposedly, however, ' a minister in the Army ' had

reported the rise of "'two new Opinions . . . . among the Anabaptists there,

viz. ' 1. That Christ's humane nature is defiled with Original sin, as well as

ours. 2. That there is but one person in the Divine nature. "33 Some even

maintained that the absence of the word "Trinity" in the 1660 Baptist

Confession of Faith, gave standing room to anti-Trinitarianism, but this

charge nineteenth century Baptist historian Adam Taylor vehemently

denied. However, Taylor did admit that there were some individual Baptists

in Kent and Sussex " who early begin to puzzle themselves with attempting

to explain the mysteries of the incarnation."34 And it is here we turn to the

case of Matthew Caffyn and his followers.

Matthew Caffyn (1628-1714) was born and raised in Sussex, but we

do not know a great deal about his early life as a youth. Probably, as a young

man he shewed promise in learning, for we find him as a student at Oxford

in the 1640s (during the Interregnum). Then in 1645, after being expelled

from Oxford for his doctrinal views, he joined the General Baptist Church at

Horsham and became, for some years, a Messenger in Southern England.

Yet, even while at Oxford this very young man employed his intellect in

puzzling over imponderable and inexplicable matters about God and Christ,

which would soon lead him into the realms of Socinian and Arian heresy.35

Soon, according to Adam Taylor, this young Baptist preacher concluded to

26

his own satisfaction that the doctrine of the Trinity must not be correct.36 In

the later 1640s, Caffyn became the pastor of the Baptist Church at Horsham

in Sussex; there he began to preach and teach his new understanding of

Christology. He also began to openly publish his views in the 1650s and

later. He was definitely opposed to the classic Athanasian Creed, and in

Taylor's estimation, he was " a rational skeptic ". McLachlan observes that

he " possibly adopted several of Melchior Hoffman's views " which had

already been deemed highly heretical.37 It seems that at first he doubted

Christ's deity, then later he flatly denied it. In his later life, he was happy to

adopt the prespective of the Socinians that Christ was merely a very good

man. Underwood's summary is apt: " [He] passed from denying the reality of

Our Lord's Human Nature to a denial of His Deity ".38 His views twice split

the General Assembly in the 17th and 18th centuries. As early as 1686

Caffyn's deviant theological views were challenged by Joseph Wright, the

pastor at Maidstone (who was, for a time, a close personal friend). He

brought charges against him before the General Assembly, accused him of

the double heresy of denying both the humanity and the deity of Christ, and

asked for his expulsion. Yet Caffyn made an eloquent verbal defense of

himself and was exonerated, while brother Wright was censured for a " want

of charity. " This led Caffyn to proclaim his heretical views ever more

broadly and openly. Then in 1693, heresy charges were again brought

against Caffyn, but once more the General Assembly refused to deal with

situation. This led to the first split of the General Baptists. The more

orthodox splinter group at that time published their manifesto as " The

Reasons of our Separation from the General Assembly ".39 Finally, we shall

27

see that from 1693 until 1731, the two General Baptist denominations co-

existed (not always peacefully!) until an effort was made to re-unite on the

basis of the Six Principles of Hebrews 6:1-2 some twenty years after Caffyn's

death. The second "split" (or reordering) came as a result of the Salter's Hall

Controversy in 1719 with the two sides being known as the Subscribers

(Trinitarian) and the Nonsubscribers (Non-Trinitarians [mostly]).

Besides Matthew Caffyn, the other important advocate of Socinianist

notions was Paul Hobson, a General Baptist, whose work flourished between

1646-1666, the year of his death. The writer has not been able to determine

his exact birth day and information about his youth and education is beyond

sketchy. Thomas Edwards described Hobson as a "chirchugeon" in London,

and he was associated with the establishment of a Baptist Church at

Crutched Friars in 1639 (which doubtlessly means he was born ca. 1620 or

earlier). He also signed the First London (Baptist) Confession in 1644.

According to McLachlan, he had moved his way up through the ranks of the

Parliamentary army and attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel, and that he

preached in various places in the countryside as his regiment moved.40

Eventually, he left the army and settled down at Sacristan, near Chester-le-

Street as a retired gentleman. During Oliver Cromwell's later Protectorate,

he was connected to the Northumberland and Durham Baptists, and held a

fellowship and chaplaincy at Eton from 1654-1660, though he was often

absent doing evangelism. When the Restoration came, he was to suffer

several arrests in connexion with conspiracies against the government, and

thus, he was eventually imprisoned in August, 1663, first in the London

Tower and later Chepstow. Then, finally, he was released in April 1665, on

28

the condition he migrate to the Carolina Colony. Little more is heard of him,

but he probably died before immigrating as his will was probated in the

Prerogative Court of Cantebury on June 13, 1666.41

Paul Hobson's writings reveal both a kind of evangelical fervor and

yet a strongly rationalistic strain. One of his early tracts is entitled Practical

Divinity: or, a Helpe through the blessing of God to lead men to look within

themselves (1646) which reveals the practical mysticism of Hobson. His

diary and autobiography, written during the period of his last imprisonment,

was printed in 1664 and it contains many details of his life. Apparently, he

had spent some time with Socinian friends in France and then with others in

Newcastle and Durham. He had also, according to his own testimony,

travelled over the Sea to Holland.42 However, when he returned from

Holland, he was not admitted to the Durham Baptist meeting for worship,

because he had begun to question the validity of ' Gospel Ordinances '. His

views on prayer, though an aside from his Christology, are interesting; he

believed that prayer was a duty, but that it does not change or alter God, but

only changes the Christian so that we fit God's will. He said, " So prayer is

the Language of God in us, not to alter God, but us. "43 This writer cannot

accept McLachlan's judgment that " Hobson's Christology is purely

Scriptural, " but his gist of Hobson's Socinian views is correct as follows:

. . . The relationship of Christ to God is described by him quite simply as ' a

bond of nature in the highest degree; for he was his Son (Psalm ii.7, Heb. V.5),

his only Son; they were united in Affection, see upon God's side in Matt. iii.17 –

" This is my beloved Son ". So on Christ's -- " his Father's Will was his Will . . . .

" & c.' Christ stood related to God ' as the chiefest and eminestest object of His

29

Delight ' . Here we find no discussion of the two natures of Christ, no mention

of the Trinity, no references to the existing schemes of theology. Christ is God's

Son and the relationship is, accordingly, natural and non-metaphysical. The Holy

Holy Spirit is, accordingly, not a Person of the Trinity but God's activity in the

world.44

Hobson's Baptist contemporaries and others, unlike himself, saw his

teachings as unorthodox, and his Socinian view on the Atonement was

likewise disturbing. He accepted only Christ's death as the Reconciliation of

the sinful world to the Father, but he denied there was satisfaction for sin.45

His failure to take the Scriptures grammatically and literally led him to

affirm Universal Salvation but also to posit the Immortality of the Soul as

demanded by both the Bible and Natural Reason. McLachlan admits that

Hobson was entirely oblivious to the fact that his views were held by

dreadful heretics, and that his own Baptist colleagues responded to him in

severest criticism. He notes that " in 1654 letters passed between Newcastle

and Hexham over his unconverted state, and the Hexham minister warning

the Newcastle Baptists against their fellow-communicant. "46 Hobson was an

eccentric figure among the seventeenth-century Baptists, what some call a

"rare bird" (rara avis) indeed, who was totally unorthodox in his

understanding of justification and redemption and who was strictly

subordinationist and non-Trinitarian in his Christology. In the eighteenth

century, his ilk was multiplied in large numbers among the General Baptists.

One key link between the strongly incipient Socinianism of the

seventeenth century and the brashly triumphant Socinianism (Unitarianism)

of the eighteenth century runs through an elite circle of urban English

30

Baptists and their political and philosophical supporters. Here the reference

is to John Gale (1680-1721), James Foster (1697-1753), and the polymath

William Whiston (1667-1752). Although there were a number of lesser

figures in among the General Baptists in the late seventeenth century (and

early eighteenth), and a number of equally significant figures among the

Anglicans, Independents, and Presbyterians, these three men were a core of

"evangelical" Baptists who were deceived by the intellectual allurements of

Socinianizing theology.

John Gale was son of a General Baptist minister in London, born on

May 26, 1680. His father, Nathaniel Gale, was a propertied gentleman who

had holdings in the West Indies. This situation allowed him to receive a first-

rate education, first in the better preparatory schools of Britain and then as

young man at the University of Leiden in the winter of 1697. He was already

proficient in the Greek and Latin classics and had learned Hebrew as a

youth. By the July 3, 1699, his gifts had made it possible for him to receive

both the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees, a phenomenal achievement. After

graduation from Leiden, he spent time in Amsterdam in the company of the

Arminian scientists Limborch and Le Clerc. Returning to London in ca. 1700,

he continued to pursue his studies in private, focusing especially on Biblical

exegesis and Patristics. His accomplishments were such that his alma mater

in Holland offered to bestow on him the honor of the Doctor of Divinity in

1703, but he declined because of his preference for a moderate Arminianism

and his dislike for the hard Calvinism of the Synod of Dort. While at Leiden,

or shortly after he had already published his four tomes of Inquisitio

Philosophica Inauguralis de Lapide Solis (1699), and before age twenty-

31

seven he had written his second major work, Reflections on Mr. Wall's

History of Infant Baptism (1706), a manuscript which he had seen, five years

before its publication (1711). Gale was a precocious linguist and logical

theologian, and his elite mental acumen drew him into the orbits of those

like William Whiston, Sir Isaac Newton, and others. Yet, he was,

nevertheless, a Dissenter, and the son of a Baptist.47 Eventually, too, he was

named as the chairman of Whiston's " Society for Promoting Primitive

Christianity ", and as we shall see, became identified in the Salter's Hall

controversy, as a "non-subscriber."48

The next important link for understanding the development of the

Socinian heresy among Baptists of the seventeenth and eighteenth century

is Reverend James Foster (1697-1753). His work also supplies a connection

between the non-Subscribers at the Salters’ Hall controversy, Baptist

Unitarians, and the later English Deists. Foster was born on September 16.

1697 in Exeter, the son of minister of Kettering, Northamptonshire. He was

well-educated , having attented the free school at Exeter and later the

academy there by Joseph Hallet. He began to preach at age twenty-one and

his entrance into the work of ministry coincided with the spread of Arianism

among the dissenters in the western counties. This was in 1718, and only

one year later, these dissenters among the Baptists, Congegationalists,

Independents, and Presbyterians, desiring to make a declaration of their

biblical “orthodoxy” lead to the Salters’ Hall conference. This led to

expulsion two friends of Foster, James Peirce and Joseph Hallet (d. 1722),

from their Exeter congregations.49 When the latter challenge came, Foster

readily took the side of the non-Subscribers. Foster’s congregation at Exeter

32

(much to their credit, we think!) found his doctrinal opinions offensive, and

thus he soon accepted a call from the congregation at Milbourne Port in

Somersetshire. Yet this church also proved to be too orthodox for him, so he

moved into the house of a certain Nicholas Billingsley, a sympathizer, who

lived at Ashwick, under the Mendip Hills. From there he preached for two

small congregations at Colesford and Wokey, near Wells, for a minuscle

salary of 15l per year. After being here at short time, he moved on to

Trowbridge, Wiltshire, where he roomed in a glover’s quarters and pastored

a congregation of fifteen to twenty persons. Foster did preach strongly on

the Resurrection of Christ in 1720 and he published one sermon on this

topic. Later the same year he published an Essay on Fundamentals in which

he argued that the doctrine of the Trinity should not be regarded as

essential to Christianity. In the appendix to this book, he is believed by most

to prove his Arian leanings. Around the same time, he was baptized by John

Gale in London and became a Baptist. For a time, because his means were

so limited, he considered becoming a glover, but in about 1722, Mr. Robert

Houlton, chose Foster as his domestic chaplain. Finally, in 1724, he was

chosed as a colleague of Joseph Burroughs to serve at the Barbican Chapel,

following John Gale (mentioned previously) and Isaac Kimber (1692-1755).

A.C. Underwood remarks on his pastoral and theological commitments at

this time:

. . . He wrote against the Deists but was himself a rationalistic Socinian. He was

accounted the best preacher in London. The wits, free-thinkers, clergy, and per-

sons of quality went to hear him. It was a proverbial saying that “ those who had not heard Farinelli sing and Foster preach, were not qualified to appear

in genteel society. ” [Later, N.B.] The Marischal College, Aberdeen, made him

a

33

Doctor of Divinity. When he had Socinianised the Barbican Church, it was said

that Gale “ had labored” and Foster had “entered into his labours.” After these

these remarkable doctrinal fluctuations the church was dissolved in 1768.50

Being something of a man ahead of his time (in a good sense), Foster

frequently gave Sunday evening lectures at the old Jewry, and was an

eloquent preacher. But both his lectures and preaching were highly

controversial. As already observed, he did write against the Deists, for

example, he made a famous reply to Matthew Tindal’s essay, Christianity as

Old as the Creation in 1731. This essay, entitled The Usefulness, Truth, and

Excellency of the Christian Religion defended against Matthew Tindal ,

however, allowed many of the premises of Deism to be accepted as valid.

Later in 1735, he wrote replies to two “Letters” by Henry Stebbing in which

he maintained that intellectual errors about God are essentially “innocent”.

Foster’s career and fame continued to prosper in a worldly fashion and in

1744 he was called from the Barbican Church to the pastorate of the

General Baptist Church at Pinners’ Hall. Foster also visited the condemned

Lord Kilmarnock in the Tower in 1746 and administered the Lord’s Supper

to him previous to his execution. Shortly afterward he published an account

of their discussion and showed himself to be sympathetic to the rebellious

noble. For this indiscretion he was severely attacked by orthodox Baptist

pastors and others who suggested that he was willing to accept the

Pretended in order to get rid of the Test Act, as some non-Conformists in

earlier days had been willing to submit to James II. This attack was unfair,

and made by people who really had other motives for disapproving of

Foster’s ministerial actions. Foster was prodigious writer of sermons and

34

essays and his sermons were published in four volumes from 1744 to 1752

(Collected Sermons) and went through five editions. He also published two

volumes of controversial theology or apologetics from his Socinian (Baptist)

perspective entitled Discourses on all the Principal Branches of Natural

Religion and Social Virtue (in 1749 and 1752), which sold at least two

thousand copies. Foster’s health was bad, and the strain of controversy

brought on a stroke in April 1750 and then a second one in July 1753. He

then died from his bodily frailties on November 5, 1753.51

One more comment about Foster must be made. It is said of James

Foster that he was a man of generosity and stout moral character, and that

he even refused on principle a generous offer of an Irish church from Bishop

Rundle. Yet, as a Baptist, Foster had moved far beyond Biblical Christianity

and had embraced rationalism, although he viewed it religiously. And

though he debated with Tindal and the other hard Deists, he himself

accepted much of the Deist approach to religion. Sir Leslie Stephen, as he

concludes his fine article on Foster which has been amply cited remarks : “

In his sermons (volume of 1733, i. 175) occurs a characteristic phrase

quoted by Bolingbroke and Savage (Gentleman's Magazine, v. 213): ‘ Where

mystery begins, religion ends. ’ ” 52

Previous to the eighteenth century theological work of William

Whiston and Samuel Clark, there were many strands which led to the

Salters’ Hall Controversy. The Baptist Socinians were only part of it, yet

they were an important and dynamic part. Below is a classified list of some

crucial anti-Trinitarian thinkers:

Thinker Location Church Affliation Date

35

1. Gilbert Clerke, Northampshire. Anglican, Non-conformist.

Late 17th Cent.

(Mathematician)

2. Noval of Tydd. St. Giles near Wisbech. Independent.

Late 17th Cent. (Pastor)

3. Thomas Firmin, publisher. London. Sabellian, Non-conformist.

Late 17th Cent.

4. William Freke. London. Arian.

Late 17th Cent.

5. John Smith. St. Augustine's, London. Socinian.

Late 17th Cent. (philomath

6. Henry Hedworth. London. Socinian. Late

17th Century.

249The Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. VII, pp. 494-495, passim. Cf. also A.C. Underwood, A History of the English Baptists, Op. Cit., p. 138.250A History of the English Baptists, Ibid. See also William L. Whitley, The Baptists of London (London: The Kingsgate Press, 1928 ), p. 14. Most of the key facts are drawn from the DNB article above in footnote 49. Another ironic and historically significant connection is that it was James Foster who in 1647 baptized the eccentric William Whiston, who had been an Anglican clergyman, and who also became so noteworthy as a translator of the works of Flavius Josephus and as representative of eighteenth century Arianism and Socinianism. 51The Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. VII, Ibid.52The Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. VII, p. 495. Sir Leslie Stephen also notes that Foster was sharply upbraided by conservative Particular Baptists like John Brine for his “free-thinking tendencies” (Ibid.). Long before the middle of the eighteenth century, perceptive Biblical Baptists realized that hard Unitarianism followed Socinianism and that it led to Deism and, ultimately, to unbelief in Christ and His Word.253From The Cambridge History of English and American Literature (18 Vols; London: Cambridge University Press, 1907-1921), Vol. X. , Pt. XVI. 7 cited in http: //www. bartleby.com /220/1607.html. 254The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Ibid. cited from the net address above.255The material facts here are taken from the article on Whiston in The Dictionary of National Biography , Vol. XXII, and the internet article on "William Whiston" at http.: //www.gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/ ~history/Mathematicians/Whiston.html. Other material is found in Edmund Calamy, An Historical Account of My Own Life, Vol. II, Op. Cit., pp. 250, 305, 350, 438, 442, 523-4, and 528; and also in Roland N. Stromberg, Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth Century England (London: Oxford University Press, 1954), particularly Chap. IV, " Arians and Socinians, " pp. 34-51.256See W.B. Selbie, Non-Conformity: Its Origin and Progress In Herbert Fisher, Gilbert Murray, et al., eds., Home University Library of Modern Knowledge (London: Williams and Norgate, 1912), chapters viii and ix, " The Revolution, " and "Reaction and Decline, " pp. 134-171. Most of Edmund Calamy's convulted volume, Op. Cit. [footnote 55 above] is concerned with this period and written in almost sensationalistic journal fashion.

36

- disciple of

John Biddle.

7. William Manning. Peasenhall. Independent. (1630-

1711).53

When the Toleration Act of 1689 was passed, the leavening effects of

almost a century of anti-Trinitarianism began to publicly manifest itself

among the churches of England, beginning with the Anglicans themselves,

257W.B. Selbie, Non-Conformity: Its Origin and Progress, pp. 162-163. Cf. also The Cambridge History of English and American Literature (18 Vols; London: Cambridge University Press, 1907-1921), Vol. X. , Pt. XVI. 8 cited in http: //www.bartleby.com/220/1607.html. This source, as others, also mentions the role of Joseph Hallett, the date of the second Exeter assembly as May, 1719. The actual Subscription controversy seems to have occurred in July, 1719. John Shute Barrington (afterwards Viscount Barrington) is identified as the leader of the Presbyterians, who as has been noted, resisted formal imposition of the a creed. The minority of subscribers later formed their own distinct minority under Bradbury's direction, while the non-subscribers issued a dispatch (or manifesto ?) letter to Exeter, stating their virtues and convictions in not subscribing. Ironically, the Unitarians of the later eighteenth and nineteenth century would look on this as their charter of freedom from "dogmatism." See further the minute coverage of the events in Roger Thomas, " The Non-Subscription Controversy, " in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 4, No. 2 (July-October, 1953): 162-163. 358Class notes from Professor John Y. Briggs, Regents Park College, Oxford which were kindly lent to this author with permission to cite them in this paper. The facts are, however, substantiated in the various histories: Thomas Crosby, Edmund Calamy, McBeth, Selbie, and Underwood and elsewhere.359Class Notes from Professor Briggs' course in Modern Church History, Regents Park College, cited with permission. These figures differ slightly from those given in some handbooks and general histories as well those in our class notes from Professor Macmullen's class on Baptist History at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. But the effect of the slight numerical variations is neglible. The main point is that most of the key General Baptist leaders were influenced in the direction of non-Subscription (and eventually toward Unitarianism), while a few General Baptists and most Particular Baptists remained orthodox at this time. (JR).360Class Notes, Ibid., p. 5. See also the detailed survey of the intellectual movements of the time in Stromberg, Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth Century England, pp. 34-39 and W.B. Selbie, Non-Conformity: Its Origin and Progress, pp. 164-171. An excellent contemporary survey of the whole period is found in Gerald R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason, 1648-1789 in The Pelican History of the Church (London: Pelican/ Penguin Books, 1988), Vol. 4, pp. 117-140.361Non-Conformity: Its Origin and Progress, p. 164. Progress, pp. 164-171. An excellent contemporary survey of the whole period is found in Gerald R. Cragg, The Church and the Age of Reason, 1648-1789 in The Pelican History of the Church (London: Pelican/ Penguin Books, 1988), Vol. 4, pp. 117-140.62 Cf. G.R. Cragg, Op. Cit., p. 136 and see K.S. Latournette, A History of Christianity (cited in footnote 2), Pt. VII, chap. xxxvi, p. 827, and Selbie, Op. Cit., pp. 164-65.363See Sromberg, Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth Century England, pp. 95, 113, and 116 and the standard histories of the time. Edmund Calamy's work An

37

then with the Baptists, Independents, and Presbyterians. As early as 1690,

Arthur Bury, a Latitudinarian minister, lost his rectorship at Lincoln College,

Oxford for his Socinian tract, the Naked Gospel. Soon this was followed by

steady stream of theological pamphlets on both sides (John Wallis, William

Jones, etc.). Eventually, this development lead to the publication of the

Historical Account of My Own Life, Vol. II, chaps. IX and X, minutely details both the political-social developments and the religious events of this time (pp. 233-535). 370Leon Mcbeth, The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness, pp. 161-170 and 289-295; and see A.C. Underwood, A History of the English Baptists, 152-159.

371A History of the English Baptists, pp. 155-56. Unitarians would, doubtlessly, from their more rationalistic perspective have a different perspective on this. It must be recalled for historical completeness that Dan Taylor left Birchcliff at Wadsworth in ca. 1773 to become pastor at Halifax, where he remained until 1785. Then in 1785, accepting a new a wider call, he loaded his family (with nine children) and his belongings on a wagon borrowed from a friend and journeying to London. There he became the assistant to John Brittain at Church Lane, Whitechapel, and after Brittain's death, was the sole pastor there until 1815. 72The Baptist Heritage, p. 164. Later on Mcbeth writes, "As its Unitarianism became more pronounced, its adherence to outworn methods more intransigent, the old General Baptists . . . . ' subsided into insignificance.' Meanwhile, the New Connexion prospered, though its growth leveled off somewhat from its early days. In 1811, the New Connection assembly registered 81 delegates from 58 churches, and reported a total membership of 5, 471 with 339 baptisms in that year." The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness, p. 294. See Underwood, Op. Cit., pp. 156-159.73A History of the English Baptists, p. 155. In addition to home and foreign missions, the New Connection sponsored several printing efforts, and these included the Baptist Repository, the Missionary Observer, a new hymnal, and an evangelical tract society. There was a sharp and heated controversy among the pastors and others about maintaining the headquarters in Leicestershire rather than move it to London. So, the New Connection came to its centenary celebration in 1870 with 153 churches and 20,488, mostly in the English Midlands. Cf. McBeth, The Baptist Heritage, pp. 294-5.74These events, which include the launching of the modern Missionary Movement with William Carey and Joshua Marshman in 1793, are discussed in intricate detail in Underwood, A History of the English Baptists, Chap. vii, " Revival," pp. 153-200 and in McBeth, Op. Cit., pp. 163-170 and pp. 285-307. 75References are from the papers of James Relly in the John Murray Papers at the New York Historical Society and the Judith Murray Papers at the Andover Harvard Theological Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts as cited by Andrew Hill in his article, "James Relly," at http: //www. uua.org/uuhs /duub/articles/jamesrelly.html. Hill has promised to update the information available on Relly in Alexander Gordon's article in The Dictionary of National Biography in a new essay coming in the New Dictionary of National Biography (forthcoming, 2004).

38

Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity briefly Explained by Jones. About the same

time William Sherlock, a rationalist theologian, published his Vindication of

the Holy and ever Blessed Trinity. Then the controversy led to yet another

attack from Robert South with his Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock's

Vindication. Then another strain of controversialists entered into the fray

and the collection was published as The Faith of one God Who is only the

76Andrew Hill, " James Relly," at http: //www.uua.org/uuhs/duub/articles/jamesrelly.html., pp. 2-3. 77Ibid., p. 2. This writer has not checked on any references concerning Relly in either Wesley's or Whitefield's Journals at the present time, but plans to do so in the near future. 78Naturally, the account of this "coversion experience" (to heresy!) is found on the Unitarian website. See "The Conversion of John Murray," from The Life of Murray cited at http://www.uua.org/uucf/jmur-con.htm (3 pages). The full title of Murray's biography is entitled, Life of Rev. John Murray . . . written by himself (London, 1816). 79According to David Robinson in The Unitarians and Universalists (Westport, Connecticut: The Greenwood Press, 1985), Chap. 5, " American Universalist Origins, " pp. 47-59. In this same place he remarks, " The Baptist movement in particular in particular was a seedbed for early Universalism, and a good many Universalists leaers and their followers, including Caleb Rich and Elhanan Winchester, arrived at their views by way of Baptist evangelicalism. " (p. 48). George de Benneville, Benjamin Rush, and Elhanan Winchester, because of their distaste for the doctrine of eternal damnation of the lost, were also inclined to this persuasion. 80David Robinson in The Unitarians and Universalists, p. 49. A popular account of this Universalist legend can be found as " The Story of Thomas Potter and John Murray, " at http.//www.murraygrove.org/heritage/pottermurray.html. As extra-Scriptural revelation of man's native goodness and God the Father's supposed prior reconciliation of each and every unrepentant and unregenerate sinner is so appealing to human reason and is so close to the actual Gospel (John 3:16-17; Romans 3: 21-25; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21), it is easy to understand its intrinsic power to convince. Anne Lee Bressler in her essay, " Calvinism Improved, " in The Universalist Movement in America, 1770-1880 , in Harry S. Stout, ed., Religion In America (Series) (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 9-30 even goes so far to say that Universalism ". . . reflected the legacy of Edwardsean Calvinism, " and Universalists were simply preachers of "Rational Election", a determined effort to improve Calvinism. This unbelievable essay may be found on line at http://www. oup__usa. org/ sd 0195129865 __01.pdf. It is a diabolically clever and sophisticated prevarication !81Although it has not been included in the bibliography, Cf. Rev. John Murray, Letters and Sketches of Sermons. 3 Vols. (Boston: Universalist Society, 1812-1813) and Record s of the Life of the Rev. John Murray . . . Written by Himself . . . to Which Is Added a Brief Continuation . . . Edited by Mrs. Judith Sargent Murray (Boston, 1816).364Perhaps a hint of this hidden working of Arianism/Socinianism can even be found, ironically, in the letter of Isaac Watts to Reverend Cotton Mather in Boston written on February 11, 1720, contained in his Collected Works, 6 Vols. (London, 1810-11),

39

Father (1691). As the controversy deepened it dissolved the fraternal bonds

of good-will among the Independents (Congregationalists) and the

Presbyterians and it began to manifest itself in several places among the

General Baptists, particularly with Matthew Caffyn, the pastor at Horsham,

Sussex, who was accused for a second time before the "Baptist General

Assembly" of denying Christ's deity in 1693. As the vote was on whether or

ii, p. 414 (contained also in the Massachusetts Historical Society Collection), cited in Thomas Rogers, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 4, No. 2 (July - October, 1953), p. 182.65Selbie, Non-Conformity: Its Origin and Progress, p. 165, for instance. Thomas Monk (Jr)'s quotation is from the minutes of the 1699 General Assembly, cited by Arnold H.J. Baines in his fine old article in The Baptist Quarterly (London: The Baptist Historical Society), Vol. 17 (1957-58): 41 (See context, pp. 35-42; 74-86; 122-128; 170-178). In Professor (Rev.) Bainesls footnote # 20 he comments: " For evidence that Caffyn's followers still denied God's omnipresence see A second Address to the Anabaptists (1702), p. 22, citing The Vail turn'd aside, which I have not seen." 66Cf. Selbie, Non-Conformity: Its Origin and Progress, pp. 165-171, but he has some qualifications on pp. 169-170 (e.g., the "Northern Education Society, " and the Heckmondwicke Academy). The few solidly Biblical Baptist academies like those at Bristol continued and the later Stepney Academy (f. 1796) which became Regent Park College, Oxford. 67See Adam Taylor, The History of the General Baptists (London, 1818), Vol. I, pp. 464-480, cited by Leon Mcbeth, The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness, pp. 156-158. See also Michael R. Watts, The Dissenters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), pp. 300 and 375 which reviews the Trinitarian controversy from the Caffynite crisis until after the Salters' Hall debacle. 68Leon Mcbeth, The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness, Ibid. Macbeth's citations come from Adam Taylor's history, Op. Cit., Vol. I, p. 480 and W.T. Whitley, A History of the British Baptists (London: Charles Griffin & Company, 1923), p. 174. 69The Baptist Heritage, p. 158. Mcbeth's description of the General Baptists between 1720 and 1770 rings true: " They fell victim to extreme liberalism. They had no gospel to preach, and they preached no gospel. " Later, in the 1760s, Daniel Taylor, having attended the General Assembly in London with disillusionment and shock stated: " They degraded Jesus Christ, and He degraded them ", cited from A.C. Underwood, A History of the English Baptists, 152. 382An important link between John Murray and later American Unitarian-Universalism was Hosea Ballou (1771-1852), who was the dominant figure in American Universalism for the first half of the nineteenth century. Ballou, unlike Murray and Elhanan Winchester, who were Trinitarian Calvinists of a heretical stripe, was an avowed opponent of the Calvinist-Reformed system of theology and the whole notion of Christ's satisfactory Atonement. His most famous writing, A Treaise on the Atonement was a radical Arminian (Congregationalist) attack on the traditional teaching of the Church and it was a concerted effort to make reason the final arbiter of the interpretation of Christ's work. His position was known as "Ultra-universalism", and although purportedly based upon an exegesis of the Bible, it was

40

not to expel Caffyn, a secession of many of the more orthodox and

evangelically Biblical Baptists produced the " General Baptist Association. "

In the same year a second huge anthology of anti-Trinitarian essays

appeared as a Second Collection of Tracts proving the God, and Father of

our Lord Jesus Christ, the only True God. Then, in 1694, John Howe, a

Presbyterian, entered the fight with his tract, Calm and Sober Inquiry

largely a total re-interpretation of Scripture according a philosophic notion of God's benevolence. Ballou was " utterly convinced that a loving God would not condemn humankind to eternal punishment. For Ballou, the consequences of sin were the spiritual, psychological, and physical harm to the sinner, not the punishment of an angry God. " See David Robinson, The Unitarians and Universalists, Chap. 6, pp. 61-73 and pp. 215-216 (biographical article). 483Much of this material is drawn directly from David Robinson, The Unitarians and Universalists, pp. 51-59 and an article by David Johnson, "Elhanan Winchester, Junior - Fire for the Gospel, Universalism,"pp. 1-8, an article taken from the Internet in October from one of the Unitarian web-sites for which the writer has presently lost the address.484David Johnson, " Elhanan Winchester, Junior ", p. 3.485David Johnson, Ibid. and see David Robinson, Op. Cit., 57.486See David Robinson, Op. Cit. and David Johnson, " Elhanan Winchester, Junior, " pp. 3-4. Much detail is being deliberately left out for the sake of space and time (JR). On Hosea Ballou, see footnote # 82 above. The writer also apologizes for not having time to tract down the bibliographical references on either Stonehouse or Paul Siegvolck's Everlasting Gospel (a good task for further research, no doubt !).87David Johnson, Op. Cit., p. 4. One may be tempted to imagine some psychical or physiological connection between Winchester's Gospel of universal salvation and his serial polygamy, but the writer does not wish to judge the motives of a man who lived over two hundred years ago on mere secondary sources. Still, maybe Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were not the first to have the idea. 488David Johnson, Ibid. 489These are the words of David Johnson himself, a Unitarian-Universalist from Brookline, Massachusetts where Winchester had his original church home. Johnson's article, which we have used frequently for the last couple of pages was a personal research on Winchester done between 1999-2001. The actual citation is taken from p. 6. 490From article by Andrew Hill, " William Vidler, " at http://www .uua.org/ uuhs/ duub/ articles/ williamvidler.html., p. 1.91Andrew Hill, " William Vidler, " Ibid. See also David Johnson, "Elhanan Winchester, Junior," pp. 6-7. There Johnson comments: " Battle Baptist built a new building in 1789, though it took a couple of generations to pay for, and by 1792, Vidler was a Universal Baptist, like Winchester. Vidler described Winchester as of "amiable" character and said that his "conversation " was "cheerful and instructing." He also noted that he exhibited a "watchfulness over his tongue such as [he] had never witnessed before." Later, Vidler and Winchester frequently exchanged pulpits at Christmastime, leading the Battle Church to the Universalist (and ultimately) Unitarian persuasion.

41

against the tenth (and last) tract of the collection just noted. The struggle

had become triangular and circular and, mostly, vicious and hot !54

Yet, this first phase of the Trinitarian (or more properly, Socinian)

controversy came to a logical end in 1708, having received its principle

deathblow in 1698 by an act of the crown which aimed to suppress

blasphemy and profaness (and this legal restraint remained on the English

92Andrew Hill, " William Vidler, " Ibid. Hill also comments that after announcing his new belief, " a minority of his church withdrew, but the majority loyally remained. Vidler and his universalist congregation were expelled from the local Particular Baptist association in 1793. "493While Vidler did occasionally preach and maintained a part-time ministry with the Battle Church until 1796, his focus now became wider and more urban, as he envisioned a Unitarian London and beyond. Here we add a final brief note on Winchester's life until his passing in 1797. He left London to return to Boston, chiefly it seems, on account of his wife's quarrelsome nature and violent abuse (at least that is his side of the story). For the remaining years he preached in Boston, Brookline, and New York. He also became the mediator of the General Convention of Universalists meeting in Oxford, Massachusetts. On a number of occasions he preached in Joseph Priestley's Unitarian Church in Philadelphia. In his last months, he felt compelled to travel up and down the Atlantic coasts, irratically proclaiming the " Universal Gospel. " At last he settled down on a farm in Connecticutt, still forebearing his hot-tempered wife, and here he died on April 18, 1797. 94After 1805, The Universalists' Miscellany was renamed The Monthly Repository. It was this event, the General Assembly's decision to accept William Vidler and his Parliament Court congregation which caused Daniel Taylor to resign in disgust. Cf. Andrew Hill, " William Vidler, " p. 2. and cf. again Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage, p. 164. 95Cf. Earl M. Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism. 2 Vols. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Pressm 1952),Vol. II, Chap. XXXIII, " English Unitarianism in the Nineteenth Century. " 96Cf. Andrew Hill, " William Vidler, " Ibid. 497Andrew Hill, "William Vidler, " Ibid. The Scriptural citation is from 1 Peter 5:8b, KJV.498See the citation of John MacLachlan in Rara Avis: A Memoir of Richard Wright (Sheffield: Unitarian-Universalist Press, 1998), p. 11 cited by David Johnson in " Elhanan Winchester, Junior, " p. 7. Johnson also records that Parliament Court chose William Johnson Fox as Vidler's successor in 1816, and it was under his leadership that the congregation moved to South Place Chapel in Finsbury and evolved into the "South Place Ethical Society." Truly, it had become a church body without the Father, Son, or the Holy Spirit and a humanist organization without the Gospel of salvation. Socinianism had issued ultimately in secular naturalism and man's own "religion" of his "good works."(JR)99A History of the English Baptists, p. 156. (He himself cites as evidence: Transactions of the Baptist Historical Society, Vol. IV, p. 191. )5100Cf. Underwood, A History of the English Baptists, p. 138. He himself refers to the compendium of William T. Whitley, The Baptists of London 1612-1928 (London: The Kingsgate Press, 1928), p. 14.

42

statute books until 1813). It is possible that both John Locke and Sir Isaac

Newton contributed to the anti-Trinitarian tracts as anonymous authors.

Newton together with William Whiston and others was either a Semi-Arian

or full-fledged Socinian according to some scholars. Before 1710, no official

representatives of either the Anglicans or the Non-Conformist Churches had

endorsed either side of the issue. Yet, the circumstances of the era and

continued agitation from "famous" preachers and learned men brought in

the various denominations with the Baptists, Congregationalists, and

Presbyterians right at the heart of the struggle. Theological trials were

beginning: Matthew Caffyn's case divided the Baptists in 1693; in Dublin,

Ireland, Thomas Emlyn was tried by the Presbyterians for Arianism. There

was only an eerie pause before the storm . . . .

101See W.T. Whitley, above, Op. Cit., p133.102W.T Whitley, The Baptists of London, p. 131.103See R. Philip Roberts, Continuity And Change, London Calvinistic Baptists and the Evangelical Revival, 1760-1820. (Wheaton, Illinois: Richard Owen Roberts, Publishers, 1989), pp. 15-16 and 183-185. Professor Roberts also shows how Calvinistic Baptists, touched by the dynamic of an evangelical revival, Scripturally and theologically responded to the onset of Socinian/Unitarian heresy. The Calvinistic and Particular Baptists, however, were never infected with anything like the degree of General Baptists. 5104The Baptists of London, p. 97. He further comments: " Baptist evangelists and statesmen had appeared by 1862, which indeed wasa summit year; the gross total was about 330, the net about 260. After 1870 the pace slackened, and the sixth half-century brought the net total just over 400. A graph shows actual decline from the Restoration to the death of George II, and the most remarkable progress under Victoria. His explanation for the decline among Baptists in the later nineteenth century and early twentieth century was mainly " doctrinal rivalry and unintelligent conservatism. " But this writer would suggest the growth of secular rationalism and the competition of the Unitarian-Universalist societies which seem to count numbers in the hundreds of thousands officially. And, one might safely wager that in the turn of the millennium (ca. 2000 A.D.) that of Englishmen that are "religious" at all, several million are unofficially "Unitarian" and "Universalist". It looks like England went neither to the Anglicans nor the Presbyterians, nor to the Baptists - it looks as though in many quarters, with a few notable exceptions, that England has been won by atheism and or unbelief. Is this fair ? Is it true ? Is it the last word ? 5105The Baptist Heritage, Chap. 13, p. 507.

43

Then in 1710, the tempest came, and the fierce winds blew. The Arian

Controversy proper had come to England and it would led to Salters' Hall in

1719 and beyond. It would nearly destroy the General Baptists until they

were saved by the Methodist revival and Daniel Taylor and the "New

Connexion" in 1770. The new phase opened with the steady blast of William

Whiston's Historical Preface (1710) which was soon prefixed to volumes on

Primitive Christianity (1711, 4 Volumes). Later, Reverend Samuel Clarke

would publish his bombshell, The Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity in 1712.

Still, before discussing these developments further, it is time to more closely

look at William Whiston himself, who became the third center of feverish

inflammation of the Baptists infected with the Socinian disease.

It would seem on the surface of things that for creating the greatest

controversy over heresy among eighteenth century Baptists there never was

more of an unlikely candidate than William Whiston. Yet, Whiston brought

the local controversies of Caffyn, Gale, and Foster into the consciousness of

English Baptists over the land because of his important connections to

Cambridge University and because of his important role in English science

and politics in the early eighteenth century.

Who was William Whiston ? Whiston was a brilliant Englishman

whose dates span the latter half of the seventeenth century and the better

half of the eighteenth (1667-1752). He was born at Norton near Twycross,

Leicestershire. He was the son of an Anglican minister and was home-

schooled by his father (a competent teacher, apparently) until he was nearly

seventeen. Then he spent a short time at Tamworth Grammar School. Then

in 1686, he was admitted to Clare Hall, Cambridge where he qualified for

44

the B.A. in 1690 and earned his M.A. by 1693, after being elected as a

Fellow in 1691. About this same time he was encouraged by a friend, David

Gregory, to study Isaac Newton's Principia and to pursue mathematics. He

intended to return to Cambridge as a don and to accept mathematics pupils,

but frail health made him give up teaching at this time. William Lloyd

ordained Whiston at Lichfield in 1695, and then in 1699 he married Ruth

Antrobus. During this same period he was active both as a chaplain to the

bishop of Norwich from 1694-1698 and he worked as an astronomer and

natural scientist. In 1696 he published his first major work, A New Theory of

the Earth. Although a fairly devout Bible believer, he nevertheless

maintained that the Biblical accounts of Creation, the Flood, and so on could

be scientifically explained in Newtonian terms with scientific descriptions of

events with historical bases (most Christians at this time would not have

necessarily objected to this per se). His theory about the Flood was a little

quirky, as he claimed that a comet smashed into the Earth in a catastrophic

way. In 1698 Whiston obtained his first vicarage at Lowenstoft-with-

Kissingland in Suffolk. But his scientific genius was recognized, and his early

publications and essays were read by Sir Isaac Newton with keen interest.

Later, however, he and Newton would have a falling out over their differing

interpretations of Biblical chronology. Also, Whiston's cosmology left more

room than Newton's for direct (and miraculous) intervention by God. But, in

1701, Whiston resigned his vicarage and took up his appointment as

Newton's assistant professor at Cambridge. There he published on

mathematics and physics, producing a usable edition of Euclid for his

45

students. He also continued to publish on cosmology and Bible

interpretation.

In 1703, following Newton's graceful resignation from Cambridge, he

succeeded his illustrious mentor as the Lucasian professor of Mathematics

and Natural Philosophy. Together with Roger Cotes, who was the Plumian

professor from 1706, Whiston conducted important joint research along

Newtonian lines and created some brilliant scientific hypotheses of his own.

Yet more and more, his searching mind was drawn back to questions of God

and the Holy Scripture. His reason was puzzled with the doctrine of the

Trinity, and like Caffyn, Gale, and Foster, he begin to follow an Arian and a

Socinian path of thought. When it became known to the Cambridge

authorities that he publicly questioned the Trinity, he was deprived of his

professorial chair in 1710. In the next few years he was in London where a

court was being set up and his trial by the Lord Chancellor was expected.

But foreign wars and the death of Queen Anne in 1714 brought the end of

the legal proceedings against him. Not one to remain mentally or physically

inactive, Whiston became instrumental in establishing the Board of

Longitude in England and for the next forty years he spent considerable time

in study of this problem while giving occasional public lectures and courses

on astronomy, physics, and , as has been noted, engaging in many

theological controversies.

Chiefly important, as previously observed, was his Historical Preface

and his Primitive Christianity Revived (4 Vols., 1711). Ironically, while

Whiston was quite a classical scholar as well as a scientist, his whole basis

for his major theological was more his own anti-Trinitarian prejudice than

46

rigorous historical research. His Primitive Christianity was based on the

Apostolical Constitutions, an ancient writing which Whiston believed to have

been published in the late first century, but was actually a late compilation

of various Eastern Church fathers in ca. 340-380. But , heretic or no,

Whiston was a man of integrity, and he believed that he had rediscovered a

"primitive" Unitarian Christianity predating the Council of Nicea in 325 and

the "corruption" of Roman Catholic Christianity. From 1710 until the 1740s

he remained virtually poor and lived off a small income from a little farm

near Newmarket together with his lecture fees. He lectured mostly in the

coffee-houses of London and sometimes conducted scientific experiments

which astounding his audience, much as Joseph Priestley and Michael

Faraday would do later. While he never solved the problem of longitude, he

did complete a famous translation of Josephus used until the late twentieth

century.

While William Whiston remained a believer in supernaturalism and

the inspiration of the Bible, he was definitely heretical about the Trinity and

remained either a Semi-Arian or Socinian until his death. However, in 1747,

after much deliberation, he left the Anglican Church and was baptized by

James Foster into the Baptist fold. It remains a lively historical question

whether the Baptists gained or lost with his endorsement of "believer's

baptism" since neither Whiston nor Foster represented the Trinitarian

commitments of the early Baptist confessions in the seventeenth century.55

The larger background of the Salters' Hall controversy involves

matters which cannot be entered into here like the struggle of the Anglican

High Church officials and the Tory party against the various Non-

47

Conformists and the Whigs. Controversies were at once economic, political,

social and theological and it would be difficult to do justice to all the

significant developments in the historical background of the era of

Toleration after 1689 until the time of the Hanoverian dynasty of George II

in 1727.56 Selbie, discussing the decline and compromising lethargy of the

Non-Conformists in the early eighteenth century, asserts that coming of a

new wave of Socinianism and Unitarianism contributed to low spiritual ebb

of the time. His account leaves out much that was covered above, but he

does explore the immediate factors leading into Salters' Hall and provides

the essential details about it. He writes as follows:

But there was yet another cause which contributed to the same result. In 1712

one Thomas Emlyn, a minister in Dublin, wrote a book confessing a very mild

type of Unitarianism. He was prosecuted, fined a thousand pounds, and impris-

oned till the fine should be paid. The case excited some attention and was the be-

ginning of the renewal of the Unitarian controversy. The trouble began in Exeter,

where one James Pierce, a man of great ability and influence, with two or three

other Presbyterian ministers, was suspected of Arianism. After discussions in the

Assembly of Devon and Cornwall, the matter was referred to seven ministers,

who, on the advice of some of their brethren in London, drew up a kind of ultima-

tum for the direction of the managers of the Exeter churches. Meanwhile the ques-

tion was being discussed in London. A meeting of the general body of Dissenters

was held in Salter's Hall, at which it appeared that there were many London mini-

sters who were in sympathy with the Exeter heretics. When at a further meeting,

an attempt was made to obtain the assent of those present to a declaration of belief

belief in Doctrines of the Trinity and Divinity of our Lord, the company at once

divided into subscribers and non-subscribers. Each then constituted their own

48

assembly, the large majority of the nonsubscribers being Presbyterians, while

the subscribing assembly consisted mainly of Congregationalists and Baptists under the leadership of Thomas Bradbury. This division marked a real

doctrin-al rupture between Congregationalists and Presbyterians. The non-

subscribers repudiated Arianism, but many of them later became Unitarians and were the founders of the Unitarian denomination, while eighteen or twenty of them,

un-der some curious process of reaction, signed the Thirty-Nine Articles and

joined the Church of England.57

It is not really an exaggeration to state that the Salters' Hall

controversy severely affected Baptists and other dissenting (evangelical)

groups for the next seventy-five years. Indeed, in the larger context of

modern British and American Unitarianism, it was one the historic

milestones of the last three centuries. From the writer's view, the total effect

has been negative and devastating in many quarters of the Christian world,

a preview of the disastrous things to come such as French and British

Deism, Darwinian Evolution, the Higher Criticism of the Bible, and modern

Skeptical Atheism. But for the Baptists (as with other evangelical Christians

such as the Congregationalists and Presbyterians), the remainder of the

eighteenth century and even much of the later nineteenth century proved to

be a theological challenge, and the passion for the historic Gospel and

evangelical missions would require several mighty revivals of God and

selfless defense and propagation of Christianity by many faithful soldiers of

Christ. But it was a fight both within and without the institutional churches

thereafter and even in the contemporary times we are still struggling

against the same forces of humanistic rationalism and unbelief disguised as

"religious philosophy".

49

Immediately after the Subscription controversy, the General Baptists

were internally divided and many Baptists were eventually lost to

Unitarianism. James Foster, for example, became a Congregationalist with

growing Unitarian sentiments. In 1735-7 he had previously noted

controversy with a Rev. Henry Stebbing, in which he asserted essentially

that differing opinions on the Trinity and Christology were "innocent".

Finally, Foster found life too hot among the few believing General Baptists

and went over to the Independents (Congregationalists), becoming in 1744

the pastor of the Independent Church at Pinner's Hall. And while Foster

denounced Deism and "infidelity", he had left Biblical and Baptist

confession far behind. The same was true of William Whiston. The "Happy

Union" of the Baptists, Congregationalists, and Presbyterians which had

seemed so promising in 1690 and the beginning of the eighteenth century

was a thing of the past and these churches were divided both externally

from each other and internally among themselves on the issues of the

Trinity, subscription, and the growing Calvinism-Arminianism debate.58 What

some saw as an issue of Christian liberty was at its heart an issue about

Biblical revelation and the Triune God. Yet, the two issues of required

subscription to creeds and the matter of orthodox belief were awkwardly

entangled and the distinctions did not become clear to many people until the

formal emergence of the Unitarian denomination toward the end of the

century. But at Salters Hall, the results were prophetic: out of about 150

ministers and other Christian leaders, there were 73 non-Subscribers of

which 47 were Presbyterians, 14 were General Baptists, 2 were Particular

Baptists and 10 were Congregationalists. By contrast, there were 78

50

Subscribers of which 29 were Presbyterians, 15 Baptists, 28

Congregationalists, and 6 who could either be Independent

(Congregationalist) or Presbyterian. About these, Professor John Y. Briggs of

Regents Park College, Oxford, comments : " The orthodoxy of the 78 is clear,

but not all of the 73 were necessarily heterodox. "59 And, Professor Briggs

adds some additional provocative words:

. . . General Baptists suffered a division between the General Association who

roughly corresponded to those General Baptists who had a Lollard origin, who liv-

ed in the inland counties of Buckinghamshire, Northhamsphire, and Cambridge-

shire, who remained orthodox, and those churches in Kent and Sussex particularly,

most influenced by the Dutch Mennonites, who, under the leadership of one Mat-

thew Caffyn, adopted the heterodox Christology of Melchoir Hoffman which de

facto denied the reality of the Incarnation. These were the churches that first adopt-

ed Arianism and then full-blooded Unitarianism, thus to be lost to the Baptist cause.

Indeed when Methodism came to offer a more attractive Evangelical Arminianism,

many ministers and members transferred their affections, and many General Baptist

congregations simply died out. The record is of preachers traveling to appointments

to find zero congregations with the consequence that General Baptist congregations

began to issue prohibitions to their members attending Methodist meetings. 60

W.B. Selbie furthermore observes that already in the early eighteenth

century the skeptical, rationalistic spirit of Deism had been felt in Non-

Conformist pulpits and had contributed to the spiritual barrenness of many

of England's churches. He tersely comments: " The older Independent

theologians had written and spoken more as prophets than as philosophers.

They were entrusted with a word from the Lord and they gave utterance to it

in no uncertain grounds. But in the period we have now reached preachers

51

attempted to argue for its acceptance on philosophical grounds. "61 Even

those among the fervent believers were to a degree affected by this

rationalism. Noteworthy examples here were Philip Doddridge (1702-1751)

and Isaac Watts (1674-1748), theological writers and composers of

hymnody. Doddridge, a minister among the Congationalists, was the author

of many famous evangelical hymns and the author of The Rise and Progress

of Religion in the Soul, was also a noted tutor and lecturer on theological

subjects. Many of his comprehensive essays and theological lectures were

published after his death and reveal a true Christian piety but at the same

time scattered elements of Arminianism and Socinianism.62 Unlike

Doddridge, Isaac Watts, is reckoned to be "the father of English hymnody"

and together with Charles Wesley (1707-1788) supplied many of the

powerful evangelical hymns of the English Evangelical Revival from 1730-

1756. Yet, like Doddridge, Watts suffered from a rationalistic element in his

dissent and was suspicious of the new "enthusiastic" revivalism and the

newly emerging Methodism of the Wesleys. Unlike Doddridge, Watts was a

more thorough-going Calvinist, but while not in any respect an Arian, he was

theologically aberrant in some of his Christological speculations and infected

with the rationalism of his age.63 And, in the two generations after Salters'

Hall, the General Baptists were affected both by the intellectual theological

speculation and even popular hymnody in subtle ways. Thus, despite the fact

that between 1720 and 1740 there was a deadness on the surface of the

church life of English Non-Conformists and a lethargic spirit of

"indifferentism" to Christian doctrine, the hidden viral infection of anti-

Trinitarianism was incessantly at work, and this stage was merely a dormant

52

period between the controversial Arianism of 1720 and the later full-blown

Unitarianism.64

The writer of this article cannot agree with W.B. Selbie and others

(e.g., H.J. MacLachlan, Roger Thomas, Roland N. Stromberg, et al.) that the

decline of creedalism, subscription to theological confessions, was such a

good thing. For if one looks at the controversy just among the Baptists going

back to its roots with the doctrinal conflict between Matthew Caffyn and

those like the rustically educated Thomas Monk of Bierton (and Aylesbury)

and Messenger Joseph Wright of Maidstone, it is clear that the essentials of

Christianity were on the line. The son of Thomas Monk (Thomas Monk,

Jr. ?) prophetically commented on an encyclical letter issued by the General

Baptist Association in 1699: " In vain it is for you to separate from such as

err about the subjects and manner of baptism; if at the same time, you

maintain communion with heretics and idolaters; as those must needs be

who deny the Deity of the Son of God, and the immensity and omnipresence

of the Divine Essence. "65 But as stated the previous paragraph, this

indifferentism affected the mass of Non-conformists and in light of later

developments can be seen to have undermined the foundations of the

General Baptist churches in southern and southeastern England as well as

their fledgling Christian educational efforts in their academies.66 Professor

Leon McBeth soberly observed that the General Baptists chose

denominational unity at the expense of doctrinal agreement and that in time

liberalism gained the ascendancy in that body in the later eighteenth

century.67 He further bitterly laments:

. . . Not many General Baptists were left who remember the old doctrines of

53

the full humanity and the full deity of Christ and the vicarious atonement of the

cross. Thus was laid the basis for the New Connection schism a generation later.

According to W.T. Whitley, this debilitating controversy "destroyed the chance

of General Baptists exerting any influence, and when in 1731 the two rival As-

semblies did unite, . . . their attention was drawn too much to the past in which

they forgot its finest ideals, which to the new needs of the new age, they proved

blind. "68

Then has been strongly emphasized by this writer's instructor (Dr.

McMullen) for most of the remaining eighteenth century General Baptists

focused on minor issues and moralistic trivialities rather than core issues of

the Gospel. Thus, as it has been satyrically noted: " They debated whether

Christians could sing as part of worship, and if so whether standing or

sitting; they condemned fox hunting, a sport of the wealthy which few if any

of their members could participate; they repeatedly condemned marriage

outside the faith; and published weighty tomes on whether to eat blood. "69

Meanwhile, their pastors grew old, preaching and theology languished, and

congregations losing a purpose for evangelism grew more worldly and more

and more spiritually attune with the Enlightenment Age and less and less

with ancient New Testament message.

Two outstanding Baptists preachers and theologians must be

acknowledged in this period of the latter eighteenth century and in the

opening decades of the nineteenth century. For they represent on the one

hand what became of the genuinely evangelical General Baptist movement,

and on the other hand, what a catastrophic spiritual metamorphosis - indeed

a fall from Divine grace and truth - occurred with Socinian and liberal

majority of the English General Baptists. In the first case, the writer is

54

referring to Daniel Taylor (1738-1816) and the "New Connection" movement

which he initiated among the more Arminian Baptists. This subject will

complete this rather lengthy third section of this study. For the last part of

the paper, William Vidler (1758-1816) and his work will be examined. For it

was primarily Vidler's leadership after the deaths of William Whiston and

James Foster which shepherded such a large part of the General Baptist fold

into unabashed and full-bodied Unitarianism in the nineteenth century,

contributed to the "Downgrade Controversy" in the latter part of it, and

issued in the contemporary modernistic Unitarian-Universalism. Also in the

last and concluding part of our paper we shall briefly survey the heretical

theological additive of British and American "universalism" with provided

nineteenth century Unitarianism (i.e., Liberalism) with its ultimate lure and

weapon to damn human souls.

So, enters the life and work of Daniel Taylor. Baptists (and other Bible

Christians too !) believe that God works in wonderful and ironic ways in

history. One of those wonderful "coincidences" was the spiritual awakening

in Great Britain brought on by the preaching of the Methodists John and

Charles Wesley and, perhaps even more from the Calvinistic perspective, the

preaching of George Whitefield. It was indeed from contact with the

Wesleyan-Methodist revival in England that young Dan Taylor came to know

his Lord about 1753. A few years later, ca. 1761, Taylor began to preach

among the Leicester Evangelicals; then in 1762, after reading the elder Dr.

Robert Hall's History of Infant Baptism, he was led to embrace for himself

"believer's baptism". Then, in 1763, he and a pastor friend, John Slater, after

a long and strenuous search, met with Reverend Gilbert Boyce, a

55

Lincolnshire General Baptist, and received baptism by immersion in a river

near Gamston, Nottinghamshire. It should also be recalled that Daniel

Taylor had been born in Northowwram, near Halifax and as a youth had

worked with his father in the mines. Then, as a teenager he had walked

miles through the moors at Haworth to hear the preaching of the Wesleys,

George Whitefield, and the lesser known William Grimshaw. He had also

been largely self-educated, teaching himself Greek, Hebrew, and Latin,

while working in the mines. He was an extraordinary young man with an

intense devotion to Jesus Christ and to the propagation of the Gospel of

salvation for sinners.70

Taylor, with the help of friends and the Gamston Baptists formed a

little congregation and built a little Baptist Chapel called Birchcliff where

Reverend Taylor himself was ordained on July 30, 1763. Soon, Taylor and

his church sought affiliation with the Lincolnshire Evangelicals, but their

lack of fervent worship and interest in dynamic evangelism left him cold (the

influence of Socinianism and, perhaps, hyper-Calvinism as well ?). For a time

he longed for his fellows among the Leicestershire Evangelicals, but then

when that group refused to join with the Lincolnshire Association, Dan

Taylor met with a handful of like-minded ministers in Whitechapel, London

to form what was then called " The New Connection of General Baptists. "

Strangely enough, even after forming this group, he continued to attend the

annual sessions of the "old" General Baptists, even chairing some of their

committees until 1803 when Socinian Universalist William Vidler was

brought into their fellowship. At this point, Taylor could endure the

compromise and heresy no longer. Baptists scholars speculate about why he

56

did this, but A.C. Underwood has suggested that it was due to his wanting to

use his influence to bring back erring churches into the Assembly, and

ultimately, to the New Connection.71 Under the Scriptural and fervent

leadership of Taylor, the New Connection grew steadily in disciples and

mightily in spiritual influence in the turn of the new century. Leon McBeth

and A.C. Underwood both indicate that the New Connection began in 1770

with 7/8 churches and less than 1,000 members. Yet, from the official

Minutes of the Association of General Baptists at Leicester, 1786 we already

hear of at least 31 churches and 2,357 members.72 Then, according to A.C.

Underwood, by 1817 (the year after Daniel Taylor's death), the New

Connexion could claim 6,846 members in more than 70 churches. 73

Taylor was no conformist to tradition, but he was wholeheartedly loyal

to the Divine inspiration of Scripture and the Divinity and Lordship of Jesus

Christ. It is not surprising either, that opposition to his New Connection

emphases came from Lincolnshire leaders and others (especially in London)

which lacked his vision and zeal, but more importantly, were seriously

infected with Arianism and Socinianism. Neither is it a coincidence that

those who minimized the centrality of Christ's vicarious atonement for

sinners would find it difficult to tolerate a fiery evangelical such as a Taylor

or his followers. McBeth underscores that he came into greater and greater

conflict with older General Baptists as he not only embraced a fully orthodox

Christology but also abandoned many "traditions": the laying on of hands on

new believers ready for membership, the lack of congregational singing

(especially women) in worship, and a non-interest in evangelism. Thus the

stage was set for the confrontations with the "Unitarian" baptists of the

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early nineteenth century, and for the later nineteenth developments which

would provide opportunity for John Clifford (1816-1923) and his ecumenical

efforts leading to the 1891 merger of the New Connection into the Baptist

Union which Charles H. Spurgeon would oppose. But that is another story . .

. .74

IV. Unitarianism & Universalism Among British Baptists, ca.

1725--1820.

In this final section the writer wishes to briefly summarize the

highlights of the Unitarianism which grew out of the Socinian advances at

Salters' Hall in 1719 and afterwards with the coming of William Vidler in

1803 to the General Assembly with a even briefer sketch of the overall

consequences for the English General Baptists until ca. 1820. This kind of

conclusion is tentative as one's mind naturally then interpolates from

1818/1820 until the "Downgrade Controversy" of the latter nineteenth

century and beyond. Yet, in an effort to limit the size of this paper (already

too large!), the writer shall only focus on the key historical and theological

milestones of the subject until 1820 and add some lose final remarks as to

how Socinianism/Unitarianism affected the General Baptists of England

thereafter in the century.

Universalism was the new component in William Vidler's theological

teaching in the early 1800s, but it was not originally a part of even the

Socinian General Baptists before the late eighteenth century. Roughly

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speaking, it appears to have its roots in in Wales and in Colonial America

previous to its formal arrival among the General Baptist Assembly in 1803.

James Relly (1722-1788) was converted as a young man under the

preaching of John Wesley and George Whitefield, caught up in the revival

sweeping over wide areas of Great Britain in the mid-eighteenth century.

Together with his greater (and much more orthodox) mentor, Wesley, Relly

was early on inclined to Arminianism. Later, he would move beyond

evangelical Arminianism to the Universalist heresy. His influence then would

convert the reluctant John Murray (1741-1815) and effectually influence the

teaching of the Americans, Elhanan Winchester (1751-1797) and Hosea

Ballou (1771-1852) who would strongly affect the path of Unitarian-

Universalism in America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Relly was born in Saunderfoot, an English-speaking area of

Pembrokeshire in southwest Wales, educated at the local grammar school

and as a young man employed as " a cow-farrier. " About 1740 he was

converted under the preaching of George Whitefield (for whom he would

have a life-long admiration) and became an ardent Calvinist Methodist

preacher in the areas of Rhyddlangwraig, Narbeth, and Pembrokeshire in

the early 1740s. Then, after 1746, he made evangelistic tours through the

West and Midlands of England (including Bristol, Portsmouth, Exeter, Bath,

Bromsgrove, Birmingham, and Tewkesbury). Like many other evangelists

Relly faced significant persecution and hostile opposition, but what made

Relly receive rebuke from even the Methodists was his new doctrine of

"universal salvation." Responding to this new heresy, Whitefield's lieutenant

(supervisor) in charge, Howel Harris, dismissed Relly at the peak of his

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career in 1746 while he was evangelizing at the London Tabernacle in

Moorfields. Then, in 1751, Relly returned to Wales where he created an even

more serious disruption " respecting Freeness, and the extent of Grace. "

Although Relly himself avowed that as an evangelist he was not promoting a

universalist message, few others doubted it. The logic was simple and

beautiful (if one is not bothered by thorny Biblical details here or there):

" . . . if all had sinned in Adam, then all were saved in Christ. "75 Then,

throughout the later 1750s and 1760s, Relly preached his new Gospel also in

Ireland.

Relly's most important theological treatise (which would mold Vidler's

thinking) was his book Union: or a treatise of consanguinity and affinity

between Christ and his Church (London, 1759). He also wrote a universalist

hymnal and several lesser popular tracts on the nature of salvation, the

nature of "Spirits", the anti-Christ, the life of Christ, Christian baptism,

Sadduceeism (legalism), Christian liberty, and angels (1753-1780). One of

his most famous writings was a poem which was dedicated to Whitefield, an

elegy, written in 1770, following the great evangelist's death. Relly himself

died in 1778 and was buried in the Maze Pond Baptist Burial Ground in

Southwark, London, but the tiny congregation he established at Windmill

Street survived until the 1820s. Then, for a few decades there some small

and highly eccentric Rellyean Universalist societies in Dorset and Wiltshire

as well as Plymouth.76

Perhaps Relly's greatest impact on both Baptists and on the

Unitarians in America came as a result of his preaching to the congregation

at Coachmaker's Hall (Addle Street) in London from 1757-1764. There,

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according to the words of John Murray's autobiography, Relly was was

drawing the wrath of his former Wesleyean and Methodist colleagues,

because he was, according to the citation of James Hill, " a man black with

crimes; an atrocious offender, both in principle and practice. "77 It was when

Relly was preaching here, that young John Murray was captured by the

appealing presentation of a pretty young woman who was one of Relly's

disciples, who according to Unitarian legend, confounded him with her

theological insight and logical acumen.78 In reading the actual account,

however, one is more inclined to think of a lonely college student or

seminarian confronted by the seductive inticements of a gorgeous Jehovah's

Witness or a Unitarian wench in a secluded chapel. The logic consists purely

in the equivocation of terms about faith and failure to observe the forensic

character of the Biblical presentation of Christ's death on behalf of sinful

man.

But now let the reader turn his attention briefly to John Murray

himself, who would soon leave the sorrows of old England and go to new

circumstances in America in 1770. The encyclopedias and handbooks

provide little in the way of Murray's early biography, but that he was born

somewhere near London in 1741 is certain. We do know that he was

converted in his youth by the preaching of the Methodists and that he was

trained in Anglican Calvinism. We also know from his autobiography that as

a brash young preacher he was taken in by the witness of a female

universalist ca. 1760. From his on account we also know that in 1769-1770

as he turned toward America, he had faced a series of personal tragedies,

including an arrest for debt and the loss of his wife and son. This made his

61

voyage desirable, but his coming to America was not itself without

tribulation. An Alantic storm forced his boat to make an unplanned landing

at Good-Luck Point on the coast of New Jersey. While there he happened

upon a group of congregational people and also a sympathetic audience of

baptist Quakers, especially Thomas Potter, who already had Universalist

sympathies from contact with some extreme dissenting Baptist sects in

Rhode Island.79 The events of their meeting and Murray's first sermon at the

Potter meeting-house has all the ear-marks of a "just so" story or sectarian

hagiography, but it is historically certain that John Murray preached there

on September 30, 1770 and this event marks perhaps the earliest conscious

efforts to promote Universalism in America.80

From this time onward until his death in 1815, Murray became one of

the leading itinerant evangelists of Universalism in New England as well as

New Jersey and New York, becoming for several years the pastor of the first

universalist church in America at Gloucester, Massachusetts (The

Independent Church of Christ, 1779). His work was significant enough that

General George Washington appointed him as chaplain for the Continential

troops of Rhode Island. Eventually, he was called to the pastorate of the

Universalist Society of Boston in 1793. Toward the end of his life, Murray's

journals and sermons were collected by his wife, Mrs. Judith Sargent Murray

and published by the Universalist Society.81 During his career, Murray

preached to some Baptist groups in America, and his ideas found a

harmonious chord among many of the General Baptists cum Unitarians who

followed William Vidler.82

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The last link to William Vidler and the ultimate demise of the General

Baptists of Britain was the American minister Elhanan Winchester, Jr. (1751-

1797). Winchester was the sixth generation descendent of Sir Henry Vane,

the fourth Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And like his father,

the elder Elhanan, the son had been a member of the Congregational

Church of Christ at Brookline, a liberal Calvinist body. The father himself,

however, had made a spiritual journey through many religious commitments,

from Separatist to Baptist, and even to Shaker (in Mother Ann Lee's

community in Harvard). The father had also been affected by the enthusiasm

of the Great Awakening in the 1740s. The son was a chip off the old block

and he was a child prodigy, largely self-taught, but a brilliant, inquistive

serious youth. When he was about nineteen years old, he was converted

under the ministry of a Joseph Jackson, a moderate evangelical Calvinist.

Afterwards, his denominational experience resembled his father's, and after

being for a time a Separatist (Puritan) type, he accepted the Baptist

teaching, and soon began to preach. Incidentally, one should mention that

though he only lived to be forty-six years old, he was married five times and

all of his unions were less than happy.83

Since Winchester through William Vidler had such a powerful effect

on the mature formation of both the American and British Unitarian-

Universalists and a definite connection to the General Baptists, his life shall

be examined in some level of detail. Elhanan began to preach almost

immediately after his conversion and about the same time (1769-1770), he

married his first wife, Alice Rogers of Rowley, Massachusetts. Together they

set out for his first pastorate in Virginia, where for a few years he was a

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successful Baptist preacher, holding to a moderate Calvinistic theological

viewpoint. Also, during this early period (ca. 1772-1773), Winchester

embraced the convictions of the open communion Baptists, and was himself

baptized by immersion in Canturbury, Connecticutt. Through these years, he

and his wife had four children, but either personal or religious quarrels

strained their marital bliss. Also sometime in this early period he returned to

Massachusetts, where he established a new Baptist church at Rehoboth and

during the same time became friends with Ezra Stiles, the President of Yale

College (who came to characterize him as " a loquacious and flaming

preacher "). He was also, for a short time devoted to the Particular Calvinist

Baptists and an avid reader of the London theologian, John Gill. During this

time he dismissed evangelism and appeals to the lost as foolish and

irreverent activities; this attitude, of course, prevented the New England

Baptists from ordaining Winchester as a Baptist evangelist. Then within two

years (1774-1776) he went from Rehoboth to Bellingham, then from there to

Grafton, and then to Hull, Massachusetts.84

In late 1774, Winchester was called to be the minister at the

Particular Baptist Church in a small town on the Pec Pec River in South

Carolina, where his first wife, Alice, died. He was only there for a few

months before returning to Boston, where he married his second wife, Sarah

Peck (from Rehoboth) in 1776. Then he went back for a couple of years to

his former church in Carolina where he began a practice of evangelizing the

Black slaves, something which was suspect in that culture. Winchester

himself, had strong convictions about the evils of slavery and he relentlessly

attacked the institution. His second wife, Sarah, died in 1778. Soon after,

64

Winchester married a third time, attracting a local lady, Sarah Luke.

Strangely, Sarah herself lived for less than a year (?). During this period

(until 1781) Winchester was caught up in the American Revolution, and was

an energetic supporter of political and religious freedom, even publishing on

behalf of the Charlestown Baptist Association a bold manifesto for religious

liberty in 1779. Then, in the same year, he returned to Boston, where he

preached under the auspices of Dr. Reverend Stillman and in his home

church of Brookline. At this time he even made a positive impression on

Isaac Backus, the great New England Baptist evangelist and recorder who is

said to have highly praised his efforts. Eventually, the Baptist Church of

Philadelphia called Winchester as their minister in 1780. Though his work

there was brief, due to his growing public pronouncements on universalism,

he did not terminate his work at the First Baptist Church until 1781.85

It was from his reading during these years of the works of a Robert

Stonehouse (an American follower of Murray ?) and even more importantly,

the works of Paul Siegvolck (pseudonym for George Klein-Nicholai), an

Eastern European Socinian and universalist, that the imminent Winchester

was finally won to the universalist heresy. Things came to a head in

Philadelphia in 1781 when Winchester's preaching and teaching had led to

his dismissal from the First Baptist congregation. Then, incidentally,

Winchester married a fourth time to Mary Morgan (what became of Sarah

Luke ?). After being expelled from the Baptists, he held services in the hall

of the University of Philadelphia until 1784, and then his congregation built

a new meeting house on Lombard Street. During the next few years he met

John Murray, the British Universalist, now pastor at Gloucester,

65

Massachusetts. Then, in 1785, Winchester, having completely renounced his

Calvinism and his evangelical Baptist heritage, supervised the establishment

of the first Universalist Meeting House for the Society of Universal Baptists

in Philadelphia. He also attended the first convention of Universalists in

Oxford, Massachusetts in the same year where he met Hosea Ballou, whose

work is mentioned in the footnotes.86 Winchester's influence was such at this

time that he received immense praise from Unitarians such as Drs. Benjamin

Rush and Richard Price, noteworthy ex-Congregationalists. Furthermore, by

1788, Winchester had published his famous (or infamous) treatise, The

Universal Restoration: Exhibited in a Series of Dialogues (London, 1778).

Winchester continued his preaching and lectures in Philadelphia from

1784-1787, and then he traveled to England, according to his own reliable

testimony, to where God had called him. Curiously, he lost his fourth wife,

Mary Morgan, somewhere along the way and, arrived in Liverpool with his

latest (fifth) wife, Mary Knowles, whom is reported to have been his most

miserable and tragic alliance. Here it is too that our journeyman universalist

apostle met William Vidler, a General Baptist pastor, and convinced this

younger man that God had given him a message to deliver there.87

Winchester preached first before the Universalist Society in Liverpool in

1787 and then occasionally in the General Baptist churches in Blackfields

and Moorfields, but after a short time these congregations were alerted to

his universalist doctrine and closed their doors to him. Even at this late time,

not all General Baptists, even Socinizing ones, had given up the traditional

understanding of Christ's atoning death and the reality of God's wrath on the

unsaved. Naturally, the Particular Calvinist Baptists scorned and denounced

66

both Winchester and Vidler for their views. However, Joshua Toulmin, a

Unitarian pastor of some fame, invited Elhanan Winchester to preach in the

Chapel in Southwark on Worship Street ; and so he preached there and in

any nearby hall where people would listen to his message. Soon, he also

proceeded to London and established there a congregation which became

quite large (400-500) and had to move to new quarters, becoming

Parliament Court Chapel on Artillery Lane in Bishopgate.88 One should note

in passing that Winchester not only had influence among the heretical

General Baptists who would became Unitarians, he made significant

contacts with other famous Unitarians such as Joseph Priestley, who

preached at the Gravel Pit Church in Hackney and who later immigrated to

Philadelphia in America to spread the message of "evangelical

Unitarianism" (something of a theological oxymoron, one thinks). Winchester

also was strongly supported by Dr. Richard Price, a famous British

intellectual ex-Presbyterian who ministered at both Newington Green and

the Gravel Pit churches as well as being instrumental in helping establish

two dissenting Academies, the most importment being at Warringon, which

led to the foundation of Manchester New College at Oxford. Winchester by

his connection to Price, became more intimate with George Washington,

Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson. Such connections

helped to establish his fame and win sympathy to his cause which

undoubtably impressed many wavering British and American Baptists, who

might have otherwise been alarmed at his Universalism and eventual

Unitarianism. But that much of spirit of Universalism was self-serving praise

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and humanistic rationalism is clear from the words of a contemporary

Bostonian admirer of Winchester :

It is important at this juncture to recognize what was so frightening about

the Gospel as understood by the Universalists. Why did so many more ortho-

dox bodies and believers go to such extremes to condemn Universalists, urge

the boycott of universalist persons and businesses, to flee from their theology

as from the devil ? [?!!, N.B.] Orthodoxy, particularly in its narrower Calvin-

ist forms, declared that those who did not believe in " an eternity of hell tor-

ments " for sinners had no reason to seek virture and avoid evil. They had no

no motivation to act justly, honorably, honestly. They could not be trusted in

any office or appointment. Since they had no motivation for rectitude they

should be excluded from all public trust and public life. Indeed it was but a

short step to seeing them as minions of the devil, Satan’s own troops, malig-

nant, dissipate, capable of every form of viciousness and dishonesty. It was

not easy to be a professed universalist. The American Universalist movement

generally responded with great good humor - how else could they embody the Gospel of Eternal Love and not fall into bitterness ? They loved to

speak of the Calvinist's "Glad Tidings of Endless Damnation." Calvinism was

the ultimate blasphemy against God to Universalists, with its God of double

pre-destination and eternal vengeance. This was not Jesus' Gospel, they

declared, and it was not theirs ! 88

Much of the paragraph above is trumphed up resentment and self-

serving balderdash, weak in both philosophical logic and theological self-

consistency. But chiefly, it ignores that fact that it was Jesus Christ himself

in the Gospels, speaking to his intimate group of disciples and his enemies

among the unbelieving Jews (e.g. the Pharisees and Sadducees), who spoke

more than 80 % of what the New Testament teaches on hell. He clearly

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warned many people that they were in danger of it. The Apostle Paul in

Romans and his other Epistles merely connected the danger of eternal

damnation to Adam's original sin. But Unitarian-Universalists have always

ignored careful exegesis of these majority texts and focused on rather

slanted and rationalistic interpretations of obscure passages out of context.

So, the "God" of Robert Relly, John Murray, Elhanan Winchester, and

William Vidler tends to be mild-mannered deity of limited holiness and

mushy compassion without much way of either glory or righteousness. He is

certainly not the God of the Bible, the holy Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,

and God whom the original Baptists trusted in.

But now, it is necessary to hurry to see the role of Winchester on

William Vidler and how this set the stage for the first half of the nineteenth

century for orthodox Baptists (like the New Connection of Daniel Taylor and

the Particular Baptists represented by Robert Hall and Charles Spurgeon)

and their conflict with those who really had ceased to be true Baptists and

became full-bodies Unitarians. For by 1803, at the latest, most of the Old

General Baptist body had been totally metastasized by the cancer of

Socinianism, and with the new element of the Universalist heresy, the

spiritual transformation into the Unitarian-Universalist "Association" was

tragically completed.

Who was William Vidler? According to the Dictionary of Unitarian &

Universalist Biography which is found on the main British Unitarian-

Universalist website, " William Vidler (1758-1816), a British Universalist and

Unitarian preacher and publisher, was a disciple and colleague of Elhanan

Winchester. Together with Unitarian missionary Richard Wright, Vidler

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played a significant role in establishing institutional features British

Unitarians continue to use."90

Vidler was born at Battle in Sussex, in southern England, inland from

Hastings, the youngest of ten children. His father, John Vidler, was a

stonemason, and from a young age the lad was apprenticed to him in the

trade despite the fact that he was somewhat weakly and asthmatic. William

Vidler, like some other dissenters of the eighteenth century, was a self-

educated and studious young person. In 1776, when William was eighteen

years old, he heard George Gilbert preach a revival at Battle and he was

challenged to accept Christ and be converted. After this, the young Vidler

joined an independent Calvinist Church which was newly organized. Within

the next year, he himself began preaching to others. Around 1780, he

William became convinced of believer's baptism and was immersed in a

nearby river by Thomas Purdy, a Baptist minister at Rye. Because they were

impressed by his sincerity and zeal, the Battle church re-organized as a

Particular Baptist Church and called Vidler as their minister. Although

untrained at college or seminary, the young Vidler had taught himself to be

fluent in both Greek and Latin, and he had read much in the literature of the

Dissenters. During the time that Vidler pastored at Battle, he continued his

trade as a stonemason; nevertheless, the membership increased from 15 to

150 in a few years. Needing more space the congregation bought and pulled

down a decrepit Presbyterian chapel and erected a new building which left

them with a significant debt for the time, L 160.91

From 1791 until 1794 Vidler traveled afield to collect funds to help

pay off his congregation's debt. It was either before or perhaps during this

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time that he began to solemnly ponder over " serious thoughts of the

Godhead of Christ and the eternity of hell torments." Probably, he had begun

to consider these issues as early as 1784, but his initial doubts about the

orthodox doctrines grew conscious and strong after he read Winchester's

Dialogues on The Universal Restoration, published in 1788. And even though

he had a friendly encounter with Andrew Fuller at Northampton when he

attended the Baptist Missionary Society conference there, he was not

entirely enthralled with the latter's moderate Calvinism. But over a period of

weeks or months, Fuller lost patience with Vidler because of his hastily

growing radical views on theology. Furthermore, as Vidler made his journey

through Lincolnshire, he encounted followers of Elhanan Winchester among

the General Baptists in Fleet and Luton. So, by the time he made his first

circuit back to the Battle Church, he was thoroughly convinced of the

universal restoration of all humankind to God. Thus he wrote in his journal

for August 22, 1792: “ It is long since I wrote anything of the state of my

soul . . . . I have lately been much stirred up again by reading R. Winchester

on the final restoration of all things, which doctrine . . . I am constrained to

say I believe. " 92

During 1792-1794 Vidler strengthed his theological and personal ties

with Winchester. Previously, he had preached many times for Winchester at

Parliament Court Church, and in 1794 he actually became Winchester's

assistant at this Universalist Chapel in Artillery Lane, London. (In the latter

nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth the Parliament Court

became Sandys Row Synagogue). In 1795 Winchester decided to return to

America, and Vidler became his chosen successor there. His influential

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ministry at Parliament Court Chapel was to last twenty years and it would

carry the congregation there as well as several other General Baptists, into

the Unitarian fold.93 Working with John Teulon, Vidler also opened a London

book shop in the Stand in 1796, where he distributed Universalist literature.

The two friends also cooperated from 1797 onward to publish a periodical,

The Universalists' Miscellany, which became an important turning point for

the later Unitarian missionary, Richard Wright (1764-1836). Wright had

been a pastor for the ancient General Baptist Church at Wisbech, and

Vidler's publications led Wright to embrace the universalist message.

Conversely, Wright's friendship with Vidler moved the latter in the direction

of Unitarianism.

This new development divided the Parliament Court congregation

and by 1801-1803, the majority had embraced Unitarian-Universalism. It

was the trauma of this unresolved division was extended to the General

Baptist Assembly which the Parliament Court congregation formally joined

in 1803.94 Later, in 1806 both William Vidler and Richard Wright became

ardent supporters of the Unitarian Fund. As a result of these early

nineteenth century efforts British Universalists (many whom had begun as

either Baptist or Presbyterians) became absorbed and eclipsed by the British

Unitarians.95

Thus, by 1798-1800 Vidler had become an enthusiastic propagandist

of both Unitarian and Universalist doctrines, and he helped to foster in the

opening years of the nineteenth century new Unitarian-Universalist societies

in a large number of English counties and cities: Northiam, Rye, Steyning in

Sussex, Reading in Berkshire, (old) Boston, and several of the North

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Marches of Lincolnshire. With the assistance of Richard Wright he also

founded The Unitarian Evangelical Society in 1804, as related above, the

Unitarian Fund in 1806, and wrote many Unitarian publications. From these

humble beginnings, came the amalgamation of the British and Foreign

Unitarian Association in 1825, and this prepared for the General Assembly of

the Unitarian and Free Christian Churches which was to be established in

5106L.G. Champion, " Baptist Church Life in the Twentieth Century: Some Personal Reflections, " in Clements, p. 4, cited in The Baptist Heritage, Ibid.107See McBeth, The Baptist Heritage, p. 303. A.C. Underwood in A History of The English Baptists, pp. 229-233 views this differently, as Underwood more or less sides with the sentiments of John Clifford (1836-1923). 5108The Miscellaneous Works and Remains of the Rev. Robert Hall with A Memoir of His Life. Edited by Olinthius Gregory, LL.D. and with A Critical Estimate of his Character and Writings by John Foster (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1849), p. 21. See also his insightful remarks on Socinians and Unitarians in his "Review of Gregory's Letters, " pp. 539-540.5

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6Written by Joseph David Rhodes for Baptist History (HT 3110) taught by Dr. Michael McMuellen, M.A., M.Div., Ph.D. (Aberdeen University). A course in the M. Divinity program taken at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in the Spring of 2003. ( This was the major term paper for the course and I

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1928. This latter organization still exists as the major Socinian/Unitarian

body in the British world today.96

Again, the ironic processes of history seemed to have transpired with

Vidler's own congregation. Having already moved from a moderate Calvinist

Baptist position to extreme Arminianism and then to Universalism and

Unitarianism, the Parliament Court Church itself eventually moved beyond

any semblance of Biblical Christianity. First, under the leadership of Vidler,

it moved to Unitarian-Universalism in the first two decades of the nineteenth

century. Then, in 1824 the Church facilities were physically relocated from

Artillery Lane to South Place Chapel, Finsbury (near present-day Liverpool

Street Station). But, more significantly, in the later part of the century what

remained of the congregation changed their affliation name to " The South

Place Ethical Society." Finally, this society relocated once more in 1927 to

Conway Hall, Red Lion Square. If spiritual symbolism has any meaning,

Vidler's church, becoming Unitarian in the beginning of the century, became

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flagrantly anti-Christian at the end of the 1800s. Another way of saying this

is that those who were once followers of the Lamb, and the Lion of Judah, in

time became followers of His adversary, " the Devil, who as a roaring lion,

walketh about, seeking whom he may devour. "97

Vidler wrote and published two tracts which were quite significant in

the literature of Unitarianism. The first is entitled, In God's Love to His

Creatures (published in London, 1799), and he taught in this book that God's

redemptive love extends even to animals (New Agers who are animal right's

advocates and radical enviromentalists love this one!). In his Letters to Mr.

Fuller on the Universal Restoration (London, 1803), Vidler recorded his side

of the controversy with the moderate Calvinists concerning universal

salvation. He also edited and published a new edition of Paul Siegvolk's

treatise, The Everlasting Gospel (1795) and his master Elhanan Winchester's

Dialogues on the Universal Restoration with a Memoir of its author (1799).

In support of his new anti-Trinitarianism, he published Nathaniel Scarlett's A

translation of the New Testament from the original Greek (1798).

It should be noted, finally that both William Vidler and Richard

Wright, who had begun their careers as General Baptist preachers of rather

humble origins, became the only official and paid Unitarian evangelists to

scour the entire country for the cause of Unitarian-Universalism. This is

especially true of Wright, who spread the New Gospel of Unitarian-

Universalism [?] from " Land's End to John o' Groats " or from the

southeastern tip of Britain to the northeastern tip of Scotland in his

evangelistic mission efforts.98

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*************

A.C. Underwood, a sensible commentator, has correctly described the

demise of the Old "General Baptists" in these terms:

. . . Thereafter [after 1803], the two General Baptists bodies followed widely di-

verging paths. The old Assembly may now drop out of our story, having virtually

Unitarian. It still meets regularly and retains its old title for legal purposes, but it

has no connexion with present-day Baptists. At various dates the churches in mem-

bership with it relinquished baptism by immersion. Thus, for example, the ancient

Baptist Church at Horsham, now called "Free Christian," has a baptistry which was

last used about 1849. For a short time admission to church-membership was effect-

ed by imposition of hands, but that rite is no longer used.99

Two other great examples of once-splendid and spiritually dynamic

General Baptist churches which died because of the infection of Socinianism

(Unitarianism) are the Barbican Church in Paul's Alley, once wealthy and

center of Baptist life and the Pinner's Hall in London. After the non-

subscription of Joseph Burroughs and James Foster at Salters' Hall in 1719,

the Barbican Church lasted only about a generation, for after some

remarkable doctrinal flucuations, it dissolved in 1768. Likewise, Pinner's

Hall, originally built by a refugee family of Calvinistic Hugenots in the reign

of Elizabeth I and refurbished and redecorated by the pious Hollis family in

the early seventeenth century - once a center for zealous and Scriptural

Baptists, became after passing into the Socinian orbit (also influenced by

Rev. Foster) weak and ineffectual. The congregation disbanded in 1778,

following the expiration of the lease.100

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Another Baptist church existed at Bermondsey from about 1733 in the

Snowfields. Originally, it had been a Methodist chapel, but in 1772 it

became an open communion church under Baptist pastor, Rev. John Hughes

(d. 1774). Yet, Rippon ceased to mention it after 1794. Then from 1796-

1800 it was led by Samuel Mansell, an Arian Baptist. It became extinct in

1814.101 There was another Baptist church in Bermondsey, built by John

Dolman at Gainsford Street, Blackfields in 1754, also an open-communion

body. It was reorganized by John Langford in 1766-1777. Then in 1778 until

1820, it became Pedobaptist under the guidance of Michael Brown.

Afterwards, it became Unitarian.102

We have already seen how under the leadership of Vidler, the Baptist

Church at Battle (originally Particular Baptist) became Unitarian, and how

from the work of Richard Wright of Wisbech that General Baptist Church

became an outpost of the same heresy. Numerous other places, Stone

Chapel, the Gravel Pit Church, the Eagle Street Church, Grafton Street

Church, and so many others were troubled by Socinianism and Unitarianism

and some that succumbed to it.103

At this point in the research of this writer there has not been time to

run down all of the historically significant General Baptist churches which

turned Socinian or Unitarian-Universalist eventually. Certainly many old

smaller General Baptist (and for that matter, Particular Baptist) churches in

England died of the "natural causes" of demographic change and simple

numerical decline from either lack of evangelical zeal, overwhelming

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secularism or both. For instance, W.T. Whitley wrote in 1928 of 856 Baptist

churches being founded in the London area since 1612, but in 1928 or

immediately thereafter there only 416 which he lists in the following

categories:

A. 228 Churches in the London Baptist Association .

B. 50 Churches in the Metropolitan Association of

Strict Baptists.

C. 27 Churches with the Gospel Standard Societies.

D. 56 Churches in the Home Counties Association.

E. 13 Churches in the Old Baptist Union.

F. 8 Churches in Essex.

G. 12 Churches in the Herts.

H. 7 Churches in Kent and Sussex.

I. 16 Isolated Churches. 104

Some of the most shocking statistics about Baptist decline have come

in the last twenty-five to thirty years. According to Leon Mc Beth, " One of

the most persistent and puzzling problems facing English Baptists in the

twentieth century has been their steady numerical decline, which since 1906

has been consistent and sometimes dramatic. "105 He also cites some

disturbing statistics which place Dr. Whitley's roster of London churches in

1928 in larger perspective:

In 1921 there were 3068 churches in the Baptist Union with a total member-

ship of 442, 000; in 1981 there were 2058 churches with a total membership of

170,000. A 57 % decline in membership. In 1921 our Sunday Schools had 518,

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000 scholars; in 1981, 157,000, a decline of 70 %106

As this paper is brought finally to a conclusion, this writer cannot help

but believe that between 1870 and 1928, something drastic happened to

both the remainder of the General Baptists and the Particular Baptists as

represented in the Baptist Union in England. Much transpired between the

emergence of full-blown Unitarian-Universalism in the early nineteenth

century and the decline of overall Baptist influence in Britain after the first

quarter of the twentieth century. At the present time, this writer's theory is

that "Downgrade Controversy" among the Baptists in the 1880s and 1890s

which was symbolically represented in the personalities of Charles H.

Spurgeon and John Clifford was linked to the earlier Socinian/Unitarian

controversies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The writer also

tends to agree with the conservative view that the seeds of the controversy

began in the 1870s when doctrinal indifference began to affect the Baptist

Union. One speculates over the effects of ideas which may have indeed had

their source among Unitarian-Universalists and Liberals which subtly

infected even the more orthodox Baptists. Charles H. Spurgeon, who

certainly was no fool and an astute observer of Baptists, charged that many

Baptist pastors in the British Baptist Union held Socinian views of Christ,

Universalistic ideas of salvation, and infidel views of the inspiration of

Scripture.107 And, again, in light of what this writer has read about the

Darwinian revolution after 1859, the rise of naturalistic and negative Biblical

criticism of the Bible from 1750-1950, and the numerous philosophical

attacks on Christianity and the Bible for the last hundred and seventy-five

years, Spurgeon looks quite visionary in his stubborness. Some of his

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rhetoric and his particular suspicions may have been wrong, but in light of

the destructive precedent of Socinianism among the Baptists in the two

centuries before, his general premises appear to be totally valid. Simply put,

when one begins to doubt matters such as the verbal inspiration of

Scripture, the doctrines of the deity and humanity of Christ, or the penal

subsitutionary atonement of our Lord, Christianity gets replaced by a new

Gospel and an anti-Christian system of thought. Jesus and His true Apostles

seemed to have predicted it long ago in sundry places in the New Testament

(Matthew 24; 2 Corinthians 11: 3-15; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12; 2 Timothy 3:1-

17; 2 Peter 3:1-18; 1 John 4:2,3; Jude 3-4; Revelation 2:1-7).

Faithful Baptists, who are first faithful Christians (as Thomas Monk,

Jr. would plead for) must make the defense of their Lord's person and work

their chief concern, even while loving the souls of those lost in modern

infidelity and cultism. One is reminded of how that illustrious champion of

Biblical Christian orthodoxy, the Reverend John Hall, Jr. (1764-1831) once

answered a Socinian well-wisher who mistook his kind remarks for the

character and integrity of Dr. Joseph Priestley as an endorsement of his

theological errors:

On one of these occasions, Mr. Hall having, in his usual terms, panegyrized

Dr. Priestley, a gentleman who held the Doctor's theological opinions, tapping

Mr. Hall upon the shoulder with an indelicate freedom from which he recoiled,

said, " Ah, sir, we shall have you among us soon, I see. " Mr. Hall, startled and

offended by the rude tone of exultation in which this was uttered, hastily re-plied, "Me amongst you, sir! Me amongst you ! Why, if that were ever the

case, I should deserve to be tied to the tail of the great red dragon, and whipped

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the nethermost regions [of hell] to all eternity. "108

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