The rise of any considerable body of opinion opposed to the cardinal
dogma of orthodoxy was preceded in England by a very strongly marked
effort to secure liberty of thought, and a corresponding plea for a
broadly comprehensive religious fellowship. The culmination of this
effort, is reached, for the period first, to be reviewed, in the
writings of _John Locke_ (1632-1704). This celebrated man, by his
powerful arguments for religious toleration and his defence of the
'reasonableness' of the Christian religion, exerted an influence of the
most important kind. But we must reach him by the path of his
predecessors in the same line. The principles of liberty of thought and
the broadest religious fellowship are warmly espoused by Unitarians, and
they look upon all who have advanced these principles as in spirit
related to them, however different their respective theological
conclusions may have been.
At the time of the Reformation a great deal of speculation broke forth
on points hitherto closed by the Church's authority, including the
fundamental doctrine of the Trinity. But, while this new ferment led to
departures from the received opinions in many countries, especially in
Poland and the Netherlands, the Protestant leaders maintained that upon
the great articles of the creeds they were still one with Rome, and in
fact they soon displayed an eagerness to stifle heresy. Men often fail
to see the logic of their own position, and many who claimed the right
to differ from Rome on points which Rome considered vital were unable to
grant that others had an equal right to differ from Luther, Calvin, or
an English State Church. The outrageous cruelty of Calvin towards the
Anti-trinitarian _Servetus_, whom he caused to be burned at Geneva in
1553, affords a glaring instance of this inconsistency. But a sad proof
is given that, about that time, even Anti-trinitarians themselves were
not always tolerant.
Among the countries where the orthodox dogma was most freely questioned
was Transylvania, adjacent to Hungary proper.
Here the sovereign, John Sigismund, took sides with the
Anti-trinitarians, and issued in 1568 an edict permitting four
recognized types of doctrine and worship--Romanist, Lutheran, Calvinist,
and Unitarian. The Transylvanians were at this time largely under the
influence of their Polish brethren in the faith, who still practised the
invocation of Christ. _Francis David_, a powerful religious leader in
Hungary, having arrived at a 'Humanitarian' view of Christ two centuries
before it was held by English Unitarians, opposed Christ-worship. In
1579, when a Catholic had succeeded to the throne, David was denounced
for an intolerable heretic by the Polish party, and, being imprisoned,
died the same year. This blot on the record has long been deplored, and
David is held in honour as a martyr by the Transylvanian Unitarian
Church, which still flourishes, and forms a third member in alliance
with the Unitarians of Great Britain and America. As, however, these
Transylvanian (popularly called 'Hungarian') Unitarians had until the
nineteenth century little or no connection with the English and
Americans, and have not materially affected the development of the
movement, we omit the details of their special history.
In England a number of Anti-trinitarians suffered burning in the
sixteenth century, being usually, but loosely, described as 'Arians.'
The last two in England who died by fire as heretics were men of this
class. In March, 1612, Bartholomew Legate was burned at Smithfield, and
a month later Edward Wightman had the same fate at Lichfield. So late as
1697 a youth named Pakenham was hanged at Edinburgh on the charge of
heretical blasphemy. Although these were the only executions of the kind
here in the seventeenth century, the evidence is but too clear that the
authorities conceived it to be their duty to put down this form of
opinion with the severest rigour. In a letter sent by Archbishop Neile,
of York, to Bishop Laud, in 1639, reference is made to Wightman's case,
and it is stated that another man, one Trendall, deserves the same
sentence. A few years later, Paul Best, a scholarly gentleman who had
travelled in Poland and Transylvania and there adopted Anti-trinitarian
views, was sentenced by vote of the House of Commons to be hanged for
denying the Trinity. The Ordinance drawn up in 1648 by the Puritan
authorities was incredibly vindictive against what they judged to be
heretical. Happily, Oliver Cromwell and his Independents were conscious
of considerable variety of opinion in their own ranks, and apparently
the Protector secured Best's liberation. It was certainly he who saved
another and more memorable Unitarian from the extreme penalty.
This man was _John Bidle_, a clergyman and schoolmaster of Gloucester.
His Biblical studies led him to a denial of the Trinity, which he lost
no occasion of making public. During twenty years, broken by five or six
imprisonments, he persisted in the effort to diffuse Unitarian
teachings, and even to organize services for Unitarian worship. His
writings and personal influence were so widely recognized that it became
a fashion later to speak of Unitarians as 'Bidellians.' Cromwell was
evidently troubled about him, feeling repugnance to his doctrine yet
averse to ill-treat a man of unblemished character. In 1655, ten years
after Bidle's first imprisonment, the Protector sent him to the Scilly
Islands, obviously to spare him a worse fate, and allowed him a yearly
sum for maintenance. A few months before Cromwell's death, he was
brought back to London, and on being set at liberty at once renewed his
efforts. Finally, he was caught 'conventicling' in 1662 and sent to
gaol, and in September of that year he died.