The reader must be reminded here of a few salient facts in the religious
history of the seventeenth century. All these undercurrents of heterodox
thought, with but few and soon repressed public manifestations of its
presence, were obscured by the massive movement in Church and State.
During the Commonwealth the episcopal system was abolished, and a
presbyterian system substituted, though with difficulty and at best
imperfectly. After the Restoration of Charles II the Act of Uniformity
re-established episcopacy in a form made of set purpose as unacceptable
to the Puritans as possible. Thereupon arose the rivalry of Conformist
and Nonconformist which has ever since existed in England. Severely
repressive measures were tried, but failed to extinguish Nonconformity;
it stood irreconcilable outside the establishment. There were distinct
varieties in its ranks. The Presbyterians, once largely dominant, were
gradually overtaken numerically by the Independents. Perhaps it is
better to say that, in the circumstances of exclusion in which both were
situated, and the impossibility of maintaining a Presbyterian order and
organization, the dividing line between these two bodies of
Nonconformists naturally faded out. There was little, if anything, to
keep them apart on the score of doctrine; and in time the Presbyterians
certainly exhibited something of the tendency to variety of opinion
which had always marked the Independents. Besides these bodies, the
Baptists and Quakers stand out amid the sects comprised in
Nonconformity. In both of these there were distinct signs of
Anti-trinitarianism from time to time; as to the former, indeed, along
with the earlier Baptist movements in England and on the Continent
(especially in the Netherlands) there had always gone a streak of heresy
alarming to the authorities. Among the Quakers, William Penn is
specially notable in connection with our subject. In 1668 he was
imprisoned for publishing _The Sandy Foundation Shaken_, in which
Sabellian views were advocated. It need hardly be pointed out that among
the still more eccentric movements, if the term be allowed, heterodoxy
as to the Trinity was easy to trace.
When the Toleration Act was passed the old Nonconformity became
'Dissent,' that being the term used in the statute itself. Dissenters
were now granted freedom of worship and preaching, but only on condition
that their ministers subscribed to the doctrinal articles of the Church
of England, including, of course, belief in the Trinity. Unitarians,
therefore, were excluded from the benefit of the Act, and the general
views of Dissenters upon the subject are clear from the fact that they
took special care to have Unitarians ruled out from the liberty now
being achieved by themselves. Locke and other liberal men evidently
regretted this limitation, but the time was not ripe, and in fact the
penal law against Unitarians was not repealed till 1813. Unluckily, too,
for the Unitarians, a sharp controversy, due to their own zeal, had
broken out at the very time that the Toleration Act was shaping, and as
this had other important results we must give some attention to it.