Those Avho have formerly communicated their thoughts and oliscrvations to us on tliis subject liave commonly given rise to their discourses from Servetus, with the transactions about him in Helvetia, and the ending of hi.s tragedy at Geneva. The things of him being commonly known, and
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my design being to deal with them in their chief seat and residence, where, after they had a while hovered about most nations of Europe, they settled themselves, I shall forbear to pursue them up and down in their flight, and meet with them only at their nest in Poland and the regions adjoining. The leaders of them had most of them separated themselves from the Papacy on pretence of embracing the reformed religion ; and under that covert were a long time sheltered from violence, and got many advantages of insinuating their abominations (which they were tho- roughly drenclied withal before they left the Papacy) into the minds of many Avho professed the gospel.
The first open breach they made in Poland was in the year 1562 (some- thing having been attempted before), most of the leaders being Italians, men of subtile and serpentine wits. The chief leaders of them were Georgius Blandrata, Petrus Statorius, Franciscus Lismaninus; all which had been eminent in promoting the Reformation.^
Upon their fii*st tumultuating, Statorius, to whom afterwards Socinus wrote sundry epistles, and lived with him in great intimacy, was summoned to a meeting of ministers, upon an accusation that he denied that the Holy Spirit was to be invocated. Things being not yet ripe, the man knowing that if he were cast out by them he should not know where to obtain shelter, he secured himself by dissimulation, and subscribed this confes- sion : " I receive and reverence the prophetical and apostolical doctrine, containing the true knowledge of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and freely profess that God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, ought to be worshipped with the same religion or worship, distinctly or respectively, and to be invocated, according to the truth of the holy Scripture. And, lastly, I do plainly detest every heretical blasphemy concerning God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, whether it be Arian, Servetian, Eunoraian, or Stancarian."^ And this confession is to be seen in the acts of that con- vention, under his own hand, to this day ; which notwithstanding, he was a fierce opposer of the doctrine here professed all his days afterward.
And I the rather mention this, because I am not without too much ground of persuasion that tliousands of the same judgment with this man do at this day, by the like dissimulation, live and enjoy many advantages both in the Papacy and among the reformed churches, spreading the poison of their abominations as they can. This Statorius I find, by the fiequent mention made of him by Socinus, to have lived many years in Poland, with what end and issue of his life I know not, nor more of him but wliat is con- tained in Beza's two epistles to him, whose scholar he had been, when he seemed to ha^e had other opinions about the essence of God than those he afterward settled in by the instruction of Socinus.
And this man was one of the first heads of that multitude of men com- monly known by the name of Anabaptists among the Papists (who took notice of little but their outward worship), who, having entertained strange, wild, and blasphemous thoughts concerning the essence of God,
Lismaninus thcologite doctor, quorum tamcn ab initio opera reformatiouis valde fuit ecclesite Dei procliva."— Hist. Ecclcs. Slavon. lib. i. p. 8 k c. •
^ •'Prophcticametapostolicamdoctrinam, quae veram Dei Patris, Filii, etSpiritusSancti cognitionem continet, amplector ac vcncror, pariqxie rcligione Dcum Patrem, Filium, et Spiritum iSanctum distiucte secundum suciaium litcrarum veiitatcm coleiidum, implo- randumqiie precibus, liberc pi ofiteor. Dcnique omnem hrereticani de Deo Patre, Filio, et kSpiritu bancto blasphemiam, plane dcte.-tor, sive Ariana ilia, sive !>ervetiana, sive Euno- miana, sive ytancariaua."— Act. Ecclcs. Min. Pol. Syn. Pinczov. anno 1559.
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were afterward broiiglit to a kind of settlement by Soelnus, in that reli- gion he had prepared to serve them all ; and into his word at last con- sented the whole droves of Essentiators, Tritheists, Arians, and Sabellians, that swarmed in those days in Silesia, Moravia, and some other parts of Germany.
For Blandrata, his story is so well known, from the epistles of Calvin and Beza, and others, that I shall not insist much upon it. The sum of ■what is commonly known of him is collected by Hornbeck.
The records of the synods in Poland of the reformed churches give us somewhat farther of him ; as doth Socinus also against Weik. Being an excellent physician, he was entertained, at his first coming into Poland, by Prince Radzivil, the then great patron of the reformed religion in those parts of the world, — one of the same family with this captain-general of the Polonian forces for the great dukedom of Lithuania, a man of great success in many fights and battles against the Muscovites, continuing the same office to this day. To him Calvin instantly wrote, that he should take care of Blandrata, as a man not only inclinable to, but wholly infected with, Servetianism.^ In that, as in many other things he admo- nished men of by his epistles, that wise and diligent person had the fate to tell the truth and not be believed. See Calvin's epistles, about the year 1561. But the man on this occasion being sent to the meeting at Pinckzow (as Statorius), he subscribes this confession : —