II. The Middle Ages. — There arc few traces of Anti- trinitarian doctrines in the church history of the Mid- dle Ages. Amalric of Bena, and his disciple, David of Dinanto, regarded the names of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as expressions for three different ages of the world. The Paulicians, the Catharists, and soma other sects, revived, with other Gnostic and Manichse- an heresies, also those concerning the Trinity.
III. The Time of the Reformation. — The rationalistic element, concealed and suppressed by the Church of Rome, came to the surface naturally at the period of the Reformation. The Anabaptist attack on practical points coincided in time, and partly in the men them- selves, with the theoretical attack on the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. To the first Antitrinitarians of this period belongs Johannes Denk (died 1528), who regarded the "Logos" as the totality of all human souls, which received its highest development in Je- sus. He denied consistently the pre-existence of the Logos, the divinity of Christ, and the Trinity. Hetzer, who was executed at Basel in 1529, seems to have been a disciple of Denk. Campanus, who died in prison at Cleves, was more attached to Arian views. He re- garded the relation of the Father to the " Logos" as a kind of marital relation, and the Holy Ghost as an impersonal emanation from both. The views of Da- vid Georsjs or Joris, of Delft, in Holland, were inter- mediate between Sabellianism and the Pantheism of Amalric of Bena. He regarded God as an undivided unity and as impersonal, but as having become man in three persons, Moses, Elias, Christ or Moses, Christ, David (himself), corresponding to three ages of the world. Servetus, who was burned in 1529, sought to unite Sabellianism with the teachings of Paul of Sa- mosata. God, as undivided unity, is the Father ; as descending upon the man Jesus, he is* the "Logos;" Jesus, pervaded by the " Logos," is the Son ; God, as the power which penetrates all creatures, and espe- cially the human soul, is called the Holy Ghost. Later he modified his views, and represented God as the es- sence of all things ; the Logos as the self-revelation of God, and including within himself the ideas of all other things; and the Holy Ghost as the self-commu- nication of God to the creatures, and as identical with the world-soul. All the Antitrinitarians of this period thus far mentioned were more or less addicted to a pantheistic mysticism, and in their views concerning the Trinity agreed more with Sabellius than with Arius. One of the first prominent representatives of a rationalistic Antitrinitarianism was Gribaldo, a learned Italian jurist, who maintained that the Son was an- other God of the same nature, but derived from the Father. This doctrine of three gods of unequal rank was completod by Gentilis, a Calabriaa. The adhe-
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rents of Antitrinitarian views in the Reformed Church of Poland were expelled in 15G5, and have since been known as Unitarians (q. v.). They honored Jesus simply as a man, but one who was richly endowed by God, "and exalted for dominion over the whole world. Most of them paid adoration to him. The Unitarians were organized as a community, and received a com- plete system of doctrine from Faustus Socinus (q. v.), who carried out the views first set forth by his uncle, La?lius Socinus, an Italian nobleman. The principal article of his system was an attempt at an accommoda- tion between different parties by the doctrine that, al- though Jesus was born a mere man, he was neverthe- less without any earthly father, and was wonderfully endowed by God ; was taken up into heaven, and the reward of his life was deified, that he might be a me- diator to bring man, alienated from God by sin, to the knowledge and grace of God, and that he might reign as the king of his people in all periods of time. The Freethinkers, Deists, and Rationalists were, of course, all Antitrinitarians. In Germany, Seebach and Dip- pel were prominent by their opposition to the doctrine of the Trinity ; in England, Winston, Clarke, Lindsey, and Priestly. Owing especially to this influence, Uni- tarian congregations were organized in England at the close of the 18th century. In the United States the spreading of Rationalism, especially among the Con- gregationalists, led, in 1815, to a formal separation, and the organization of a Unitarian denomination. With them another religious denomination, who simply call themselves Christians, as well as the Universalists, and a seceding portion of the Society of Friends (the " Hicksites"), agree in the distinctive article of their faith. Swedenborg substituted for the doctrine of the Trinity a threefold revelation of the one God, who was obliged to become man that he might give a human character to the doctrines of faith, and drive back the powers of hell. Several denominations, as the Disci- ples, Mennonites, Quakers, and others, without reject- ing the divinity of Christ, or explaining his relation to the Father, are opposed to the expression Trinity, as not being used by the Bible.
In Germnii}r, Sabellianism has found man}' admirers in the school of speculative theology. Schleiermacher, in particular, was of opinion that Sabellianism both avoided the difficulties of the church doctrine, which he regarded as insoluble, and yet satisfied the nat- ural desire of the Christian to attribute to Christ the highest predicate without endangering Monotheism (Christliche Ghmbemlthre, 2d ed. ii, 532). Many new attempts were made to advocate a Trinitarian idea of God in a sense entirely different from that of the church doctrine. We refer to them more fully in the article Trinity. See Lange, Gesck'chte der Unitarier vor der nic. Synode (Leips. 1831, 8vo) ; Bock, Historia Antitrinitariorum (Kcenigsberg, 1774-84, 2 vols. 8vo) ; Trechsel, Die Protestant. Antitrin. vor F. Socin (Heidelb. 1839, 1844, 2 vols. 8vo) ; Hagenbach, Hist, of Doctrines, i, 131 ; ii, 210, 328, 478 ; Wallace, Antitrin. Biog. (Lond. 1850, 3 vols. 8vo) ; Shedd, Hist, of Doctrines, i, 254 sq. ; Schaff, Ch. Hist, i, 287 sq. See Christology.