UNITARIANISM
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UNITARIANISM
craving heart of thoughtful Italy. He there says, " I have made choice of Chaniiing as the most eloquent witness and an irrefragable proof of the new evolution of Christian thought in the world, and of the reform which is in process of initiation in human religiousness ; because in the story of his career, and in the fortunes of his books, in the marvel of their rapid diffusion in all corners of the civilized earth, is to be seen the most lu- minous and triumphant proof of the reality of that movement Avhich is inwardly transforming European society, and bringing it, little by little, to worship un- der the roof of a new temple, that Church really cath- olic, whose frontal shall bear, without untruth, the in- scription 'To the One God,' which Mazzini hailed on the facades of the Unitarian churches of Hungary."
4. In France, reporting two million Protestants, since the martyrdom of Dolet in Paris, no specific Unitarian movement has been known. But during the last fifty years, in the Reformed Church, which is mostly Trin- itarian, has been a growing liberal party ; among whom the Coquerels, father and son, Martin Paschoud, Fon- tanes, Colani, Vincent, and the present liberal Parisian pastor Auguste Dide have substantially represented Un- itarianism. Their papers were formerly Le Beformateur, and Le Disciple de Jesus, and at present La Renaissance. Says Renan, in a brilliant essay on Channing in 1863, "France has rejected Protestantism. She is the most orthodox country in the world, because she is the most indifferent in religious matters."
5. In Switzerland, where the early Unitarian mar- tyrs (Hetzer, at Zurich, in 1529, and Servctus, at Gene- va, in 1553) paid the penalty of their lives, the spirit of liberty in Church as in State has prevailed ; and, with- out separate formal organization. Unitarian sentiments, from the first, have been steadily held. The Swiss Church has been committed to no dogmatic declaration, but only " to preach purely and fully the Word of God as contained in the Holy Scriptures." The Genevan Church, in general, denies the equality of the Son Avith the Father, and the Godhead of the Messiah. Tlie cor- respondent of the Evangelical Christendom, Feb. 1, 1875, says, "The Grand Council of Basle, on the question of the Deity of Christ, on May 2, 1871, decided in the neg- ative by a vote of sixty-three voices against forty-eight." Etienne Chastel, professor of ecclesiastical history at Geneva, is among Channing's most ardent admirers. French Switzerland has itself produced two great lib- erals, Samuel Vincent and Alexander Vinet, who were largely in sympathy with Unitarian thought.
6. Holland, like Switzerland and America, always hospitable to those who are exiles for conscience, has never been wanting in representatives of a free theolo- gy. Of its two and a half million Protestants, about four fifths belong to the Reformed Church ; which, again, has its two parties of Orthodox and Moderns. Since the burning of Flekwyk, a Dutch Baptist, for his denial of the Trinity in 15G9, there has been continued progress. In a popular religious work by Dr. Matthes, it is a sig- nificant fact that the chapter on God has no allusion to the Trinity; but at the close occurs a fopt-note in which, with the calm spirit of the historian rather than that of the controversialist, he speaks of '• the antiquated doc- trine of the Trinity." The creed adopted at the Synod of Dort in 1G18 has given place to the acceptance of the Bible as the standard of faith, together with the tolera- tion and diversity of sentiment which are sure to follow.
7. Germany, that gave the world, along with Luther, some of the tirst Unitarian reformers, during the suc- ceeding three and a half centuries, without any distinct- ly organized Unitarian movement, has, with its noted scholarship and philosophy, produced all shades of ra- tionalism, from extreme orthodoxy to extreme unbe- lief. In South Germany, governmental statistics of 1861 report 325,000 Unitarians. Says Dr. Beard, " The Trinity subsists among the learned of Germany only in name. The patristical doctrine has been attenuated to a shadow or reduced to nothing; if brought down into
scriptural form it is abandoned; if converted into three 'somewhats,' it is no longer such as the creeds declare or their advocates recognise. The doctrine once taught and held for an essential article of Christian faith is vir- tuall)' repudiated and silently disowned." A translation of Channing's complete works, by Sydow and Schultze, was published in Berlin in 1850. After that, the chev- alier Bunsen, in his God in Ilistori/, speaks of Channing as "a grand Christian saint and man of God— nay, also a prophet of the Christian consciousness regarding the future." The Protestanten-Verein of Germany, estab- lished at Eisenach in 1865, a free Union Association, holding annual conference sessions, though not organ- ized on a dogmatic basis and not professedly Unitarian, welcomes and cherishes fellowship and sympathy with the Unitarians of England and America.
8. In Poland the Unitarian faith early took a firm hold and spread rapidly, aided by refugees who there found a hospitable asylum. Yet it was not without persecution at the start. In 1539, in the market-place in Cracow, was burned Katharine Vogel at the age of eighty, wife of a goldsmith and alderman, condemned for denying tlie Deity of Christ and affirming the divine unity. In 1552 the Bible was translated, chiefly by Unitarian scholars, into the Polish language. Hither came Faustus Socinus, around whom flocked converts from all ranks and classes of society, among them many of the nobility. These, protected from persecution by the privileges of their rank, proved especially favorable to a movement which, more than any other of the time, seemed destructive of the traditions and prestige of the Romish Church. The prosperous commercial city of Racow, with its large printing establishment publishing many of the best books of the da}^, became its head- quarters. Here was issued the famous Racovian Cate- chism, which became widely known and influential, and was afterwards signallj' burned in London. King Sig- ismund II became a convert, and during his reign this party of reformers grew strong enough to form a church of their own. For a century it flourished, till, in 1660, prince Casimir, a cardinal and a Jesuit, coming to the throne, with unrelenting persecution burned the homes of its adherents, drove them into silence, exile, or death. So effectually did he exterminate it, and with it the spirit of libert}' in the state as in religion, that it maj' fairly be said that Jesuit tyranny at once obliterated a church and a nation.