THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 82
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character of love, and it is sought by growth through the exercise of the soul’s highest powers, in which God communicates himself to man. Denying all dogmatic limitations of the Church, Unitarians seek to realize as the chief end of human activity and the purpose of God’s universal fatherhood a perfect brotherhood of good will. They devote themselves, therefore, to philanthropic activities and cherish faith in the progressive development of all man’s higher possibilities. This faith in the possibility of a perfect humanity engages their energy in the promotion of culture and of higher social living as requisite for the fullest nurture of the religious spirit. Unitarians see in the life after death the further unfolding of the eternal life now experienced in obedience to the divine will revealed in the holiest human ideals.
In the early church Unitarian conceptions of God took the two forms of Sabellianism (see MonaRrcH- IANISM) and Adoptionism (q.v.). Only the latter
has analogies to modern Unitarianism. 2. Early and It conceived Jesus as-a man invested Medieval with the spirit of God and exalted Unitarian- through death and resurrection to diism. vine authority over the conscience of men. The believer was to be baptized as Christ was baptized, and to be adopted as he was adopted into sonship to God. The ascendency of the Logos Christology after 270 a.p. meant the defeat of Adoptionism in the Greek churches, but it had a continued life among the Paulicians (q.v.) of Armenia, and through their colonization of the Danube country (eighth and tenth centuries) found connection with the anti-ecclesiastical Evangelical movements of the West from the eleventh century onward. In the West also the early Adoptionism had some continuity of life in spite of the establishment of Nicene orthodoxy. Augustine was reared in this view and never lost the influence of it. There are traces of it in early British Christianity, and it was wide-spread in Spain even after ecclesiastics had attempted to reconcile it with the Nicene theology. The condemnation of Felix of Urgel by the Frankish Church (799 a.p.) and the later complete assimilation of the Spanish Church to Roman standards prevented the further development.
In the Reformation era reaction against the trinitarian dogma had sporadic manifestations, but in
Poland, partly under Italian influence
3. In (e.g., Georgius Blandrata, q.v.), it was Poland and one element in a concerted movement Hungary. to revise dogma by reason. After 1565 this rational Biblicism was the theol-
ogy of a strong group of Polish churches, and in 1575 obtained the leadership of Faustus Socinus and the impress of his theological scholarship (see Socinus, Faustus, Socinians). Under Sigismund I. and II. Poland enjoyed religious toleration, and the Polish Unitarian church (college at Racow after 1600) developed great activity. Jesuit aggression culminated in the suppression of the college and churches (1638), and finally (1658) in a decree for the expulsion of Socinians from the realm. The exiles were eventually absorbed in the churches of Germany, Holland, and Transylvania. Unitarianism found advocates in Hungary through the influence of the
Italian Stancarus (1553) and the Hungarian Aran (1558), and its progress was promoted by the accession to the throne of John Sigismund (1558) after years of exile spent at the Polish court and by the arrival of Blandrata from Poland as court physician. The chief leader of the movement was Franciscus Davidis (q.v.), who in 1556 had become head of the Lutheran church and college of the Magyar capital of Koloszvgr, and ten years later, when royal chaplain, adopted Unitarian doctrines. In 1568 Davidis was made bishop of the avowed Unitarian churches which by act of the diet at Torda in that year obtained freedom of worship in common with Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics. Court favor ended with the advent to the throne of Stephen
.Bathory, a Roman Catholic, and the diets of 1576
and 1577.restricted Unitarian synods to Koloszvar and Torda. Unitarian strength was indicated by the Synod of Torda in Mar., 1578, which comprised 322 clergymen.
Since 1571 Davidis had opposed prayer to Christ as an object of worship, but now, in 1578, met resistance from Blandrata, who had begun to retreat from Unitarian views. In 1579 the Roman Catholic — viceroy Christopher Bathory placed Davidis under the surveillance of the magistrates and then, at the instance of Blandrata, condemned him to imprisonment for life as an innovator and blasphemer. Davidis’ death (Nov. 15, 1579) in the dungeon of Déva established him as a heroic martyr in the sympathies of the Hungarian churches. Though they still had legal existence, the Unitarians suffered hardship. Under Austrian rule, in 1716, their publications were forbidden, their churches confiscated, and all public office denied to them. Since the statute of 1791, which recognized the liberty of the four religions of Transylvania, they have grown moderately in numbers, and are in close fellowship with their coreligionists in England and America. The college at Kaloszvar has 4 professors and 25 students of theology. The number of congregations is 116.
Some of the English martyrs of the sixteenth century suffered for Arian views, but. the first
noteworthy expression of the spirit
4. British and method of Unitarianism was The
Unitarian- Religion of Protestants a Safe Way ism. to Salvation (London, 1638), by William Chillingworth (q.v.), and the first
conspicuous application of this method with express Unitarian results was made by John Biddle (q-v.), who under the Commonwealth gathered a society in London and published his views. In 1662 he was imprisoned for the third time, and soon died of prison disease. His writings were collected and published by his disciple Thomas Firmin in 1691 (The Faith of One God). Although Unitarianism was excluded from the operation of the Toleration Act of 1689 (q.v.), while its advocates were threatened by the act of 1698 with loss of civil rights and imprisonment, Socinian and Arian views of the person of Christ found increasing favor in the course of the eighteenth century both in the Church of England and among dissenters. Noted instances of this tendency are Samuel Clarke (see CLarKn, SAMUEL, 4), Nathanael Lard-