SETHIANS or SETHITES-were heretics of the second age who had an extraordinary veneration for the patriarch Seth, one of the sons of Adam: they were a branch of Valentinians, and pretended that two angels of very contrary dispositions had created Cain and Abel;-that after the death of Abel, the great virtue, by which we suppose they meant the Divine Power, raised up Seth from seed immaculate: but they do not inform us--whether the angels--some of whom were good, the rest evil--had derived their origin from the same source. They tell us indeed, that these good and evil spirits had concurred in the production of a wicked generation of men, whom their fanciful supreme divinity, called by them the Great Virtue, overwhelmed in the universal flood; but that, notwithstanding, a part of their malignity found its way into the ark, and thence diffused itself over the earth. This absurd hypothesis was devised in order to account for the existence of good and evil in the universe; and, to the same origin precisely, does the system of the various sects of Gnostics owe its birth.

Theodoret confounded the Sethians with the Ophites, and very possibly the only difference between these two sects wasthe superstitious veneration of the former for the patriarch Seth : they maintained that his soul had transmigrated into the sacred person of Jesus Christ, and constituted one individual with him. They held a thousand other still greater absurdities, which it would be quite superfluous to detail. (See St Ireneus adv. Hær. 1. 1. c. 7, &c. St Epiph. Hær. 31. Tert. de Prescrip. c. 47.)

SEVERIANS-a branch of Tatianites, headed by one Severus a disciple of Tatian. (See TATIANITES.)

SHAKERS- -are an American sect which took its rise towards the close of the last century. They are the disciples of one Hannah Leese, whom they stile," says Mr Evans," the elect lady, and the mother of all the elect; who, poor creatures! must have been without a mother during the long lapse of so many ages before her appearance in North America!" Be this as it may, we are told that she is the identical woman mentioned in the twelfth chapter of the Revelations; that she can speak seventy-two languages, and converses with the dead. Jumping, dancing, and violent exertions of the body are the favorite exercises of this athletic sect, which bringing on shaking, they are hence denominated Shakers. Dancing, they say, denotes their victory over sin. They are also much pleased with another similar religious feat: it consists in turning round and round for an hour or two successively; which, in their sublime ideas, admirably shews the great power of God. See a farther account of these fanciful enthusiasts in the Travels of Rochefoucault through America, vol. 1.

Si

SIMON the MAGICIAN-was a Samaritan, and had acquired an extraordinary reputation in the city of Samaria, before the arrival of St Stephen. St Luke informs us, that he seduced the people with his magical practices; and he adds, (Acts viii. 10) that they all gave ear to him from the least to the greatest, saying: This man is the power of God, which is called great. These illusions and impostures the infernal spirit sought to oppose to the true miracles of Christ; as he was suffered to assist the magicians of Pharaoh against Moses. But God, when he permits the devil to exert in so extraordinary a manner his natural strength and powers, always furnishes his servants with the means of discerning and confounding the imposture. Accordingly, the true and undeniable miracles wrought by St Philip, put the magician out of countenance. Being himself eye-witness to these miracles, and seeing the people run to Philip to be bapti-ed, he also, believed or pretended to believe, and was baptised. After which he attended Philip very diligently-in hopes of receiving at his hands the power of miracles, like those which he saw performed by him. The apostles at Jerusalem hearing of the conversion of Samaria, sent thither St Peter and St John to confirm the new proselytes by the imposition of hands-a sacrament which only bishops could confer. With the peculiar grace of this sacrament were usually imparted to the faithful at that time, certain external gifts of the miraculous powers. mon seeing these communicated to the laity by the imposition of the hands of the apostles, wished to purchase of them with money a similar privilege for himself: Give me also, cried Simon, this power; that on whomsoever I shall lay my hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But St Peter said to him: Keep thy money to thyself to perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money. Do penance for this thy wickedness; and pray to God, if perhaps this thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee. For I see thou art in the gall of bitterness, and engaged in the bonds of iniquity. Thus ill disposed, he was incapable of receiving the gifts of the Holy Ghost, or, at least, interior sanctifying grace. Nor did he sincerely desire this. However, fearing the threat of temporal evils, he answered: Pray you for me to the Lord, that none of these things may come upon me. From this crime of Simon the sin of buying or selling any spiritual thing,—a traffic which both the law of nature and the positive Divine law most severely condemn, is called simony; and to maintain it lawful, is usually termed in the canon law, the heresy of Simon Magus. Of this impostor we have no farther account in holy writ, except that he and his disciples seem hinted at by St Paul and St Jude; (2 Tim. iii. 1, 2, 3, 8, 13. Jude 4) and St James proves against them, as well as against our reformers of latter times, the necessity of good works in order to salvation. (ii. 14.) St Peter also draws

their portrait in the most frightful colors. (2 Pet. ii. 1, 2, 3, 13, &c.) The fathers generally deem the pretended conversion of Simon to the faith-an act of hypocrisy, founded only in ambi, tion and temporal views, and in the hope of purchasing the gifts of the Holy Ghost, which he ascribed to a superior art magic. We learn from St Epiphanius, (Hær. 21) St Ireneus, (1. 1, c. 20) Tertullian, (Præscrip. c. 33) Theodoret (Hæret. Fab. c. 1, 5, 9,) and other fathers, that he afterwards pretended to be the Messiah, and called himself the Power of God who was descended upon earth to save mankind, and to re-establish order in the universe, which he affirmed had been disturbed by the ambition of the angels, contending for the principality, and enslaving men under their tyrannical government of this visible world. He said, that to hold man in subjection to themselves, they had invented the law of good works; whereas, he contended-that faith alone sufficeth to salvation. The world, he said, was created by angels who afterwards revolted from God, and usurped in it an undue power. Nevertheless he commanded them to be honored, and sacrifices to be offered to the Father by the mediation of these powers,-not with a view to implore their succour, but to appease them, for fear they should obstruct our designs, or hurt us after death. This superstitious worship of the angels was a downright idolatry, and was condemned by St Paul. (Col. ii. 18.) Simon moreover rejected the Old Tes tament; pretending it was framed by the angels, and that he himself was sent to abolish it. Having purchased at Tyre an abandoned female slave of great beauty, he called her Helena, and said she was the first intelligence, and that through her the Father had created the angels. He used to call himself the Holy Ghost, and sometimes honored Helena too with the name of Paraclete. To himself he required divine honors to be paid, under the character of Jupiter, and to Helena in that of Minerva. His extravagant system was a medley formed from Paganism, and the Christian, Jewish and Samaritan doctrines; and he sowed the seeds of the abominations afterwards practised by the Gnostics. In all things he affected to rival Jesus Christ; and, in imitation of his ascension into heaven, he is said at Rome to have raised himself in the air by his magical powers, in presence of the emperor. SS. Peter and Paul beholding the delusion, had recourse to prayer; upon which the impostor fell to the ground, broke a leg in the fall, and died a few days after in confusion and despair. Eusebius and other authors assure us, that the sect was not extinct till the commencement of the fifth age.

SOCINIANS derive their appellation from Faustus Socinus a native of Sienna. His uncle Lælius Socinus, who died in 1562, had left behind him several treatises in manuscript, against the

mystery of the blessed Trinity; and many amongst his friends embraced his heterodox opinions, especially his nephew Faustus who entered warmly into his uncle's views, and resolved to commence himself-reformer of the reformed. With this design he went to Basil, and published his book On Jesus Christ the Saviour; in which he openly revived the Samosatenian and Photinian he resy. Blandrata, an Antitrinitarian, who, after the execution of Servetus at Geneva for similar opinions, had retired into Poland and thence into Transylvania, invited him thither. Socinus afterwards passed into Poland, in 1579. The Antitrinitarians of that kingdom were already divided into about fifty different sects; but were all known by the general name of Unitarians. They had their conventicles in many great towns in Poland; but Racovia in Little Poland was their metropolis, under the protection of the lord of that city, who had renounced Calvinism to espouse the cause of Unitarianism. In this place the Antitrinitarians had a famous college; in which Crellius was the most celebrated professor, and minister from the year 1612. His name stands foremost, with the exception of Socinus himself, on the list of Socinian teachers; and his books On the Unity of God, and the Satisfaction of Christ against Grotius's answer to Socinus, are much esteemed by his own sect. The college subsisted till the year 1638, when it was suppressed-in punishment of the riots of the students, who had pulled down the public crosses in the country, and profaned the churches. Faustus Socinus lived many years in Cracow; but spent his latter days, and died in 1604, at a gentleman's house in the country, nine miles distant from that city. The Arians and Socinians of Poland favored Ragotzi, prince of Transylvania in his wars against Poland; by which they so exasperated the state, that they were banished the kingdom in 1658, being allowed only two years to dispose of their estates. Great numbers retired into Holland, though they were not permitted there the exercise of their public worship. See Christophori Sandii Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum, an impious though curious and learned piece, &c. This writer in his Nucleus Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ, pretends to derive a continued succession of Arians and Socinians, as some protestant writers do of protestants, from the earliest ages of christianity.

The leading principles of Socinianism are, first, that all scriptural doctrines are so to be understood, as to contain nothing above reason, no mystery: and all the expressions which seem to imply the reverse, are to be looked upon as lofty, exaggerated phrases of the Oriental languages: for they pretend, that nothing is to be allowed in faith, which our reason does not fully comprehend. Hence it would follow-that articles of faith must vary in proportion to men's capacities. Secondly, the Socinians teach, that Christ was formed indeed, by God-an extraordinary personage; born of the Virgin Mary; taken up to heaven, and

endued with that portion of divine power and knowledge which is denominated the Holy Ghost; and sent again upon earth God's ambassador to men-to teach them his will and divine law. They deny his death to have been a satisfaction for our sins; but say, that those who obey his precepts, as all may do by the strength of their own nature, will rise again in other bodies, and enjoy a happy life in that blessed place, in which God possesses his own beatitude: but that the wicked shall be condemned to torments for a limited duration, after which they will be reduced to a state of annihilation. Some of them condemn, with the Quakers, all oaths, wars, and magistracies, together with all capital punishment. Their form of worship differs little from that of Calvinists-their most intolerant and hereditary enemies. With them none but adults are baptised, and that by immersion; and their notion of the eucharist is such as a Zuinglian or a Presbyterian would allow.

The first catechism of this sect was put out at Cracow in 1574. Faustus Socinus compiled a new one, which has been since enlarged under the title of the Catechism of Racovia: in it all points of the Socinian doctrine are not expressed; being intended rather as an apology to externs, than for the instruction of this people. See Schimidius's comments upon it in 1707,

&c. &c.

Some Socinians maintain Christ to have had an existence by creation, before he was born of the Virgin Mary; but deny that he created the world, and interpret all passages in which creation is ascribed to him-of its spiritual creation or renovation, in as much only as he raised it from sin by his perfect law. Socinus maintained the lawfulness of worshipping and praising Christ, against one Davides and his disciples-Franken, Sommer, &c. whom he calls Semi-Judaizantes, and against whom he published his book contra Semi-Judaizantes. Yet he very inconsistently procured the imprisonment of Davides; since he allows this to be a point of no importance, and even affirms that they do best, who never pray to Christ at all. (Respons. ad Wajeckum, T. ii. p. 538.) The Budneans-so called from Simon Budneus who was followed by great numbers of Antitrinitarians in Lithuania and Polish Russia, and in 1584 was deprived of his office of teacher and preacher by Socinus and his friends, hold it unlawful to offer prayers, or worship and adoration to Christ; and were with their author by Socinus secluded from the communion of his sect. The Holy Ghost is generally reduced by them to a mere operation of the Deity.

Since the expulsion of the Socinians from Poland, they seem no where to retain a form of public church government, except in Transylvania; where it still subsists, though in some degree discountenanced. (See Historia Crypto-Socinianismi Altorfini.) The Calvinistic magistrates and divines rendered abortive-by