in reference to the doctrine of the Trinity. According to his view the Son of God was begotten before the Creation and Time of the essence of the Father as a subordinate Hypostasis. He denied the personality of the Holy Spirit, and regarded him as the divine Essence in general, or as the common energy of the Father and the Son. The leaders of the Arian party were* VALENTINE GENTILIS, of Cosenza, who after moving in Switzerland, Savoy, France, and Poland, returned to Bern, were he was beheaded in 1566;† MATTHEW GRIBALDUS, PETER GONESIUS, who attempted to spread Antitrinitarianism in Poland,§ and with whom was associated STANISLAUS FARNOVIUS. They were warmly opposed by the strict Unitarians. LEWIS HETZER belonged to the second school (beheaded at Constance, A.D. 1529), who denied every distinction in the Trinity. Also CLAUDIUS of SAVOY,** who taught respecting Christ that he was called God, inasmuch as he had received the fulness of the divine Spirit beyond all other beings. The Father dwelt in him through the divine Spirit, and all through him might be animated by the Father. Many persons class with him OCHINO, who was first a general of the Capuchins, then an active propagator of the Reformation in Italy, and in the course of his unsettled life adopted a great variety of opinions. His Unitarian views are inferred from the nineteenth and twentieth of his Dialogues,†† in which he so * Heberle, Tübinger Zeitschr. für Theologie, 1840. Walch, Streitigkeiten ausser der Luther. Kirche, iv. 121. Valentini Gentilis Justo Capitis Supplicio Bernæ affecit; Brevis Historia Auctore Benedicto Aretio Bernensis Ecclesiæ Doctore Theologo, Genev. 1567, 4to. Valentini Gentilis impietatum Explicatio ex Actis Publicis Senatus Genevensis Optima Fide Descripta cum Præfatione Theodori Begæ in Calvini Tractatus Theologici, Amsterd. 1667, p. 568. Bock, i. 1, 369, ii. 427. Trechsel, ii. 316. Bock, ii. 456. Walch, 124. § Lubienic, Historia Reformationis Polonica, Freist (Amsterd.), 1685, p. 101. Walch, 139. Sandii Bibliotheca Antitrinitariorum, p. 40. Sandius, p. 52. Breitinger, Anecdot de Ludov. Hetzero in the Museum Helveticam, 1751, t. vi. Dietrich Tübinger Zeitschr. 1834, 4to. Bock, ii. 231. Trechsel, i. 13. ** Trechsel, i. 55. ++ XXX. Dialogi, Bant. 1563. Struve de Vita, Religione et Fatis Bemhardt Occhini Sevensis. Schilhorn, iii. M'Crie's History of the Reformation in Italy. Trechsel, ii. p. 221. treats of the Trinity as to present the arguments against it with greater point and urgency, than those in its favour, which he is suspected to have done designedly. But we cannot from this determine with certainty his private opinion. But the most remarkable person of this class was MICHAEL SERVEDO, a Spaniard, a man of great acuteness and power of imagination, in whom were to be found many indications of a future theological development. We cannot make his doctrine harmonize entirely with any of the more ancient schemes; it was peculiar and bore the greatest analogy to the early Gnostic view. It is an important fundamental principle, that not the doctrine of the Trinity but that of the historical Christ is the centre of the Gospel, and that Salvation depends not on a certain speculative view of the Trinity but on the acknowledgment of Christ, in whom alone God reveals himself, and by whom alone we attain to the divine life. The article respecting Christ was the original article of faith of the Apostolic Church. The deeper knowledge of the mode in which God was in Christ was not so general a thing at that time. He spoke against the doctrines of a mathematical invisible Son of God and the abstract knowledge of God. God in his essence is unimaginable, inconceivable. We should know nothing of him, had he not brought himself near to us, and accommodated himself to the nature of the Creature. No one knows God who does not know the way in which God willed to reveal Himself to us. As a knowledge of God cannot be brought to us without that form, so neither can there be communion with God if He does not bring Himself near to us through such a form. The form for the Revelation of God in the World is the Logos, the form for the communication of His essence to human Spirits is the Holy Spirit.† The Holy Spirit is a De Trinitatis Erroribus, 1532. Christianismi Restitutio, Vienna, 1553. Rilliet, Relation du Procès Criminel Intenté a Genève en 1553 contre M. Servet, rédigée d'après les Documens Originaux, Genève, 1844. Calvini Fidelis Expositio Errorum Serveti, 1554, in his Tractat. Theol. Mosheim, Gesch. des M. Servet, Helmst. 178, and Neue Nachrichten von Servet, 1750. Heberle, Servets Trinitätslehre und Christologie in der Tübinger Zeitschr. für Theologie, 1840, 2. Trechsel, i. Baur, iii. p. 46. Dorner, ii. 649. + Restitutio Christianismi, lib. v.-Quemadmodum Dei essentia quatenus mundo manifestatur, est verbum, ita quatenus mundo communicatur, est spiritus estque manifestationi annexa communicatio. Quemadmodum in verbo erat idea princeps creati hominis, ita in spiritu modus deitatis, as far as God communicates himself in Christ and through Christ (modus dispensationis per Christum); he is the substantialis modus of the divine Essence as it accommodates itself to Angels and Men. He (SERVEDO) speaks of God's being in all things, without however being a Pantheist, which many were disposed to make him. Here is rather to be observed an affinity, on the one hand, to the Gnostic doctrine of Emanation, and on the other, to Sabellianism. Like SABELLIUS he distinguishes between the Logos in himself as a form of the Revelation of God, and the hypostatical Logos in Christ, the former the ideal, the latter the real Being. In this sense he also speaks of persons as equivalent to characters, phases, under which the divine Essence presents itself. As out of Christ God cannot be known, so can He not be worshipped except through Him. In the adoration of God in Christ consists the worship of God in spirit and in truth. In Judaism, on the other hand, God was known only through Angels, who were a type of Christ. On this point he sometimes approaches to Gnostic Elements. In the Temple God was worshipped only in Shadows and Types; Christ appeared as the true Temple of God; hence the worship of God in Spirit as he dwells in us through Christ, is possible. Whoever worships out of Christ, prays to him after the manner of Jews, Mohammedans, and Pagans, and Christ becomes a mere nullity. In his interpretation of the Old Testament there are many things worthy of notice, which support the historical sense, and in which he revives the standpoint of the Antiochian School. FAUSTUS SOCINUS, in his opposition against all speculation and mysticism, and in his onesided Intellectualism, is the exact opposite of SERVETUS. His doctrine of the Trinity, also, is not in all points like the earlier. He impugns the Arian and Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, as well as every erat idea creati spiritus. Prodebat cum sermone spiritus; Deus loquendo spirabat. Sermonis et spiritus erat eadem substantia sed modus diversus, p. 197. Substantialis in mundo fuit Dei manifestatio, sicut substantialis communicatio; sicut Deus Logos, ita Deus Spiritus. Verbum mandat, ut res fiat, spiritu vivificat. Sicut substantia verbi manifestata et vera est in Christi corporalibus elementis. Christus est Deus, a Deo profectus et natus; ipse primario, nos secundario per ipsum; ab ipso ore Christi proficiscitur in nos spiritus regenerationis. See Niedner, p. 682. notion of a pre-existent divine nature of Christ. Respecting the Holy Spirit he teaches, like PAUL of SAMOSATA and SABELLIUS, that it was not a person distinct from God, but a certain operation of God, a power from on high for sanctification. When passages of the New Testament, in which personality is signified, were objected to him, he rejoined that they referred to God the Father, who manifested his agency through this power among men. His view of Christ agrees for the most part with that of PAUL of SAMOSATA, and differs only in his explanation of the term Logos; he understood by it not, like PAUL, the Logos as a divine power, but Christ, the Logos become Man, who is called the Word of God, because God through him reveals his Will and Decree (Interpres divinæ voluntatis). The passages in the New Testament which speak of the Creation by the Logos, he referred to the moral Creation effected by Christ. He allowed that Christ in many passages was called God, but asserted that this title denoted not nature, but power and authority, which were committed to him in God's name. He did not propound his antitrinitarian doctrine as essential to salvation; a person might be saved though in error, as to the Church doctrine of three divine persons, provided he connected with it the doctrine of the Unity of God, and acknowledged the will of God revealed through Christ, and practised and evinced love towards those who thought differently. In consequence of these controversies, express declarations respecting the doctrine of the Trinity were made in the Evangelical Churches, for in the first article of the Augsburg Confession the older articles were confirmed, and the Samosateni neoterici were condemned. It has been questioned to whom this phrase referred. In point of time it would suit SERVETUS, but not as to doctrine; and so with CAMPANUS; we might rather refer it to HETZER. But we cannot tell absolutely what persons MELANCTHON had in his eye; for among the various enthusiastic sects of that age, many similar doctrines were set forth. Induced by these controversies MELANCTHON admitted the doctrine of the Trinity into the edition of his Loci, A.D. 1535. It is worthy of notice that from his confidential language we learn that he was not altogether satisfied with the Church representation of this Dogma. When SERVETUS made his appearance he wrote about A.D. 1533 to CAMERARIUS. "You THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST. 651 know that in reference to the Trinity I have always feared that these things would again break out. Good God! what disturb ances will be raised in the next age, whether the Logos and the Holy Spirit are Hypostases. I abide by those words of Holy Writ, which direct to pray to Christ, and attribute to him divine honours; but I do not feel compelled to examine more accurately the assertions respecting Hypostases." At the end of the seventeenth Century the opposition to the Church doctrine of the Trinity reappeared from the Arian and Semi-Arian standpoint, and the great revolution in the Protestant Theology which has since taken place, brought these controversies again under discussion. b. THE DOCTRINE OF THE PERSON OF CHRIST. ALTHOUGH SOCINUS attributed to Christ no pre-existent divine Nature, yet he recognised in him a man begotten in a supernatural manner, animated, enlightened, and endowed with peculiar powers by God, in order to make known the divine will to men. He regarded him as the only Mediator between God and Man, by whom alone men can be made partakers of salvation. The passages of Scripture in which it is said that the Logos was with God before his Incarnation, and mention is made of his coming down from Heaven, and of his going where he was before, SOCINUS might have understood as referring to Predestination, and to instruction imparted by God; but he took another view. Disposed to an external supranaturalism, he did not acknowledge the immanent indwelling of God in Christ, a connexion with the Divine Being which implied a specific relation different from that of all other men ; but he favoured the representation of an external fact, an elevation of Christ to God, in order to be instructed by Him. Moses was to him the type of Christ; as he had communion with God on Sinai, so Christ, the potentiated Moses, was honoured with higher intercourse with God; he did not ascend Sinai, but was taken up to God in Heaven. This took place several times before he made his public appearance. Thus he explained John vi. 38. When it was objected that no account is given of such events in the Gospels, he replied that this was because they were not observed by any human being. After the Resurrection Christ was exalted to the right hand of the Father to the highest dignity next to Him; he received from him the guidance of the kingdom of God-the highest |