§ 3
Unitarianism, formerly a hated heresy, was now in comparison leniently treated, because of its deference to Scriptural authority. Where the deists rejected all revelation, Unitarianism held by the Bible, calling only for a revision of the central Christian dogma. It had indeed gained much theological ground in the past quarter of a century. Nothing is more instructive in the culture-history of the period than the rapidity with which the Presbyterian succession of clergy passed from violent Calvinism, by way of “Baxterian” Arminianism, to Arianism, and thence in many cases to Unitarianism. First they virtually adopted the creed of the detested Laud, whom their fathers had hated for it; then they passed step by step to a heresy for which their fathers had slain men. A closely similar process took place in Geneva, where Servetus after death triumphed over his slayer.[68] In 1691, after a generation of common suffering, a precarious union was effected between the English Presbyterians, now mostly semi-Arminians, and the Independents, still mostly Calvinists: but in 1694 it was dissolved.[69] Thereafter the former body, largely endowed by the will of Lady Hewley in 1710, became as regards its Trust Deeds the freest of all the English sects in matters of doctrine.[70] The recognition of past changes had made their clergy chary of a rigid subscription. Naturally the movement did not gain in popularity as it fell away from fanaticism; but the decline of Nonconformity in the first half of the eighteenth century was common to all the sects, and did not specially affect the Presbyterians. Of the many “free” churches established in England and Wales after the Act of Toleration (1689), about half were extinct in 1715;[71] and of the Presbyterian churches the number in Yorkshire alone fell from fifty-nine in 1715 to a little over forty in 1730.[72] Economic causes were probably the main ones. The State-endowed parish priest had an enduring advantage over his rival. But the Hewley endowment gave a certain economic basis to the Presbyterians; and the concern for scholarship which had always marked their body kept them more open to intellectual influences than the ostensibly more free-minded and certainly more democratic sectaries of the Independent and Baptist bodies.[73]
The result was that, with free Trust Deeds, the Presbyterians openly exhibited a tendency which was latent in all the other churches. In 1719, at a special assembly of Presbyterian ministers at Salters’ Hall, it was decided by a majority of 73 to 69 that subscription to the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity should no longer be demanded of candidates for the ministry.[74] Of the 73, the majority professed to be themselves orthodox; but there was no question that antitrinitarian opinions had become common, especially in Devonshire, where the heresy case of Mr. Peirce of Exeter had brought the matter to a crisis.[75] From this date “Arian” opinions spread more rapidly in the dwindling denomination, shading yet further into Unitarianism, step for step with the deistic movement in the Church. “In less than half a century the doctrines of the great founders of Presbyterianism could scarcely be heard from any Presbyterian pulpit in England.”[76] “In the English Presbyterian ministry the process was from Arian opinions to those called Unitarian ... by a gradual sliding,” even as the transition had been made from Calvinism to Arminianism in the previous century.[77]
Presbyterianism having thus come pretty much into line with Anglicanism on the old question of predestination, while still holding fast by Scriptural standards as against the deists, the old stress of Anglican dislike had slackened, despite the rise of the new heretical element. Unitarian arguments were now forthcoming from quarters not associated with dissent, as in the case of Thomas Chubb’s first treatise, The Supremacy of the Father Asserted (1715), courteously dedicated “To the Reverend the Clergy, and in particular to the Right Reverend Gilbert Lord Bishop of Sarum, our vigilant and laborious Diocesan.” Chubb (1679–1747) had been trained to glove-making, and, as his opponents took care to record, acted also as a tallow-chandler;[78] and the good literary quality of his work made some sensation in an England which had not learned to think respectfully of Bunyan. Chubb’s impulse to write had come from the perusal of Whiston’s Primitive Christianity Revived, in 1711, and that single-minded Arian published his book for him.
The Unitarians would naturally repudiate all connection with such a performance as A Sober Reply to Mr. Higgs’s Merry Arguments from the Light of Nature for the Tritheistic Doctrine of the Trinity, which was condemned by the House of Lords on February 12, 1720, to be burnt, as having “in a daring, impious manner, ridiculed the doctrine of the Trinity and all revealed religion.” Its author, Joseph Hall, a serjeant-at-arms to the King, seems to have undergone no punishment, and more decorous antitrinitarians received public countenance. Thus the Unitarian Edward Elwall,[79] who had published a book called A True Testimony for God and his Sacred Law (1724), for which he was prosecuted at Stafford in 1726, was allowed by the judge to argue his cause fully, and was unconditionally acquitted, to the displeasure of the clergy.