Bidle, a tailor's son, must take high rank among the martyrs of learning. After a brilliant school career at Gloucester, he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, where, says his biographer, "he did so philosophise, as it might be observed, he was determined more by Reason than Authority"; and this dangerous beginning he shortly followed up, when master of the Free School at Gloucester, by the still more dangerous conclusion that the common doctrine of the Trinity "was not well grounded in Revelation, much less in Reason." For this he was brought before the magistrates at Gloucester on the charge of heresy (1644); and from that time till his death from gaol-fever in 1662, at the age of forty-two, Bidle seldom knew what liberty was. It was soon after his first imprisonment that he published his Twelve Arguments. Though the House had this burnt by the hangman, it was so popular that it was reprinted the same year. The year following (1648) the House passed an ordinance making a denial of the Trinity a capital offence; in spite of which Bidle published his Confession of Faith touching the Holy Trinity, according to Scripture, and his Testimonies of Different Fathers regarding the same, the last of which manifests considerable learning. The Assembly of Divines then appealed to Parliament to put him to death; yet, strange to say, Parliament did not do so, but soon after released their prisoner. In 1654 he published his Twofold Catechism, for which he was again committed to the Gatehouse, and debarred from the use of pens, ink, and paper; and all his books were sentenced to be burnt (December 13th, 1654). After a time, his fate being still uncertain, Cromwell procured his release, or rather sent him off to the Scilly Isles. But his enemies got him into prison again at last, and there a blameless and pious life fell a victim to the power of bigotry. One may regret a life thus spent and sacrificed; but only so has the cause of free thought been gradually won.
Bidle has also been thought to have been the translator of the famous Racovian Catechism, first published in Polish at Racow in 1605, and in Latin in 1609. In it two anti-Trinitarian divines reduced to a systematic form the whole of the Socinian doctrine. A special interest attaches to it from the fact that Milton, then nearly blind, was called before the House in connection with the Catechism, as though he had had a share in its translation or publication. It was condemned to be burnt as blasphemous (April 1st, 1652). In the Journals of the House copious extracts are given from the work, from which the following may serve to indicate what chiefly gave offence:—
"What do you conceive exceedingly profitable to be known of the Essence of God?
"It is to know that in the Essence of God there is only one person . . . and that by no means can there be more persons in that Essence, and that many persons in one essence is a pernicious opinion, which doth easily pluck up and destroy the belief of one God. . . .
"But the Christians do commonly affirm the Son and Spirit to be also persons in the unity of the same Godhead.
"I know they do, but it is a very great error; and the arguments brought for it are taken from Scriptures misunderstood.
"But seeing the Son is called God in the Scriptures, how can that be answered?
"The word God in Scripture is chiefly used two ways: first, as it signifies Him that rules in heaven and earth . . .; secondly, as it signifies one who hath received some high power or authority from that one God, or is some way made partaker of the Deity of that one God. It is in this latter sense that the Son in certain places in Scripture is called God. And the Son is upon no higher account called God than that He is sanctified by the Father and sent into the world.
"But hath not the Lord Jesus Christ besides His human a Divine nature also?
"No, by no means, for that is not only repugnant to sound reason, but to the Holy Scripture also."