The spirit of free inquiry, at a later period, ran into decided Arianism and Socinianism: at the time of which I am now speaking, tendencies in that direction were at work in different quarters. When, under the Commonwealth, Philip Nye said that “to his knowledge the denying of the Divinity of Christ was a growing opinion;”—when Edwards said, it had found an entrance into some of the Independent Churches;—when Owen said, “The evil is at the door, there is not a city, a town, scarce a village in England wherein some of this poison is not poured forth;”—these writers might be under the influence of uncharitableness, or of false alarm—both are common in seasons of excitement—but when Parliament resolved, in the year 1652, to seize and burn all copies of the Racovian Catechism, that fact forces us to conclude that the Catechism must have been in circulation, and that the tenets which it expressed were being propagated.
John Biddle, who under the Commonwealth Government suffered much in consequence of his opinions, may be considered the father of Socinianism. Being a man of blameless life, the persecutions that he underwent awaken our sympathy; and it is highly probable, that the treatment which he received, although intended to reclaim him from his errors, only served to drive him further from orthodoxy. He took high ground as to free inquiry; but professed to exercise it simply in getting at the meaning of Scripture; and he exhorted people “to lay aside for a while, controversial writings, together with those prejudicate opinions that have been instilled into the memory and understanding, and closely to apply themselves to the search of the New Testament.” At first he declared, “I believe, that our Saviour Jesus Christ is truly God, by being truly, really, and properly united to the only Person of the Infinite and Almighty Essence;”—this position, instead of being employed by his opponents as an admission, sufficient to keep him, if consistent, within the bounds of evangelical faith, excited their suspicions, and led to fresh controversy, and fresh persecution. Although he continued to use orthodox language, he made it more and more a vehicle for conveying unorthodox ideas. His opinions and modes of expression are equally peculiar.
For example, one of the positions which he lays down is this:—“I believe that there is One principal Minister of God and Christ, principally sent from heaven to sanctify the Church, who, by reason of His eminency, and intimacy with God, is singled out of the number of the other heavenly ministers, or angels, and comprised in the Holy Trinity, being the third Person thereof, and that this Minister of God and Christ is the Holy Spirit.” Further, he observes, “the Trinity which the Apostle Paul believed, consisteth of One God, One Lord, and One Spirit, but not of three Persons in One God.” And he proceeds even to adduce the usual arguments for the personality of the Holy Spirit:—a doctrine which he admits throughout a singular Tract, published by him at an earlier period.
BIDDLE.
In another article of faith, he avers, “I believe that Jesus Christ, to the intent He might be a brother, and have a fellow-feeling of our infirmities, and so become the more ready to help us (the consideration whereof is the greatest encouragement to piety that can be imagined), hath no other than a human nature; and, therefore, in the very nature, is not only a Person (since none but a human person can be our brother), but also our Lord, yea, our God.”
His use of the word Trinity, which it seems he never dropped, he explains by saying, that the Trinity which the Apostle Peter (Acts ii. 36) believed, consisteth of God the Father, of the Man Jesus Christ our Lord, and of the Holy Spirit, the gift of God through our Lord Jesus Christ.[496]
In Biddle’s Catechism, which John Owen couples with the Racovian, and elaborately answers in his Vindiciæ Evangelicæ,[497] the author so far from explaining away the language of Holy Writ, pushes its literal interpretation, respecting one subject at least, in a very bold, rude fashion, to such an extreme, that he attributes to the Almighty, a bodily and visible shape, with human affections and passions. Consequently, he objected to the terms infinite and incomprehensible, as forms of speech not used in Scripture, and not applicable to the Supreme Being. Tertullian, it may here be noticed, ascribed corporeality to God, but he seems to have meant by it nothing more than substance and personality.[498]
A very different man from Biddle,—one whom from his absurd manner of talking, we should suspect had in him a touch of insanity,—was Daniel Scargill, Fellow of Corpus Christi, Cambridge. In 1669, he formally and publicly, before the University, recanted the following opinions which he had formerly maintained: that all right of dominion is founded only in power—that moral righteousness is based on the law of the Magistrate—that the authority of Scripture rests on the same foundation—that whatsoever the Civil Government commanded is to be obeyed, although it may be contrary to Divine laws, and “that there is a desirable glory in being, and in being reputed an Atheist—which I implied when I expressly affirmed that I gloried to be an Hobbist and an Atheist.” These retractions indicate the previous entertainment of most extraordinary errors.
In the next chapter I shall examine the mysticism of the Quakers before I proceed to the theology of the Puritans.