A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes — John Shaqi
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
In the generation after Grotius, one
Koerbagh, a doctor, for publishing (1668) a dictionary of definitions
containing advanced ideas, had to fly from Amsterdam. At Culenberg he
translated a Unitarian work and began another; but was betrayed, tried
for blasphemy, and sentenced to ten years' imprisonment, to be followed
by ten years' banishment. He compromised by dying in prison within
the year. Even as late as 1678 the juri-consult Hadrian Beverland
(afterwards appointed, through Isaac Vossius, to a lay office under
the Church of England) was imprisoned and struck off the rolls of
Leyden University for his Peccatum Originale, in which he speculated
erotically as to the nature of the sin of Adam and Eve. The book was
furiously answered, and publicly burned. [160] It was only after an
age of such intolerance that Holland, at the end of the seventeenth
century, began to become for England a model of freedom in opinion,
as formerly in trade. And it seems to have been through Holland,
in the latter part of the seventeenth century, that there came the
fresh Unitarian impulse which led to the considerable spread of the
movement in England after the Revolution of 1688. [161]
Unitarianism, which we have seen thus invading Holland somewhat
persistently during half a century, was then as now impotent beyond
a certain point by reason of its divided allegiance, though it has
always had the support of some good minds. Its denial of the deity of
Jesus could not be made out without a certain superposing of reason
on Scripture; and yet to Scripture it always finally appealed. The
majority of men accepting such authority have always tended to
believe more uncritically; and the majority of men who are habitually
critical will always repudiate the Scriptural jurisdiction. In
Poland, accordingly, the movement, so flourishing in its earlier
years, was soon arrested, as we have seen, by the perception that
it drove many Protestants back to Catholicism; among these being
presumably a number whose critical insight showed them that there was
no firm standing-ground between Catholicism and Naturalism. Every new
advance within the Unitarian pale terrified the main body, many of
whom were mere Arians, holding by the term Trinity, and merely making
the Son subordinate to the Father. Thus when one of their most learned
ministers, Simon Budny, followed in the steps of Ferencz Davides (whom
we have seen dying in prison in Transylvania in 1579), and represented
Jesus as a "mere" man, he was condemned by a synod (1582) and deposed
from his office (1584). He recanted, and was reinstated, [162] but
his adherents seem to have been excommunicated. The sect thus formed
were termed Semi-Judaizers by another heretic, Martin Czechowicz, who
himself denied the pre-existence of Jesus, and made him only a species
of demi-god; [163] yet Fausto Sozzini, better known as Faustus Socinus,
who also wrote against them, and who had worked with Biandrata to have
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