PREFACE.

The

THE following work has been written amidst a variety of other occupations, and has been laid aside, from time to time, as other engagements required, and resumed, at intervals, as health and leisure permitted, for several years past. author has often felt, as the range of his inquiries was enlarged and extended, how little he knew, when he entered upon his labours, and how little is known by Unitarians in general, of the history of those venerable confessors and martyrs, who led the way in freeing the religion of Jesus from some of its grossest abuses; and, in particular, what noble and costly sacrifices some of them made in defence of those primary doctrines of Christianity, -the Supremacy of the Father, and the Subordination of his Son, Jesus Christ. This feeling has often sustained him, and urged him to persevere, amidst difficulties and discouragements of no ordinary kind; and he trusts, that the goodly array of

names, which adorns the following pages, will have its effect, in inducing many of his readers to continue firm in the profession of obnoxious truth, and in stimulating them to fresh exertions in a cause, which in their minds is identified with that of pure and unadulterated Christianity.

The plan which originally suggested itself to the author was, first, to point out the origin, and trace the gradual development, of the doctrine of the Trinity; secondly, to produce testimonies of Ante-Nicene writers to the Supremacy of the Father; and thirdly, to give a series of biographical notices of those, who, since the general reception of the doctrine of the Trinity among Christians, have rejected or impugned that doctrine. The first and second parts of this plan he soon found it necessary to abandon, not on account of any difficulty which there would have been in bringing together the requisite proofs, but because the work would have extended over too wide a space, and would have involved an amount of labour and expense, too great for him to encounter. The question then arose, whether he should commence with those Christian Fathers, who, in the fourth century, distinguished themselves by their opposition to the Trinity, and descend, in the regular order of time, to the present day, dividing the whole into Three Periods, the Patristic, the Scholastic, and the Protestant; or whether he should commence with the Reformation, and confine himself to those, who

have since that time distinguished themselves by their advocacy of the Divine Unity, or the doctrine of One God in one person. Necessity again compelled him to make choice of the latter plan, on account of the too comprehensive nature of the former. But when he saw his materials increasing upon him so rapidly, that the work, instead of being confined, as he had expected, within two or three volumes, would probably have extended to at least twice that number, impressed with the value of the Iloratian maxim,

Vitæ summa brevis spem nos vetat inchoare longam,

(Od., L. i. 4, 15), he resolved at once to contract its limits, and content himself with bringing it down to the close of the seventeenth century; leaving it to others, who might be favoured with the requisite degree of health and leisure, to carry it forward to the present time.

It now became a matter for consideration, whether he should do more than make a selection of names from the works of Sandius and Bock, omitting those of least celebrity. But in attempting to carry out this idea, he soon felt, that it would be difficult to draw the line; and that he should probably lay himself open to the charge of having made an arbitrary selection. It thus became apparent, that he must either insert all the names which had been brought together by the above-mentioned writers, or pass over those of many, who, though un

known to the English reader, were eminent in their day, and contributed, each in his own sphere, to the diffusion of an enlarged and liberal Theology. To have adopted the latter plan would have been to produce a partial and imperfect work, which would have satisfied neither the author himself, nor his readers. No alternative therefore was left; and the result he now ventures to lay before the public, convinced that, though some of the minor details contained in these volumes may have but little interest for the general reader, the most minute will not be without their value to the bibliographer, or the student of Ecclesiastical History.

It is possible, notwithstanding all the author's care, that the names of some able defenders of the Unitarian cause have been omitted. Should this prove to be the case, he will regret the fact, but may allege, by way of apology, that the present being the first attempt to produce an "Antitrinitarian Biography" on a large scale, in the English language, he is entitled to the indulgence usually accorded by the candid and liberal to first attempts. He begs to state, however, that no name, belonging to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, has been intentionally omitted, which Sandius and Bock have included in their works, except those of Melchior Hoffman, David George, and Martin Seidelius, of whom memoirs will be found in the Appendix ;*

Nos. III. and XIII.

and Francis Joseph Burrhus, or Borri, the Alchemist, who created a great sensation in Italy and Germany during the latter half of the seventeenth century, and of whom Schelhorn and Bayle have given accounts, which will fully justify the omission.* On the other hand, no pains have been spared to make the present work as complete as possible, by the addition of such names as had escaped the observation of those authors. In making these additions, the object has been to bring together the scattered notices of Antitrinitarians, which lay dispersed over the works of English and foreign writers; and more especially, as regards the former, to collect the valuable materials, which have been accumulating during the last half century, and which form a very interesting portion of the records of Unitarian periodical literature. The author has likewise to acknowledge his obligations to those, who have either published works expressly on the history of modern Unitarianism, or written separate biographical accounts of eminent Antitrinitarians, or incorporated such accounts in works on other subjects. In short, he lays claim to no higher merit, than that of having brought together, from sources which are inaccessible to the general reader, a mass of valuable and curious matter, illustrative of the lives and writings of Continental and English Unitarians.

• Schelhornii Amanitates Literariæ, Tom. V. p. 141. Bayle, Dictionaire Historique et Critique, Art. BORRI.