¹ See A Brief History of the Unitarians, Also Called Socinians, 2nd ed. (1691) 3, in The Faith of One God (London, 1691). I use the terms “Socinian” and “Unitarian” interchangeably throughout this essay, a synonymity not all would accept, including some of the original tractarians I discuss; that the first term is demonstrably more encompassing than the second does not, I think, substantially alter my analysis. Likewise, especially later in the essay, I frequently oppose “Anglican” to “Socinian,” although some Socinians, like the philanthropist Thomas Firmin, never formally left the Church of England.

See McLachlan, Herbert (The Story of a Nonconformist Library [Manchester: University Press, 1923] 53–56)Google Scholar for a summary on the argument about categorization of the Socinian writers of the 1690s, where most of the categories concern doctrinal content. The standard work on Socinianism in England is by McLachlan, H. John (Socinianism in Seventeenth-Century England [London: Oxford University, 1951]). Mainly concerned with Socinians before 1690, this briefly touches (317–35) the Socinian tract literature of the 1690s, “the high-water mark of seventeenth-century English Socinianism” (332)Google Scholar.

² For the best available accounts of Anglican rationalism, see the work of Harth, Phillip (Swift and Anglican Rationalism [Chicago: University of Chicago, 1961] chap. 2)Google Scholar and of Irène Simon (Three Restoration Divines [Paris: Societé d'Edition “Les Belles Lettres,” 1967], 1, 75–148)Google Scholar.

³ For Chillingworth's development of this theme, see Orr, Robert R. (Reason and Authority: The Thought of William Chillingworth [Oxford: Clarendon, 1967] 92–102)Google Scholar.

⁴ The Poems and Fables of John Dryden (ed. Kinsley, James; London/ New York: Oxford University, 1970) 291.Google Scholar For the derivation of Dryden's theological arguments in Religio Laid and for the sources of the Anglican doctrine of these lines, see Harth, Phillip (Contexts of Dryden's Thought [Chicago: University of Chicago, 1968], chap. 6)Google Scholar.

⁵ Lord Herbert of Cherbury's De Religione Laici (ed., trans., introd. Hutcheson, Harold R.; New Haven: Yale University, 1944) 55. Hutcheson's fourth chapter, “Herbert and Deism,” gives a good, comprehensive sketch of deism in the seventeenth centuryGoogle Scholar.

⁶ See Harth, Contexts, 84–86.

⁷ Lord Herbert of Cherbury's De Religione Laici, 76.

⁸ Stephen, Leslie, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century (3rd ed.; London: Smith and Elder, 1902), 1, 85Google Scholar.

⁹ Cragg, Gerald R., From Puritanism to the Age of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1950) 149. It is of note that to document his remark about Tillotson's sermons, Cragg refers not to Tillotson but simply back to Leslie Stephen's HistoryGoogle Scholar.

¹⁰ Besides those passages quoted below, see Tillotson's major anti-Socinian collection (Sermons Concerning the Divinity and Incarnation of Our Blessed Saviour [London, 1693]). See n. 41.

¹¹ Stillingfleet, , Works 3 (London, 1710) 591–92, 605–6.Google Scholar

¹² Stephen seeks to solve this difficulty by noting the short-sightedness of the Anglican principals in debate. He suggests that the divines missed the “true affinities” of their thought with deism, affinities which are “sufficiently clear to men standing upon the vantage-ground of later experience” (History, 1, 91). This is Whiggishly interpretative.

¹³ Stephen, History, 1, 101.

¹⁴ Stillingfleet, Works 3, 521; South, Sermons 3 (London, 1698), sig. al^v; John Gailhard, Blasphemous Socinian Heresie (London, 1697) 322, 331.

¹⁵ Toulmin, Joshua, A Review of the Life, Character, and Writings of the Rev. John Bidle, M.A. (London, 1791), sig. alGoogle Scholar.

¹⁶ A Short Account of the Life of John Bidle, 4–5, in The Faith of One God. McLachlan treats Bidle's life at length (Socinianism, 163–217).

¹⁷ A Short Account, 9.

¹⁸ See DNB 41, 282–83; H. John McLachlan briefly discusses the tracts (Socinianism, 320–23). For a good treatment of their authorship, style, content, and form, see Herbert McLachlan (Story of A Nonconformist Library, 53–87). See also Wallace, Robert (Antitrinitarian Biography [London, 1850] 1, 199–200, 212–33, 236–342) for a precise chronology of the tractsGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ The Trinitarian Scheme of Religion (1692) 21, in A Second Collection.

²⁰ A Defence of the Brief History of the Unitarians (1691) 8, in The Faith of One God.

²¹ Some Thoughts Upon Dr. Sherlock's Vindication of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, 2nd ed. (1691) 11, in The Faith of One God.

²² Some Thoughts Upon Dr. Sherlock's Vindication, 14–15.

²³ The Trinitarian Scheme of Religion, 27.

²⁴ An Impartial Account of the Word Mystery As it is taken in the Holy Scripture, 18, in The Faith of One God.

²⁵ See The Testimonies of Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Tertullian …. (1691), in The Faith of One God.

²⁶ An Impartial Account of the Word Mystery, 22. The closeness of this and other Socinian methodological positions to William Chillingworth's “rule of faith” did not go unnoticed by their authors. A Second Collection contains an eight-page selection of quotations from him, Mr. Chillingworth ‘s Judgment of the Religion of Protestants …, that allegedly support Socinianism. See Robert R. Orr (Reason and Authority, 97–99) for an unbiased treatment of the Socinian charges against Chillingworth.

²⁷ Some Thoughts Upon Dr. Sherlock's Vindication, 9.

²⁸ Considerations on the Explications of the Doctrine of the Trinity (1694) 30, in A Third Collection of Tracts.

²⁹ Considerations on the Explications, 6, 29.

³⁰ Considerations on the Explications, 30.

³¹ The Naked Gospel (London, 1691) 92.

³² An Impartial Account of the Word Mystery, 12.

³³ An Impartial Account of the Word Mystery, 5–7.

³⁴ Stillingfleet, Works, 3, 351–55.

³⁵ Considerations on the Explications, 4.

³⁶ Toland, Christianity Not Mysterious (2nd ed.; London, 1696) xi, xviii–xix, xxii–xxiii. All references to Toland will be to this edition; page numbers will be given in parentheses in the text. See G. R. Cragg's summary of the work (From Puritanism to the Age of Reason, chap. 7) and Zbigniew Ogonowski's work on Toland in the context in which I am discussing him (“Le ‘Christianisme sans mystères’ selon John Toland et les Sociniens,” Archiwum Historii Filozofii I Mýsli Spoliczny 12 [1966] 205–23). Ogonowski is not aware of the tracts of the English SociniansGoogle Scholar.

³⁷ A late and anonymous entry into the heated controversy is helpful in understanding it; see the anonymous The Judgment of A Disinterested Person Concerning the Controversy About the B. Trinity; Depending between Dr. S—th, and Dr. Sherlock (London, 1696).

³⁸ Works 3, 352.

³⁹ This correspondence has recently been analyzed afresh by Carroll, Robert Todd (The Common-Sense Philosophy of Bishop Edward Stillingfleet, 1635–1699 [The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975] 90–101).CrossRefGoogle Scholar Carroll's quote from Toland against “voluminous systems” (88) surely does not refer to Simonian criticism but, in good Socinian fashion, to scholastic and Anglican use of non-Scriptural terminology. For Locke and theology in the 1690s, see Cragg's survey (From Puritanism to the Age of Reason, chap. 6).

⁴⁰ Works 1, 495.

⁴¹ Extended answers are also made by William Sherlock, Dean of St. Paul's, in a series of essays which generate their own controversy (see n. 37) about the subsistence of persons in the Trinity; by John Wallis, friend of Samuel Pepys and Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, in eight “Letters” (1691–92), which attempt to illuminate the Trinity through geometrical analogies; and lengthily by Luke Milbourne, no friend of Dryden (Mysteries in Religion Vindicated[London, 1692]). Stillingfleet says he is joining the controversy because he has been personally attacked, although he tried to stay out of it (Works 3,413). Tillotson joins in, publishing some earlier, apposite sermons, because he has been accused of Socinianism by hostile critics (Sermons Concerning the Divinity and Incarnation of Our Blessed Saviour [London, 1693], sig. a2^v). These anti-Socinian sermons, originally delivered in St. Lawrence Jewry in 1679 and 1680, are not printed—and then in revised form—until 1693. A summary of the Tillotson-as-Socinian charges may be seen in a work probably written by Charles Leslie (The Charge of Socinianism Against Dr. Tillotson Considered. By a True Son of the Church [Edinburgh, 1695]).

⁴² Works 3, 347–48.

⁴³ Works 1, 496.

⁴⁴ Sermons Preached on Several Occasions 3 (London, 1737) 225. The sermon referred to was delivered 29 April 1694, in Westminster AbbeyGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁵ Works, 3rd ed. (London, 1701) 556.

⁴⁶ Works, 577, from a sermon delivered sometime in 1693, “Concerning the Unity of the Divine Nature.”

⁴⁷ Works 3, 497 (itals. rev.)

⁴⁸ South, Sermons 3, 217.

⁴⁹ Stillingfleet, Works 3, 242.

⁵⁰ Tillotson, Works, 530.

⁵¹ South, Sermons 3, 242–45; Stillingfleet, Works 3, 348–49.

⁵² Tillotson, Works, 530.

⁵³ Stillingfleet, Works 3, 243, 280–81, 479–80.

⁵⁴ Works, 559.

⁵⁵ Works, 3, 244.

⁵⁶ Sermons 3, 216.

⁵⁷ Sermons 3, 222, 246.

⁵⁸ Stillingfleet, Works 3, 355–57; Tillotson, Works, 531–32.

⁵⁹ Works 3, 448–69.

⁶⁰ Works 3, 406. In his phraseology, Stillingfleet unwittingly prefigures Toland's idea of all one can do in theology.

⁶¹ Works, 572, 574.

⁶² Sermons 3, 240–41.

⁶³ The Danger of Corrupting the Faith by Philosophy (London, 1697) 24. For similar remarks, see a companion essay of Sherlock (A Vindication of Dr. Sherlock's Sermon … in answer to some Socinian Remarks [1697] 37–39).

⁶⁴ Works 3, 516–18.