Socinianism

Yet they were equally sober and confident in the name of God and he has justified their act of faith.

The first secretary of the new society was Thomas Scott, then chaplain of the Locke Hospital, once an almost Socinian curate, eager only to study, then gently led by John Newton to adore his Redeemer and at this time already a strong and patient leader in Christian enterprises.

Just before one of the first small annual meetings of the society a young clergyman asked Scott a little carelessly how they were getting on with money and men.

We have collected about £1,200 was the answer and we have hopes of an offer of service from two German students.

This congregation was an offshoot from the Old Chapel, hence the double name given it.

The separation took place on doctrinal grounds, many of the hearers being dissatisfied with their minister's views, which had a strong flavour of Socinianism.

They met in a licensed dwelling house at first, until a site for a chapel was obtained from the Earl of Dartmouth, which was erected in 1765.

It was the chapel of which the Reverend T. Clow was the pastor in 1804, but owing to a notice from Lord Dartmouth to quit the premises, a new one was erected in 1835, called Rehoboth Chapel, of which the Reverend J.P. James is the present pastor.

Monsieur Albert Revil, whose religious writings are always interesting, says that the conception which cultivated and philosophical Jews now entertain of Christianity and its founder is probably destined to become the conception which Christians themselves will entertain.

Socinians are fond of saying the same thing about the Socinian conception of Christianity.

Even if this were true, it would still have been better for a man through the last 1,800 years to have been a Christian and a member of one of the great Christian communions than to have been a Jew or a Socinian because the being in contact with the main stream of human life is of more moment for man's total spiritual growth and for his bringing to perfection the gifts committed to him which is his business on Earth than any speculative opinion which he may hold or think he holds Luther, whom we have called a Philistine of genius, and who, because he was a Philistine, had a coarseness and lack of spiritual delicacy which have harmed his disciples, but who, because he was a genius, had splendid flashes of spiritual insight.

Luther says admirably in his commentary on the book of Daniel, A God is simply that whereon the human heart rests with trust, faith, hope, and love.

Monsieur Albert Revil, whose religious writings are always interesting, says that the conception which cultivated and philosophical Jews now entertain of Christianity and its founder is probably destined to become the conception which Christians themselves will entertain.

Socinians are fond of saying the same thing about the Socinian conception of Christianity.

Even if this were true, it would still have been better for a man through the last eighteen hundred years to have been a Christian and a member of one of the great Christian communions than to have been a Jew or a Socinian because the being in contact with the mainstream of human life is of more moment for man's total spiritual growth and for his bringing to perfection the gifts committed to him, which is his business on Earth, than any speculative opinion which he may hold or think he holds.

Luther, whom we have called a Philistine of genius, and who because he was a Philistine had a coarseness and lack of spiritual delicacy which have harmed his disciples, but who because he was a genius had splendid flashes of spiritual insight.

This congregation was an offshoot from the Old Chapel, hence the double name given it.

The separation took place on doctrinal grounds, many of the hearers being dissatisfied with their minister's views, which had a strong flavor of Socinianism.

They met in a licensed dwelling house at first, until a site for a chapel was obtained from the Earl of Dartmouth, which was erected in 1765.

It was the chapel of which the Reverend T. Clow was the pastor in 1804, but owing to a notice from Lord Dartmouth to quit the premises, a new one was erected in 1835 called Rehoboth Chapel, of which the Reverend J. P. James is the present pastor.

W. H. Gould, Edinburgh It sheds interesting light on the character and resources of Owen if the circumstances in which the following treatise was composed are borne in mind.

it was published in sixteen fifty six and its author was at the time dean of christ church and vice-chancellor of the university of oxford restoring it by a course of mingled kindliness and decision from the ruinous condition into which it had lapsed during the civil wars and raising it to such prosperity as to extort the praises of clarendon he was preaching each alternate sabbath those sermons which lingered in the memory and strengthened the piety of philip henry he was frequently summoned to london on momentous consultations respecting public affairs and to preach before the parliament as if this amount of toil were not sufficient to occupy him toil so great that in his noble address on resigning the vice-chancellorship of the university he describes himself as having been sapius The Council of State had imposed on him the task of replying to Biddle the Socinian, and he fulfilled it by the production of his elaborate and masterly work, Venditiae Evangelice, a bulwark of the faith so solid in its foundation, and so massy in its proportions, that the entire phalanx of Socinian authorship has shrunk from the attempt to assail it.

In the next year, and but a few months after this great work had appeared, as if his secular labors in the management of the University, his own heavy share in the burden of public affairs and the rough duties of controversy could not arrest the progress of grace in his own soul or deaden his zeal for the promotion of vital godliness around him he gave to the world this treatise on the mortification of sin in believers we learn from the preface that it embodies what he had preached with such acceptance that sundry persons in whose hearts are the ways of god pressed him to publish it he had a desire also to correct certain dangerous mistakes into which some preachers or writers of that day had fallen, who recommended and enforced a process of mortifying sin which was not conducted on evangelical principles, and only tended to ensnare the conscience and foster self-righteousness and superstition.

The directions which our author gives in order to subdue the power of internal corruption are at the furthest removed from all the arts and practices of a hollow asceticism.

Yet they were equally sober and confident in the name of God and he has justified their act of faith.

The first secretary of the new society was Thomas Scott, then chaplain of the Locke Hospital, once an almost Socinian curate, eager only to study, then gently led by John Newton to adore his Redeemer and at this time already a strong and patient leader in Christian enterprises.

Just before one of the first small annual meetings of the society a young clergyman asked Scott a little carelessly how they were getting on with money and men.

We have collected about one thousand two hundred pounds, was the answer, and we have hopes of an offer of service from two German students.