IN THE CONSIDERATION AND CONFUTATION OF ACATECHISM CALLED “ASCRIPTURE CATECHISM,”WRITTEN BY J. BIDDLE, M.A.,AND THE CATECHISM OF VALENTINUS SMALCIUS, COMMONLY CALLED “THE RACOVIAN CATECHISM;” WITH THE VINDICATION OF THE TESTIMONIES OF SCRIPTURE CONCERNING THE DEITY AND SATISFACTION OF JESUS CHRIST FROM THE PERVERSE EXPOSITIONS AND INTERPRETATIONS OF THEM BY HUGO GROTIUS,IN HIS ANNOTATIONS ON THE BIBLE.

ALSO, AN APPENDIX, IN VINDICATION OF SOME THINGS FORMERLY WRITTEN ABOUT THE DEATH OF CHRIST AND THE FRUITS THEREOF FROM THE ANIMAD VERSIONS OF MR. R. B.

Mhde< eJmoi< tw~| tau~ta le>gonti aJplw~v pisteu>shv ejadeixin tw~n kataggellome>nwn ajpo< qei>wn mh< la>bh|v grafw~n — CYRIL, HIEROS., Catech. 4.

OXFORD: 1655.

PREFATORY NOTE.

IN 1654 the commands of the Council of State were laid upon Owen to undertake the refutation of Socinianism, which about that time was introduced into England, and in the following year the “Vindiciae Evangelicae” appeared; — a work of unequal merit, and in many parts obsolete under the new light shed on the subject by more recent discussions, but in the main so solid as never to have been answered; containing much that modern polemics have by no means superseded; full of information as to the early history of Socinianism, nowhere else to be gleaned in the theological literature of Britain; and altogether of such substantial excellence as to render its author’s name worthy of its place as historically the first among that splendid catena of divines, — Bull, Waterland, Horsley, Magee, Fuller, Pye Smith, and Wardlaw, — by whom the cardinal doctrines of Christ’s person, Godhead, and work, have been placed on a basis of unshaken demonstration from the Word of God.

In the execution of his task, our author resolved to meet three parties whose writings tended to unsettle the general belief of the Church of Christ respecting these doctrines; — Biddle, whose publications, devoted to the propagation of Unitarian sentiments, had drawn the attention and excited the fears of the Council; the Polish Socinians, as represented by the Racovian Catechism; and Hugo Grotius, whose Socinianizing comments on Scripture have left his orthodoxy on the vital truths of our Lord’s divinity and satisfaction under a cloud of suspicion. JOHN BIDDLE, the father of English Socinianism, was born in 1616, at Wotton-under-Edge. Having made considerable proficiency at the grammar school of his native town, he received from Lord Berkeley an exhibition of £10, was admitted a student of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, and took his degree of A.M. in 1641. While occupied afterwards as a teacher in the city of Gloucester, he began to divulge his errors by the private circulation of a small tract, under the title, “Twelve Arguments drawn out of the Scriptures, wherein the commonly received opinion touching the Deity of the Holy Spirit is fully Refuted.” He was summoned from the county jail, to which the magistrates had committed him, to answer for his errors before Parliament; and, on the report of a committee respecting his case, he was left under the custody of an officer of the House for five years. During this period he published successively his “Twelve Arguments,” “A Confession of Faith concerning the Holy Trinity,” and “The Testimonies of Irenaeus, etc., concerning one God and the Persons of the Holy Trinity.” By an atrocious act passed in 1648, in which it was made a capital offense to publish against the being and perfections of God, the deity of the Son and of the Spirit, and similar doctrines, Biddle had wellnigh fallen a martyr to his opinions. The act, however, never came into operation. He was even in more serious peril after the Long Parliament was dissolved and its: opponents were in power; for he actually stood a trial for his life in 1655. Cromwell dexterously overruled these proceedings by the summary banishment of Biddle to Star Castle, in one of the Scilly Islands. He recovered his freedom only to be cast into prison anew on the Restoration; and having caught some distemper common in the jails of that time, he died a prisoner in 1662. He was a man of considerable attainments as a scholar. “Except his opinions,” says Anthony Wood, “there was little or nothing blameworthy in him;” and his admirer, Toulmin, pronounces him “a pious, holy, and humble man.” His piety must have been of a singular type, if we consider his views of the divine nature, — views replete with the most profane and revolting materialism, at that time without a parallel in our literature, and calculated to shock the best feelings and holiest convictions of his countrymen, while the knowledge of them inspired continental divines with alarm, as if England were fast lapsing into the most impious heresies. It can only be from a desire that their cause may have the honor of having stood, in one instance at least, the test of civil penalties under British rule, that Socinians, who pride themselves on their views of the spirituality of God, claim affinity with poor Biddle.

Nicolas Estwick replied to him, in an “Examination of his Confession of Faith;” Poole, in his “Plea for the Godhead of the Holy Ghost;” and Francis Cheynel, in his “Divine Trinunity of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” Biddle held to his errors, and produced in 1654 his “Twofold Catechism,” etc.; which the following work of Owen is designed to review and confute.