A HISTORY OF UNITARIANISM - Starr King School for the Ministry

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
IT IS THE PURPOSE of this work to set forth a comprehensive and well
documented account, from its earliest origins through the first quarter of the
twentieth century, of that free and progressive movement in Christian history
since the Reformation which, though it has at different times and in different
lands borne a variety of names, has on the Continent of Europe (save in
Transylvania) been most widely known as Socinianism, and in Transylvania,
England and America as Unitarianism. 1 This movement is most often
conceived by the world at large, and frequently even by its own adherents, as
one confined to England and America, and limited to the past century and a
half, definitely dating in England from the opening of Lindsey’s Unitarian
chapel in London in 1774, and in America from Channing’s sermon at
Baltimore in 1819. In reality, however, its beginnings were only a few years
later than those of Protestantism itself; and it had on the Continent an organized
existence of more than two centuries before it took form in England — a
history of great dramatic interest, and of significant influence upon the thought
and life of the whole period. For while the Protestant Reformation began in
1517 when Luther posted his theses at Wittenberg, it was only fourteen years
later that Servetus in 1531, by publishing his first book in criticism of the
doctrine of the Trinity, initiated the movement here treated. The springs of this
movement in Italy, Switzerland and Germany ran together in that decade and
those next following, into a stream that was to some extent to wash the shores
of almost every country of western Europe; though its main current was to flow