A HISTORY OF UNITARIANISM - Starr King School for the Ministry

fame spread so far that Sebastian Franck in 1531 sent him from Strassburg a
long letter expressing sympathetic appreciation of his efforts. 41
Other avenues of approach to the Lutheran world being now closed to him,
Campanus took up his pen and wrote a book entitled, Against the whole world
since the Apostles. 42 Though this circulated rather widely in manuscript, it is
not known to have been printed; but it was presently followed in print by an
abridged version in German. 43 The little book covers Campanus’s whole
system of theology, discussing the various points in the light of Scripture, and
is distinctly anti-Lutheran. Luther thought the work not worth paying any
attention to, and advised that the writer be not complimented with an answer;
but Melanchthon was more agitated by it, and expressed the opinion that the
author deserved to be hanged, and he so wrote to the Duke of Julich. 44
Campanus’s view of the Trinity is but a small part of the whole system of
doctrine by which he proposed to restore the ptlrity of Apostolic Christianity,
though it is the most original part, and the one with which he sets out. The case
of Adam and Eve, who though two persons were declared to be one flesh, is
taken as a symbol of the Divine Being, in which there are two persons but only
one God. One of these bears, the other is born. The Son is not eternal like the
Father, but was born from the essence of the Father before all worlds; but he
was not eternally begotten, and is subordinate to the Father. Scripture knows of
no third person; and the Holy Spirit is the common being of Father and Son, the
nature and power of God which inspires in us true faith and holy life.
Campanus continued for some twenty years to spread his notion of a
reformed Christianity along the lower Rhine. Melanchthon kept watching him
and writing the authorities letters against him; but his un bounded contempt for
the Lutheran system won him favor and indulgence among a population largely