When the first great movement which led to the Reform of a large part of the Christian Churches in Europe, awakened men’s minds from the lethargy in which they had slept whilst learning was confined to the cloister, the questions with regard to the nature of the Deity which had distracted the early church began again to be mooted; and as early as the year 1524, “the divinity of Christ was openly denied by Lewis Hetyer, one of the wandering and fanatical Anabaptists, who was put to death at Constance.” { 33a} He was succeeded by Michael Servede or Servetus, a Spanish physician; who, for his wild notions on the same subject, was apprehended on his road through Switzerland at the instigation of Calvin, accused of blasphemy, and condemned to the flames. { 33b} But doctrines were never yet crushed by persecution, unless indeed it were so wholesale as to exterminate all who held them; and though these opinions were thus fatal to their professors, the main points were reproduced by others; and finally assumed form as a sect, under the titles above named. The term Socinian was taken from two of its most distinguished promoters, Lælius and Faustus Sozinus, or Socinus. They were of an illustrious family at Siena in Tuscany, and Lælius, the uncle of Faustus, having taken a disgust to popery, travelled into France, England, &c. to examine into their religious creed, in order, if possible, to come at the truth. He was a man distinguished for his genius and learning, no less than for his virtuous life; he settled at last at Zurich, embraced the Helvetic confession of faith, and died at Zurich in 1562, before he had reached his fortieth year. His sentiments, or rather doubts as to certain points, were embodied, and more openly propagated by his nephew Faustus; who, as is supposed, drew up from his papers the religious system afterwards known under the name of Socinianism. There is however a considerable degree of obscurity hanging over the rise of this sect, and no one has given a satisfactory history of it.
The first appearance of Unitarians, as a distinct congregation, was in Poland, where they obtained a settlement in the city of Cracow in the year 1569; and in 1575 they published at Cracow the “Catechism or Confession of the Unitarians;” { 35a} but Faustus Socinus having settled among them in the year 1579, soon obtained so much influence as finally to remodel the whole religious system of the sect, and a new form drawn up by Socinus himself, was substituted for the old Catechism.