found it so favorable to the Antitrinitarians that he carried it away, and would not return it, lest it get into print and make converts; and it was therefore not published until twenty-five years later. Had the king lived, the Minor Church might have had much to hope from him; but he died in 1572, and his dynasty thus became extinct. The nobles took advantage of this occasion to make sure of securing their full rights under any future rulers. They drew up a new law, making it a condition of the election of any new king, that he should take his oath to preserve peace among the religious sects, and they sacredly pledged themselves and their posterity, that, though differing from one another as to religion (dissidentes1 de religione), they would keep the peace with one another, would not shed one another's blood, nor punish one another in any way, nor assist a magistrate in doing so, and would with all their might oppose any one who on any pretext should attempt such a thing. There were numerous representatives of the Minor Church in the Diet which passed this compact (the celebrated pax Dissidentium, 1573), and they became parties to it along with the rest; and although its provisions were later violated, and were eventually ignored altogether, nevertheless it became a fundamental law of the land, and secured the Minor Church an existence of nearly a century.

Despite the persecutions they had suffered and the dangers they had run, the number of adherents of the Minor Church continued large; and under the protection of the new law it now increased rapidly, especially among the educated nobility; for they, not having been so strictly trained up in the subtleties of theology as the clergy had been, felt the less devoted to the teachings of the creeds; while, like all Protestants of that period, they were keenly interested in the 1 Hence the term, Dissidents, later applied only to non-Catholics.

study of the Scriptures, and as they read those they could not but see that they contained little enough to support the peculiar doctrine of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds. The Diet of the kingdom was said to be filled with "Arians,” and their beliefs found wide acceptance among all classes except the ignorant peasantry who, being little better than serfs, were little regarded by any of the Protestant churches. Within a generation churches were established in every part of the kingdom, from Danzig to Kijow (Kief), and from northern Lithuania to the Carpathians; but most numerously in Little Poland and Lithuania, while in Great Poland they were few and widely scattered.

No mean factor in the growth of the Minor Church was the city of Rakow, founded in 1569 by a powerful magnate named Sieninski. Though a Calvinist, he offered the residents of his new town, among other advantages, that of perfect freedom of religious worship. Many of the Antitrinitarians therefore, being apprehensive of persecution where they were, came from all parts of the kingdom and settled here; among them Gregory Paulus who, having been driven from Krakow, founded a church at Rakow which eventually became the leading one in all Poland. The new congregation grew rapidly, and its preachers were men of the greatest reputation. The Anabaptists regarded Rakow as almost a new Jerusalem, and it came to be looked on as an especial object of divine providence. For a time rather extreme Anabaptist views were rife here, and in the church school all scholars were required to learn some manual trade. Numerous synods were held at Rakow, and it became for sixty years or more the center and source of all the main influences in the Minor Church. The more important part of its history, however, belongs in a later chapter.

We have now reached a point in our history where this

church seemed in a way to become fairly established. While disputes on the points we have mentioned were still rife among its members well on into the seventeenth century, yet they had now ceased to be a source of serious danger to the church's existence; for however much in earnest the members might be over their doctrines, the principle of mutual tolerance and charity was firmly established and generally accepted among them. Although still hated as before by both Catholics and Protestants, they now stood under the equal protection of the law which was in the interest of all the churches alike, and the age of civil persecution seemed past. One thing was still needful, if they were to have a vigorous life and a wide growth under these favorable conditions; and that was a leader who could do for them what Luther and Calvin had done for their churches: organize their system of thought, lead them in counsel, and direct them in action. Such a leader soon appeared in the person of Faustus Socinus.

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CHAPTER XVII

FAUSTUS SOCINUS AND THE FULL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCINIANISM IN POLAND,

1579-1638

At the time when, as we saw in the last chapter, the Polish Antitrinitarians most needed leadership, the needed leader appeared in the person of Faustus Socinus (in Italian, Fausto Sozzini). He organized their beliefs into a consistent system purged of extravagances and extreme positions; he ably represented them in their controversies with their opponents both Catholic and Protestant; and although a foreigner he so won their confidence and love, and so stamped himself upon their movement, that it eventually came to be known after him as Socinianism, by which name, for the sake of convenience, we shall henceforth refer to it.1 Socinus was born at Siena, Italy, in 1539, and was nephew of Lælius Socinus, whom we found as one of the Antitrin

1 The Socinians themselves did not use this name, or at least not until long afterwards. Their official name, as we have seen, was the Minor Reformed Church of Poland. They liked best to call themselves merely Christians, or Catholic Christians, or Polish Brethren. The name of Unitarians, borne by those of like faith in Transylvania, later became attached to them, and at length they were glad to accept it. To the end they never ceased to protest against the name of Arians, or of Anabaptists, by which their enemies insisted on calling them; for the former of these names stood for views which we have seen that they rejected early in their history, and the latter was more or less associated with fanatical social and religious views with which many of them had little sympathy.

itarians at Zürich in the time of Calvin.1 When he was but two years old his father died, leaving him to be brought up without regular education, as he never ceased to regret; and the law, in which many of his family had distinguished themselves, never attracted him. Soon after he became of age, the Sozzini family fell under suspicion of being Protestant heretics. One of them was seized by the Inquisition, and the rest fled, among them Faustus, who for some two years lived mostly at Lyon, though he was at Geneva long enough to become a member of the Italian church there. While he was at Lyon, his uncle Lælius died, leaving him his manuscripts, most of them on religious subjects. These may well have planted in his mind seeds that were to ripen later, but for a time they seem to have made no impression upon him; for he returned to Italy the next year, and from 1563 to 1575 lived the life of a courtier at Florence, in the service of Isabella de' Medici, daughter of the Grand-Duke Cosimo of Tuscany, remaining outwardly a good Catholic. During this period he published a book On the Authority of Holy Scripture which was highly esteemed by both Catholics and Protestants, was translated into several languages, and continued in circulation for over a century and a half.

Upon the death of his patroness Socinus refused all inducements to remain longer at court, left Italy never to return, and went to Basel which was then a place of considerable religious freedom, and for three years applied himself to the study of religious subjects, chiefly the Bible. While there he wrote a treatise showing much independence of thought, On Christ the Savior, in which he defended the view that Christ is our Savior not because he suffered for our sins, but because he showed us the way to eternal salvation, which 1 See page 114.