Socinians

“ To God's righteous Judgment therefore I must finally remit you. At your own peril be it. This, of the Socinian's Plea concerning the Scripture on his side.
§. 9.
Where the self-clearness of the sense of Scriptures, not mistakable in Fundamentals, or necessaries, upon a due industry used (of which also rightly used, men may be sufficiently assured,) being made the ground, as you see, of the Protestants and Socinians Faith, before these two proceed to any further conference, give me leave, to interpose a word between them, concerning this certainty so much spoken of, and presumed on. ”

“ By men warmly attached to their own religion, and who had at all times regarded the Socinians as undermining its foundation, this youthful excess was represented as confirming all the charges that had been made against the community to which the perpetrators belonged, and they determined to exert themselves to procure their punishment or extirpation. ”

“ The Socinians open the modern development, but since they and their successors, the Unitarians, remain a branch of the Christian Church, and retain some measure of the sacerdotal and authoritative element, they do not properly fall into the category of Rationalists, and are not included in this work. ”

“ Among Protestants I know the Socinians are great Pretenders to the Scriptures, and in Words as much exalt them as any other People; and yet its strange to see how that not only in many things they are not agreeable to them ”

“ Spanish half-crowns.
[21] P. 99. Socinians; followers of the teaching of Lalius and Faustus Socinus (16th century) , which denied the doctrine of the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the personality of the devil, the native and total depravity of man, the vicarious atonement and eternal punishment. The Socinians are now represented by the Unitarians. Manicheans; followers of Manes or Manichæus (3rd century) , a Persian who maintained that there are two principles, the one good and the other evil, each equally powerful in the government of the world. ”

“ The five articles are concerning predestination, redemption, God's grace, free- (illegible text) , and the perseverance of the (illegible text) .
Of Socinians.
So called from one Faustus Socinus, an Italian of Stena. They place all their religion in old condemned heresies: following their mast (illegible text) a most vile heretic.
Amongst other things they hold the doctrine of man's free will ”

“ No doubt one chief reason for the unclear and contradictory theories of class relations lies in the fact that our society, largely controlled in all its organization by one set of doctrines, still contains survivals of old social theories which are totally inconsistent with the former. In the Middle Ages men were united by custom and prescription into associations, ranks, guilds, and communities of various kinds. These ties [23] endured as long as life lasted. Consequently society was dependent, throughout all its details, on status, and the tie, or bond, was sentimental. ”

“ Its whole plausibility rests on the à priori assumption of prejudice, that slaveholding cannot but be wicked, and on a determination not to see it otherwise. Our refutation, which is demonstrative, reveals the Socinian origin and Rationalistic character of these opinions. Socinianism harbours loose views of the authority of inspiration, and especially of that of the Old Testament. ”

“ The Reformation secured a measure of it in religious affairs, the eighteenth century evolutions conquered a place for it in political affairs; socialism,—or rather this conception of solidarity,—has yet to assure it in all social life—not merely in economic life. The individual is dignified in the common purpose of the race—in the life of the organism of which he is an integral part. With this perception we encounter the crux of the social question, the rock on which all forms of socialism threaten to split, the reality and the implications of human equality. ”

“ Practically, the group would tend to limit itself, from the first, to own brothers who shared their wives in common, and to own sisters who shared their husbands in common. Lastly. The gentes created a higher organic structure of society than had before been known, with processes of development as a social system adequate to the wants of mankind until civilization supervened. With the progress of society under the gentes, the way was prepared for the appearance of the syndyasmian family. ”

“ I now propose to try to find out whether there is any class in society which lies under the duty and burden of fighting the battles of life for any other class, or of solving social problems for the satisfaction of any other class; also, whether there is any class which has the right to formulate demands on "society"—that is, on other classes; also, whether there is anything but a fallacy and a superstition in the notion that "the State" owes anything to anybody except peace, order, and the guarantees of rights. ”

“ In the stationary societies, where all individuals were permeated by the same political, religious, moral, and social ideas; and where each class had its own hereditary and fixed traditions of action and manners, this cause of friction and suffering had of necessity no existence; individual differences and discord might be occasioned by personal greeds, ambitions, and selfishnesses, but not by conflicting conceptions of right and wrong, of the desirable and undesirable, in all branches of human life. ”

“ State Socialism, the Socialism of the chair, and the Christian Social movement prove the simultaneity of this characteristic of the age in every circle of modern society; the Social Democratic party merely represents the group to whose impulse we must ascribe the fact of governments including Socialism in their programme, of professors inoculating young intelligences therewith from their chairs, of Rome eagerly seizing it as a welcome instrument wherewith to revive her faded popularity ”

“ If you are wearing stripes, I am wearing stripes.' We've got to feel something more than Brotherhood. We've got to feel identity. And as a part, anyway, of that road seems to me to be named Socialization, I'm willing to be called a Socialist. ”

“ Yes, without doubt, the Saint-Simonians profess peculiar views regarding property and the future of women, as well as concerning religion, power, liberty, and, finally, concerning all the great problems which are agitated so violently in Europe to-day. But these are very different from those ascribed to them. The system of community of goods means a division among all the members of society, either of the means of production or of the fruits of the toil of all. ”

“ Still many of them may have heard that in the opinion of various fin-de-siècle seers and prophets the future of the human race lies in collectivism, a prediction which I do not intend to discuss, but respecting which I may remark that during the last half century in this country there has certainly been a tendency in the direction indicated, even amongst classes which profess to hold every form of socialism in horror. ”

“ But great as is the influence which a well-organized civil society must have upon the condition of its members, the term civilization conveys something still more comprehensive and more lofty than the mere perfection of social relations in the economic sphere. In this other aspect the word embraces the development of the intellectual and moral faculties of man, of his feelings, his propensities, his natural capacities and tastes. ”

“ In the language of the Christian socialists, who wish to combine the militant spirit and organisation of medieval Catholicism with a bid for the popular vote, we have 'rediscovered the Corporate Idea.' But if we take socialism, not in the narrower sense of collectivism, which would be an economic experiment, but in the wider sense of a keen consciousness of the solidarity of the community as an organic whole, there is very little truth in the commonly held notion that we have become more socialistic. ”

“ In the case of other classes, or bodies of persons, having community of interests this common interest invariably interprets itself in a sense of class, caste, or race solidarity. The class or caste has a certain esprit de corps in its own interest. The whole of history largely turns on the conflict of economic classes based on a common feeling obtaining between members of the respective classes; on a small scale, we see the same thing in the solidarity of a particular trade or profession. ”

“ A favourite dream of socialism is—or was until the idea of collectivism obtained—that each State of Europe should be divided into an infinite number of small self-contained communes. Now, it sometimes happens that the thing we desire is already realised, had we eyes to see. ”

“ And in the individual associated, in this social man, is found both individual and species, organ and organism. These are the two fundamental principles, individualism and solidarity. The two conceptions are complementary on one condition, however; that is the fusion of the one in the other and the formation of a conception altogether new, as the chemical combination of an acid and a base forms a salt. So individualism and socialism should form a social reaction, producing a new body of religious and economic doctrine. ”

“ The more Syndicalism develops, by abandoning the old superstitions which come to it from the Old Régime and from the Church—through the men of letters, professors of philosophy, and historians of the Revolution,—the more will social conflicts assume the character of a simple struggle, similar to those of armies on campaign. We cannot censure too severely those who teach the people that they ought to carry out the highly idealistic decrees of a progressive justice. ”

“ The writers by whom, more than by any others, a new mode of political thinking was brought home to me, were those of the St. Simonian school in France. In 1829 and 1830 I became acquainted with some of their writings. They were then only in the earlier stages of their speculations. They had not yet dressed out their philosophy as a religion, nor had they organized their scheme of Socialism. They were just beginning to question the principle of hereditary property. ”

“ How much more manly would it be, and how much better would it be financially for themselves, and morally for their children and descendants, if they are prepared to labour with their own hands, to do so in their own country, and remain a part of the great Anglo-Saxon race, with all its rich inheritance of laws, literature, and traditions, than to cast in their lot with mongrel Portuguese and Africans! ”

“ Socinios, now universally acknowledged as king, began his reign with a degree of moderation which there was no reason to expect of him. Often as he had been betrayed, many and inveterate as his enemies were, now he had them in his power, he sought no vengeance for injuries which he had suffered, but freely pardoned every one, receiving all men graciously without reproach or reflections, or even depriving them of their employments. ”

“ Socialist, in 1847, were understood, on the one hand, the adherents of the various Utopian systems; Owenites in England, Fourierists in France, both of them already reduced to the position of mere sects, and gradually dying out; on the other hand, the most multifarious social quacks who, by all manner of tinkering, professed to redress, without any danger to capital and profit, all sorts of social grievances; in both cases men outside the working-class movement, and looking rather to the 'educated' classes for support. ”

“ I write more now for a purpose. I am one of the ‘abhorred tribe,’ you know—a Socialist, or what people understand as a Socialist. Are you horrified?”
“Not in the least,” I answered her; “only I should like to know more about it. From what I have heard about Socialism I should never have dreamed of associating it with—well, with Dresden cups and saucers, for instance,” I laughed, motioning to her own. ”

“ Singly we are sand-grains, together we are the simoom. Our great teacher, Moses, was the first Socialist. The legislation of the Old Testament—the land laws, the jubilee regulations, the tender care for the poor, the subordination of the rights of property to the interests of the working-men—all this is pure Socialism! ”

“ The friends of humanity start out with certain benevolent feelings toward "the poor," "the weak," "the laborers," and others of whom they make pets. They generalize these classes, and render them impersonal, and so constitute the classes into social pets. They turn to other classes and appeal to sympathy and generosity, and to all the other noble sentiments of the human heart. Action in the line proposed consists in a transfer of capital from the better off to the worse off. ”

“ The present wave in the direction of socialism arises, to an extent, in reaction from the extremely individualistic position of previous ages. Man is now realising that the social relations of life are of importance as well as the character of his own life. He realises the interdependence of members of a community, and the conception of the State as a whole, a unit, instead of a mere sum of individuals, grows up. ”

“ Against this noisy, garrulous, and lying Socialism, which is exploited by ambitious people of every description, which amuses a few buffoons, and which is admired by decadents—revolutionary Syndicalism takes its stand, and endeavours, on the contrary, to leave nothing in a state of indecision ”

“ Have we seen it develop into Socinianism at Geneva, and utter unbelief in Germany, and a host of sects in England and America, whose name is Legion, and who seem to be agreed in nothing else but in the denial of sacramental grace, and visible unity; and all this at the last hour, in the very turning point of our destiny, to seek alliance with those who have no other point of union but common resistance to the tabernacle of God among men? ”