Unitarianism in America | Page 8

was a demand for simplicity, rationality,
and toleration. When it had proceeded far on its way, it was led to a
consideration of the problem of the Trinity, because it did not find that
doctrine distinctly taught in the New Testament. Accepting implicitly
the words of Christ, it found him declaring positively his own
subordination to the Father, and preferred his teaching to that of the
creeds. To the early liberals this was simply a question of the nature of
Christ, and did not lessen for them their implicit faith in his revelation
or their recognition of the beauty and glory of his divine character.
[1] Paul Lafargue, The Evolution of Property from Savagery to
Civilization, 18, 19. "If the savage is incapable of conceiving the idea
of individual possession of objects not incorporated with his person, it
is because he has no conception of his individuality as distinct from the
consanguine group in which he lives.... Savages, even though
individually completer beings, seeing that they are self-sufficing, than
are civilized persons, are so thoroughly identified with their hordes and
clans that their individuality does not make itself felt either in the
family or in property. The clan was all in all: the clan was the family; it
was the clan that was the owner of property." Also W.M. Sloan, The
French Revolution and Religious Reform, 38. "In the Greek and Roman
world the individual, body, mind, and soul, had no place in reference to
the state. It was only as a member of family, gens, curia, phratry, or
deme, and tribe, that the ancient city-state knew the men and women
which composed it. The same was true of knowledge: every sensation,
perception, and judgment fell into the category of some abstraction, and,
instead of concrete things, men knew nothing but generalized ideals."

[2] Francesco S. Nitti, Catholic Socialism, 74, 85, 86. "If we consider
the teachings of the Gospel, the communistic origins of the church, the
socialistic tendencies of the early fathers, the traditions of the Canon
Law, we cannot wonder that at the present day Socialism should count
no small number of its adherents among Catholic writers.... The
Reformation was the triumph of Individualism. Catholicism, instead, is
communistic by its origin and traditions.... The Catholic Church, with
her powerful organization, dating back over many centuries, has
accustomed Catholic peoples to passive obedience, to a passive
renunciation of the greater part of individualistic tendencies."
[3] See David Masson, Life of John Milton, III. 136; John Tulloch,
Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England, II. 9; John
Hunt, Religious Thought in England, I. 234.
[4] The word socialism is not used here with any understanding that the
Catholic Church accepts the social theories implied by that name. It is
used to indicate that the Roman Church maintains that revelation is to
the church itself, and that it is now the visible representative of Christ.
The Protestant maintains that revelation is made through an individual,
and not to a church. See Otto Gierke, Political Theories of the Middle
Age, translated by F.W. Maitland, 10, 22. "In all centuries of the
Middle Age Christendom is set before us a single, universal community,
founded and governed by God himself. Mankind is one mystical body;
it is one single and internally connected people or fold; it is an
all-embracing corporation, which constitutes that Universal Realm,
spiritual, and temporal, which may be called the Universal Church, or,
with equal propriety, the Commonwealth of the Human Race....
Mediaeval thought proceeded from the idea of a single whole.
Therefore an organic construction of human society was as familiar to
it as a mechanical and atomistic construction was originally alien.
Under the influence of biblical allegories and the models set by Greek
and Roman writers, the comparison of mankind at large and every
smaller group to an animate body was universally adopted and pressed.
Mankind in its totality was conceived as an Organism."
[5] Tulloch, Rational Theology in England, I. 339.
[6] David Masson, Life of Milton, III. 102.
[7] The Religion of Protestants, II. 411.
[8] John Hunt, Religious Thought in England, II. 99.

[9] John Hunt, Religious Thought in England, I. 340.
[10] John Hunt, Religious Thought in England, I. 340.

II.
THE LIBERAL SIDE OF PURITANISM.
Unitarianism was brought to America with the Pilgrims and the
Puritans. Its origins are not to be found in the religious indifference and
torpidity of the eighteenth century, but in the individualism and the
rational temper of the men who settled Plymouth, Salem, and Boston.
Its development is coextensive with the origin and growth of
Congregationalism, even with that of Protestantism itself. So long as
New England has been in existence, so long, at least, Unitarianism, in
its motives and in its spirit, has been at work in the name