Socinianism and the Cromwellian Church settlement

Abstract

In 1652, John Owen and his fellow Independent ministers had assumed that Socinian ideas found little support in England, yet by 1655 they feared that this Polish heresy was infiltrating England, rivalling the appeal of true Reformed theology. The Independents recognised that the Socinians offered a new approach to the scriptural text, which supported a new interpretation of Christianity, and they realised that this alternative reading could seriously damage their plans for a Church settlement. At the same time, however, they believed that by demonstrating the errors and absurdities of the Socinians they could prove the superiority of their own version of Christianity. Whereas in 1652 they had used a petition against the Racovian Catechism to bolster support for a Trinitarian settlement, by the middle of the 1650s they were more ambitious, hoping to discredit several theological positions at once by associating them with Socinianism. Yet Owen and his friends also became genuinely anxious about the spread of Socinian ideas – and there was some truth in their fears. There is evidence from this period for positive engagement with Socinian ideas, but most especially with Socinian ideas as they were mediated through the Remonstrant tradition. The result was a clash between different views of what constituted a ‘reasonable’ reading of Scripture – a clash that damaged the prospects for Church settlement in the short term, but which also revealed some serious tensions within English Reformed theology and intellectual culture.