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of the Father; and the Tritheists, who maintain that there are three equal and distinct Gods.
Nearly allied to the latter class are the Athanasians, a name derived from Athanasius, a father of the Christian Church, who lived in the fourth century.
The Sabellian reduces the three persons in the Trinity to three characters or relations. This has been called a modal Trinity, and the persons who hold it Modalists. Sabellius, the founder of this sect, espoused the doctrine in the third century.
ARIANS.
The Arian derives his name from Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, who flourished about the year 315, and the propagation of whose doctrine occasioned the famous Council of Nice, assembled by Constantine in the year 325. Arius owned Christ to be God in a subordinate sense, and considered his death to be a propitiation for sin. The modern Arians acknowledge that the Son was the Word, though they deny its being eternal, contending that it had only been created prior to all other beings. According to the different degrees of dignity assigned by this sect to Christ, in his state of existence previous to his incarnation, do they receive the appellation high and low Arian.
SOCINIANS, OR UNITARIANS.
The Socinian takes his name from Faustus Socinus, an Italian, who died in Poland, 1604. There were two who bore the name Socinus, uncle and nephew, and both disseminated the same doctrine.
The followers of this sect assert that Christ had no existence until born of the Virgin Mary; and that, being a man like ourselves, though endowed with a large portion of the divine wisdom, the only objects of his mission were to teach the efficacy of repentance without an atonement, as a medium of the divine favour—to exhibit an example for our imitation—to seal his doctrine with his blood—and, in his resurrection from the dead, to indicate the certainty of our resurrection at the last day. The simple humanity of Christ, which forms a principal article of their creed, is held lay them in such an exclusive sense, that they have, on this account, sometimes received the appellation of Humanitarians.
But the Socinians have appropriated to themselves the appellation of Unitarians, and by this name they are now generally distinguished. The miraculous conception, and the worship of Christ, together with many other opinions pro-
