ANTINOMIANS, in ecclesiastical history, certain
heretics who maintain the law of no use or obligation
under the gospel-dispensation, or who hold doctrines that
clearly supersede the necessity of good works and a vir-
tuous life. The Antinomians took their origin from John
Agricola about the year 1538; who taught that the law
is no ways necessary under the gospel; that good works
do not promote our salvation, nor ill ones hinder it; that
repentance is not to be preached from the decalogue, but
only from the gospel.
This sect sprung up in England during the protec-
torate of Oliver Cromwell, and extended their system
of libertinism much farther than Agricola the disciple
of Luther. Some of their teachers expressly maintained,
that as the elect cannot fall from grace, nor forfeit
the Divine favour, the wicked actions they commit
are not really sinful, nor are to be considered as instan-
ces of their violation of the divine law; and that con-
sequently they have no occasion either to confess their
sins, or to break them off by repentance. According
to them, it is one of the essential and distinctive char-
acters of the elect, that they cannot do any thing
which is either displeasing to God or prohibited by the
law.—Luther, Rutherford, Schluselburg, Sedgwick,
Gataker, Witsius, Bull, Williams, &c. have written
refutations; Crisp, Richardson, Saltmarsh, &c. defen-
ces, of the Antinomians; Wigandus, a comparison be-
tween ancient and modern Antinomians.
The doctrine of Agricola was in itself obscure, and
perhaps represented worse than it really was by Luther,
who wrote with acrimony against him, and first styled
him and his followers Antinomians. Agricola stood on
his own defence, and complained that opinions were
imputed to him which he did not hold. Nicholas Ams-
dorf fell under the same odious name and imputation,
and seems to have been treated more unfairly than even
Agricola himself. It is rather hard to charge upon a
man all the opinions that may be inferred from things
that have hastily dropped from him, when he himself
disavows such inferences.