SOCINUS, FAUSTUS, nephew of the preceding, and principal founder of the Socinian sect, was born at Siena in 1539. The letters which his uncle Lælius wrote to his relations, and which infused into them many seeds of heresy,
Socrates. made an impression upon him; so that, knowing himself not innocent, he fled as well as the rest when the Inquisition began to persecute that family. He was at Lyon when he heard of his uncle's death, and he departed immediately to take possession of his writings. He returned to Tuscany; and made himself so agreeable to the grand duke, that the charms which he found in that court, and the honourable posts which he filled there, hindered him for twelve years from remembering that he had been considered as the person who was to put the last hand to the system of divinity, of which his uncle Lælius had made a rough draught. At last he went into Germany in 1574, and paid no regard to the grand duke's advices to return. He stayed three years at Basel, and there studied divinity; and having adopted a set of principles very different from the system of Protestants, he resolved to maintain and propagate them; for which purpose he wrote a treatise De Jesu Christo Servatore. In 1579 Socinus retired into Poland, and desired to be admitted into the communion of the Unitarians; but as he differed from them on some points, on which he refused to be silent, he met with a repulse. He did not, however, cease to write in defence of their churches against those who attacked them. At length his book against James Palæologus furnished his enemies with a pretence to exasperate the King of Poland against him; but though the mere reading of it was sufficient to refute his accusers, Socinus thought proper to leave Cracow, after having resided there four years. He then lived under the protection of several Polish lords, and married a lady of a good family; but her death, which happened in 1587, so deeply afflicted him as to injure his health; and to complete his sorrow, he was deprived of his patrimony by the death of Francis de' Medici, Great Duke of Florence. The consolation which he found in seeing his sentiments at last approved of by several ministers was greatly interrupted in 1598; for he met with a thousand insults at Cracow, and was with great difficulty saved from the hands of the rabble. His house was plundered, and he lost his goods; but this loss was not so uneasy to him as that of some manuscripts, which he extremely regretted. To deliver himself from such dangers, he retired to a village about nine miles distant from Cracow, where he spent the remainder of his days at the house of Abraham Blonski, a Polish gentleman, where he died in 1604. All Faustus Socinus's works are contained in the first two volumes of the great collection entitled Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum.
The followers of the Socini were called Socinians. They maintain—"That Jesus Christ was a mere man, who had no existence before he was conceived by the Virgin Mary; that the Holy Ghost is no distinct person, but that the Father is truly and properly God. They own that the
name of God is given in the Holy Scriptures to Jesus Christ; but contend that it is only a deputed title, which, however, invests him with an absolute authority over all created beings, and renders him an object of worship to men and angels. They deny the doctrines of satisfaction and imputed righteousness; and say that Christ only preached the truth to mankind, set before them in himself an example of heroic virtue, and sealed his doctrines with his blood. Original sin and absolute predestination, they esteem scholastic chimeras. They likewise maintain the sleep of the soul, which they say becomes insensible at death, and is raised again with the body at the resurrection, when the good shall be established in the possession of eternal felicity, while the wicked shall be consigned to a fire that will not torment them eternally, but for a certain duration in proportion to their demerits."