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 virtuous 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 protectorate 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 instances of their violation of the divine law; and that consequently 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 characters of the elect, that they cannot do anything which is either displeasing to God or prohibited by the law.—Luther, Rutherford, Schluffelburg, Sedgwick, Gataker, Witius, Bell, Williams, &c. have written refutations; Crisp, Richardson, Saltmarsh, &c. defences, of the Antinomians; Wigandus, a comparison between 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 Amstorf 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.