le a large number of
pamphlets and treatises, for and against the new views, published about
this period. It is the first considerable body of Unitarian literature.
Its promoter was _Thomas Firmin_, a disciple of John Bidle, on whose
behalf he interceded with Oliver Cromwell, though himself but a youth at
the time. Firmin, a prosperous citizen of London, counted among his
friends men of the highest offices in the Church, some of whom are said
to have been affected with his type of thought. Apart from his
Unitarianism he is remarkable as an enlightened philanthropist of great
breadth of sympathy. Men of very different theological bent who were
fain to seek refuge in London from persecutions abroad were aided by
funds raised by him. We should notice also that, ardent as he was in
diffusing Unitarian teachings, he had no wish at first to set up
separate Unitarian chapels; his desire was that the national Church
should include thinkers like himself. We are thus pointed into a path
which for a time at least promised more for Unitarian developments than
anything very evident in the Dissenting community.

The situation is aptly illustrated by a little book of 184 pages which
is included in the first volume of the _Tracts_. This work is specially
noteworthy as one of the first English books to use the name
'Unitarian,' though the use is here so free and without apology or
explanation that we must suppose it had already attained a certain vogue
before 1687, the date of the book. The title is _A Brief History of the
Unitarians, called also Socinians_. Neither author nor publisher is
named, but the former is known to have been the Rev. Stephen Nye, a
clergyman, whose grandfather, Philip Nye, was noted in his day as one of
the few Independents in the Westminster Assembly. Stephen Nye's book
takes the form of four Letters, ostensibly written to an unnamed
correspondent who has asked for an account of the Unitarians, 'vulgarly
called Socinians.' The opening letter states their doctrine, after the
model of Socinus--God is One Person, not Three; the Lord Christ is the
'Messenger, Servant, and Creature of God,' also the 'Son of God, because
he was begotten on the blessed Mary by the Spirit or Power of God'; 'the
Holy Ghost or Spirit, according to them, is the Power and Inspiration of
God.' (We may notice here that Bidle, otherwise agreeing with Socinus,
regarded the Holy Spirit as a living being, chief among angels.) Nye,
writing as if