wise counsels, virtuous pro- they settled at Nisqueunia, pensities, and divine feelings and, finally, that these two representations were to cease after the destruction of this terrestrial globe, and to be absorbed into the substance of the Deity, whence they had been formed. Servetus denied infant baptism, and maintained that no man ought to be prosecuted like a criminal for any doctrinal point.* SETHIANS, so called because they paid divine worship to Seth, whom they looked upon to be Jesus Christ, the Son of God; but who was made by a third divinity, and substituted in the room of the two families of Abel and Cain, which had been destroyed by the deluge. This denomination appear ed in Egypt about the year 190, and continued above two hundred years.t SHAKERS. The first who acquired this denomination were Europeans, a part of whom came from England to New York in the year 1774; and, being joined by others, above Albany, whence they have spread their doctrine, and increased to a considerable number. Anna Leese, whom they style the Elect Lady, was the head of this party. They assert that she was the woman spoken of in the twelfth chapter of Revelation, and that she speaks seventy-two tongues; and though these tongues are unintelligible to the living, she converses with the dead, who understand her language. They add further that she is the mother of all the elect, that she travails for the whole world, and that no blessing can descend to any person but only by and through her, and that in the way of her being possessed of their sins, by their confessing and repenting of them one by one, according to her direction. The tenets which are peculiarly distinguishing to this denomination are comprised in seven articles, to which is added a short specimen of their manner of defending their religious sentiments.§ * Mosheim, vol, iv, pp. 172, 173. Memoirs of Literature, vol. iv. p. 199. † Broughton, vol. ii. p. 390. Anna Leese died in the year 1784, and her power devolved upon one James Whitacher, who died in July, 1787. The office is now exercised by Joseph Meacham, of New Lebanon, who has attained the reputation of a prophet with this denomination. This account is chiefly extracted from a manuscript, in which a Shaker gave a particular relation of the tenets of his denomination, in answer to queries proposed to him, (1.) That the first resurrection is already come, and now is the time to judge themselves; and that this first resurrection is an entire new dispensation, in which the people of God are not to be guided by the written word, but by the immediate influences of the holy Ghost. (2.) That they have power to heal the sick, to raise the dead, and to cast out devils. This, they say, is performed by the preaching of the word of God, when it is attended with the divine power-the wonderful energy and operation of the holy Spirit; which performs those things, by healing the brokenhearted, by raising up those who are dead in trespasses and sins to a life of holiness and righteousness, which causes the devils to be cast out. See Matt. x. 8.-(3.) That they have a correspondence with angels, the spirits of the saints, and their departed friends. This they attempt to prove from 1 Cor. xii. 8-10: There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. To some is given the word of wisdom, to some the discerning of spirits, &c. (4.) That they speak with divers kind of tongues in their public assemblies. This, they think, is done by the divine power and influence of the holy Spirit. (5.) That it is wful to practise vocal music with dancing in the christian churches, if it be practised in praising the Lord.—(6.) That they, being the children of the resurrection, must neither marry nor be given in marriage; but that their church is come out of the order of natural generation, to be as Christ was; and that those who have wives be as though they had none; that by these means heaven begins upon earth, and they thereby lose their earthly and sensual relation to Adam the first, and come to be transparent in their ideas in the bright and heavenly visions of God. They suppose that some of their people are of the number of the hundred and forty-four thousand who were redeemed from the earth, that were not defiled with women.-(7.) That the word everlasting, when applied to the punishment of the wicked, refers only to a limited space of time, excepting in the case of those who fall from their church; but for such there is no forgiveness, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come. They quote Matt. xii. 32, to prove this doctrine. This denomination maintain that it is unlawful to swear, game, or use compliments to each other; and that water-baptism and the Lord's supper are abolished. They deny the imputation of Adam's sin to his posterity, and the doctrine of election and reprobation. The discipline of this denomination is founded on the supposed perfection of their leaders. The mother, it is said, obeys God through Christ. European elders obey her. American labourers and the common people obey them: while confession is made of every secret in nature, from the oldest to the youngest. The people are made to believe that they are seen through and through in the gospel glass of perfection by their teachers, who behold the state of the dead, and innumerable worlds of spirits, good and bad. These people are generally instructed to be very industrious, and to bring in according to their ability to keep up the meeting. They vary in their exercises. Their heavy dancing, as it is called, is performed by a perpetual springing from the house floor, about four inches up and down, both in the men's and women's apartment, moving about with extraordinary transport, singing sometimes one at a time, sometimes more, making a perfect charm. This elevation affects, the nerves, so that they have in tervals of shuddering, as if they were in a strong fit of the ague. They sometimes clap hands, and leap so as to strike the joist above their heads. They throw off their outside garments in these exercises, and spend their strength very cheerfully this way. Their chief speaker often calls for their attention, when they all stop and hear some harangue, and then fall to dancing again. They assert that their dancing is the token of the great joy and happiness of the New Jerusalem state, and denotes the victory over sin. One of the postures, which increases among them, is turning round very swiftly for an hour or two. This, they say, is to shew the great power of God. They sometimes fall on their knees, and make a sound like the roaring of many waters, in groans and cries to God, as they say, for the wicked world who persecute them.* SIMONIANS, a denomination in the first century. They derived their name from Simon Magus, their leader, who is so often mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles; and assumed to himself the title of the supreme power of God. This denomination main *Rathburn's Account of the Shakers, pp. 411. Taylor's Account of the Shakers, pp. 4-16. West's Account of the Shakers, pp. 8-13. See Accounts of Shakers in Theological Magazine, 1795, p. 82. tained the eternity of matter, and also the existence of an evil being, who presided, and thus shared the empire of the universe with the supreme and beneficent Mind. They probably embraced the opinion of those who held that matter moved from eternity; and, by an intrinsic and necessary activity, had, from its innate force, produced, at a certain period of time, from its own substance, the evil principle which now exercises dominion over it, with all its numerous train of attendants. They are said to have taught that all human actions were indifferent, to have attributed a surprising power to magic, and to have denied the resurrection of the dead. Simon Magus taught those who followed him to fall down before him and his mistress Helena in his journey from Asia to Rome, to whom he ascribed the quality of the first intelligence of the sovereigu virtue. To her he attributed the production of angels, and to angels the creation of the world. He pretended that in his person resided the great est and most perfect of the divine aions, and another, of the female sex, the mother of all human souls, dwelt in the person of his mistres Helena ; and that he came by the command of God upon earth to establish the empire of those who had formed the material world, and to deliver Helena from their power and dominion.* SOCINIANS, a denomination which appeared in the sixteenth century, and embraced the opinions of Lelius Socinus, a man of uncommon genius and learning; and of Faustus Socinus, his nephew, who propagated his uncle's sentiments in a public manner after his death. The principal tenets maintained by this denomination are as follow; to which are added a few of the arguments they use in defence of their sentiments. That the holy scriptures are to be understood and explained in such a manner as to render them conformable to the dictates of reason.-In consequence of this leading point in their theology, they maintain that God, who is infinitely more perfect than man, though of a similar nature in some respects, exerted an act of that power by which he governs all things; in consequence of which an extraordinary person was born of the *Mosheim's Eccles. Hist. vol. i. 115. Simson's History of the Church, 414. Dupin's Church History, vol. ii. p. 29. Formey's Ecclesiastical History, vol. i. p. 21. Virgin Mary. That person was Jesus Christ, whom God first translated to heaven by that portion of his divine power called the holy Ghost; and, having instructed him fully in the knowledge of his counsels and designs, sent him again into this sublunary world to promulgate to mankind a new rule of life, more excellent than that under which they had formerly lived, to propagate divine truth by his minis try, and to confirm it by his death. That those who obey the voice of this divine teacher (and this obedience is in the power of every one whose will and inclination lead that way) shall one day be clothed with new bodies, and inhabit eternally those blessed regions where God himself immediately resides. Such, on the contrary, as are disobedient and rebellious, shall undergo most terrible and exquisite torments, which shall be succeeded by annihilation, or the total extinction of their being. The above is an account of the religious tenets of Socinus and his immediate followers. Those at the present day who maintain the mere humanity of Christ, differ from Socinus in many things; particularly in not paying religious worship to Jesus Christ, which was a point that Faustus Socinus vehemently insisted on, though he considered Christ as a man only, with divine pow eis conferred upon him. He supposed that, in condescension to human weakness, in order that mankind might have one of their own brethren more upon a levels with them, to whom they might have recourse in their straits and necessities, Almighty God, for his eminent virtues, had conferred upon Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary, some years after he was born, a high divine power, lordship, and dominion, for the government of the christian, world only; and had qualified him to hear and answer the prayers of his followers in such matters as related to the cause of the gospel. The chief foundation on which Socinus founded the opinion of Christ's being an * Socinus and some of his followers entertained a notion of Christ's hav ing been in some unknown time of his life taken up personally into heaven, and sent down again to the earth, which was the way in which they solved these expressions concerning him: "No man has ascended to heaven but he that came from heaven, even the Son of Man which is in heaven." (John iii. 13.) Thus Moses, who was the type of Christ, before the promulgation of the law, ascended to God upon Mount Sinai. So Christ, before he enter ed on the office assigned him by the Father, was in consequence of the divine counsel and agency, translated into heaven, that he might see the things he had to announce to the world in the name of God himself. |