duals among the nobility of the country. Their triumph gave a new impulse to their intolerance, and. led them to seize every opportunity to prejudice the Unitarians in the public mind, and arm against them the powers of the government. Unfortunately, an occasion soon offered for the full display, and the ample gratification, of the insatiable spirit of hostility by which they were actuated.

In the year 1638, some students belonging to the college of Racow, with imprudent and childish zeal, beat down with stones a cross which had been placed near one of the entrances into the town. This was construed by the Catholics into a designed insult of their religion, and an act of impiety of the blackest description. Notwithstanding the parents of the youths, and the heads of the colleges, punished the offenders, and publicly apologized for their conduct, offering at the same time to make any further atonement which the case could justly require or admit ;— nothing could allay the fury of the people, who were led on and exasperated by their religious superiors. The cause was carried before the Diet of Warsaw in the course of the year, and was regarded with deep interest by all the distinguished persons there assembled. Eminent individuals of all communions,of the Greek Church, of the Reformers, and even of the Catholic body itself,-interposed their influence to quash the proceedings, but all without success. For a decree was passed, enjoining that the Unitarian church at Racow should be closed, the college be

broken

broken up, the printing-house be demolished, and the ministers and professors be branded as infamous, proscribed, and banished the state*.

This decree was instantly executed in all its rigour, and proved a very heavy misfortune to the Unitarians., For besides depriving them of their chief seminary, and of their principal ecclesiastical establishment, it gave encouragement to the provincial tribunals in every part of the kingdom to persecute with the utmost severity all who openly professed Antitrinitarian sentiments, and to prevent the unfortunate individuals who had been expelled from Racow, obtaining a secure and peaceable asylum in other places..

These misfortunes were shortly afterwards aggravated by an invasion of the Cossacs, who marked out the Unitarians as especial objects of their outrage and vengeance. In the year 1655 the peasants of Poland also, being instigated by the Catholics, rose up in arms against them in several districts, and pursued them everywhere with sanguinary ferocity, pillaging

Lubieniecii Hist. Reform. Polon. p. 252. Vindicia pro Unitariorum in Polonia Religionis Libertate, ad calcem Sandii Bibl. Antitrin. p. 278. Histoire du Socinianisme, 4to, p. 114.

+ Among the individuals who were at this period persecuted for their Unitarian sentiments, was Jonas Schlichtingius, one of the ablest writers belonging to the Unitarians of Poland. In 1647 he published a work intituled Confessio Fidei Chris tianæ, edita Nomine Ecclesiarum quæ in Polonia unum Deum et Filium ejus unigenitum Jesum Christum, et Spiritum S. profi tentur, &c. For this he was proscribed by the Diet of Warsaw in the same year, and banished the state, and his book. was ordered to be burnt by the hands of the common hangThis work he afterwards published in 1651, with corrections and additions. The first edition I have never seen the second, which is also very scarce, is in my collection..

man.

their property, burning their houses, and putting all to death who fell into their hands.

The Catholics having succeeded thus far in the execution of their designs against the Unitarians, resolved at last to put a closing hand to their work, by either reducing them to complete silence, or forcing them to depart the country. With this view, being assured of the disposition of the sovereign, John Casimir, they preferred against them, at the Diet of Warsaw in 1658, a formal accusation, charging them, among other offences, with aiding the king of Sweden in his late invasion of the kingdom, on the ground of some families having, during his occupation of Cracow, sought an asylum in that city against the outrages of the peasants. The charges were readily entertained; and a decree was passed forbidding the public exercise of their religion, or the dissemination of their sentiments in any way whatever, under the penalty of death; and commanding them to quit the kingdom of Poland and its dependencies, within three years, unless in the mean time they joined the commmunion of the Church of Rome, or that of the tolerated reformed churches of the Lutherans or Calvinists. This dreadful edict,-which was confirmed by three successive diets, in direct violation, if not of the positive written laws of the nation, certainly of that enlightened spirit by which the administration of public affairs, as respected the subject of religion, had for upwards of a century been conducted,-fell upon the Unitarians as a calamity of the most afflicting kind. Their body comprised several families of the

first distinction, both as to rank and opulence, who adhered to their communion from principle, and whose convictions and fidelity were not to be easily shaken by persecution. The alternative which remained to them, of expatriation, with the certain loss of a very large proportion of their property, and in some instances of almost inevitable and absolute penury, was, however, so appalling, that they determined to use what influence they could yet command to avert the threatening storm, or obtain some mitigation of the sentence. Accordingly, in 1660, two years after the first decree had been passed, a synod was appointed, at the solicitation of some of the more powerful of their adherents, to be held at Cracow, in the month of March, which the Unitarian ministers were invited to attend, in order to hold a public conference or disputation with the Catholics and orthodox reformed on the principal controverted points of their respective theological systems. The Unitarian ministers augured no benefit from this measure, and being withal apprehensive that some snare might be intended, declined being present, with the exception of only one individual, ANDREW WISSOWATIUS, whose name stands most honourably connected with this celebrated assembly. Disdaining to have it imputed to him that he was ashamed openly to avow his religious opinions, or afraid to stand forward as their public advocate, at the hazard of his liberty or his life; and fearing also that if no minister of the party appeared to plead their cause, some individuals, whose resolution might have been shaken by their present

sufferings,

sufferings, and their dark future prospect, might make a fatal shipwreck of conscience by abandoning their faith; this intrepid confessor boldly proceeded to the place of meeting, and secured a reception suited to the splendour of his talents and the magnanimity of his spirit. In the disputation which followed, and which continued from the 11th to the 16th of March,. Wissowatius, though standing alone, and unsupported,vanquished by his eloquence, and the overwhelming. force of his reasoning, every adversary who appeared against him in the combat *.

This victory, however, which was evinced by the silence of his opponents, though it covered this undaunted champion with well merited honour, was productive of no advantage to the cause he had advocated. On the contrary, the Catholics, irritated

*There is a singular testimony to the triumph of Wissowatius on this occasion from a reverend Catholic. Being asked by Wiclopolski, the governor of Cracow, who presided at the discussions, what he thought of the controversy, he replied"If all the devils from hell had been here, they could not have maintained their religion more ably than this one minister has done." Et si omnes ex inferno prodirent, non possent fortius religionem suam tutari quam hic unus.' "But what," rejoined the governor, "if more of these ministers had been present? and there are many of similar powers." "If such be the case," answered the monk, "I do not know in what manner we are to defend ourselves against such per sons."-"Behold," writes a Catholic historian of this incident in a tone of lamentation, "the advantages which Catholic divines sometimes obtain from the conferences they are so ready to grant to heretics, before magistrates and others of the laity, who commonly understand the business of war, of courts, and of politics, better than the concerns of faith and piety!" Epist. de Vita A. Wissowatii, ad calcem Sandii Bibl. Antitrin. p. 252. Lamy, Histoire du Socinianisme, p.121.

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