Apart from the extremists in the great struggle between High Church and Puritans there existed a group of moderate men, often of shrewd intellect, ripe scholarship, and attractive temper, who sought in a wider liberty of opinion an escape from the tyrannical alternatives presented by the two opposing parties.  Even in connection with these very parties there were tendencies peculiar to themselves, which could not fail in the end to mitigate the force of their own contentions.  The High Church was mostly ‘Arminian,’ i.e. on the side of the more ‘reasonable’ theology of that age.  The Puritans were wholly committed to the principle of democratic liberty, as then understood, and in religious matters set the Bible in the highest place of authority.  It could not be but that these several factors should ultimately tell upon the solution of the problem of religious liberty.  But the immediate steps toward that solution had to be taken by the advocates of Latitude.  Among them were Lord Falkland, John Hales, and William Chillingworth, the last of whom is famous for his unflinching protest that ’the Bible, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants,’ a saying which was as good as a charter to those who based their so-called heresies on the explicit words of Scripture.  In the second half of that seventeenth century the work of broadening the religious mind was carried forward by others of equal or even greater ability; it is sufficient here to name Jeremy Taylor among Churchmen, and Richard Baxter among Nonconformists.

There was, of course, a good deal of levity, the temper of the Gallio who cares for none of these things.  But this was not the temper of the men to whom we refer.  Their greatest difficulty, indeed, arose from their intense interest in religious truth.  They could not conceive a State which should not control men’s theology in some real way.  Even Locke did not advocate toleration for the atheist, for such a man (in his opinion) could not make the solemn asseverations on which alone civil life could go forward.  Nor would he tolerate the Roman Catholic, but in this case political considerations swayed the balance; the Catholic introduced the fatal principle of allegiance to a ’foreign prince.’  Taking for granted, then, the necessity for some degree of State supervision of religion, how could this be rendered least inimical to the general desire for liberty?

The reply to this question brought them very close to the position taken up by Faustus Socinus long before, viz. that the ‘essentials’ of a Christian faith should be recognized as few and, as far as possible, simple.  Of course, it is from his name that the term ‘Socinian’ is derived, a term that has often been applied, but mistakenly, to Unitarians generally.  The repeated and often bitter accusation brought against the advocates of Latitude that they were ‘Socinians,’ or at least tainted with ‘Socinianism,’ renders appropriate some short account of Socinus himself.