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1st Century
"He presented another illustration to them, saying: 'The Kingdom of the heavens may be likened to a man who sowed fine seed in his field. While men were sleeping, his enemy came and oversowed weeds in among the wheat and left. When the stalk sprouted and produced fruit, then the weeds also appeared. So the slaves of the master of the house came and said to him, "Master, did you not sow fine seed in your field? How, then, does it have weeds?" He said to them, "An enemy, a man, did this." The slaves said to him, "Do you want us, then, to go out and collect them?" He said, "No, for fear that while collecting the weeds, you uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and in the harvest season, I will tell the reapers: First collect the weeds and bind them in bundles to burn them up; then gather the wheat into my storehouse."'...
"Then after dismissing the crowds, he went into the house. His disciples came to him and said: 'Explain to us the illustration of the weeds in the field.' In response he said: 'The sower of the fine seed is the Son of man; the field is the world. As for the fine seed, these are the sons of the Kingdom, but the weeds are the sons of the wicked one, and the enemy who sowed them is the Devil. The harvest is a conclusion of a system of things, and the reapers are angels. Therefore, just as the weeds are collected and burned with fire, so it will be in the conclusion of the system of things. The Son of man will send his angels, and they will collect out from his Kingdom all things that cause stumbling and people who practice lawlessness, and they will pitch them into the fiery furnace. There is where their weeping and the gnashing of their teeth will be. At that time the righteous ones will shine as brightly as the sun in the Kingdom of their Father. Let the one who has ears listen.'"
"I know that after my going away oppressive wolves will enter in among you and will not treat the flock with tenderness, and from among you yourselves men will rise and speak twisted things to draw away the disciples after themselves."
—Apostle Paul to the elders of the congregation in Ephesus, Acts 20:29-30.
"Let no one lead you astray in any way, because it [the day of Jehovah] will not come unless the apostasy comes first and the man of lawlessness gets revealed, the son of destruction. "
"Young children, it is the last hour, and just as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared, from which fact we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of our sort."
"As regards the day for observing the Pascha [the Lord's Evening Meal], the usage of the Quartodeciman churches of Asia was continuous with that of the Jerusalem church. In the 2nd century these churches at their Pascha on the 14th of Nisan commemorated the redemption effected by the death of Christ."
"From the middle of the 2nd century AD Christians who had some training in Greek philosophy began to feel the need to express their faith in its terms...The philosophy that suited them best was Platonism."
—The New Encyclopædia Britannica (1988), Volume 25, page 890.
3rd Century
"[T]he Trinitarians and the Unitarians continued to confront each other, the latter [Unitarians] at the beginning of the 3rd century still forming the large majority."
—Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. XXIII, 1911; p. 963.
4th Century
Rejected Immortality of Soul Doctrine
(c.250—336)
"In this letter—which, throughout, breathes a temperate spirit—he [Arius] gives at some length his views of the Father and Son, and says, 'This faith I have received from tradition, and learned of you.' Again: that the Father existed before the Son, he says, 'is what I learned of you, who publicly preached it in the church.' The letter was signed by Arius and five other priests, six deacons, and two bishops. We have before alluded to the change of sentiment attributed to Alexander. We will simply add in this place, that the Arians constantly appealed to tradition as in their favor, and asserted that they held the ancient doctrine. This assertion must not be taken in the most rigid sense; though, to a certain extent, it was true. The Arians could quote passages from the old writers, exceedingly embarrassing to their opponents. On some points, as the supremacy of the Father and his priority of existence, tradition was clearly in their favor; and they could say, with truth, that they held the old faith. The new doctrine embraced by the orthodox concerning the generation of the Son, they said, was pure Manicheism and Valentinianism."
—The Church of the First Three Centuries, by Alvan Lamson, D.D., 1860; p. 190-1.
"The formulation 'one God in three Persons' was not solidly established, certainly not fully assimilated into Christian life and its profession of faith, prior to the end of the 4th century. But it is precisely this formulation that has first claim to the title the Trinitarian dogma. Among the Apostolic Fathers, there had been nothing even remotely approaching such a mentality or perspective."
—New Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. XIV, 1967; p. 299.
5th Century
6th Century
7th Century
8th Century
9th Century
(779—840)
Rejected Image WorshipRejected Saint WorshipPromoted Scripture over Tradition
Rejected Image WorshipRejected Saint WorshipPromoted Scripture over Tradition
10th Century
11th Century
Rejected Transubstantiation DoctrinePromoted Scripture over Tradition
12th Century
A sect of which various scattered notices occur from the latter half of the twelfth century. They were first condemned at the Synod of Verona under Lucius III. (1184), but without any definite statement of the peculiar tenets. The only places from which anything can be gathered as to these are in Bonacursus, Manifestatio hæresi Catharorum...and a treatise of Gregory of Bergamo, written about 1230, Specimen opusculi contra Catharos et Pasagios...Both assert that the Pasagians taught the literal obligation of the Mosaic law, enforcing circumcision, the Sabbath, and everything but the sacrifices, teaching that the doctrine of the Trinity was an error and Christ no more than the first and purest of God's creatures...They seem to have maintained themselves until toward the end of the thirteenth century.
—New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. VIII, 1953; pp.361-2.
Promoted Bible TranslationRejected Immortality of Soul DoctrineMartyred
(1466?—1536)
A moderate and tolerant Catholic priest that lived through the Reformation and produced the first printed edition of the Greek New Testament that quickly replaced the prevailing Latin Vulgate text in the West.
Erasmus never took a position against the Trinity, but he was forced to defend himself against the charge of being antitrinitarian because of his efforts to produce an accurate Greek text. Especially upsetting to his critics was his omission of the inauthentic addition in the Latin text of 1 John 5:7 that reads, "the Father, the Word and the holy spirit; and these three are one," which is not present in any of the older Greek manuscripts.
The fact that Erasmus' attempt at rediscovering the original text of the Bible was interpreted as being antitrinitarian in nature speaks volumes in itself. And in fact it didn't take long for his work (as well as his defense of it) to be frequently quoted by those who, in the wake of the Reformation, sought to throw off the Trinity doctrine as unscriptural.
An English merchant that preached with his two brothers. Legate was one of the last persons burned at the stake in England for heresy, by order of King James I, for refusing to accept the Trinity doctrine. This was just months after the release of King James' authorized version of the Bible (the King James Version). So essentially, Legate was put to death for teaching what the KJV itself teaches at places like Revelation 3:14, that Jesus is "the beginning of the creation of God."
Perhaps it is not generally known, that the last execution of heretics by fire in England took place so late as seventy years after the Reformation. One Bartholomew Legate, an Arian of blameless life, was burnt to death at Smithfield, on the 18th of March, 1612, after having been examined by King James in person, and declared a contumacious and obdurate heretic by Bishop King, in his Consistory at St. Paul's. A pardon was offered him at the stake if he would recant, but he refused it. On the 11th of the following month, Edward Wightman, being convicted by Dr. Neile, Bishop of Coventry, of the heresies of Arius, Cerinthus, Manichæus, and the Anabaptists, was burnt at Lichfield. The whole procedure was exactly that which used to be practised under the Church of Rome, as the reader may see by the writ De Heretico comburendo, addressed to the Sheriff's of London, in the case of Legate, which concludes as follows:—
"Whereas the holy Mother-Church hath not further to do and to prosecute on this part, the same reverend Father hath left the aforesaid Bartholomew Legate, as a blasphemous heretic, to our secular power, to be punished with condign punishment, as by the Letters Patent of the same reverend Father in Christ, the Bishop of London, in this behalf above made, hath been certified to us in our Chancery. We, therefore, as a zealot of justice, and a defender of the Catholic faith, and willing to maintain and defend the Holy Church, and the rights and liberties of the same, and the Catholic faith; and such heresies and errors every where, what in us lieth, to root out and extirpate and to punish with condign punishment such heretics so convicted; and deeming that such a heretic, in form aforesaid convicted and condemned according to the laws and customs of this our kingdom of England in this part accustomed, ought to be burned with fire; we do command you that the said Bartholomew Legate, being in your custody, you do commit publicly to the fire, before the people, in a public and open place in West Smithfield, for the cause aforesaid; and that you cause the said Bartholomew Legate to be really burned in the same fire, in detestation of the said crime, for the manifest example of other Christians, lest they slide into the same fault; and this that in nowise you omit, under the peril that shall follow thereon. Witness," &c.
—The London Quarterly Review, Vol. IV, 1855; pp. 399-400.
An English merchant that preached with his two brothers. Legate was one of the last persons burned at the stake in England for heresy, by order of King James I, for refusing to accept the Trinity doctrine. This was just months after the release of King James' authorized version of the Bible (the King James Version). So essentially, Legate was put to death for teaching what the KJV itself teaches at places like Revelation 3:14, that Jesus is "the beginning of the creation of God."