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Pinczovians

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a Socinian sect, so named after the town of Pinczow, Poland, where its leaders resided. The Pinczovians were usually called "Unitarian Brethren," but they deserved to be called Arians (q.v.) rather than Socinians (q.v.). It is true, some of the principal doctors among them were inclined towards those views of Jesus Christ which afterwards were the common views of the Socinian sect; but the greater part of them agreed with the Arians, and affirmed that the Savior was produced by God the Father before the foundation of the world, but that he was greatly inferior to the Father, and so also the Holy Spirit was begotten, and is inferior to the Father. This is very clearly taught by George Schomann in his Testamentum, published by Sand (p. 194-5): "Sub id fere tempus (A.D. 1566) ex rhapsodiis Lcelii Socini quidam fratres dicerunt. Dei filium non esse secundam Trinitatis personam patti coessentialem et coaequalem, sed hominem Jesum Christum, ex Spiritu Sancto conceptum, ex virgine Maria natum, crucifixum et resuscitatum; a quibus nos commoniti, sacras litteras perscrutari, persuasi sumus." These words most clearly show that the Pinczovians (as they were called before they separated from the Reformed in 1565) professed to believe in a Trinity of some sort, and did not divest Jesus Christ of all divinity. Besides, Schomann was a doctor of great authority among them; and in the year 1565 (as he himself informs us), he contended at the convention of Petricow (pro uno Deo patri) for one God the Father, in opposition to the Reformed, who, he says (Deum trinum defendebant), maintained a threefold God. Yet in the following year he, with others, was induced by the papers of Laelius Socinus to so alter his sentiments that he denied Christ to be a divine person. He, therefore, with his Pinezovian flock, before this time must necessarily have been, not a Socinian, but an Arian. (See POLAND). (J. H. W.)