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Semi Judaizers

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(1.) a Socinian sect, originated in the 6th century by Francis David, a Hungarian, who was superintendent of the Socinian churches in Transylvania. The principal doctrine which David and his followers maintained was that neither prayer nor any other act of religious worship should be offered to Jesus Christ. Faustus Socinus argued strongly against this tenet; and when all efforts to reclaim the Hungarian heretic were found to be fruitless, the public authorities threw him into prison, where he died at an advanced age, A.D. 1579. The sect, however, survived its founder, and for a long time gave no little trouble to Socinus and his followers in Poland and Lithuania. Faustus Socinus wrote a book expressly against the Semi Judaizers, while at the same time he strongly admitted that the point in debate between himself and them was of no great importance, since in his own view it was not necessary to salvation that a person should pray to Christ.

(2.) The name Semi Judaizers was also given to a sect founded near the close of the 16th century by Martin Seidelius, a Silesian, who promulgated various strange doctrines in Poland and the neighboring countries. The. chief points of this system were that God had indeed promised a Savior or a Messiah to the Jewish nation, but that this Messiah had never appeared, and never would appear, because the Jews by their sins had rendered themselves unworthy of so great a deliverer; that of course Jesus Christ was erroneously regarded as the Messiah; that it was his only business and office to explain the laws of nature, which had been greatly obscured, and therefore that whoever shall obey this law as expounded by Jesus Christ will fulfill all the religious duties that God requires of him. While diffusing these erroneous opinions, Seidelius rejected all the books of the New Test. as spurious.

(3.) In Russia, also, a small sect of Semi Judaizers, called Sabatniki (q.v.), exists, which mixes up to a considerable extent Jewish and Christian rites.