Ireland
Controversy respecting the Trinity was excited in Ireland by the prosecution at Dublin (1703) of Thomas Emlyn (see above), resulting in fine and imprisonment, for rejecting the deity of Christ. In 1705 the Belfast Society was founded for theological discussion by Presbyterian ministers in the north, with the result of creating a body of opinion adverse to subscription to the Westminster standards. Toleration of dissent, withheld in Ireland till 1719, was then granted without the requirement of any doctrinal subscription. Next year a movement against subscription was begun in the General Synod of Ulster, culminating (1725) in the placing of the advocates of non-subscription, headed by John Abernethy, D.D., of Antrim into a presbytery by themselves. This Antrim presbytery was excluded (1726) from jurisdiction, though not from communion. During the next hundred years its members exercised great influence on their brethren of the synod; but the counter-influence of the mission of the Scottish Seceders (from 1742) produced a reaction. The Antrim Presbytery gradually became Arian; the same type of theology affected more or less the Southern Association, known since 1806 as the Synod of Munster. From 1783 ten of the fourteen presbyteries in the General Synod had made subscription optional; the synod's code of 1824 left "soundness in the faith" to be ascertained by subscription or by examination. Against this compromise Henry Cooke, D.D. (1788–1868), directed all his powers, and was ultimately (1829) successful in defeating his Arian opponent, Henry Montgomery, LL.D. (1788–1865). Montgomery led a secession which formed (1830) the Remonstrant Synod, comprising three presbyteries.
In 1910 the Antrim Presbytery, Remonstrant Synod and Synod of Munster united as the General Synod of the Non-subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland, with 38 congregations and some mission stations. Till 1889 they maintained two theological chairs in Belfast, where John Scott Porter (1801–1880) pioneered biblical criticism; they afterwards sent their students to England for their theological education, though in certain respects their views and practices remained more conservative than those of their English brethren.
Irish Unitarian periodical literature began in 1832 with the Bible Christian, followed by the Irish Unitarian Magazine, the Christian Unitarian, the Disciple and the Non-subscribing Presbyterian.
See generally: Robert Wallace, Antitrinitarian Biography(1850); G. Bonet Maury, Early Sources of Eng. Unit. Christianity, trans. E. P. Hall (1884); A. Gordon, Heads of Eng. Unit. Hist. (1895).
Read more about this topic: History Of Unitarianism, Classical Period of Unitarianism
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