Fausto Sozzini - Works

Works

Sozzini's works, edited by his grandson Andrzej Wiszowaty and the learned printer Frans Kuyper, are contained in two closely printed folios (Amsterdam, 1668). They rank as the first two volumes of the Bibliotheca fratrum polonorum though the works of Johann Crell and Jonas Schlichting were the first of the series to be printed. They include all Sozzini's extant theological writings, except his essay on predestination (in which he denies that God foresees the actions of free agents) prefixed to Castellio's Dialogi IV (1575, reprinted 1613) and his revision of a school manual Instrumentum doctrinarum aristotelium (1586).

His pseudonyms, easily interpreted, were Felix Turpio Urhevetanus, Prosper Dysidaeus, Gratianus Prosper and Gratianus Turpio Gerapolensis (Senensis). Some of his early verse is in Ferentillis Scielta di stanze di diversi autori toscani (1579, 1594); other specimens are given in Cant and in the Athenaeum (Aug. II, 1877); more are preserved at Siena.

Sozzini considered that his ablest work was his Contra atheos, which perished in the riot at Kraków (1598). Later he began, but left incomplete, more than one work designed to exhibit his system as a whole.

His reputation as a thinker must rest upon the De auctoritate scripturae sacrae (1570) and De Jesu Christo servatore (1578). The former was first published (Seville, 1588) by López, a Jesuit, who claimed it as his own, but prefixed a preface maintaining (contrary to a fundamental position of Sozzini) that man by nature has a knowledge of God. A French version (1592) was approved by the ministers of Basel; the English translation by Rev. Edward Coombe (Somerset 1731) was undertaken in consequence of the commendation in a charge (1728) by Bishop Richard Smalbroke, who observes that Grotius had borrowed from it in his De veritate Christ. rel.. In small compass it anticipates the historical argument of the credibility writers; in trying it by modern tests, it should be remembered that Sozzini, regarding it (1581) as not adequately meeting the cardinal difficulties attending the proof of the Christian religion, began to reconstruct its positions in his Lectiones sacrae (unfinished). His treatise on the Saviour renders a real service to theology, placing orthodoxy and heresy in new relations of fundamental antagonism, and narrowing the conflict to the main personal benefit of religion.

Of the person of Christ in this treatise he says nothing; its one topic is the work of Christ, which in his view operates upon man alone; the theological sagacity of Sozzini may be measured by the persistency with which this idea tends to recur. Though his name has been attached to a school of opinion, he disclaimed the rôle of a heresiarch, and declined to give his unreserved adhesion to any one sect. His confidence in the conclusions of his own mind has earned him the repute of a dogmatist; but it was his constant aim to reduce and simplify the fundamentals of Christianity. Not without some ground does the memorial tablet at Siena (inscription by prof. Giovanni Brigidi 1879) characterize him as vindicator of human reason against the supernatural.

Of his non-theological doctrines the most important is his assertion of the unlawfulness not only of war, but of the taking of human life in any circumstances. Hence the comparative mildness of his proposals for dealing with religious and anti-religious offenders, though it cannot be said that he had grasped the complete theory of toleration. Hence, too, his contention that magisterial office is unlawful for a Christian.