In
controversy he encountered foemen worthy of his steel, such as Spinosa,
Hobbes, Dodwell, Collins, Leibnitz, and others. But in 1712 he published
_The Scriptural Doctrine of the Trinity_, which was declared to be opposed
to the Christian belief and tainted with Arianism. The attention of
Parliament was called to the book; the arguments were disputed by Edward
Wells, John Edwards, and William Sommer; and Clarke was deprived of his
offices. The charge of heterodoxy was certainly never proved against him;
he did good service in trying to stem the flood of rationalism prevalent
in his time, and his work was carried on by Bishop Butler. His
correspondence with Leibnitz on Time, Space, Necessity, and Liberty was
published in 1717, and his editions of Caesar and Homer were no mean
contributions to the study of classical literature.
In the sixteenth century there lived in Hungary one Francis David, a man
learned in the arts and languages, but his inconstancy and fickleness of
mind led him into diverse errors, and brought about his destruction. He
left the Church, and first embraced Calvinism; then he fled into the camp
of the Semi-Judaising party, publishing a book _De Christo non invocando_,
which was answered by Faustus Socinus, the founder of Socinianism. The
Prince of Transylvania, Christopher Bathori, condemned David as an impious
innovator and preacher of strange doctrines, and cast him into prison,
where he died in 1579.
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