Note 356 — CCLXXXIX.—To Lelio Socin.[356]

Lelio Socin, founder of the celebrated sect which bears his name, was born at Sienna of a distinguished family: his father, Mariano Socin, a professor in the University of Bologna, was one of the most learned jurisconsults of his age. Of a bold and active mind, which found pleasure in the most subtle speculations, and which would not stop short of the interpretation of mysteries, Lelio left his native country in 1548, and joined the Reformers of Switzerland and Germany, whose friendship he won by the politeness of his manners, the purity of his life, and his zeal for learning. He resided by turns at Zurich and Wittemberg, and was not slow, by correspondence or conversation, to express his doubts on the common doctrines, which he skilfully advanced rather in the form of questions than as opinions which he was prepared to maintain and to teach. He was beloved by Bullinger, who did not suspect the heterodoxy of his beliefs, and who wrote to Calvin regarding him, "I restrain as far as I can this man's curiosity;" and Calvin himself, after having repeatedly broken off correspondence with Socin, could not forbear renewing it, and giving a friendly reply to the doubts which he had expressed on the resurrection, baptism, the trinity, &c. (Calv. Opera, tom. ix. pp. 51, 57, 197.) The letter, which is published here for the first time, throws valuable light on the relation of the Reformer to the founder of a sect to which even Socin himself was yet a stranger, and whose doubts were afterwards to be set up as dogmas by his disciples. Lelio Socin died in 1562, before he had completed his thirty-seventh year.—M'Crie, Hist. of Ref. in Italy, passim.