\So*cin"i*an*ism\, n. (Eccl. Hist.)
The tenets or doctrines of Faustus Socinus, an Italian
theologian of the sixteenth century, who denied the Trinity,
the deity of Christ, the personality of the Devil, the native
and total depravity of man, the vicarious atonement, and the
eternity of future punishment. His theory was, that Christ
was a man divinely commissioned, who had no existence before
he was conceived by the Virgin Mary; that human sin was the
imitation of Adam's sin, and that human salvation was the
imitation and adoption of Christ's virtue; that the Bible was
to be interpreted by human reason; and that its language was
metaphorical, and not to be taken literally.