William Kolbrener The Charge of Socinianism: Charles Leslie’s High Church Defense of “True Religion” The intellectual sea change of what has become known as the Age of Reason challenged inherited Christianity. John Locke in The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) and John Toland in Christianity Not Mysterious (1696) took up the challenge by at- tempting to adapt Christianity to the claims of reason. Yet as one observer noted, “Arianism [and] Socinianism ... do greatly abound” in these works, 1 both of which would play a decisive role in the de- velopment of a Christianity devoid of “mystery”—the Christianity deemed appropriate for an Enlightenment theology tending toward deism. Although Socinianism had more recent origins in the thought of the sixteenth-century Italian theologian Faustus Socinus, both Arianism and Socinianism—perhaps best categorized under the broader heading of subordinationism—derived from the thought of the fourth-century theologian Arius, who had denied the co- substantiality of the Son, arguing that the status of the Son is not one of essential Godhead, but is distinct from the Father. While Arius had argued for the created nature of Jesus and thus the subordination The Journal of The Historical Society III:1 Winter 2003 1