ANTINOMIANISM. Antinomian has been defined as "one who holds that the law is not a rule of life under the Gospel." The idea that to one who had become a true follower of Christ conscience was the only law might easily arise. Luke xvi. 16, " the law and the prophets were until John "; Romans vii. 6, " But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were holden, so that we serve in newness of the spirit, and not in oldness of the letter " ; Galatians H. 16, " knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but only through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed on Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law "; and other passages would be appealed to in support of such a view. And the idea would soon be exaggerated and carried to extremes. This seems actually to have happened among certain sections of the Gnostics, and later among some of the religious sects in the Middle Ages. In such cases Antinomianism, from being a kind of superiority to law, degenerates into rejection and violation of the moral law. The term was first used, however, by Luther in reference to the views of John Agricola (1492-1566), called " Magister Islebius," from the name of his birth-place, Eisleben. In 1527 he maintained in opposition to Philipp Melanchthon (1497 1560) " that the law of God was not to be used to bring men to repentance, and that the preaching of the law was no work for a gospel minister " (J. H. Blunt). In 1538
he was bold enough to " declaim against the law, main taining that it was neither fit to be proposed to the people as a rule of manners, nor to be used in the Church as a means of instruction; and that the gospel alone was to be inculcated and explained both in the churches and in the schools of learning." His followers were called Antinomians. His controversy with Luther, which ended in a recantation (1540), was called the " Anti nomian Controversy." Since that time Antinomianism, in one form or another, has had its representatives in England. Amongst the troublesome parties with which Cromwell had to deal were " the violent fanatics and Antinomians who desired an immediate ' rule of the saints ' " (M. W. Patterson, Hist.). In 1691 the republi cation of the works of Tobias Crisp (1600-1643) produced another " Antinomian Controversy " between Congrega tionalists and Presbyterians, the latter accusing the former of Antinomianism (see H. S. Skeats and C. S. Miall, Hist.). See J. H. Blunt; Brockhaus.