For full text go to the menu on top of the UnitarianTorch home page, click on Translated Transylvanian Unitarian Sermons line, and then click on the title: SermonOpposita Concio JohZilvasi.
Summary of sermon: The author of the sermon deserves as much attention as the topic. Enyedi György was the third bishop of the Transylvanian Unitarian Church, until his death in 1597. He is called in some Hungarian language literature as the “Unitarian Plato”, because most of his writings and sermons focuses on the explanations of Bible verses. He is noted for using everyday, mundane metaphors to teach the congregation about the meaning behind the words of Christ. Hungarian translations of the Bible began to spread in his time, and it was important to teach churchgoers on their mother tongue about it.
The primary topic of the sermon is a response to a Catholic sermon preached by Johanness Zilvasi in Kolozsvár sometime in early October, 1593. That sermon used Ephesians 4 to argue for the “cutting down at the edge of the sword” all who doesn’t believe like us. Enyedi György responded to that open threat by teaching Christian unity from the same lines of Ephesians 4. Enyedi György then explains from page 11 through 14 the basic arguments against the concept of Trinity.
Enyedi György was born in the town of Nagyenyed in Transylvania, and the current Unitarian Church there is partnered with the First Unitarian Church of Louisville, Kentucky.
In this sermon you look through a window into late XVIth century Transylvania, and hear the words of Bishop of the very Unitarian Church that was threatened with extermination. The translation time machine will take you back to 1593, October 17, and allows you to listen to this gem of a sermon, available the first time in English.