ABRAMITES. - Two sects bore this name: 1) certain heretics of the 9th century, scattered in Syria, who, adopting the ideas of ABRAHAM OF ANTIOCH, denied the divinity of Jesus Christ; 2) a Protestant sect of little importance and short duration, belonging to the Hussites (v.), which arose at the end of the 18th century near Pardubice in Bohemia.
This may be considered a sect of deists. Its adherents, recruited mysteriously especially among Jewish and Protestant peasants, preached that they wished to conform to the religion professed by ABRAHAM before his circumcision. They repudiated the Most Holy Trinity, original sin, the Incarnation, and other truths contained in the Scriptures, of which they retained only the Ten Commandments as they interpreted them, and the Lord’s Prayer. They admitted only the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, rewards and punishments in the life to come, but not the eternity of hell. Solely to avoid possible persecution, they had their children baptized and contracted religious marriages. When invited by JOSEPH II to enroll in one of the confessions recognized by the Edict of Tolerance (1780), they refused to comply; JOSEPH then dispersed them (1783), forcibly organizing the men into frontier battalions.