Servetus and Calvin / A Study of an Important Epoch in the Early History of the Reformation

The circumstances connected with the printing of the ‘Restoration of Christianity’ at Vienne were once more brought up, the prisoner being particularly questioned as to his relations with the publisher Arnoullet and his manager Geroult. In contradiction to what he had already admitted on this head, and with the letter of Arnoullet to Bertet lying open before the Court, he now averred that he had not had any, even indirect, communication with Geroult on the subject of his book! This, we regret to think, must necessarily be untrue. The difficulty he had had to find a publisher, as we see by the letter of his friend Marrinus; the premium he had paid Arnoullet to have the work undertaken, the secrecy with which the printing had been carried on, added to other minor terms of the contract—that all was to be at his proper cost, that he was to be his own corrector of the press, &c.—-everything, in a word, assures us that both Arnoullet and Geroult were as well aware of what they were about as the author himself. Arnoullet, we may be certain, never intended to appear as either the printer or publisher of the heretical work. It was to come out in Italy, in Switzerland, in Germany—anywhere, everywhere, save at Vienne, Lyons, or Paris, the principal emporia of the book trade of France. Neither, indeed, did Michel Villeneuve, the Physician, intend to show himself at once as its author. The M.S.V., on the last page, was a private mark by which the child might be known and claimed by the parent at some future time, when his fame had spread over Europe, when he had been eagerly enquired after by an admiring world, and raised above the heads of Luther, Melanchthon, Œcolampadius and Calvin, as the great ‘Restorer of Christianity’!

The persistence with which Servetus stuck to the untruth now uttered is not difficult of explanation: his first admission of complicity on the part of the Viennese publisher and his manager was made inadvertently and without forethought; his retractation and denial came of reflection and better feeling, when he saw that the admission was calculated to bring the two men who had aided him in his undertaking into the same trouble as himself. In spite of what M. Rigot says, Michael Servetus never meets us save as a man of a perfectly guileless nature—more guileless perhaps than truthful.

As every point in the several indictments was made subject of renewed inquiry, so do we now find further questions addressed to the prisoner on his life and social habits; for the prosecution, as we have seen, held it matter of moment to present him, if possible, as a person of immoral and ill-regulated life. They had not now, however, any more than formerly, a particle of evidence to show that he had ever lived otherwise than soberly, chastely, and respectably; and as to the allegation, brought up against him for the second time, that he had said women were not such paragons of virtue as to make matrimony necessary to secure their more intimate converse, he declared, as he had done already, that he had no recollection of ever having said anything of the kind; but if he had, it was by way of bravado, and to conceal a certain infirmity under which he laboured which indisposed or incapacitated him, as he believed, from entering on matrimony.89

Making an abrupt change of front, the prosecutor now inquired of the prisoner what he meant by the passage in his book where he says that, ‘The Truth begins to declare itself and will be accomplished for all ere long.’ ‘Do you mean that your doctrine is the Truth, and will shortly be universally received?’ ‘I mean to speak of the progress of the Reformation,’ said Servetus; ‘the truth began to be declared in the time of Luther, and has gone on spreading since then until now.’ Had he stopped here, all would have been well and the answer must have been scored to his credit; but he went on to particularise and to say that ‘the Reformation would have to advance upon some matters which in his opinion were not yet well set forth.’

This was immediately seized upon as a challenge by the men who believed that the Reformation had already been accomplished or completed through them; so that he was forthwith required to explain what he meant by such language. Here, however, he dared not be outspoken; and though he made no denial of his doctrine, which was seen of all to be in his estimation the complement and crown of the Reformation, he diverged into a variety of topics, floundered, and wound up by proposing to enlighten the Court by a reference to the Bible and the Fathers, or to explain himself more fully than he had done in his book if they would grant him a conference, in their presence, with one or more men of learning. Pressed further, he said that he could not divine whether his doctrine would ever be generally accepted or not; but he believed and should continue to believe that it was founded in truth until shown to be otherwise. ‘Such things,’ said he in conclusion, ‘are commonly enough denounced and condemned as erroneous at first, but are by and by acknowledged for truth and universally accepted.’

The prisoner had much the same difficulty in justifying his singular opinion that persons under the age of twenty were not accountable agents, or incapable of sin, and so not obnoxious to punishment for their misdeeds. He, in fact, made but an indifferent escape from such a paradox by declaring that, in speaking as he did, he had capital punishment only in view; not that he thought there should be penalties of no kind for evil-doers under age. They, he said, might be properly punished by flogging, seclusion, and the like. From what he says on another occasion we see that this fancy of Servetus was founded on a literal and arbitrary interpretation of the text where Jehovah, to punish the Israelites, determines that no one over twenty years of age is to enter the Land of Promise; all others are to leave their carcasses in the wilderness.

Having said a few words in his book implying no disapproval of the infidel Alkoran, the prisoner, in reply to the reproaches made him for having spoken without reprobation of such a personage as Mahomet and his book, now averred that he had only adduced Mahomet and the Koran to the greater glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, and even ventured to add: ‘That though the book generally is bad, it nevertheless contains good things, which it is lawful to use’—language that was looked on as little short of blasphemy by his auditors, but that to us proclaims the superiority of the speaker over the bigots around him.

The last question in this day’s proceedings referred to a sojourn he was said to have made in Italy immediately before coming to Geneva, and how he had passed his time since he arrived there. And here again we find Calvin the prompter; for it is he who speaks of Servetus having wandered for four months in Italy before reaching Geneva. Any such journey or sojourn, however, as that now hinted at, Servetus positively denied; ‘and for such information as the Court might require of his doings since he had entered their city, he referred them to his host of the Rose, where he had had his quarters before being thrown into their prison.’ It is not difficult to see the drift of the latter clause of the question; but Servetus was on his guard now, and did not commit himself or his prompters, the Libertines, as he had done when the printer of his book was in question.

August 31.—After the lapse of three days an answer was received to the letter addressed by the Syndics and Council of Geneva to the authorities of Vienne. In this missive the Genevese were informed that it was impossible to comply with the request they had made to have the documents connected with the trial of Michel Villeneuve sent to them, inasmuch as the authorities of Vienne could not sanction any review or possible inculpation of their proceedings. They therefore only forwarded duplicates of the warrant of arrest and sentence of death passed upon the said Villeneuve, and for themselves they demanded ‘the delivery of that individual into their hands, in order that the sentence passed upon him might be carried into effect,’ engaging, as they went on to say, ‘that it should be of a sort that would make any search for further charges against him unnecessary.’90

To this communication from Vienne, the Council ordered a gracious answer to be returned; but they declined to send back the prisoner, ‘inasmuch as he was at present under trial before themselves for matters in which they, too, promised that strict justice should be done.’ To be sent back to Vienne, Servetus knew would be to be consigned to certain death at the shortest possible notice; so that to the somewhat needless question now put to him by the Court, their own expressed determination considered: ‘whether he preferred remaining in the hands of the Council of Geneva, or to be sent back to Vienne? he fell on his knees and entreated to be judged by the Council in presence, who might do with him what they pleased; but he begged them in no case to send him back to Vienne.’ There he knew that the stake was driven, and the faggots piled, whilst in Geneva, we must imagine from his bearing, he did not at present fear that anything of the kind could possibly come into requisition.

The business of Vienne thus brought into prominence, the Council proceeded to inquire of the prisoner concerning the trial there; touching once more on his escape from the prison, his coming to Geneva, and any communication he might have had since his arrival in the city with persons resident therein. On the subject of the trial and escape he could be open and communicative; but he denied explicitly that since he reached Geneva he had spoken with anyone save those who waited on him and brought him his meals in the hostel where he lodged—a denial against the truth of which more than suspicion may fairly be allowed. But let us observe that Servetus’s swervings from the absolute truth are mostly to screen others rather than to save himself. On the vital question of his religious opinions be never blenched before his judges of Geneva.

It was now that the prisoner mentioned incidentally the singular fact that the windows of the room he occupied in the Rose Inn had been nailed up. But why this was done he did not say; neither, strangely enough, was any notice taken of it by the Court. There can be little doubt, however, as we interpret the matter, that it was to prevent him from taking himself off without the knowledge of his prompters of the Libertine party. Realising the full hostility of Calvin, knowing that his life was aimed at, he was anxious to be gone; but Perrin and Berthelier had resolved to keep him and play him off against their tyrant and the Clericals, reckless of the risk he was thereby made to run, so as they might use him for their own selfish ends. Hence the otherwise inexplicable delay of the month in Geneva before his presence became known to Calvin—the fatal delay that cost him his life!

How it happened that Servetus was ever made an object of interest to the Libertine party, detained as he certainly was by them in his passage through Geneva, is a question not altogether irrelevant. That he was unknown even by name to the chiefs of this party, and to everyone else resident in Geneva, save Calvin, seems certain; and Calvin who had not seen his Parisian acquaintance for nearly twenty years, had no intimation of his presence there for nearly a month. But William Geroult, the printer of Vienne, was in Geneva when Servetus reached the city. Having heard of his escape from prison, he may have been on the look-out for the possible coming of the fugitive. Geroult, though of the Reformed Faith, we have seen reason to believe was not among the number of Calvin’s admirers. But native of Geneva and of the Libertine party, we venture to think it was through him that Servetus was made known to Perrin and Berthelier; such particulars being further communicated as suggested to them the use that might be made of the fugitive against their clerical enemy. We have seen the proceedings of August 23rd concluded by a number of questions having reference to those with whom the prisoner might have held communication since he reached the city, and particularly if he had not seen and spoken with William Geroult, and if Geroult did not know that he intended to come to Geneva?

That they might leave no incident in the previous history of the prisoner unnoticed, the Court now questioned him on his opinions touching the Mass, which it was known he had declared to be a mockery and a wickedness, his habit nevertheless having been to attend its celebration during his residence at Vienne. To this, put to him reproachfully, he replied that he had but imitated Paul, who frequented the synagogue like the Jews in general, though he had inaugurated a new religion of his own; but for himself, he added that he had sinned through fear of death, and regretted what he had been obliged to do.

Confronted with the gaoler of Vienne, who had brought the missives of his masters to Geneva, and asked if he knew the man, he replied that of course he did, having been under his charge in prison for two days; but he exonerated the gaoler from all complicity with his escape. Furnished with a certificate to this effect, the gaoler was dismissed, and returned to Vienne.

September 1.—At the sitting on this day a letter was received from M. Maugiron, Lieutenant-General of the King of France for Dauphiny, which gave fresh occasion for recurrence to the affairs of Vienne. In his letter Maugiron informed the Syndics and Council of Geneva that the goods and chattels and debts due to Michel Villeneuve, estimated to amount to 400 crowns, had been escheated by his Majesty the King, and given to his—Maugiron’s—son; but that to come into possession it was necessary to have a list of the parties indebted to the doctor. He therefore requested the Council to interrogate their prisoner on this head, and furnish him with a list of the names and surnames of debtors to the prisoner’s estate, as well as of the sums severally due by each. The noble correspondent, Lieutenant of the King of France for Dauphiny, must have been oblivious of the professional services of the physician Villeneuve when he consented to write as he did to the Syndics and Council of Geneva; for we have seen that Servetus was actually taken from the house of this Monsieur Maugiron when in attendance on him, to find himself a prisoner. Anxious to clear himself of all suspicion of having aided and abetted in the evasion from the prison of Vienne, Maugiron goes on in his letter to express himself ‘rejoiced to know that Villeneuve is now in the hands of Messieurs de Geneve, and I thank God,’ he continues, ‘for the assurance I feel that you will take better care of him than did the Ministers of Justice of Vienne, and award him such punishment as will leave him no opportunity for dogmatising, or writing and publishing heretical doctrines in time to come.’

Let us not doubt that the heart of Michael Servetus swelled with indignation and contempt at this exhibition of heartlessness and meanness on the part of the man he had tended in his sickness. The experience of the physician, however, leads him to form no very high estimate of the world’s thankfulness for services in sickness: the fee at the moment is mostly held to close the account. Sick men are weak; and when they recover are usually well-disposed to forget not only their weakness, but the physician who has seen it.

The appeal made to the self-esteem of the Council of Geneva, and a possible desire on their part to enter into rivalry with the judicial tribunal of Vienne, may have contributed in some measure to the final condemnation of Servetus. We do not read that they took the becoming course at once of declining to question the prisoner on matters having not even the most remote connection with the cause; they seem actually to have tried to elicit information from him, that would have been of use to M. Maugiron, in making the gift of his Majesty the King of France of much avail; but Servetus positively declined to give any information of the kind desired, as having no bearing on the matters for which he was now on his trial, and being likely to distress many poor persons who were indebted to him.

CHAPTER VIII.

SERVETUS IS VISITED IN PRISON BY CALVIN AND THE MINISTERS.

We have seen symptoms of something like a leaning of the Court towards the prisoner. They had requested Calvin and others of the Clergy to visit and confer with him, and do their best to bring him to what all regarded as a better understanding; and it would appear that immediately after the last sitting, Calvin, accompanied by several Ministers, proceeded to the gaol and had an interview with the prisoner. Calvin of course was the spokesman, and opened upon him with an address in which he strove to show him not only the load of error under which he laboured in his exposition of Scripture generally, but the grave offence he had committed in attacking the particular dogma of the Trinity, as interpreted by the Churches, and in calling all who believed in it Tritheists and even Atheists.

From what we already know we may divine how little a visit from John Calvin with such an exordium was likely to lead to any satisfactory conclusion; Servetus appears at first, indeed, to have declined even to hear his visitors: he was too much oppressed by sorrow, sickness, and long confinement, he said, to enter on any defence of his views, and a prison was no fit place for theological discussion.

Stern, bigoted, and uncompromising as he was by nature, Calvin would have been false to his calling as a Minister had he not striven, though thus encountered, to bring even a personal enemy to what he believed to be proper thoughts of the Trinity, the nature of the Logos and the Sonship of Christ; and we do not question his will and inclination to do so; but in Servetus Calvin saw the man who had insulted and so had mortally offended him, whilst in Calvin, Servetus beheld the individual who so lately, by underhand means and the violation of his confidential correspondence, had wrecked his fortunes and sought his life; the man, moreover, at whose instance he was now in prison and subjected to what he rightfully regarded as unworthy usage and an unauthorised and unjust trial.

We can but excuse the irritation that mastered Servetus now, and lament that with Berthelier’s disastrous countenance misleading him, he neglected the chance that was undoubtedly offered him to save his life, had it been but by a show of moderation and conciliatory bearing. Calvin, however, must have persevered for a while with the unfortunate physician, and brought him to reply to more than one of the principles of his system produced against him. Among others, we find him reported as maintaining that wherever the word Son is met with in the Scriptures, it is the man Jesus that is to be understood; and when Christ is spoken of as the Word and the Eternal Son, the language is to be taken in a potential not in an actual sense; neither Light, Logos, nor Son having existed otherwise than in the mind of God before creation; the actual or real Son in particular having only begun to be when engendered in the womb of the Virgin Mary—and so on, the discourse turning upon matters transcending man’s power to know, and falling wholly within the domain of faith or belief. On the last topic brought under review, Servetus from the beginning of his career was always empathic. ‘Si unum iota mihi ostendas quo Verbum illud Filius vocetur, aut de Verbi generatione fiat mentio, fatebor me devictum. Ubi Scriptura dicit Verbum, dicit et ipse Verbum; ubi Filius, Filius; scilicet: olim Verbum, nunc vero Filius.’ These are his words in his earliest work, and from their tenor he never swerved.91

The interview ended as we may imagine it could only end—with increased irritation on the part of the Ministers at the obstinate self-will of the heretic, as they interpreted it, and without a ray of new light having made its way into the mind either of the prisoner or his visitors. His would-be enlighteners, however—he thinking that they stood much in need of enlightenment from him—were particular, before taking their leave, in insisting on the right of the temporal power in the state to repress and punish theological error. Heretics, as they said, being liable by the Justinian Code, still in force over Europe, to be proceeded against and punished as criminals; and he having, in a highly objectionable manner, attacked many among the most sacred of the divine ordinances, would have no reason to complain did he find himself dealt with in the severest fashion as a blasphemer of the Church of God, and disturber of the peace of Christendom.

But neither, as we may imagine, were the words of the deputation in this direction found of any avail in leading the prisoner to their views. Civil tribunals, he maintained, were utterly incompetent in matters of faith, and had no right of the sword in cases of imputed heresy. The Code of Justinian was in truth no authority, having been compiled in times when the Church had already lapsed from its original purity. The violent repressive measures it sanctioned were wholly unknown to the Apostles and their immediate successors. Besides all this, he held the Church of Geneva to be specially precluded from giving an opinion or pronouncing a judgment upon his views; his opponent and personal enemy, Calvin, wielding such paramount authority there, as to make him in fact and in himself the Church. How little all this, however true (and all the less, perhaps, because true), was calculated to win either Calvin or his followers to more friendly feelings, may be imagined; but it shows us the brave, consistent, conscientious, religious man, face to face with fate, and a proffered opportunity to conciliate and save his life, abiding by his convictions, and, with the warning but just given him, rather than belie himself, verily courting death. What would have happened had Galileo been as conscientious and firm as Servetus?

CHAPTER IX.

THE COURT DETERMINES TO CONSULT THE COUNCILS AND CHURCHES OF THE FOUR PROTESTANT CANTONS.

It was at this time and on the suggestion of Servetus—as Calvin affirms, of the Council, according to its own minutes—that a resolution was come to, by which the Church of Geneva was no longer to have the sole say in the final decision of the guilt or innocence of the prisoner. The Councils and the other reformed Churches of Switzerland, it was resolved, were to be consulted on the merits of the case. There was a precedent for such a course; it had been followed only two years before, under somewhat similar circumstances, when Jerome Bolsec was tried for heresy at the instance of Calvin. Calvin and the Ministers were consequently directed by the Court to extract from the works of the prisoner, and to deliver in writing, but without note or comment, the particular passages involving the erroneous or heretical opinions in debate between the prosecution and him.

This appeal to the Swiss Churches we cannot help thinking of as fatal to Servetus. If his own concluding reply to the deputation which visited him in prison did not lead to it, it was probably suggested to him by Berthelier, who knew that it had saved Bolsec. But Berthelier was not theologian enough correctly to appreciate the dissimilarity of the propositions involved in the two cases; and he certainly took no note of the difference in the political circumstances of the several times, or he would not have given the advice we presume he did.

From the letters which Calvin now wrote to several of his friends, particularly to Sulzer, of Basle, we learn that he was much averse to the idea of this appeal to the Churches. Having been foiled by them in his prosecution of Bolsec, he must have feared that what had happened before might happen again. He knew that he was less considered abroad than at home, and seems not to have apprehended that the appeal now resolved on, was not only to ensure his own triumph, but to make the Reformed Churches of Switzerland participators in his sin of intolerance and abettors of the error (to give it no worse name) he committed when he brought Servetus to his death.

CHAPTER X.

THE TRIAL IS INTERRUPTED THROUGH DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CALVIN AND THE COUNCIL.

The Churches were to be appealed to, then, and Calvin applied himself immediately to make the best he could of the case as it stood. With the diligence that distinguished him, we need not doubt of his having been soon ready with the Articles upon which the trial of Servetus may be said to have entered on its third, if it were not its fourth and definite, phase.92 But a notable interval elapsed before we find the Council giving any heed to the new Articles of Indictment, or taking steps to have them despatched to the Cantons. The Council had business of another kind to engage them, with Calvin and his friends as their opponents on grounds of policy, instead of their instigators and guides in a trial for heresy. It was at this precise time that the struggle to which we have alluded in our review of the political situation took place between Calvin and the Council on the right exercised by the Consistory to excommunicate or deprive of Church privileges those who were known to have infringed one or another of its arbitrary religious, moral, or sumptuary regulations. Philibert Berthelier, having offended in this direction, had fallen under the ban of the Consistory some time before; but, having now appealed to the Council for redress against what he held to be an unjust award, his party were powerful enough not only to obtain a decision in his favour, but to have the Consistory deprived of the right to excommunicate at all.

This was felt, of course, as a heavy blow by Calvin and his supporters. Berthelier, formally absolved of the Consistorial interdict, was declared at liberty to present himself at an approaching celebration of the Solemn Supper. And he would probably have shown himself there, and an unseemly scene would have ensued; for Calvin was as resolute to have his authority respected within the walls of St. Peter’s Church, as the Council could have been to have theirs upheld within the precincts of the City. Berthelier himself, however, being advised that though he was fully entitled to present himself at the Table, it would perhaps be as well did he abstain from doing so for the present, took the hint and stayed away. But several members of the Libertine party—each of whom we must presume, in Calvin’s estimation, might have subscribed himself as

uninformed of this, and expecting countenance from the presence of their leader, offered themselves among the other communicants. Being all well known to Calvin, however, they were resolutely warned off by him. Covering the typical Bread and Cup with his outspread hands, he declared that they should sooner hack them off than bring him to minister to those he looked on as notorious scoffers at religion and its most solemn rites. Here the minister was in his place and within the pale of his office; so that they who came to browbeat and humble him had to retreat from his presence with shame to themselves and damage to their party, whilst he stood erect in the fearless discharge of his duty, and rose higher than ever in the estimation of all lovers of law and order, even of the stringent kind that prevailed in the theo-autocratic city of Geneva.

The letter which Calvin wrote, at this stormy time, to his friend Viret, of Lausanne, is too interesting and characteristic not to have a place here:

... I had thought to have been silent about our affairs of Geneva, fearing that I should only add needlessly to your other anxieties; but lest rumours reaching you from other quarters should distress you more than knowledge of the truth, I think it best to tell you exactly what has happened.

When Ph. Berthelier was forbidden to present himself at the Lord’s Table some year and half ago, he then appealed to the Council against the decree of the Consistory. We were called into court to hold the scoundrel (nebulo) in check; and when the case had been heard, the Senate declared that he had been properly excommunicated. From that time until now he has been quiet; whether in despair of mending matters or through indifference, I know not. But now, and before the Syndicate of Perrin expires, he would have himself reinstated by the Council in spite of the Consistory. I was again summoned, and in copious words I showed that this could with no propriety be done; that it would not be lawful, indeed, to counteract in any such way the discipline of the Church. When my back was turned, however, the Consistory not having been further heard or represented, permission was given him by the Council to present himself at the Table. This being told to me, I took care immediately to have the Syndic summon a special meeting of the Council, at which I entered with such fulness into the question, as to leave nothing which in my opinion could be said further to make them change their mind—now vehement, now more persuasive, I strove to bring them to a right way of thinking. I even declared that I would sooner die, opposing their decree, than profane the Sacred Table of the Lord.... The Senate nevertheless replied that they saw no reason to depart from the judgment already given.

From this you will perceive that I should have nothing for it but to quit my ministry, did I suffer the authority of the Consistory to be trodden under foot, and consented to administer the Supper of Christ to the openly contumacious who declare that we Pastors of the Church are nothing to them. But, as I say, I would sooner die a hundred deaths than subject Christ to so foul a mockery. What I said yesterday at two meetings, I need not recapitulate. But the wicked and lost among us will now have all they desire. In so far as I am concerned, it is the Church’s calamity that distresses me. If God, however, give such licence to Satan that I am to be thwarted in my ministry by violent decrees, I am as good as dead in my office. But he who inflicts the wound will find the salve; and truly, when I see how the wicked have gone on all these years with such impunity, the Lord perhaps prepares some judgment for me, in respect of my unworthiness. Whatever befals, it is nevertheless for us to submit to his will. Farewell, and may God be with you always, guide you and protect you! Pray incessantly that He consider this our miserable Church!

Geneva, The day before the nones (4th) of September, 1553.

CHAPTER XI.

THE TRIAL IS RESUMED ON THE NEW ARTICLES SUPPLIED BY CALVIN.

It fell out, unfortunately for Servetus, that the decree of the Council against the Consistory was the immediate prelude to the resumption of his trial. The decision come to had been warmly contested by Calvin, as we see by the preceding letter, he looking on any interference of the civil magistrate in questions which he regarded from a purely ecclesiastical point of view, as a blow not only to his spiritual authority in Geneva, but to the cause of religion. He saw the late awards of the Council in favour of Berthelier and against the Consistory in the light of triumphs of his enemies over himself, and mainly due to the influence of his particular opponent, Amied Perrin, under whose presidency the adverse decisions had been obtained.

On the resumption of the Servetus trial, then, the hot blood engendered by the recent struggle had not yet had time to cool; and Calvin, on taking his place in the reconstituted Criminal Court, found himself once more not only face to face with his theological opponent, but set beside his chief political enemies, Perrin and Berthelier. Elate with the advantage just gained, they had kept their seats on the Bench, intending doubtless to do what in them lay to secure a further victory through Michael Servetus over the uncompromising Reformer. It is not difficult to imagine the influence, in the present state of affairs, which the attitude of these men had on the fate of our unhappy Servetus; for Calvin, with his many supporters acting as his spies, was well informed of the countenance they had given the prisoner privately, and seems to have construed their presence at this particular moment as a public demonstration in his favour. To convict Servetus was therefore to thwart them, and the discomfiture of the solitary stranger had become more than ever a personal and political necessity to the Reformer.

The articles from the works of Servetus from the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ exclusively, on this occasion, thirty-eight in number, had been laid before the Court so long back as September 1, and are headed: ‘Opinions or Propositions taken from the Books of Michael Servetus which the Members of the Church of Geneva declare to be in part impious and blasphemous, in part full of profound errors and absurdities, all of them alike opposed to the Word of God and the orthodox assent of the Church.’

September 15.—The Court constituted in the usual manner, with Servetus before them sworn to speak the truth, Calvin, who seems now to have taken the place of the Attorney-General, proceeded to interrogate the prisoner on the new Articles of Impeachment. One of the first of these, referring to the relationship of the Son to the Father in the mystery of the Trinity, appears to have given rise to another long, and we may imagine excited debate between Calvin and the prisoner; from which, however, the judges were able to gather so little light that they interposed, and came to a resolution to have any further discussion that might arise carried on in writing and in the Latin tongue, instead of by word of mouth and in French as heretofore.

The substitution of Latin for French had in fact become a necessity when the determination to consult the other Reformed Churches of the Confederation was adopted. Native to Geneva with its French-speaking population, French was little understood at Berne, Basle, Zürich, and Schaffhausen with their German inhabitants; but the liberally educated among them were generally familiar with Latin. Calvin, we must therefore presume, had presented his new Articles in French, so that they had to be translated and turned back into Latin; but the trial appears to have suffered no particular delay on this account. Presented anew in the Latin tongue and approved by the Court, they were ordered by it to be submitted to the prisoner, with the intimation that he was required to answer them, and to feel himself at liberty to alter or retract anything he might now think he had written unadvisedly; to explain anything he had said that was misunderstood; and to defend such of his opinions as were challenged, by the citation of Scripture in their support. Nor was he to be hurried in sending in his replies; he was to take his own time, and to enter as fully as he pleased into every question.

As it is part of our business here to learn on what grounds men of the highest culture burned one another to death three hundred and twenty-four years ago—and it is thought by some that there still remains such an amount of ignorance, bigotry, and intolerance in the world as might lead to a rekindling of the fires, were the power to do so but added to the will—we feel bound to make a somewhat particular study of the Articles on which the unfortunate Servetus was finally incriminated and doomed to die. We therefore proceed to lay before the reader, in slightly condensed form, these Articles, which will be seen, on the most cursory perusal, to involve none but topics of transcendental dogmatic theology—a subject which to reasonable men has now lost almost all the significance it once possessed, but which has still a large historical interest as showing, in contrast with present views, the progress that has been made from darkness into light; and as illustrating the great, yet persistently neglected, truth, that the religious feelings are no safe guides of conduct when dissevered from the other emotional elements of human nature in balanced action among themselves, enlightened by science and associated with reason. Religion has in fact at no time been the civiliser of mankind, as so commonly said, but has itself been the civilised through advances made in science or the knowledge of nature, and in general refinement. Brutal and blood-stained among savages and the barbarous but policied peoples of antiquity, Assyrians, Chaldæans, Egyptians, Hebrews; cruel and intolerant among Newer Nations well advanced in art and letters, but ignorant of the world they lived in and the universe around them, religion has only become humane as Science has been suffered to shed her ennobling light, and will first prove truly beneficent when Piety is seen to consist in study of the laws of nature, which are the laws of God, and Worship is acknowledged to be comprised in reverential observance of their behests. What adequate idea of God could be formed—if, indeed, it be possible for man to form any adequate idea of God!—so long as this earth—this mote in the ocean of Infinity—was thought of as the centre of the universe, the one object of God’s care, and a single family among the myriads that people it as the sole recipients of his revealed word and will!

But turn we to our Articles, which we proceed to pass under review in connection with the answers made to them by Servetus. In these we shall now find him more intemperate than he has yet shown himself; more aggressive, too; not only indisposed to yield in jot or tittle, but negligent of opportunities to defend his conclusions, and eager to attack his pursuer; ready to call him opprobrious names, and to charge him with wilful misrepresentation and malignity. The recent triumph of Perrin and Berthelier had obviously infected Servetus, and not only lost him his chance of continuing to improve his position with his judges, but even made him careless of making any serious effort to prove himself in the right.

At the very outset of his replies, and by way of preface, assuming the Articles to be Calvin’s and Calvin’s alone, Servetus says: ‘It is impossible not to admire the impudence of the man, who is nothing less than a disciple of Simon Magus, arrogating to himself the authority of a Doctor of the Sorbonne, condemning everything according to his fancy, scarcely quoting Scripture for aught he advances, and either plainly not understanding me or artfully wresting my words from their true significance. I am therefore compelled, before replying to his Articles, to say, in brief, that the whole purpose of my book is to show, first, that when the word Son is met with in Scripture it is always to the man Jesus that the term is applied, he having also the title Christ given him; and, second, that the Son or second Person in the Trinity is spoken of as a person because there was visibly relucent in the Deity a Representation or Image of the man Jesus Christ, hypostatically subsisting in the Divine mind from eternity. It is because this rationale of the Person is unknown to Calvin, and because the whole thing depends thereon, that I refer as preliminary to certain passages from the ancient Doctors of the Church on which I rest my conclusions.’

Passages sixteen in number, from Tertullian, Irenæus, Clemens Romanus, and others, are then cited to justify the sense he attaches to the words Person and Son; from which we see that Servetus, following his authorities, adopts the Neo-platonic view of the Son as a pre-existing idea in the Divine mind, not as an entity distinct from the essence of God, having a proper life and subsistence of its own, and only proceeding in time to become incarnate in the man Jesus.

We were interested, of course, in referring to these passages from the Fathers (they are given at length in Calvin’s Refutation); and, though disappointed in finding them less cogent and conclusive than we had expected, we yet discover the germs of almost all that is more fully developed by Servetus in connection with the subjects of which they speak. ‘Tertullian,’ says he, ‘declares, that to conform with things human, God, in former times, assumed human senses and affections, and made himself visible to man in the divinity of Christ; and that the words Person and Son of God are used in Scripture because God, invisible, intangible in himself, was made visible in Christ. He who spoke with Adam in the garden, with Noah, with Abraham, and came down to see what the Babylonians were about, and so on, was no other than Christ or a prefiguration of Christ. He who spoke with Moses, too, at different times was Christ—the Relucent visible Image or Figuration of the invisible Deity. In the essence of God there is no real distinction between the Father and the Son; they do not constitute two invisible entities such as the Tritheiti imagine; it is no more than a formal distinction that is made between the invisible Father and the visible Son. It is the idea of prolation or procession of one thing out of another that has given occasion to certain dispositions, dispensations, or modes in the Deity being turned into so many entities, and so into a Trinity of Persons. Quoting St. Paul, Tertullian says that “in the face of Christ is seen the very light of God;” and to this I myself refer repeatedly in my Third Book on the Trinity; but Calvin, persisting in his blindness, will not see God thus.’

From Irenæus we find little that is not repetition of what is said by Tertullian. ‘The Jews,’ he says, ‘did not know that he who spoke with Adam and Abraham and Moses in human form, was the Word, the Son of God. But Jesus, as the Image, as the Word, was then the Divine manifestation of God, being at once, but without real distinction, both Word and Spirit; for in the spiritual substance of the Father was comprised the figuration and representation of the Word. Abraham was taught and knew that the Angel who visited him was the representative of the Word which was, or was to be, the future man, the Son of God—dost hear, Calvin?—the Word was the figuration of the man Jesus! The Word is always spoken of as something visible; so that when John says, “In the beginning was the Word,” we are to understand the prefiguration of Christ in the Deity: invisible in himself, God the Father is visible in the Son. The Logos and the Spirit imply nothing of personal distinction in God so that, when it is said, “God made all things by his Word,” it is himself as Creator, and not another, that is to be understood: the Word and the Holy Ghost are not to be thought of as distinct entities, but as dispositions in God.’

But enough of this—more than enough, indeed, is before the reader to enable him to judge of the kind of matter that never yet influenced man in his conduct towards either God or his fellow, on which Michael Servetus was adjudged to die.

The answers of Servetus to the incriminated passages of his book are obviously by no means either so full or so satisfactory as he might easily have made them; neither are they always so worded as unequivocally to express his proper views; but of more moment than all, they are given without the references to Scripture which the Court had suggested, and would certainly have had greater weight with it than aught else that could be urged. Though he uses the words person and hypostasis, we know that he did not understand them in the same way as theologians generally. He did not acknowledge any proper personality in the nature of God, who to him was invisible, all-pervading Essence, inscrutable too, save as manifesting and making himself known in Creation. Servetus’s persons and hypostases are modes or manifestations of God in nature, and, not limited to three, are, in truth, infinite in number, and proclaimed in an infinity of ways. To accommodate himself in some sort to such conceptions as were current on the subject of the Trinity, he uses language at times which it seems might fairly bring him within the pale of orthodoxy, were we not aware of the arbitrary meaning he attaches to the terms employed: God, Father, all-pervading Being; Christ, Son, visible manifestation of God to man; Holy Ghost, Angel—ἐνέργεια, actuating force in nature. Such, as we understand him, was the kind of Trinity formulated by Servetus.

The answers of the prisoner to the new articles of incrimination were now ordered by the Court, which has nothing to say to them itself, to be put into the hands of the Reformer for his strictures. This gave Calvin the opportunity which he did not fail to turn to the best advantage. Treating Servetus’s Replies in a very different spirit from that in which the Spaniard had treated his Articles, he proceeded elaborately to criticise and refute them; in other words, and more properly, to demonstrate the incongruity and incompatibility of Servetus’s admitted beliefs and opinions touching the transcendental propositions involved, with the orthodox conclusions of himself and the Churches generally. To a theologian like Calvin such a task presented no difficulties; but the thoroughness of his exposition or refutation, and the length to which it runs, assure us of the pains he bestowed on the work. Calvin is said to have spent no more than two or three days in the composition of this elaborate paper; had the time been two months and more, it would have been little, and few men, we apprehend, could have got through the work in less time.

Signed by as many as thirteen ministers beside himself—for Calvin would not forego the backing of his colleagues in such a cause—the Refutation of the prisoner’s replies to his prosecutor’s Articles of Inculpation was laid before the Court at their next meeting; and in a spirit of entire judicial fairness, was by them ordered to be forthwith submitted to the prisoner, for his observations in assent to, or dissent from, the interpretations put upon his words. He was even particularly told, as he had been before, that he was at liberty to answer in the way and at the length he pleased.

The understanding of the Court when giving Calvin his instructions, was that his Extracts were not to be accompanied by either note or comment—they were to be ‘word for word’ from the writings of the prisoner. But we see that he gave little heed to this injunction; for many of the Articles are either prefaced or concluded by a comment; Art. XVI. for example, begins in this way: ‘That he may corrupt the saying of the apostle,’ &c.; XVII.: ‘To say that God is Father of the Holy Ghost, is to confound the persons,’ &c.; XVIII.: ‘To show that he plays with the word person,’ &c.; XXXV.: ‘After jumbling together many insane and pernicious notions on the substance of the soul,’ &c.; XXXVIII.: ‘That he has written and published horrible blasphemies against the baptism of infants,’ &c. Calvin, in short, could not resist the opportunity of helping the Judges to a conclusion in consonance with his own views, and therefore adverse to those of his opponent.

When we turn to Calvin’s Refutation of the Errors of Michael Servetus, we observe him setting out by saying that he will not imitate the prisoner in the use of uncivil language, but confine himself strictly to the matters in question. He would not be John Calvin, however, did he keep his word; and truly his language is at times little less offensive than that of Servetus; whilst his comments, uniformly adverse, are ever studiously calculated to damage the prisoner in the eyes of his Judges. ‘Whosoever,’ says Calvin in concluding his work, ‘will duly weigh all that is here adduced, will not fail to see that the whole purpose of Servetus has been to extinguish the light we have in the true doctrine, and so put an end to all religion.’ But we, for our part, say, after some pains bestowed, that whoever peruses the writings of Servetus without a foregone conclusion that any one among the various formulated systems of religious doctrine he sees around him is the Absolute Truth, and alone essential to constitute Religiousness, will not fail to discover that not only had Servetus no thought of putting out the light of religion in the world, but that he was animated by a most earnest desire, through another interpretation of the Records which he, too, looked on as Revelations from God, to set Christianity on another, and, as he believed, a better foundation than it had yet obtained from the labours of Luther, Calvin, and the rest of the Reformers. Servetus was, in truth, but one among the host of Reformers of every shade and colour who made their appearance on the field at the trumpet-call of Luther, and who had but this in common: hostility to the ignorance and immorality of monk and priest, to the pride and lust and abuse of power so conspicuous in Pope and Roman Hierarch. And shall we in these days think of him as impious and irreligious who held that it was less than reasonable to speak of the coeternity of a Father and a Son, taking the words in any common-sense acceptation; and that a single entity could not be conceived as subdivided into three distinct entities or persons, without loss of its essential unity, nor three distinct entities or persons be thought of as amalgamated into one without loss of their several individualities? Who said, moreover, that he believed God to be the all-pervading essence and order of the universe; man to be fitted for his state, each individually answerable for his own sin, not for the sin of another, and that faith in the highest exemplar of humanity as he conceived it, that had ever appeared on earth, added to a good life and its associate charities, was that which was required for salvation? Shall we, we ask, think of such a man as less pious, less religious, less likely to be acceptable to God than one who believed that there was a certain Word which was with God from the beginning, and was indeed God, and yet another than God; or that God, beside his proper all-sufficing substance, was supplemented by several hypostases or offsets, which were at once himself, yet other than himself; that from eternity God had elected and fore-ordained a relatively limited proportion of mankind to salvation and eternal life, and doomed an infinitely larger proportion to perdition and everlasting death? Shall we, we say further, think that the man who was tolerant of the speculative opinions of others, and whose business in life it was to visit the sick and reach the healing potion, was less of a good, and a true, and a useful member of society, than he who aspired through the unseen, the unknown and the unknowable, to rule the world with a rod of iron, who was utterly intolerant of other speculative opinions than his own, and in enforcing his arbitrary rules for the regulation of life and conversation, was merciless in the use of the scourge, the branding iron, the sword, and the slow fire? Surely we shall not. Were greatness associated in the world with true nobility of nature, light-bringers, like Michael Servetus, would assuredly be set on a higher level than conquerors of kingdoms.