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Servetus, probably, tended more than any single event to produce wiser and more charitable views on this subject. Free-thinkers, who had no convictions for which they would die themselves - the apostles of indifference were naturally early in the field in favor of the rights of opinion. But religious toleration could never obtain a general sway, until the limitations of human responsibility, and the limited function to which the State is properly restricted, were better understood. A more enlightened charity, which makes larger allowance for diversities of intellectual view, is doubtless a powerful auxiliary in effecting this salutary change.1

The conflicts through which Calvin had to pass in upholding and firmly establishing the Genevan theocracy, would have broken down any other than a man of iron. Personal indignities were heaped upon him. The dogs in the street were named after him. Every device was undertaken in order to intimidate him. As he sat at his study table late at night, a gun would be discharged under his window. In one night fifty shots were fired before his house. On one occasion he walked into the midst of an excited mob and offered his breast to their daggers.

The case of Bolsec, who was arrested and banished for violently attacking the preachers on the subject of predestination, has already been referred to. Another in

1 Lecky, in common with other writers at the present day, makes persecution the necessary result of undoubting convictions on the subject of religion, coupled with a belief that moral obliquity is involved in holding opposite views. These writers would make scepticism essential to the exercise of toleration. See Lecky's quotation from C. J. Fox (vol. ii. p. 20). But if this be true, how shall we account for the opposition to the spirit of persecution, which these very writers attribute to the founders of Christianity - to Christ and the Apostles? Much that is ascribed to the influence of "Rationalism" is really due to the increasing power of Christianity, and to the better understanding of its precepts, and of the limits of the responsibility of society for the opinions and character of its members. There are two antidotes to uncharitableness and narrowness. The one is liberal culture; the other is that high degree of religion-of charity -which is delineated by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians xiii. Either of these remedies against intolerance is consistent with a living, earnest faith.

stance somewhat similar was the controversy with Castellio. Castellio was a highly cultivated scholar whom Calvin had brought from Strasburg to take charge of the Geneva school. He was desirous of becoming a minister, but Calvin objected on account of his views on the Song of Solomon, which he thought should be struck from the canon, and his opposition to the passage of the creed respecting the descent of Christ into hell. The result was that Castellio at length made a public attack upon the preachers, charging them with intolerance, and less justly, with other grave faults. He accused Calvin of a love of power. Whether the charge were true, Calvin wrote to Farel, he was willing to leave it to God to judge. The result was that Castellio, who had many points of excellence, was expelled from Geneva, and afterwards prosecuted in print a heated controversy with Calvin and Beza.1 But these and all other instances of alleged persecution are overshadowed by the more notorious case of Servetus. Michael Servetus was born at Villeneuve, in Spain, in 1509, and was therefore of the same age as Calvin. According to his own statement, he was attached, for a while, when a youth, to the service of Quintana, the chaplain of Charles V., and witnessed the stately ceremonies at the coronation of the Emperor at Bologna. He was sent by his father to Toulouse to study law; but his mind turned to theological speculation, and, in connection with other scholars of his acquaintance, he read the Scriptures and the Fathers, especially the writers of the ante-Nicene period. He also delved in judicial astrology, in which he was a believer. Of an original, inquisitive mind, adventurous and independent in his thinking, he convinced

1 When Calvin was excited, he was a match for Luther in the use of vituperative epithets. The opprobrious names which he applies to Castellio the latter collects in a long list. The origin of Calvin's disputes with Castellio - Calvin's dissatisfaction with his translation of the New Testament is given in the letter to Viret, Bonnet, i. 326. See, also, i. 316, 379, 392. A fair account of the controversy is given by Dyer, i. 169 seq.

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himself of the groundlessness of the claims of the Roman Catholic Church; but he was not satisfied with the Protestant theology, especially on the subject of the Trinity. Going to Basel he formed an acquaintance with Ecolampadius, who expressed a strong dislike of his notions. Zwingle, whom Ecolampadius consulted, said that such notions would subvert the Christian religion, but seems to have discountenanced a resort to force for the suppression of them. The book of Servetus on the "Errors of the Trinity," appeared in 1531. In it he defended a view closely allied to the Sabellian theory, and an idea of the incarnation in which the common belief of two natures in Christ had no place. He endeavored to draw Calvin into a correspondence, but became angry at the manner in which Calvin treated him and his speculations. He wrote Calvin a number of letters well stored with invectives against the prevalent conceptions of Christian doctrine, as well as against Calvin personally. At length he returned to Paris, where he had previously studied at the same time that Calvin was there, and under the assumed name of Villanovus, derived from the village where he was born, he prosecuted his studies in natural science and medicine, for which he had a remarkable aptitude. He divined the true method of the circulation of the blood, almost anticipating the later discovery of Harvey.2 As a practitioner of medicine he stood in high repute. After repeatedly changing his name and residence, he finally took up his abode in Vienne, in the south of France, where he was hospitably received by the Archbishop, and long lived in the lucrative practice of his profession. During all this time, in the aggregate more than twenty years, he conformed outwardly to the Catholic Church, attended mass, and was not suspected of heresy. Here he finished a book, not less obnoxious than the first, en1 Mosheim, Geschichte Servets, p. 17. 2 Henry, Leben Calvins, iii. Beil. 59.

titled "The Restoration of Christianity"-Christianismi Restitutio-and not being able to get it printed in Basel, he bribed the Archbishop's own printer and two of his assistants, to print it for him secretly. He superintended the press, and sent copies of the anonymous book to various places for sale, not forgetting to despatch one or more copies as presents to the Genevan theologians. In this work his conception of the person of Christ is somewhat modified; its doctrine makes a nearer approach to Pantheistic theories. The two grand hindrances in the way of the spread of Christianity were declared to be the doctrine of the Trinity and that of Infant Baptism. The manuscript of the first draft of the work had been sent to Calvin at an earlier day. A French refugee residing at Geneva, by the name of Guillaume Trie, in a letter to Antoine Arneys, a Roman Catholic relative at Lyons, made reference to Servetus as the author of this pestiferous book, and as, nevertheless, enjoying immunity in a Church that pretended to be zealous for the extirpation of heresy. Arneys carried the information to the Archbishop of Lyons. Servetus was arrested; and an ecclesiastical court was constituted for his trial. Some pages of an annotated copy of the "Institutes," which he had long before sent to Calvin, and a parcel of his letters were transmitted from Geneva by Trie, for the purpose of establishing the charge which he had indirectly caused to be made. Trie prevailed on Calvin to grant him this additional evidence. Servetus, and the printers with him, had sworn that they knew nothing of the book which they had published. Servetus also swore that he was not the person who had written the book on the "Errors of the Trinity." But when the Genevan documents ar

1 "Es gibt kaum ein anderes System, das so sehr wie das Servets als ein pantheistiches bezeichnet zu werden verdient in dem gewöhnlich mit diesem Worte verbundenen Sinn." — Baur, Die christl. Lehre v. d. Dreieingkeit, etc., III. i. 2,

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rived, he saw that conviction was inevitable, and contrived to escape from his jailer. The Vienne court had to content itself with seizing his property and burning his effigy. We know Calvin's disposition towards him; for in a letter to Farel he had once said that if his authority was of any avail, in case Servetus were to come to Geneva, he should not go away alive.1

Servetus, having escaped from Vienne, after a few months actually appeared in Geneva and took lodgings in an inn near one of the gates. He had been there for a month without being recognized, when Calvin was informed of his presence, and procured his arrest. A scribe of Calvin made the accusation. Ultimately, Calvin and all the other preachers were brought face to face with the prisoner, before the Senate which was to sit in judgment upon him. In the subsequent proceedings he defended his theological opinions with much acuteness, but with a strange outpouring of violent denunciation.2 His propositions relative to the participation of all things in the Deity, and the identity of the world with God, although he made the embodiment of the primordial essence in the world to spring from a volition, were couched in phraseology which made them seem to his accusers in the highest degree dangerous and repulsive. He caricatured the Church doctrine of the Trinity by the most offensive comparisons. His ideas were out of relation to the existing philosophy and theology, and were an anticipation of phases of speculation of a much later date. His physical

1 February 13, 1546. Bonnet, ii. 19.

2 Dyer, a writer not at all disposed to excuse Calvin, says (p. 337) of the indorsements made by Servetus on the list of thirty-eight heretical propositions which Calvin had extracted from his writings: "The replies of Servetus to this document are very insolent, and seem almost like the productions of a madman." These replies may be read in the new edition of Calvin's works, viii. 519 seq.

3 "Man kann sich daher nicht wundern, dass auch die Gegner an diesem so offen vor Augen liegenden Character des Systems den grössten Anstoss nahmen." — Baur, Ibid., p. 103.