theories were interwoven with his theology. His maxiin, that "no force acts except by contact," was connected with his doctrine of the substantial communication of the Deity to all things; and he told Calvin contemptuously that if he only understood natural science, he could comprehend this subject. While he was undergoing his trial, a messenger arrived from the tribunal at Vienne to demand their escaped prisoner. There was no safety for him with Papist or Protestant! He chose to remain and take his chance where he was. It is not improbable that his boldness and vehemence were inspired by suggestions from the Libertine party, and that he felt that they stood at his back. Calvin was far from being omnipotent in Geneva at this time. He was, in fact, in the very crisis of his conflict with his adversaries. It was on the 27th of August, 1553, that he denounced Servetus from the pulpit; he had been arrested on the 13th of the same month. On the 3d of September, Calvin refused the Lord's Supper to the younger Berthelier, a leader of the Libertines. So strong was this party, that had the cause of Servetus been carried, as was attempted, to the Council of One Hundred, Servetus would have escaped. He was extremely bold, and demanded that Calvin should be banished for bringing a malicious accusation, and that his property should be handed over to him. Contrary to his expectation, he was condemned. He called Calvin to his prison, and asked pardon for his personal treatment of him; but all attempts to extort from him a retraction of his doctrines, whether made by Calvin or by Farel before the execution of the sentence, were ineffectual. He adhered to his opinions with heroic constancy, and was burned at the stake on the morning of the 27th of October, 1553.

1 Guizot expresses the decided opinion that Servetus went to Geneva relying on the Libertines, and that they expected support from him. St. Louis and Calvin, p. 313. But there is no good evidence of any previous understanding between him and them.

CALVIN AND SERVETUS.

231 On the one hand, it is not true that Calvin arranged that the mode of his death should be needlessly painful. He made the attempt to have it mitigated; probably that the sword might be used instead of the fagot. And notwithstanding the previous threat, to which reference has been made, it is likely that he expected, and he had reason to expect, that Servetus would recant. On the other hand, it cannot be denied that he yielded to the solicitation of Trie, and supplied the documentary evidence which went from Geneva to the court at Vienne. He caused the arrest of Servetus at Geneva, and it is a violation of historical truth to say that he did not desire his execution. The infliction of capital punishment on one whom he considered a blasphemer, as well as an assailant of the fundamental truths of Christianity, was in his judgment right. In the defense of the doctrine of the Trinity against Servetus, which Calvin published in 1554, he enters into a formal argument in favor of the capital punishment of contumacious heretics by the civil authority. He thinks that if Roman Catholic rulers slay the innocent, this is no reason why better and more enlightened magistrates should spare the guilty. The whole discussion proves that the arguments for toleration, both from Scripture and reason, were not unknown to him, for he tries to answer them. He makes his appeal, in great part, to the Old Testament. Guizot thus pronounces upon the case of Servetus and Calvin: "It was their tragical destiny to enter into mortal combat as the champions of two great causes. It is my profound conviction that Calvin's cause was the good one; that it was the cause of morality, of social order, of civilization. Servetus

1 We have already cited his letter to Farel, of February 13, 1546. After the arrest of Servetus, Calvin wrote to Farel (August 20, 1553), saying: "I hope (spero) the sentence will at least be capital; but desire the atrocity of the punishment to be abated." He wished him to be put to death, but not by fire. Calvin published an elaborate work in defense of the proceeding. Henry has mistranslated the above passage: see Dyer, Life of Calvin, p. 339.

was the representative of a system false in itself, superficial under the pretense of science, and destructive alike of social dignity in the individual, and of moral order in human society. In their disastrous encounter, Calvin was conscientiously faithful to what he believed to be truth and duty; but he was hard, much more influenced by violent animosity than he imagined, and devoid alike of sympathy and generosity. Servetus was sincere and resolute in his conviction, but he was a frivolous, presumptuous, vain, and envious man, capable, in time of need, of resorting to artifice and untruth. Servetus obtained the honor of being one of the few martyrs to intellectual liberty; whilst Calvin, who was undoubtedly one of those who did most toward the establishment of religious liberty, had the misfortune to ignore his adversary's right to liberty of belief.”1 The forbearance of Calvin toward Lælius Socinus has been sometimes considered a proof that he was actuated by personal vindictiveness in relation to Servetus. But Calvin, widely as he might differ from Socinus, recognized in him a sobriety, a moral respectability, which he wholly missed in the restless, visionary, passionate physician of Villeneuve. It was the diversity of character in the two men, and the different methods which they adopted to spread their doctrines, much more than any resentment which Calvin might feel in consequence of the attacks of Servetus whom he looked down upon as a wild, mischievous dreamer- that made him so courteous and lenient to Socinus.

The execution of Servetus, with a few notable exceptions, was approved by the Christian world. Bullinger, the friend and successor of Zwingle, justified it. Even Melancthon gave it his sanction. The rise of infidel and fanatical sects in the path of the Reformation, as an incidental consequence of the movement, and the disposition

1 St. Louis and Calvin, c. xix. p. 326.

CONFLICTS OF CALVIN.

233

of opponents to identify it with these manifestations, made the Protestants the more solicitous to demonstrate their hostility to them, and their fidelity to the principal articles of the Christian faith. In rejecting infant baptism, and in the terms of his proposition respecting the identity of the world with God, Servetus was at one with. the Libertine free-thinkers. "He held with the Ana-. baptists," said the Genevan Senate, and must suffer;1 although Servetus asserted that he had always condemned the opposition made by the Anabaptists to the civil magistrate.

The conflict with the Libertine faction did not end with the condemnation of Servetus. The courage and determination of a Hildebrand were required to stem the opposition which Calvin had to meet. An attempt to overthrow the power of the Consistory, by interposing the authority of the Senate, was only baffled by his resolute refusal to admit to the sacrament persons judged to be unworthy. Finally, the efforts of the Libertine party culminated in 1555, in an armed conspiracy under the lead of Perrin, who had held the highest offices in the city; and the complete overthrow of this insurrection was the deathblow of the party. In the preface to the Psalms, Calvin makes a pathetic reference to the stormy scenes which he -by nature "unwarlike and timorous"-had been compelled to pass through; to the sorrow which he felt in the destruction of those whom he would have preferred to save; and to the multiplied calumnies that his enemies persistently heaped upon him. "To my power,"

1 Upon the life and opinions of Servetus, and the circumstances of his trial and death, see Mosheim, Ketzergeschichte, ii. (1748), and Neue Nachrichten von dem berühmten span. Arzte, M. Serveto (1750); Trechsel, Die Anti-trinitarier, and art. "Servet" in Herzog's Real-Enc.; Dyer, Life of Calvin, chs. ix. and x.; Henry, Leben Calvins, III. i.; Baur, Die christl. Lehre von d. Dreieinigkeit, etc., t. iii. p. 54 seq.; Dorner, Entwicklungsch. d. Lehre von d. Person Christi, ii. 649 seq. The letters of Servetus to Calvin, together with the Minutes of his Trial at Geneva, are given in the new edition of the Works of Calvin (by Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss), vol. viii. (1870).

2 Kampschulte states that when the pestilence raged at Geneva in 1543, Calvin

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he says, which they envy-O that they were the successors ! "If I cannot persuade them while I am alive that I am not avaricious, my death, at least, will convince them of it." His entire property after his death amounted to less than two hundred dollars!

At the same time that he was waging this domestic contest, he was exerting a vast influence as a religious teacher within the city and over all Europe. Besides preaching every day of each alternate week, he gave weekly three theological lectures. His memory was so extensive that if he had once seen a person, he recognized him immediately years afterwards, and if interrupted while dictating, he could resume his task, after an interval of hours, at the point where he had left it, without aid from his amanuensis. Hence, he was able to discourse, even upon the prophets, where numerous historical references were involved, without the aid of a scrap of paper, and with nothing before him but the text. Being troubled with asthma, he spoke slowly, so that his lectures, as well as many of his sermons, were taken down, word for word, as they were delivered. Hundreds of auditors from the various countries of Europe flocked to Geneva to listen to his instructions. Protestant exiles in great numbers, many of whom were men of influence, of whom Knox was one, found a refuge there, and went back to their homes bearing the impress which he had stamped upon them. Under Calvin's influence, Geneva became to the Romanic, what Wittenberg was to the Lutheran nations. The school of which Castellio was the head did not flourish after he left it; but, in 1558, a gymnasium was established, and in the following year the Academy

declined, from fear, to go to the pest-house to minister to the sick and dying. (Johann Calrin, i. 484.) But Beza, than whom there is no better witness, states that Calvin offered himself for this service, but the Senate would not permit him to undertake it: Vita Calvini, ix. For other contemporary proof, see Bonnet, Letters of Calvin, i. 334, n. 3. See also Henry, ii. 43. But Kampschulte himself quotes the act of the Council, withholding Calvin from this service, which involved almost certain death (p. 486, n. 2).