THE TRIAL IS CONTINUED, AND SERVETUS ADDRESSES LETTERS TO CALVIN AND HIS JUDGES.

On returning to his dungeon after his examination on September 15, Servetus addressed his prosecutor in the following characteristic epistle, which the reply to Art. XXI. appears to have suggested:

To John Calvin, health!—It is for your good that I tell you you are ignorant of the principles of things. Would you now be better informed, I say the great principle is this: All action takes place by contact. Neither Christ nor God himself acts upon anything which he does not touch. God would not in truth be God were there anything that escaped his contact. All the qualities of which you dream are imaginations only, slaves of the fields as it were. But there is no virtue of God, no grace of God, nor anything of the sort in God which is not God himself; neither does God put quality into aught in which he himself is not. All is from him, by him, and in him. When the Holy Spirit acts in us, therefore it is God that is in us—that is in contact with us, that actuates us.

In the course of our discussion I detect you in another error. To maintain the force of the old law, you quote Christ’s words where he asks: ‘What says the law?’ and answers himself by saying: ‘Keep the commandments.’ But here you have to think of the law not yet accomplished, not yet abrogated; to think further, that Christ, when he willed to interpose in human things, willed to abide by the law; and that he to whom he spoke was living under the law. Christ, therefore, properly referred at this time to the law as to a master. But afterwards, all things being accomplished, the newer ages were emancipated from the older. For the same reason it was that he ordered another to show himself to the priest and make an offering. Shall we, therefore, do the like? He also ordered a lamb and unleavened bread to be prepared for the Passover: Shall we, too, make ready in this fashion? Why do you go on Judaising in these days with your unleavened bread? Ponder these things well, I beseech you, and carefully read over again my twenty-third letter. Farewell.94

How little likely this epistle, however reasonable in itself, was calculated to win the favour of Calvin, need not be said. To pretend to set John Calvin right in anything could, indeed, only be taken by him as an impertinence.

In the present disposition towards the prisoner—the purely metaphysical and undemonstrable nature of the matters in debate, taken into account—we may reasonably conclude that the Judges had hoped he would be able to explain away the offensive and heretical sense in which his views were regarded by the head of their Church—and indeed, and in so far as they could be understood, as they must have been seen by themselves.

But Servetus, unhappily for himself, did not improve the opportunity presented him of righting himself in any way with the Court by the manner in which he set about dealing with Calvin’s strictures on his replies to the incriminated passages of his book. He does not now, as he had done before, however curtly and imperfectly, reply to the Reformer’s refutations, and show wherein he is misinterpreted or misunderstood; neither does he present his views in another and more questionable light than they are set by his accuser, which he could readily have done in numerous instances at least; and, where this was impossible, he might have appealed to the reason and common sense of his Judges for latitude in interpreting matters that really lie beyond the scope of the human understanding. He, however, did nothing of all this, but proceeded as though he thought it neither necessary nor worth his while to defend himself or his opinions any further—he did not even take paper of his own for his reply, but contented himself with jottings on the margins and between the lines of Calvin’s elaborate refutation! the remarks he makes, moreover, being rarely in the way of answer or explanation. They are mostly curt expressions of dissent, or simply abusive epithets applied to the Reformer, who is called Simon Magus, liar, calumniator, persecutor, homicide, and more besides. Instead of persisting in his legitimate plea that he was but another in the ranks of the Reformers, interpreting the Scriptures by the understanding he had by nature and his education, or declaring, as he had done before, that he would be found ready to abjure those of his opinions that were shown him to be opposed to their teaching, and adverse to the peace of the world, he threw down the gauntlet on the whole question, not to Calvin only, but to the religious world at large. But this, the point of view from which the religious question was regarded in the middle of the sixteenth century, considered, was simply to ensure his condemnation. Men less bigoted, and, above all, less under the influence of the most intolerant of bigots, might possibly have been led to take pity on the writer, and to see him for what he was in truth—a sincerely pious zealot of irreproachable life, if much mistaken, as they believed, in his theological conclusions; and so, and save in the use of intemperate language, excusable on every ground of Christian charity. But this, perhaps, was more than could possibly be expected in the fifteen-hundred-and-fifty-third year of the Christian Æra.

In returning the document so unhappily annotated, Servetus appears to have felt that an apology was due to the Court for the style of response he had adopted. He therefore accompanied it with the following letter, in which he seeks to excuse himself for the course he has taken:

My Lords,—I have been induced to write on Calvin’s paper as there are so many short, interrupted expressions which, apart from the context, would have neither sense nor signification. But doing as I have done, setting the pros and cons in juxtaposition, Messieurs the Judges will be able more readily to decide on the questions in debate. Calvin must not be offended with me for this, for I have not touched a word of his writing; and it was not possible, without infinite confusion, to do otherwise than as I have done. Be pleased, my Lords, to let those who may be appointed to judge or report, have the two books now sent, as they will be thereby spared the trouble of searching out the passages referred to, these being all duly indicated. If Calvin makes any remarks on what is now said, may it please you to communicate them to me.

Your poor prisoner,
Michael Servetus.

This epistle, like the petitions presented to them, received no notice from the Council, which at this time was seriously engaged with business more interesting to them in their civil and administrative spheres; so that for some fourteen days no heed was given to the unfortunate Servetus rotting in the felon’s gaol of Geneva, or to the preparation and despatch of the documents to be submitted to the Councils and Churches of the four Protestant Cantons.