CALVIN ANTICIPATES THE JUDGES IN THEIR APPEAL TO THE SWISS CHURCHES.

Calvin, unlike Servetus, was never remiss. Sedulous to leave as little as might be to accident, and nothing, if he could guard against it, to independent conclusion, he did not fail to take advantage of the pause in the proceedings that now occurred, by being beforehand with the judges, and writing to the leading ministers of the Swiss Churches, every one of whom was of course personally known, and, with few exceptions, even servilely devoted, to him. Addressing Henry Bullinger, on September 7, he says:—

The Council will send you, ere long, the opinions of Servetus in order to have your advice. It is in spite of us that you have this trouble forced on you; but the folks here have come to such a pass of folly and fury that they are suspicious of all we say. Did I declare that there was daylight at noon, I believe they would question it. Brother Walter [Bullinger’s son-in-law] will tell you more [of the state of affairs here].

Calvin, it would therefore appear, did not like the appeal to the Churches. We have said that he had formerly been baffled in his pursuit of Jerome Bolsec, by the moderation they recommended when consulted on the case. He would have had his own and the Church of Geneva’s decision suffice; the motion for appeal to the wider sphere, moreover, seems really to have come from Servetus, and this of itself would have sufficed to make it distasteful to Calvin. The Council’s giving in to it must have been regarded by him, if not as an insult, yet as a mark of distrust: hence his angry allusion to the fury and folly of the Genevese. He made the best of the matter, however, as we have said, by having the start of the Council; and not only writing to the chiefs of the four Churches, but in the case of ZÜrich at least, by sending a messenger—Brother Walter—specially commissioned to give Bullinger, its head pastor, information of a kind he would not trust to writing.

Bullinger, in reply to the written and verbal communication, informs Calvin that—

‘Walter’s news has indeed saddened and disquieted him greatly.’ In some sort of trouble himself, as it seems, Bullinger can heartily sympathise with his brother of Geneva; yet is he ‘without fear for the future, though there be in the town around him more dogs and swine than he could desire! Still many things are to be put up with for the sake of the Elect, and we have to enter the Kingdom of Heaven through great tribulation. But do not, I beseech you, forsake a Church which has so many excellent men within its pale. Bear all for the sake of the Elect. Think what cause of rejoicing your retreat would give to the enemies of the Reformation, and with what danger it would be fraught to the French refugees. Remain! The Lord will not forsake you. He has, indeed, now presented the noble Council of Geneva with a most favourable opportunity of clearing itself from the foul stain of heresy, by delivering into its hands the Spaniard Servetus. You will have heard, of course, that he has put forth another book, wherein he surpasses himself in impiety; but if the blasphemous scoundrel be dealt with as he deserves, the whole world will own that the Genevese have the impious in horror, that they are forward to pursue the obstinate heretic with the sword of justice, and well disposed to assert the glory of the Divine Majesty! Nevertheless, and in any case should they not do so, you ought not to abandon your post and expose the Church to new misfortunes. Fight on bravely, then, trusting in God.’95

From what he says, we see that Bullinger had not been informed of all that had taken place in Geneva, and that the printing of ‘the other book,’ which he could not yet have seen, had been the occasion of its author’s arrest and trial. But the letter to Calvin, prompted by the news he had received through Brother Walter, satisfies us that Calvin at this time felt little at his ease in Geneva, and in nowise sure of the support he was to have from his friend Bullinger. He had no doubts as to the theological criminality of Servetus; neither had he any qualms as to the kind of punishment he designed for him; but he was wroth with the Council for the impartiality it showed towards one who had dared, as he believed, to beard him in his own domain, and ventured to subscribe himself as having the support of the great heavenly head of all the Churches. As Calvin interpreted the latest proceedings of the Council, they appeared simply hostile to himself. Failing now in his prosecution of the Spaniard, his social influence would be compromised, and with the check he had just received in the affair of Berthelier, and the power of the Consistory to excommunicate, whereby his religious foothold was seriously shaken, he must have threatened, if he did not really contemplate, the extreme step of abandoning the Genevese to their own evil devices. Bullinger probably took Calvin’s threat of quitting his charge in Geneva, as conveyed to him by Brother Walter, too literally. From the suspicion of any such purpose, we find him anxious immediately to clear himself by the letter he forthwith addressed to the ZÜrich pastor:

‘From your letter, most excellent Brother (he says), I learn that you have not been so accurately informed of the griefs whereof I complain as I could have wished. The wicked people about me, knowing that I am irritable, my stomach troubling me often and in various ways, have lately been striving to get the better of my patience. But sharp as the struggle has been, they have not succeeded in turning me in the slightest measure from my course. I have been armed against all the arrows they have aimed at me. The Lord may have put me of late so sorely to the proof among this people, that I might learn by experience what heavy trials have to be borne by his ministers. He who has upheld me hitherto will not, I trust, fail to possess me with less fortitude in time to come. Wherefore, trusting in his aid, I have never been really minded to quit the station in which he has placed me. Never once, when your Walter was here lately, did I think of giving way and yielding to the contumelies and indignities that were heaped upon me. The report to the contrary was raised by the factious, that they might injure me.’

Calvin then goes on to inform his friend of the affair of Berthelier, and the permission he had received from the Council to present himself at the Lord’s Supper, and continues: ‘Knowing the brazen face of the man who, with every occasion given him, has still stood in my way; and believing that he would be disposed to vanquish me if he could, I declared to the Council that I would not administer to him, and said that I would sooner die than prostitute the bread of the Lord by giving it to dogs or such as made a mockery of the Gospel, and trod the ordinances of the Church under foot. You have not understood aright what I said. Do not imagine that anything is changed. Something more may possibly be attempted at the next meeting of the Council. May the Lord lead the perverse to desist from their efforts! For my part, it is certain that I will never suffer the discipline sanctioned by the senate, and the decree of the people, to be set aside. If I am prevented from discharging the duties of my office, I may have to yield to force, but I will never renounce the liberty I possess; for, that abandoned, my ministry would be in vain. I am not made of such stubborn stuff, however, as not to feel sorely distressed when I think of the future scattering of this flock; but whilst I have the power, I shall do all I can to hold them in the right way. Do you with your prayers come to our aid, and entreat that Christ may keep to himself his flock of this place.

Things go on no better in France. Wherever there is the pretext, they do not spare bloodshed. Three are condemned to death at Dijon, if they be not already burned; and the danger is that the commotions we hear of in Scotland will add fuel to the fires. Seven or eight youthful persons have been thrown into prison at Nemours, and in several other French towns many more have met with a like fate. Farewell!

The letter which Calvin wrote about the same time to Sulzer, pastor of Basle, also deserves a place here, as showing the pains he took to influence the minds of his friends in his own favour and against Servetus.

The name of Servetus, who, twenty years ago, infected the Christian world with his vile and pestilent doctrines, is not, I presume, unknown to you. Even if you have not read his book, it is scarcely possible that you should not have heard something of the kind of opinions he holds. He it is of whom Bucer, of blessed memory, that faithful minister of Christ, a man otherwise of the most gentle nature, declared that ‘he deserved to be disembowelled and torn in pieces.’ As in days gone by, so of late he has not ceased from spreading abroad his poison; for he has just had a larger volume secretly printed at Vienne, crammed full of the same errors. The printing of the book having been divulged, however, he was thrown into prison there. Escaping from prison—by what means I know not—he wandered about in Italy for some four months; but driven hither at length by his evil destiny—tandem hic malis auspiciis appulsum—one of the syndics, at my instigation, had him arrested.

Nor do I deny that I have been led by my office to do all in my power to restrain this more than obstinate and indomitable individual, so that the contagion should continue no longer. We see with what licence impiety stalks abroad, scattering ever new errors; and we have also to note the indifference of those whom God has armed with the sword to vindicate the glory of his name. If the Papists approve themselves so zealous and so much in earnest for their superstitions, that they cruelly persecute and shed the blood of innocent persons, is it not disgraceful in Christian magistrates to show so little heart in defending the assured Truth? But where there is the power of prevention, there are surely limits to the moderation that suffers blasphemy to be vented with impunity.

As regards this man, then, there are three things to be considered: First, the monstrous errors with which he corrupts all religion, the detestable heresies with which he strives to overthrow all piety, and the abominable fancies with which he surrounds Christianity, and seeks to upset from the foundation every principle of our Faith. Secondly, the obstinacy with which he has comported himself, the diabolical persistency with which he has despised all the counsels given him, and the desperate insistance wherewith he has been forward to spread his poison. Thirdly, the daring with which he, even now, produces his abominations. So far is he from showing any sign or giving any hope of amendment, that he does not scruple to fasten his plague-spot on those holy men, Capito and Œcolampadius—as if they were his associates! Shown the letters of Œcolampadius, he said he wondered by what spirit he, Œcolampadius, had been induced to depart from his first opinion!...

There is but one thing more on which I would have you advised, viz.: That the Questor of our city, who will deliver you this, is of a right mind in the business, which is, that the prisoner shall not escape the fate we desire—ut saltem exitum quem optamus non fugiat.

I say nothing now of French affairs; there being no news here of which I imagine you are not as well informed as we, unless it be that on last Sabbath-day three of our pious brothers were burned to death at Lyons, and a fourth met a like fate in a neighbouring town. It is scarcely credible how these men, illiterate, but enlightened by the spirit of God, and ennobled by the perfections of the Doctrine, behaved on the occasion; with what unswerving constancy they met their fate. But it is not there only; in other parts of France burnings of the same sort go on incessantly; nor seems there any prospect of mitigation. Farewell!

Geneva; v. of the Ides (19) of Septr. 1553.

Calvin, we see from this epistle, believed that he would be fully justified in having Michael Servetus burned alive at Geneva because they differed in their interpretation of the Trinity; but that the Papists of Lyons were inexcusable for sending to a fiery death those who with himself did not acknowledge the Pope as God’s vicegerent on earth, and Romish doctrine as the true and only saving faith. It is the evil destiny of Servetus, too, that has led him into the toils of the Reformer; and to be of a right mind in the business of the prosecution, then proceeding is, so to play into the hands of the prosecutor that his victim shall not escape the death designed him!

It was of ZÜrich, however, more than of any of the Churches consulted, that Calvin felt most in doubt. The tolerant views of Zwingli were in some sort hereditary there; and Bullinger, who was its chief pastor, had disappointed him in the case of Bolsec. But he must also have had strong misgivings of Basle, when he was induced to write the long and particular letter to Sulzer, its leading minister, which we have just perused. The more refined and delicate tone that is said to have pervaded society in the city of Basle indisposed its people to violence or extremes; and ‘Thorough’ was always the word on Calvin’s banner.

If he had doubts of ZÜrich and Basle, Calvin could place implicit reliance on Neuchatel, where Farel, his oldest, most devoted, and most obsequious friend presided as head of the Church. Addressing Farel soon after the arrest of Servetus, he writes:

It is even as you say, my dear Farel,—we are indeed variously and sorely tried and tossed about by storms! We have now a new business with Servetus—jam novum habemus cum Serveto negotium. His intention may, perchance, have been to pass through this city; but it is not precisely known why he came hither. When he was recognised, however, I thought it right to have him arrested, my man Nicholas presenting himself as accuser on the capital charge, and binding himself by the law of retaliation, to proceed against him. Articles of accusation under as many as forty heads were presented in writing on the day following the arrest. He prevaricated at first, which led to our being called in. Recognising me, he behaved as though he held me obnoxious to him. I, as became me, gave no heed to him. The senate, in fine, approved of all the charges, and he was sent back to prison. On the third day after, my brother becoming bail for Nicholas, he was set at liberty.

I say nothing of the effrontery of the man; but such was his madness that [in the course of the interrogatory] he did not hesitate to say the Devil was in the Deity—Diabolus inesse Divinitatem—and more, that in so many men there were so many gods, Deity being substantially communicated to them, as, indeed, he said it was to stocks and stones! I hope the sentence will be capital at the least—Spero capitale saltem fore judicium; but I would have the cruel manner of carrying it out remitted. Farewell!

Calvin’s charge was therefore, as we see, to no halting or half-way conclusion. He proceeded from the first for a capital conviction—he hoped it would be nothing short of this; and being so, he knew the kind of death the man must die. It is a poor show of humanity, therefore, that he makes at the end of his letter. But there is a phrase at the beginning of the epistle which deserves very particular notice: ‘Iam novum habemus cum Serveto negotium—we have now on hand a new business with Servetus.’ But there was no older business with Servetus at Geneva. It was at Vienne that this took place. Writing to Farel, his oldest and most trusted friend, Calvin reverts in mind to the fact, and his words reflect or echo back his inward thought. Of the justice of this surmise we seem to find confirmation in Viret’s letter of August 22, which we have seen in reply to the one in which Calvin inquires after a copy of the book on Trinitarian Error; for there the pastor of Lausanne says: Nunc vobis est alia cum Serveto disputatio—and now you have another contention with Servetus;96 an obvious reference to a passage in one of the Reformer’s letters of the same tenor as that he has just addressed to Farel. Calvin, it is notorious, always shirked acknowledgment of the part he played in the affair of Vienne. Even the self-complacency that comes of theological zeal did not permit him to find an excuse for underhand dealing, and the violation of a correspondence that was private and entirely confidential. He was, by no means, insensible to the infamy that cleaves to an act of the kind, however, and in his own case could say, ‘ZebedÆus has been perfidiously showing confidential letters of mine, which I wrote to him fifteen years ago from Strasburg!’97

Farel’s reply to the last epistle of Calvin, dated from Neufchatel on September 8, is as follows:

I have returned from Normandy, restored to my usual good state of health.... It is a wonderful dispensation of God that has brought Servetus to this country. I wish he may come to his senses, late though it be. It will indeed be a miracle if he prefer death, and, turning to God, consent to edify the spectators—he dying one death who has caused the death of so many others!

Your judges will only show themselves hard-hearted contemners of Christ, enemies of the true Church and of its pious doctrine, if they prove insensible to the horrible blasphemies of so wicked a heretic. But I hope God will so order it that they may merit commendation by putting out of the way the man who has so long and so obstinately persevered in his heresies to the perdition of so many! In desiring to have the cruelty of the punishment mitigated, you appear as the friend of him who has been your greatest enemy. There are some, however, who would let heretics be doing—as if there were any difference between the office of the pastor and that of the magistrate! Because the Pope condemns the faithful for the crime of heresy, and hostile judges cause innocent persons to undergo the punishment that should be reserved for blasphemers, it is absurd to conclude that heretics are not to be put to death, in order that the faithful may be preserved. But do you act, I pray, in such a manner as to show that in time to come no one will be suffered to promulgate new doctrines and to throw everything into confusion, as this Servetus has done. For my own part, I have often said that I should be ready to suffer death did I teach aught that was opposed to the true doctrine, and should deem myself deserving of the most terrible tortures did I turn even one from the faith that is in Christ. I would not, therefore, apply to another a different rule.

Farel is neither an elegant nor an agreeable, still less a logical, writer; but he is zealous in behalf of the true doctrine—the doctrine, to wit, he holds himself. God, the father of mankind, who sends the rain and the sunshine indifferently on all, has, in the opinion of this poor bigot, by a special dispensation of his providence, led a sincerely pious man, according to his lights, to Geneva, there to be first harshly and ignominiously treated by another sincerely pious man, according to his lights; and finally through the influence he exerts over its clergy and magistracy, to be put to a lingering death by slow fire! Farel never thought of himself, with his ‘True Doctrine,’ as a heretic in the highest degree in the eyes of his neighbours the Roman Catholics of France with their ‘True Doctrine.’

It is more than questionable, indeed, whether Farel had ever read a word of Servetus’s writings. He was a man of action, fearless, full of fiery zeal, and a ready talker, but with no great amount of scholarly acquirement, and still less of philosophy. In anything of his we have seen, and save in what is said of his harangues, he never meets us otherwise than as a man of narrow mind, utterly intolerant and entirely under the influence of Calvin. If Servetus had sinned by persevering in heresy, and corrupting souls, so had he, so had Calvin, so had Melanchthon and the rest, in the estimation of their neighbours the Papists of neighbouring lands; and, though he speaks glibly of myriads who had lost their chance of salvation through Servetus, there was never a tittle of evidence adduced on the trial to show that even a single individual had been influenced by his writings. On the contrary, all who are brought forward in connection whether with the man or his works—Œcolampadius, Bucer, Melanchthon—are proof and more than proof against both him and them. Calvin and Farel, as we see, had made up their minds that Servetus was to be condemned to death weeks before the conclusion of his trial.