AFTER THE BATTLE—VÆ VICTORIBUS!

Even before the trial of Servetus had come to an end we have seen it attracting the attention of some of the freer minds of Geneva—such as were not over-awed by the dominant spirit of Calvin or not absorbed in the political strife of the hour. A criminal suit on the ground of a new interpretation of Scripture, as it had been made in fine so clearly to appear, struck reasonable men not only as illogical but as indefensible in a city whose autonomy and entire religious system were founded on a right of the kind assumed by itself. Calvin’s dictum, that Servetus’s purpose was the overthrow of all religion, was not seen to be borne out by the facts of the case when calmly considered, and, to the popular apprehension, was wholly belied by the pious bearing of the man in the last hours of his life. Even Farel, misled as he was by his fanaticism, could not help saying to the people, that ‘after all the man may have meant well.’

The protracted trial at an end, the sacrifice made, the Councillors of Geneva seem immediately to have come to their senses, and discovered that they had transgressed the true limits of their authority in condemning to death one who owed them no allegiance, who had been guilty of no crime or misdemeanour whether within the bounds of their jurisdiction or elsewhere, and whose heresies implied no rejection of the Scriptures as the Word of God, or of the teaching of Christ and his Apostles as the means of salvation. Servetus’s heresy amounted to no more than repudiation of what he maintained to be erroneous interpretations of the language of the Gospels, of metaphysical assumptions from heathen philosophies, and mystical procedures unwarranted by a line whether of the Old or the New Testament. They overlooked the fact that the presence of the man among them was due to flight from the fate that waited on all who had the courage of their opinions amid the blood-stained intolerance of Roman Catholicism; that he was only another among the host of refugees—their spiritual Dictator himself not excepted—who now crowded the streets of Geneva; and that, but for the hostile interference of Calvin, he, like so many more, would have been welcomed as ‘a bird escaped from the net of the fowler;’ sheltered had he elected to remain, furthered on his way had he chosen to depart.

That thoughts of the kind had taken possession of the Council is proclaimed by the fact of their quashing the indictment preferred by Farel and the Consistory against Geroult, Arnoullet’s foreman, three days after the death of Servetus, on the score of the part he had had in printing the ‘Restitutio Christianismi,’ and concealing the character of its contents from his master. Farel and the clergy in their blind zeal would have persevered in their efforts to have another victim. But the civilians interposed. Enough—more than enough had already been done to satisfy the outer world that the Genevese, if reputed heretics themselves, were no favourers of heresy of another complexion than their own. Left to calm reflection, the Council may well have come to see that they had only lent themselves to theological intolerance, when they imagined they were fulfilling an important part of their magisterial duties.

The entire ground, indeed, on which the trial had been instituted would not bear close scrutiny. The book, on the presumed publication and dissemination of which it had been set on foot, had not yet been seen in Geneva save by Calvin: there was not then another copy in the city but the one sent, as I believe, by its hapless author through Frelon to the Reformer. Neither had the ostensible institutor of the suit, Nicolas de la Fontaine, the shadow of a grievance against Michael Servetus, the writer of the book. He could never have seen it out of Calvin’s hands, he was almost certainly unacquainted with the language in which it was written, and, if he were not, he could still never have read a word of it but at Calvin’s prompting—he had not, in all probability, even heard the name of Servetus until he had it from the mouth of his master! De la Fontaine, moreover, was no citizen of Geneva any more than Calvin himself100—neither of them could have had a legal title to prefer a criminal charge; master and man were aliens alike, and in Geneva on the same plea as Servetus; they fleeing for their lives from the Inquisitors and agents of the concubine of Henry of France, he from the Inquisitor and Church authorities of Dauphiny.

More than this. ‘He,’ it is said, ‘who casts the first stone should be himself without sin.’ Calvin pursued Servetus to death mainly on the ground of his divergent interpretation of the Trinitarian mystery. But was Calvin himself quite sound on this head, and was he equally hostile to all who called the dogma in question? We have had him saying that he only objected to speak of God and Nature as signifying the same thing, because of the harshness or impropriety of the expression. But he who so delivers himself identifies God and the Universe, and excludes ideas of personality and subdivision in the essence of the Deity. No wonder, therefore, that Calvin was oftener than once charged with unorthodoxy from the Catholic point of view on the subject of the Trinity. In the Confession of Faith which he formulated for the Church of Geneva in the year 1536, it is certain that neither the word Trinity nor the word Person is to be found;101 and when challenged at a later period by Caroli, the colleague of Viret at Lausanne, on the matter, he did not so express himself as to satisfy his accuser. In a remarkable note, moreover, ‘On the word Trinity and the word Persons,’ written apparently to meet the surmises suggested by the absence of the sacred vocables from the Confession, Calvin says:

‘Inasmuch as these words, ‘Trinity’ and ‘Persons,’ are found by us to be very serviceable in the Church of Christ, as by them the true distinction of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is more clearly expressed, and controversial discussions are better served by their means, we say that we have no such objection to them as forbids us to receive them from others or to make use of them ourselves. Therefore, do we again declare, as we have formerly declared, that we accept the words, and would not that they ceased to be used in the Churches. For neither in our expositions of the Scriptures or when preaching to the people do we shun them; and we have instructed others [in private]—docebimus alios, that they should not superstitiously avoid them. Did anyone, however, from religious scruples, feel indisposed to make use of the words—although we avow that such superstition is not approved by us, and we shall continue striving to correct it—still, this seems no sufficient reason why a man, otherwise pious and having like religious views as ourselves, should be rejected. His want of better knowledge in this direction ought not to carry us the length of casting him out of the Church, or lead us to conclude that he was therefore altogether unsound in the faith. Neither, meantime, are we to think evilly of the Pastors of the Church of Berne, if they refuse to admit anyone to the ministry who declines to use the words.’102

We leave the reader to draw his own conclusions from this, and only ask him to say, on its showing, what excuse can be found for Calvin’s deed in burning Servetus? Scattered throughout the writings of the Genevese Reformer we encounter many expressions which prove plainly enough how much against the grain he finally confessed partition in the unity of God. ‘The first principle to be acknowledged in the Scriptures,’ he says, ‘is the Being of One God; but as the same Scriptures speak of a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost, what have we for it—quid aliud restat—but to own three Persons in the Godhead? These, however,’ he proceeds in the usual orthodox fashion to say, and in contradiction to the words first made use of, ‘imply no plurality of persons, neither do they destroy the essential unity of God; for where were Quaternity to be found does the one God comprise in himself three properties—ubi autem quaternitas reperitur si unus Deus tres in se proprietates contineat?’104 Where, indeed! But the question is of persons not of properties; as in the affair with Caroli it was of an Eternal Son not of an Eternal Word.

In another place we find him using such language as this: ‘The words of the Council of NicÆa are these: God of God—a hard expression I admit, for the removal of the ambiguity of which no better interpreter can be found than Athanasius, who indited it—Deum a Deo—dura loquutio fateor, sed ad cujus tollendam ambiguitatem nemo potest esse magis idoneus interpres quam Athanasius qui eam dictavit.’

Elsewhere, though we have omitted to note the place, he declares that the Athanasian symbol was never approved by any of the legitimate [i.e. Protestant] Churches—cujus symbolum nulla unquam legitima ecclesia approbÂsset.’105 Such writing is surely very noteworthy. Calvin’s acknowledgment of a Trinity is neither of his understanding nor his faith; it is enforced merely and obviously in opposition to the reason he had from God for his guidance. But Michael Servetus, whom he sent to a fiery death, not only does not deny, but expressly, and oftener than once, avows that he acknowledges a Trinity in the Essence of God. He, too, found the words Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the Scriptures; and, as little disposed as Calvin to gainsay a word they contain, he actually uses language the simple sense of which is that precisely under which Calvin seeks to shield himself; only he employs the word dispositions instead of properties. Calvin, when he attempts to reconcile the idea of a Trinity of persons co-existing with an unity of Being, and does not use language that contradicts itself, speaks no otherwise than Servetus, and arrives in fine at the same interpretation of the Trinitarian Dogma: the persons are dispositions to the one, properties to the other!

After the most careful study of the writings of Servetus we have been able to bestow, we have it forced upon us that had Calvin been so minded he could from them, more readily, and far more consistently, have defended their author as a sincerely pious, though in his opinion, a much mistaken man in his interpretation of Christian doctrine, than prosecuted him as the enemy of all religion, a monster, as he says, made up of mere impieties and horrible blasphemies! But to the intolerant bigot, engrossed by his own conceits and dislikes, all Servetus’s confiding piety was hypocrisy, his touching prayers mockery, and his eloquence as becoming in him as a coat of mail to a hog—‘qu’une jaserame un Truie’(!)

Nor can Calvin have credit given him for religious zeal, as the principal, still less as the sole ground for his prosecution of Servetus. He would condone the Church of Berne for repudiating him who denied the Trinitarian mystery, but could not forgive the Spaniard’s intemperate and disrespectful style of address to himself. In this lay the prime cause of offence to the man, accustomed to have all the world bowing down before him, who was always addressed as ‘Monsieur,’ not as ‘MaÎtre,’ like the rest of the clergy, and whose appointments, however modest in our eyes, equalled those of a dignitary of the Church in neighbouring lands. One of Nicolas de la Fontaine’s counts against the man he did not even know, but whom he arraigned for life or death, is the objectionable language indulged in towards his pastor; and we have Calvin’s own words against himself when he says that Servetus’s ‘arrogance, not less than his impiety, led to his destruction;’ whilst he elsewhere owns, that ‘had Servetus but been possessed of even a show of modesty he would not have pursued him so determinedly on the capital charge.’

By way of conclusion here, let us observe that Calvin’s fundamental principle of Election by the Grace of God ought to have stayed his hand from all persecution on religious grounds. He is constantly spoken of as a man possessed of a peculiarly logical mind. But if it be by the eternal decrees of God that some are ordained to salvation and some to perdition, how should Servetus or anyone else come between God and his purposes? How should the Elect be prejudiced, or the Reprobate made worse by the act of man?