CALVIN DEFENDS HIMSELF.

Dissatisfaction with what had been done appears to have become general immediately after the execution of Servetus. It extended beyond the walls of the Council chamber and found wider expression than in the arrest of proceedings against Geroult. Ballads and pasquinades, little complimentary to Calvin and his party, circulated freely, and were all the more persistently spread in private if none dared to utter them in public or sing them in the streets. Calvin himself acknowledges that fear alone of consequences repressed for a time any open expression of abhorrence for the death of Servetus. Certain it is, that before the year was out, save among friends and obsequious followers, the act in which he had taken the prominent part came to be so unfavourably construed that he felt forced to appear as his own apologist, and in justification of his deed to proclaim his victim not only a heretic because of theological dissidence, with which the people of Geneva were familiar enough and not always greatly scandalised, but to hold him up as wholly without religious convictions himself, the open enemy of all religion in others, the conspirator against the moral well-being of the world, and the conscience-stricken craven in face of his impending fate!

To this task Calvin would seem to have been more especially incited by Bullinger, who loses no opportunity of showing himself hostile to Servetus; and even thinks that ‘were Satan to come back from hell and take to preaching for pastime, he would make use of much the same language as Servetus the Spaniard.’106 Writing to Calvin at this time, and thinking doubtless of the growing unpopularity of his friend, Bullinger says: ‘See to it, dear Calvin, that you give a good account of Servetus and his end, so that all may have the beast in horror—ut omnes abhorreant a bestia!’ To which Calvin replies: ‘If I have but a little leisure I shall show what a monster he was.’107

Such were the inducements Calvin had for entering on the apologetic defence of himself through denouncing the errors, impugning the motives, and blackening the fame of Servetus to which he now applied himself and had ready for publication both in French and Latin early in the year 1554, the title of the French book in brief being ‘DÉclaration pour maintenir la vraye Foy;’ that of the Latin, ‘Defensio OrthodoxÆ Fidei de sacra Trinitate contra errores Michaelis Serveti, &c.’108

In his introduction Calvin informs the reader that he had ‘not at first thought it necessary to come forward with any formal refutation of the errors of Servetus,’ the ponderous absurdity of his ravings appearing so plainly that he imagined it would be like winnowing the wind to do so, for there was really no danger of anyone of sound mind and ordinary understanding not being found superior to such follies. ‘But better informed, knowing the poison to be deadly in its kind, and having regard to the amount of stupidity and confusion which God, to avenge Himself, inflicts on all who despise his doctrine, I have felt myself compelled as it were to take up the pen, and in exposing the errors of the man to furnish grounds for better conclusions. When Servetus and his like, indeed, presume to meddle with the mysteries of religion, it is as if swine came thrusting their snouts into a treasury of sacred things. May God pay all with the wages they deserve whose vicious proclivities lead them to burn after one novelty or another, which they can no more resist than can the man from scratching who has the itch!—pas plus que celui qui a la ratelle qui dÉmange.’

‘The punishment that befel Servetus,’ he continues, ‘is always ascribed to me. I am called a master in cruelty, and shall now be said to mangle with my pen the dead body of the man who came to his death at my hands. And I will not deny that it was at my instance he was arrested, that the prosecutor was set on by me, or that it was by me that the articles of inculpation were drawn up. But all the world knows that since he was convicted of his heresies I never moved to have him punished by death. There needs no more than simple denial from me to rebut the calumnies of the malevolent, the brainless, the frivolous, the fools, or the dissolute.’

There is much in what precedes to challenge comment, and the language, self-condemnatory of the writer in one respect, if not purposely meant to mislead, is yet greatly calculated to do so in another. If Servetus’ teaching was such ponderous folly that it could by no possibility have any influence in the world, why did Calvin proceed against him from the first on the capital charge? It is God, too, who inflicts such stupidity on mankind as makes the intervention of John Calvin necessary to set things right; and the denial and vituperative epithets at the end of the paragraph last quoted do not cover an obvious intention on his part to have the reader conclude that he had had nothing to do with the doom which befel the Spaniard. But Calvin knew that by the law of Geneva the convicted heretic must die; and he had written to his friend Farel on August 20, within a week of the arrest, that he hoped the sentence would be capital at the least—spero capitale saltem judicium fore. All the favour Calvin ever asked for Servetus was that he might die by the sword instead of by brimstone and slow fire. He does not say so much indeed, but it almost looks as if he would have the world believe that he had moved to save the man’s life! We have his own acknowledgment, however, of the active part he took in the prosecution of Servetus at Geneva, and his expressed hope of what the sentence should be. This much he could not deny; the facts of the case put it out of his power. But he always shirked complicity with all that happened at Vienne. There there was underhand dealing and betrayal of trust, and he would fain have the world believe that he had had nothing to do with the ugly business. But here, too, everything we know, is against him, and all he says by way of freeing himself from the charge of having denounced Servetus to the authorities of Lyons seems but to strengthen the conclusion that he did. Calvin was an able man undoubtedly, but he was not a cunning man, and often lets his pen give expression to thoughts of things gone by, which he would not have suffered to appear had he been more artful.

In one of his epistles he says, ‘Nothing less is said of me than that I might as well have thrown Servetus amid a pack of wild beasts as into the hands of the professed enemies of the Church of Christ; for I have the credit given me of having caused him to be arrested at Vienne. But why such sudden familiarity between me and the satellites of the Pope? Is it to be believed that confidential letters could have passed between parties who had as little in common as Christ and Belial? Yet why many words to refute that which simple denial from me suffices to answer! Four years have now passed since Servetus himself spread this report. I only ask why, if he had been denounced by me, as said, he was thereafter suffered to remain unmolested for the space of three whole years? It must either be allowed that the crime I am charged withal is a pure invention, or that my denunciation did him no harm with the Papists.’

True, and answers to all he says are not far to seek. Why the familiarity with the satellites of the Pope? That he might be avenged through them on one whom he regarded at once as a dangerous heretic and a personal enemy. How should confidential letters have passed between parties who had so little in common as himself and the Roman Catholics of Lyons? Because he would have had them the instruments of his vengeance. If denounced by him, as said, how did Servetus remain unmolested for three whole years? Because denunciation for heresy of one who lived in good repute with his friends as a true son of the Church, by another standing in the very foremost ranks of heresy, was taken no notice of by Cardinal Tournon and his advisers.—All that Calvin says now seems but to demonstrate the truth of what we have from Bolsec, and may possibly have been the ground of the warning against the over free expression of his opinions which Servetus is said to have received long before the denouement that followed the printing of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio.’ Calvin continues:

‘Would that the errors of Servetus might have been buried with him; but as his ashes continue to spread a pestiferous stench I go on to expose his heresies, a task delayed till now through no fear of measuring myself with one like him, for I have coped with adversaries much more redoubtable than he, but because I had other work in hand of more importance as I believed. He, however, who contends that it is unjust to punish heretics and blasphemers, I say, becomes their deliberate associate. You tell me of the authority of man; but we have the word of God and his eternal laws for the government of his Church. Not in vain has He commanded us to suppress every human affection for the sake of religion. And wherefore such severity, if it be not for this, that we are to prefer God’s honour to mere human reason.’

But the St. Bartholomew and all the nameless horrors that have been perpetrated in the name of religion and to uphold what is called the honour of God, are the logical outcome of principles that lead to such language. Calvin’s treatment of Servetus was in truth nothing less than a direct encouragement to the Roman Catholics of France to persevere in their atrocities towards the Protestants. Geneva, which had been looked on as the bulwark of independent thought and of freedom to worship God according to conscience came to be regarded as the seat of another Inquisition. All and sundry who pretended to think for themselves, and who did not include Election and Predestination in their creed, must be silent. Did they speak or say a word against the rules and regulations of the modern propounder of the doctrine of God’s partiality, they were mercilessly hunted down, fined, imprisoned, scourged on the back, branded on the cheek, banished from their homes, or, as in the case of Servetus, put to death; even as the moving cause of all these atrocities would himself have been dealt with in France had he there avowed what were there styled the heretical opinions he entertained—the damnable doctrines he taught. Persecution which follows necessarily from the principles on which the Church of Rome is founded, could not be entered on by the Reformed Churches without a total abnegation of those to which they owe their existence.109

But it is not with Servetus’s doctrines alone that Calvin occupies himself in his ‘Declaration’ and ‘Defence.’ He must further darken the fame of the man whom he slew, for the consistency and fortitude he displayed when confronted with death, as we have seen him essaying to detract from the purity and probity of his life on his trial. ‘Servetus,’ says Calvin, ‘was only bold when he had no fear of punishment before him; but so overwhelmed was he in face of his impending fate, that he was lost to all and everything about him. Praying with the people he had said were Godless, he yet prayed as if he had been in the midst of the Church of God, and thereby showed that his opinions were nothing to him! Giving no sign of regret or repentance, saying never a word in vindication of his doctrines, what, I ask you, is to be thought of the man who, at such a time, and with full liberty to speak, made no confession one way or another, any more than if he had been a stock or a stone? He had no fear of having his tongue torn out; he was not forbidden to say what he liked; and though at last he declined to call on Jesus as the eternal Son of God (Calvin omits to say that he called devoutly with his latest breath on Jesus as Son of the eternal God), inasmuch as he made no declaration of his faith, who shall say that this man died a martyr’s death?’ ‘Theological hatred,’ says a late esteemed writer,110 ‘never inspired words more atrociously cruel and unjust than these of Calvin;’ and we do not hesitate to indorse the dictum. Calvin’s challenge of Servetus’s fortitude in the face of death is most unjust. Servetus went bravely to his death; though to him, in the vigour of life, and possessed of all his powers,

life assuredly was sweet; and to lose it not only for no crime, but for the avowal of what he believed to be holy truth, was hard indeed. To Servetus existence was not summed up in ministering to mere material wants and putting off and on at eve and morn; it meant doing in the knowable, speculating in that which transcends the known, furthering knowledge of the world we live in, striving after congruous conceptions of the Almighty Cause of the good, and ministering to the ill that befals—a truly noble life!

But Calvin could no more forgive Servetus his constancy and consistency than he could endure his theological divergences and his personal insults. ‘Could we but have had a retractation from Servetus as we had from Gentilis!’ exclaims he, upon another occasion. Strange! that men in whom the religious sense is strong should still be blind to the truth that if there be sincerity in the world, they, too, who feel strongly though divergently on religion, must be as truly religious and sincere as themselves; and that convictions in the sphere of faith—those garments of the soul—cannot be put off and on at pleasure, like the garments of the body!

It were needless to say that Calvin’s refutation, or shall we say condemnation of Servetus, is full and complete, if it be not at all times of the complexion which unimpassioned weighing of the argument, considerate appreciation of the purpose, and truthful interpretation of the language of an opponent would have secured. Both of the forms in which the book appeared were well received by the public; the ‘DÉclaration pour Maintenir la Vraye Foy’ having been extensively read by those who were not masters of the Latin; the ‘Fidelis expositio Errorum’ by those who were. Bullinger, it appears from what Calvin says, must formerly have urged him on to severity; and, as we have just seen, now shows himself anxious to have his friend appear in defence of what had been done. Writing immediately after the publication of the book, he congratulates the writer on his work; the only fault he has to find with it being the terseness of the style, which leads at times to obscurity, and its brevity. Calvin, in reply, excuses himself for the conciseness of his language and the modest length of his work. But his letter, in so far as it relates to our subject, is too important not to have a place in our narrative.

Your last letter, Calvin says, was duly delivered by our excellent brother Tho. Jonerus. I was from home at the time, so that I could not show him the hospitality he deserved, but it so fell out that the Lord in my absence provided for him in a way that could not have been bettered.... I have always feared that in my book my conciseness may have occasioned some obscurity; but I could not well guard against it. I may say, indeed, that with the end I had in view other motives led me to the brevity you speak of. In writing at all it was not only my principal but my sole object to expose the detestable errors of Servetus. It seemed to me that the subjects handled were best discussed in the plainest terms, and that the impious errors of the man should not be overlaid by any lengthy or ornate writing of mine. I, therefore, say nothing more of the severity of the style on which you animadvert. I have, indeed, taken every possible pains to show the common reader how without much trouble the thorny subtleties of Servetus may be exposed and refuted. I am not blind to the fact, however, that though I am wont to be concise in my writings I have felt myself more bound to brevity here than usual. But so it be only allowed that the sound doctrine has been defended by me in sincerity of faith and with understanding, this is of far more moment than any regrets I may feel for having been forced on the task. You, however, for the love you bear me, and led by the candour and equity of your nature, will judge me favourably in what I have done. Others may construe me more harshly; say I am a master in severity and cruelty, and that with my pen I lacerate the body of the man who came to his death through me. Some, too, there are, not otherwise evilly disposed, who say that the world is silent as to what was done, and that no attempt is made to refute my argument on the punishment of heresy, through fear of my displeasure. But it is well that I have you for the associate of my fault, if, indeed, there be any fault; for you were my authority and instigator. Look to it, therefore, that you gird yourself for the fight....

Jo. Calvin.

Geneva, November 3, 1554.

This interesting letter111 seems to show that Calvin had already conceived misgivings of his conduct in the affair of Servetus. When John Calvin condescends to seek support beyond himself, and to charge a friend with having egged him on to the deed whose memory seems now to rankle in his mind, he must have felt less sure than was his wont that all he did was well done

Self-reliant as he was, and ready else to take on himself the responsibility of his acts, we yet see that he, the strong man among the strong, now felt the want not only of sympathy and approval, but of some one to share the ‘fault, if fault there were,’ in a relentless pursuit and terrible deed. When he would thus associate Bullinger with himself in his pitiless persecution of the ill-starred Servetus, Calvin must refer to the letter he had had from the ZÜrich pastor of September 14, as well as to the one in which the reply of the Church of ZÜrich to the Council of Geneva is couched—reply of which there need be no question Bullinger was the writer. Of all the ministers of the Swiss Churches Calvin, we believe, had the highest respect for Bullinger, who, as he did not always truckle to him, fell out of favour at times, but only to come back anon with heartier consideration than before.

Melanchthon, too, whom we have found taking more notice of the work on Trinitarian Error than any of the other Reformers, would seem to have gone on to the end of his life increasing in hostility to its author. He, indeed, shows little of the mildness with which he is commonly credited whenever in later years the name of Servetus meets him. Writing to Calvin in October 1554, a year consequently after the death of Servetus, and when he had probably read the ‘Apologia de Mysterio Trinitatis,’ addressed to him, and printed at the end of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ Melanchthon congratulates the Reformer ‘for all he had done in bringing so dangerous a heretic to justice.’ ‘I have read your able refutation of the horrible blasphemies of the Spaniard; and for the conclusion attained give thanks to the Son of God who was umpire in your contest. The Church, too, both of the day and of the future, owes you thanks, and will surely prove itself grateful.’112

Calvin’s more intimate friends and partisans, with few exceptions, approved of his zeal in vindicating the honour of God, as they said, and treading out, as they imagined, the threatening spark of heresy kindled by Servetus. Later admirers and adherents, again, unable to condone his deed, attempt to find, and flatter themselves that they do find, excuse for him in the ruder and sterner temper of the times in which he lived. But we own, regretfully, that with all we know, we cannot follow them in this. Calvin was not only a man of the highest intelligence, he was also possessed of a carefully cultivated mind. An admirable scholar, deeply read in the humanities, and familiar with history, he had in earlier life, and in face of the persecution for conscience’ sake beginning under Francis I., manfully raised his voice for toleration. He had even gone out of his way, as we have seen, and spent his money in republishing Seneca’s ‘Treatise on Clemency,’ with added comments of his own, by way of warning, beyond question, to his sovereign against the fatal course on which he saw him entering.

Addressing another among the monarchs of the earth in a later work,113 he says: ‘Wisdom is driven from among us, and the holy harmony of Christ’s kingdom, that makes lambs of wolves and turns spears into pruning-hooks, is compromised when violence is impressed into the service of religion.’ And yet again we have him using words like these: ‘Although we are not to be on familiar terms with persons excommunicated by the Church for infractions of discipline, we are still to strive by clemency and our prayers to bring them into accord with its teaching. Nor, indeed, are such as these only to be so entreated; but Turks, Saracens, and others, positive enemies of the true religion, also. Drowning, beheading, and burning are far from being the proper means of bringing them and their like to proper views.’114

Calvin had, therefore, got beyond his age and its spirit of intolerance; and, having turned his back on the Church of Rome, no shelter can be found for him in an appeal to its sanguinary principles and practice. Calvin, in a word, is inexcusable for refusing to Servetus the liberty he arrogated for himself, and for turning the city that sheltered him into a shambles for the man of whom religiousness alone had made an enemy, and persecution had driven into his power.

Servetus, however, it is said, was a heretic, a blasphemer. But what was Calvin in the eyes of those he had forsaken? The most egregious of heretics, whose teaching had led thousands from the faith of their fathers, and imperilled their salvation; a traitor, too, whose independent principles turned subjects into rebels, and tended to make despotic rule by Priest and King impossible. And this is true; for we are not to overlook the fact that it is to Calvin, with however little purpose on his part, that we mainly owe the large amount of civil and religious liberty we now enjoy.

Of Calvin, more truly perhaps than of any man that ever lived, may the dictum of the poet, where he says:

be held to be reversed. In Calvin’s case it was the ill he did that died, the good that lived. With no respect for civil liberty himself, and still less for religious liberty beyond the pale of his own narrow confession of faith, Calvin must nevertheless be thought of as the real herald of modern freedom. Holding ignorance to be incompatible with the existence of a people at once religious and free, Calvin had the school-house built beside the church, and brought education within the reach of all. Nor did he overlook the higher culture. He restored the College of Geneva, founded half a century before by a pious and liberal citizen, but utterly neglected in Roman Catholic times; and as a complement to the University he founded the Academy. Forbidden to set foot on the land of his birth, he was nevertheless the genius of its religious growth, and in company with this, of its aspirations after freedom. But for the fickleness and falseness of its princes, France might have had reformed Christianity for her faith; and with the intelligence, morality, and true piety of her Huguenot sons in possession of their homes, might possibly have been spared her Grand Monarques and despotism, her Revolutions, her Buonapartes, and her wars that have drenched the soil of Europe in blood ever since Henry of Navarre proved untrue to himself and Liberty. But Scottish Presbyterianism and English Puritanism and Nonconformity in its multifarious, sturdy, self-sufficing forms, and 1688, were each and all the legitimate outcome of a system which told the world that there was no such thing in the law of God as divine right to govern wrongly; and in asserting free-thought for itself in matters of opinion, by indefeasible logic gave a title to all to think freely.

There can be little question, in fact, that Calvinism, or some modification of its essential principles, is the form of religious faith that has been professed in the modern world by the most intelligent, moral, industrious, and freest of mankind. If Calvinism, however, tend to make men more manly and more fit for freedom, it has also a certain hardening influence on the heart, disposing to severity. Yet has not even this been without its compensating good; for when Calvin—impersonation of relentless rigour—sent the pious Servetus to the flames, it may be said that the knell of intolerance began to toll. Persistence in consigning dissidents from the religious dogmas of the day to death was made henceforth impossible, and persecution on religious grounds to any minor issue has come by degrees to be seen not only as indefensible in principle, but immoral in fact; for it strikes at the root of the very noblest elements in the constitution of humanity—Conscience and Loyalty to Truth.

But Calvinism has had its day. The free inquiry of which it sprang has slowly, yet surely, carried all save its wilfully blind or ignorant adherents beyond the pale of their old beliefs. More than a century ago the Church of Geneva broke not only with its Confession of Faith as formulated by its founder, but with confessions of faith of every complexion; so that one of its leaders, on occasion of the late tercentenary commemoration of the death of the Reformer, could say: Nous ne sommes plus Calvinistes selon Calvin. Nor has the defection of the Swiss been singular; they have been followed more or less closely by the Dutch, the Germans, the more advanced of the Protestant Church of France, and finally and at length by the Scotch. In the land of Knox, the very stronghold of Judaic Christianity as defined by Calvin and his great disciple, open rebellion has broken out against the narrowness of the Creed and Catechism of the Westminster Assembly of Divines so obsequiously followed until now; prelude, doubtless, to further disruption and greater change than have yet been seen; for modern criticism and exegesis, and ever advancing science, proclaim arrest at any grade in the Religious Idea yet attained by the Churches to be impossible.