THE COURT DETERMINES TO CONSULT THE COUNCILS AND CHURCHES OF THE FOUR
PROTESTANT CANTONS.
It was at this time and on the suggestion of Servetus--as Calvin
affirms, of the Council, according to its own minutes--that a
resolution was come to, by which the Church of Geneva was no longer
to have the sole say in the final decision of the guilt or innocence
of the prisoner. The Councils and the other reformed Churches of
Switzerland, it was resolved, were to be consulted on the merits of the
case. There was a precedent for such a course; it had been followed
only two years before, under somewhat similar circumstances, when
Jerome Bolsec was tried for heresy at the instance of Calvin. Calvin
and the Ministers were consequently directed by the Court to extract
from the works of the prisoner, and to deliver in writing, but without
note or comment, the particular passages involving the erroneous or
heretical opinions in debate between the prosecution and him.
This appeal to the Swiss Churches we cannot help thinking of as fatal
to Servetus. If his own concluding reply to the deputation which
visited him in prison did not lead to it, it was probably suggested to
him by Berthelier, who knew that it had saved Bolsec. But Berthelier
was not theologian enough correctly to appreciate the dissimilarity of
the propositions involved in the two cases; and he certainly took no
note of the difference in the political circumstances of the several
times, or he would not have given the advice we presume he did.
From the letters which Calvin now wrote to several of his friends,
particularly to Sulzer, of Basle, we learn that he was much averse to
the idea of this appeal to the Churches. Having been foiled by them in
his prosecution of Bolsec, he must have feared that what had happened
before might happen again. He knew that he was less considered abroad
than at home, and seems not to have apprehended that the appeal now
resolved on, was not only to ensure his own triumph, but to make
the Reformed Churches of Switzerland participators in his sin of
intolerance and abettors of the error (to give it no worse name) he
committed when he brought Servetus to his death.