THE TRIAL IS RESUMED ON THE NEW ARTICLES SUPPLIED BY CALVIN.
It fell out, unfortunately for Servetus, that the decree of the Council
against the Consistory was the immediate prelude to the resumption of
his trial. The decision come to had been warmly contested by Calvin,
as we see by the preceding letter, he looking on any interference of
the civil magistrate in questions which he regarded from a purely
ecclesiastical point of view, as a blow not only to his spiritual
authority in Geneva, but to the cause of religion. He saw the late
awards of the Council in favour of Berthelier and against the
Consistory in the light of triumphs of his enemies over himself, and
mainly due to the influence of his particular opponent, Amied Perrin,
under whose presidency the adverse decisions had been obtained.
On the resumption of the Servetus trial, then, the hot blood engendered
by the recent struggle had not yet had time to cool; and Calvin, on
taking his place in the reconstituted Criminal Court, found himself
once more not only face to face with his theological opponent, but
set beside his chief political enemies, Perrin and Berthelier. Elate
with the advantage just gained, they had kept their seats on the
Bench, intending doubtless to do what in them lay to secure a further
victory through Michael Servetus over the uncompromising Reformer. It
is not difficult to imagine the influence, in the present state of
affairs, which the attitude of these men had on the fate of our unhappy
Servetus; for Calvin, with his many supporters acting as his spies, was
well informed of the countenance they had given the prisoner privately,
and seems to have construed their presence at this particular moment
as a public demonstration in his favour. To convict Servetus was
therefore to thwart them, and the discomfiture of the solitary stranger
had become more than ever a personal and political necessity to the
Reformer.
The articles from the works of Servetus from the ‘Christianismi
Restitutio’ exclusively, on this occasion, thirty-eight in number, had
been laid before the Court so long back as September 1, and are headed:
‘Opinions or Propositions taken from the Books of Michael Servetus
which the Members of the Church of Geneva declare to be in part impious
and blasphemous, in part full of profound errors and absurdities, all
of them alike opposed to the Word of God and the orthodox assent of the
Church.’
* * * * *
_September 15._--The Court constituted in the usual manner, with
Servetus before them sworn to speak the truth, Calvin, who seems now to
have taken the place of the Attorney-General, proceeded to interrogate
the prisoner on the new Articles of Impeachment. One of the first of
these, referring to the relationship of the Son to the Father in the
mystery of the Trinity, appears to have given rise to another long,
and we may imagine excited debate between Calvin and the prisoner;
from which, however, the judges were able to gather so little light
that they interposed, and came to a resolution to have any further
discussion that might arise carried on in writing and in the Latin
tongue, instead of by word of mouth and in French as heretofore.
The substitution of Latin for French had in fact become a necessity
when the determination to consult the other Reformed Churches of the
Confederation was adopted. Native to Geneva with its French-speaking
population, French was little understood at Berne, Basle, Zürich,
and Schaffhausen with their German inhabitants; but the liberally
educated among them were generally familiar with Latin. Calvin, we must
therefore presume, had presented his new Articles in French, so that
they had to be translated and turned back into Latin; but the trial
appears to have suffered no particular delay on this account. Presented
anew in the Latin tongue and approved by the Court, they were ordered
by it to be submitted to the prisoner, with the intimation that he
was required to answer them, and to feel himself at liberty to alter
or retract anything he might now think he had written unadvisedly; to
explain anything he had said that was misunderstood; and to defend
such of his opinions as were challenged, by the citation of Scripture
in their support. Nor was he to be hurried in sending in his replies;
he was to take his own time, and to enter as fully as he pleased into
every question.
As it is part of our business here to learn on what grounds men of
the highest culture burned one another to death three hundred and
twenty-four years ago--and it is thought by some that there still
remains such an amount of ignorance, bigotry, and intolerance in the
world as might lead to a rekindling of the fires, were the power to do
so but added to the will--we feel bound to make a somewhat particular
study of the Articles on which the unfortunate Servetus was finally
incriminated and doomed to die. We therefore proceed to lay before
the reader, in slightly condensed form, these Articles, which will
be seen, on the most cursory perusal, to involve none but topics of
transcendental dogmatic theology--a subject which to reasonable men has
now lost almost all the significance it once possessed, but which has
still a large historical interest as showing, in contrast with present
views, the progress that has been made from darkness into light; and
as illustrating the great, yet persistently neglected, truth, that
the religious feelings are no safe guides of conduct when dissevered
from the other emotional elements of human nature in balanced action
among themselves, enlightened by science and associated with reason.
Religion has in fact at no time been the civiliser of mankind, as so
commonly said, but has itself been the civilised through advances made
in science or the knowledge of nature, and in general refinement.
Brutal and blood-stained among savages and the barbarous but policied
peoples of antiquity, Assyrians, Chaldæans, Egyptians, Hebrews; cruel
and intolerant among Newer Nations well advanced in art and letters,
but ignorant of the world they lived in and the universe around them,
religion has only become humane as Science has been suffered to shed
her ennobling light, and will first prove truly beneficent when Piety
is seen to consist in study of the laws of nature, which are the laws
of God, and Worship is acknowledged to be comprised in reverential
observance of their behests. What adequate idea of God could be
formed--if, indeed, it be possible for man to form any adequate idea of
God!--so long as this earth--this mote in the ocean of Infinity--was
thought of as the centre of the universe, the one object of God’s
care, and a single family among the myriads that people it as the sole
recipients of his revealed word and will!
But turn we to our Articles, which we proceed to pass under review
in connection with the answers made to them by Servetus. In these we
shall now find him more intemperate than he has yet shown himself;
more aggressive, too; not only indisposed to yield in jot or tittle,
but negligent of opportunities to defend his conclusions, and eager to
attack his pursuer; ready to call him opprobrious names, and to charge
him with wilful misrepresentation and malignity. The recent triumph
of Perrin and Berthelier had obviously infected Servetus, and not only
lost him his chance of continuing to improve his position with his
judges, but even made him careless of making any serious effort to
prove himself in the right.
At the very outset of his replies, and by way of preface, assuming
the Articles to be Calvin’s and Calvin’s alone, Servetus says: ‘It is
impossible not to admire the impudence of the man, who is nothing less
than a disciple of Simon Magus, arrogating to himself the authority
of a Doctor of the Sorbonne, condemning everything according to his
fancy, scarcely quoting Scripture for aught he advances, and either
plainly not understanding me or artfully wresting my words from their
true significance. I am therefore compelled, before replying to his
_Articles_, to say, in brief, that the whole purpose of my book is to
show, _first_, that when the word Son is met with in Scripture it is
always to the man Jesus that the term is applied, he having also the
title Christ given him; and, _second_, that the Son or second Person
in the Trinity is spoken of as a _person_ because there was visibly
relucent in the Deity a Representation or Image of the man Jesus
Christ, hypostatically subsisting in the Divine mind from eternity. It
is because this _rationale of the Person_ is unknown to Calvin, and
because the whole thing depends thereon, that I refer as preliminary to
certain passages from the ancient Doctors of the Church on which I rest
my conclusions.’
Passages sixteen in number, from Tertullian, Irenæus, Clemens Romanus,
and others, are then cited to justify the sense he attaches to the
words Person and Son; from which we see that Servetus, following his
authorities, adopts the Neo-platonic view of the Son as a pre-existing
_idea_ in the Divine mind, not as an _entity_ distinct from the essence
of God, having a proper life and subsistence of its own, and only
proceeding in time to become incarnate in the man Jesus.
We were interested, of course, in referring to these passages from
the Fathers (they are given at length in Calvin’s Refutation); and,
though disappointed in finding them less cogent and conclusive than
we had expected, we yet discover the germs of almost all that is
more fully developed by Servetus in connection with the subjects of
which they speak. ‘Tertullian,’ says he, ‘declares, that to conform
with things human, God, in former times, assumed human senses and
affections, and made himself visible to man in the divinity of Christ;
and that the words Person and Son of God are used in Scripture because
God, invisible, intangible in himself, was made visible in Christ.
He who spoke with Adam in the garden, with Noah, with Abraham, and
came down to see what the Babylonians were about, and so on, was no
other than Christ or a prefiguration of Christ. He who spoke with
Moses, too, at different times was Christ--the Relucent visible Image
or Figuration of the invisible Deity. In the essence of God there
is no real distinction between the Father and the Son; they do not
constitute two invisible entities such as the _Tritheiti_ imagine;
it is no more than a _formal_ distinction that is made between the
invisible Father and the visible Son. It is the idea of prolation or
procession of one thing out of another that has given occasion to
certain _dispositions_, _dispensations_, or _modes_ in the Deity being
turned into so many entities, and so into a Trinity of Persons. Quoting
St. Paul, Tertullian says that “in the face of Christ is seen the very
light of God;” and to this I myself refer repeatedly in my Third Book
on the Trinity; but Calvin, persisting in his blindness, will not see
God thus.’
From Irenæus we find little that is not repetition of what is said by
Tertullian. ‘The Jews,’ he says, ‘did not know that he who spoke with
Adam and Abraham and Moses in human form, was the Word, the Son of God.
But Jesus, as the Image, as the Word, was then the Divine manifestation
of God, being at once, but without real distinction, both Word and
Spirit; for in the spiritual substance of the Father was comprised
the figuration and representation of the Word. Abraham was taught and
knew that the Angel who visited him was the representative of the Word
which was, or was to be, the future man, the Son of God--dost hear,
Calvin?--the Word was the figuration of the man Jesus! The Word is
always spoken of as something visible; so that when John says, “In
the beginning was the Word,” we are to understand the prefiguration
of Christ in the Deity: invisible in himself, God the Father is
visible in the Son. The Logos and the Spirit imply nothing of personal
distinction in God so that, when it is said, “God made all things by
his Word,” it is himself as Creator, and not another, that is to be
understood: the Word and the Holy Ghost are not to be thought of as
distinct entities, but as dispositions in God.’
_The Thirty-eight final Articles of Impeachment, and Servetus’s
Replies._
ARTICLE.
I.-IV. Servetus, says Calvin, maintains that all who believe in a
Trinity in the essence of God are Tritheists, or have three Gods
instead of one God; or they are Atheists, and properly have no God at
all, their God being tripartite or aggregative, not absolute. That
the three Persons of the Trinity are Phantoms; and that there should
be distinct entities in the one God is a thing impossible; so that a
Trinity of Persons in an Unity of Being is a dream. Further: That the
Jews, resting on numerous authorities, wonder at the Tripartite Deity
we acknowledge; and, yet more, That it was the admission of _real_
distinctions in the Incorporeal Deity which led Mahomet to deny Christ.
REPLY.
I.-IV. From the authors quoted, it is evident that in the Essence and
Oneness of God there is no _real_ distinction into three invisible
entities. That there is a figurative or personal distinction between
the Invisible Father and the Visible Son, however, I admit; so that
in this way I religiously believe in a Trinity, though denying it
as usually understood. The truth of what I say about the Jews and
Mahometans, I maintain to be amply borne out by history and what we see
among the Turks of the present time.
ARTICLE.
V. To colour his infamous opinions, he speaks of a personal distinction
in the Godhead; but this is external only, not internal, or inherent
in the Essence of God; the Word, according to him, having been Ideal
Reason from the beginning—mere Reflection, Figure, or Semblance; Person
only in the sense of appearance; and that this prefigured the future
Man, Jesus Christ.
REPLY.
V. I have always acknowledged the subsistence of the Son in God, both
externally and internally. And you contradict yourself; for if the
Reason was Ideal, then was it Internal. It plainly appears you know not
what you say.
ARTICLE.
VI. Confounding the Persons, the Wisdom of Scripture is said to
have been formerly both Word and Spirit, no real distinction being
acknowledged between them; the mystery of the Word and Spirit being
defined to have been the effulgent glory of Christ.
REPLY.
VI. Irenæus thus interprets the matter; Wisdom, he says, was the Holy
Spirit. So does Tertullian. Solomon understands the wisdom that was
given him as the Holy Spirit. And in my Eighth Letter, I show that the
whole mystery of the Word and the Spirit was to the glory of Christ,
because in him was the plenitude both of the Word and the Spirit. O
wretched man, thus to go on condemning what you do not understand!
ARTICLE.
VII. Denying any real distinction in the Persons of the Godhead Christ
is said 408 to have been invested with such glory as to be not only God
of God, but very God from whom another God might proceed.
REPLY.
VII. Did I say another God? I meant another mode of Deity. But if it
offend you that I say another God, say another Person [i.e. as Servetus
understands the word, another manifestation] of Deity. Why quote that
against me which I have myself corrected? But you show your candour on
all occasions!
ARTICLE.
VIII. Christ is said to be the Son of God not only and in as much as he
was engendered by God in the womb of the Virgin Mary; and this, not by
the virtue of the Holy Ghost, but by God of his proper substance.
REPLY.
VIII. Is not he rightly called the son of him by whom he is begotten?
Therefore do I say that God from eternity and of his substance produced
[protulit] this Son; and therefore is he said to be of God naturally.
ARTICLE.
IX. The Word of God coming down from heaven, is said to have been the
flesh of Christ; so that the flesh of Christ is from heaven, his body
being the body of God, his soul the soul of God; both his soul and body
having existed from Eternity in the proper substance of Deity.
REPLY.
IX. The Word, I say, is now the flesh of Christ by hypostatical union.
I say well, therefore, that the flesh of Christ is from heaven, and
indeed is the heavenly Manna. What else I say, I admit in the sense in
which I conceive it. You fasten on such things as these, and neglect
the main truth!
ARTICLE.
X. The essence of the soul and body of Christ is declared to be the
Deity of the Word and the Spirit, and Christ to have existed from the
beginning in respect of his body as well as his soul, 409 the substance
of the Deity being not only in the soul but in the body of Christ.
REPLY.
X. Essence is spoken of as that by which anything is sustained. Art
thou not ashamed to calumniate me, or dost thou think that with thy
savage barking thou wilt dull the ears of the Judges?
ARTICLE.
XI. As if to show that to him the divinity of Christ is mere mockery,
he says that it means the wisdom, the power, and the splendour of God;
as if it were only a certain wisdom and power that in him was excelling.
REPLY.
XI. You do unjustly ever; you quote me falsely. I do not say what you
charge me with saying. and the splendour of God; as if it were only a
certain wisdom and power that in him was excelling.
ARTICLE.
XII. The man Jesus is said to have been from the beginning in his
proper person and substance, in or with God; and yet two persons are
elsewhere ascribed to Christ.
REPLY.
XII. What you say first is most true, and I wish you understood it.
Christ in himself is one person; but in him verily is the Holy Spirit,
who is also a person.
ARTICLE.
XIII. Having said that the Word of God was made man, he says that this
Word was the Seed of Christ; also that it was different from the Son;
and that the Word by which the world was created, was produced by the
grace of God; whence it would follow that Christ was not the Word in
question. It is said, further, that the Word of God was the Dew, the
natural engenderer of Christ in the womb of the Virgin, similar to the
generative element of animals; and, yet further, that the Son 410 of
God was naturally begotten of the Holy Ghost by the Word.
REPLY.
XIII. I speak here as do Tertullian, Irenæus, Philo, and others. In
the passage you quote, the Word is taken for the voice from heaven
saying, ‘This is the Son of God.’ Who does not see that the Word of God
is something other than the man his Son? You have not read me aright,
neither do you understand me. What else you say, I admit.
ARTICLE.
XIV. The Word of God is said to be itself the seed generative of
Christ; and as the generative element is in creatures, so is it in the
Deity, in whom was the seed of the Word before the son was conceived of
Mary; the paternal element in God acting in the engenderment of Christ
in the same way as that of our fathers in us.
REPLY.
XIV. All this I admit. God acted as generator in the way I explain in
my first Dialogue. [The Celestial influence overshadowing the Virgin
acted in her as the dew or the rain of heaven acts on the ground, and
brings forth herb and flower.]
ARTICLE.
XV. The Divine Word, it is said, mingling with created elements,
was the agent in the generation of Christ. The divine and the human
elements coalescing, there came forth the one hypostasis of the Spirit
of Christ, which is the hypostasis of the Holy Ghost; though it had
been asserted previously that the three elements in Christ were of the
substance of the Father.
REPLY.
XV. I grant everything here if you understand what you say as having
reference to the paternal elements, so called because of their
existence as ideal reason in God.
ARTICLE.
XVI. To corrupt what the Apostle says—viz. that Christ did not take on
himself the nature of the angels, but that of the seed of Abraham—it is
said, by way of explanation, 411 that he delivered us from death.
REPLY.
XVI. I corrupt nothing, but accept both interpretations; you, however,
quote everything falsely and teach falsely also.
ARTICLE.
XVII. God, he says, is father of the Holy Ghost. But this is nothing
less than to confound the persons—even such persons as he feigns.
REPLY.
XVII. The confounding is in your own mind, so that you cannot
comprehend the truth.
ARTICLE.
XVIII. Playing with the word Person, he says there was one sole
personal image or face, which was the person of Christ in God, and was
also communicated to the angels.
REPLY.
XVIII. I play fast and loose with nothing. I make use of the language
of those I quote, which you treacherously pervert.
ARTICLE.
XIX. As from either parent there are in us three elements, so are there
three in Christ; but in him the material element is derived from the
mother only. Whence it would follow that Christ had not a body like to
ours, and this were to do away with our Redemption.
REPLY.
XIX. The body of Christ, I say, is like to ours, sin excepted; excepted
also this: that his body is participant of Deity.
ARTICLE.
XX. The celestial Dew, overshadowing the Virgin and mingling with her
blood, transformed her human matter into God.
REPLY.
XX. The Transformation referred to here is Glorification.
ARTICLE.
XXI. Confounding the two natures, he says that the created and
uncreated light were in Christ one light; and that of the Divine Spirit
and the human Soul there was constituted 412 one substantial Soul in
Christ; so that the substance of the flesh and the substance of the
Word were one substance.
REPLY.
XXI. He, I say, who is of and in God, is with Him one Spirit. Is there
confusion when two unite in one? Are soul and body confounded when
they constitute an individual man? Wretch that thou art, thou dost not
understand the principles of things! [See the letter to which this
remark gave occasion.]
ARTICLE.
XXII. Partaking of the nature of God and man, Jesus Christ, it is said,
cannot be spoken of as a creature, but as a partaker of the nature of
creatures.
REPLY.
XXII. And what then?
ARTICLE.
XXIII. One and the same Divineness which is in the Father, it is
said, was communicated immediately, bodily, to his Son, Jesus Christ;
from whom, mediately, by the ministry of the Angelic Spirit, it was
communicated to the Apostles. That in Christ only is Deity implanted
bodily and spiritually; all of the Divine that others have, being given
through him by a holy substantial halitus, or breath.
REPLY.
XXIII. This, I say, is the Truth.
ARTICLE.
XXIV. As the Word went into the flesh of Christ, so, it is said, did
the Holy Ghost enter into the souls of the Apostles.
REPLY.
XXIV. In some sort, in a certain way, as I show in the place you refer
to.
ARTICLE.
XXV. Confounding the Persons, he asserts that the λὀγος was naturally,
voluntarily, 413 ideal reason and procession,—the resplendence of
Christ with God, the Spirit of Christ with God, and the light of
Christ with God; whence it would follow that the λὀγος was nothing
substantial, inasmuch as it was the figure only of a thing that was not
yet in being, and yet did not differ from the Spirit.
REPLY.
XXV. You confound yourself in what you say, and do not understand what
you speak about—as if that which subsisted hypostatically in God was no
real substance!
ARTICLE.
XXVI. Before the advent of Christ, he says, there was no visible
hypostasis of the Spirit. Whence it would follow that there was neither
hypostasis nor real person, seeing that there can be no person that is
not visible, as he declares in his book and asserts in his answers;
speaking also, as he does in another place, of the Spirit of God, as
The Shadow in the Creation of the world.
REPLY.
XXVI. Person in the Word is called a visible hypostasis, and in the
Spirit is spoken of as a perceptible hypostasis.
ARTICLE.
XXVII. As all things are said by Servetus to be in God, so and in the
same order were they in God before creation, Christ being first and
foremost of all—such being the kind of Eternity he allows to the Son of
God. Further, that God, by his Eternal Wisdom, decreeing 414 to himself
from Eternity a visible Son, gives effect to his decree by means of the
Word.
REPLY.
XXVII. All this is good, and you would see it so were you not
perversely minded.
ARTICLE.
XXVIII. Christ, he says, so long as he abode in the flesh, had not
yet received the new Spirit which was to be his portion after the
resurrection, and was verily afterwards imparted to him; so that he now
possesses hypostatically the glory both of the Word and the Spirit,
prefigured by the dove descending on him in Jordan.
REPLY.
XXVIII. There is nothing here that is not true, would you but be
willing to understand it.
ARTICLE.
XXIX. In God, he maintains, there are no parts and partitions as
in creatures, but Dispensations, and this in such wise that in the
partition or imparting of the Spirit every portion is God. Beside this,
he says that our spirits substantially are from Eternity, and so are
consubstantial and coeternal; although he elsewhere declares that the
spirit wherewith we are enlightened may be extinguished.
REPLY.
XXIX. All you say here at first is true; but I do not say that the
Spirit of God in itself is extinguished, because, when we die, the
spirit departs from us.
ARTICLE.
XXX. The Divine Spirit, it is said, was infused into us in the
beginning by the breath of God.
REPLY.
XXX. This is most true; and you, miserable man, deluded by Simon Magus,
ignorest it. Making a slave of 415 our will, you turn us into stocks
and stones.
ARTICLE.
XXXI. When we find it stated in the Law that the Spirit of God is in
any one, this is not to be taken as meaning the Spirit of regeneration.
REPLY.
XXXI. The words quoted, I say, are for the most part so to be
understood.
ARTICLE.
XXXII. Angels, he says, were worshipped by the Jews of old; so that he
calls Angels their Gods; but, this being so, the true God could never
have been worshipped by them—by Abraham in particular—but Angels, only,
prefiguring Christ.
REPLY.
XXXII. Almost everything, I say, presented itself to the Jews in the
way of Figure.
ARTICLE.
XXXIII. Admitting that Christ or the Word had no hypostatic [actual]
existence from the beginning, he nevertheless declares that Angels and
the Elect were verily in God from the first.
REPLY.
XXXIII. What you mix up and make me say here, is false. Nothing
created—no creature—existed before the moment of its creation.
ARTICLE.
XXXIV. He maintains that the Deity is present substantially in all
creatures.
REPLY.
XXXIV. God, I say, is present in all creatures by his essence and
power, and himself sustains all things.
ARTICLE.
XXXV. Having mixed up many vain, perverse, and pernicious dreams about
the substance of Souls, he concludes at length that the Soul is from
God and of his substance; 416 that a created inspiration was infused
into it along with its divineness; and that in respect of substance it
was united through the Holy Spirit by a new inspiration into one light
with God.
REPLY.
XXXV. Take away the words, of his substance, you will find the rest to
be true; and that it is you yourself who dream with Simon Magus.
ARTICLE.
XXXVI. Though the soul is not primarily God, yet does it become Divine
or is made God by the Spirit, which, indeed, is very God, so that it
is improper to doubt that our Souls and the Holy Spirit conjoined with
Christ are of the same elementary substance as the Word conjoined with
the flesh. Further, that created and uncreated things combine and unite
in one substance of Soul and Spirit.
REPLY.
XXXVI. This is so; many things thus unite in one—bones, flesh, nerves,
soul, spirit, and form, for instance, to make the one substance of Man.
ARTICLE.
XXXVII. He has written and published horrible blasphemies against the
Baptism of Infants, and has said that mortal sin is not committed
before the age of twenty years.
REPLY.
XXXVII. I own to having written so; but when you have convinced me that
I am in error in this, I will not only acknowledge my fault, but kiss
the ground under your feet.
ARTICLE.
XXXVIII. The Soul, he says, was made mortal by sin, even as the flesh
is mortal—not meaning to say that the Soul is annihilated, but that
deprived by pain of the vital 417 actions of the body, it languishes,
and is shut up in hell as if it were to live no more. Thence he
concludes that the Regenerate have souls other than they had before,
new substance, new divineness being added to them [by the Water of
Baptism].
REPLY.
XXXVIII. The passage you quote against me, shows that you act
perfidiously. I there say that it is as if the Soul died, and,
languishing, is detained in Hell. But if it languishes, it still lives.
See what I have elsewhere said of the ‘Survival of the Soul,’ pp. 76,
229, and 718 [of the Chr. Rest]. The souls of the regenerate, I say,
are other than they were before; even as a thing is said to be new or
altered by the accession of new properties.[93]
But enough of this--more than enough, indeed, is before the reader to
enable him to judge of the kind of matter that never yet influenced
man in his conduct towards either God or his fellow, on which Michael
Servetus was adjudged to die.
The answers of Servetus to the incriminated passages of his book
are obviously by no means either so full or so satisfactory as he
might easily have made them; neither are they always so worded as
unequivocally to express his proper views; but of more moment than all,
they are given without the references to Scripture which the Court had
suggested, and would certainly have had greater weight with it than
aught else that could be urged. Though he uses the words person and
hypostasis, we know that he did not understand them in the same way as
theologians generally. He did not acknowledge any proper personality
in the nature of God, who to him was invisible, all-pervading Essence,
inscrutable too, save as manifesting and making himself known in
Creation. Servetus’s persons and hypostases are modes or manifestations
of God in nature, and, not limited to three, are, in truth, infinite in
number, and proclaimed in an infinity of ways. To accommodate himself
in some sort to such conceptions as were current on the subject of the
Trinity, he uses language at times which it seems might fairly bring
him within the pale of orthodoxy, were we not aware of the arbitrary
meaning he attaches to the terms employed: God, Father, all-pervading
Being; Christ, Son, visible manifestation of God to man; Holy Ghost,
Angel--ἐνέργεια, actuating force in nature. Such, as we
understand him, was the kind of Trinity formulated by Servetus.
The answers of the prisoner to the new articles of incrimination were
now ordered by the Court, which has nothing to say to them itself,
to be put into the hands of the Reformer for his strictures. This
gave Calvin the opportunity which he did not fail to turn to the best
advantage. Treating Servetus’s Replies in a very different spirit from
that in which the Spaniard had treated his Articles, he proceeded
elaborately to criticise and refute them; in other words, and more
properly, to demonstrate the incongruity and incompatibility of
Servetus’s admitted beliefs and opinions touching the transcendental
propositions involved, with the orthodox conclusions of himself and the
Churches generally. To a theologian like Calvin such a task presented
no difficulties; but the thoroughness of his exposition or refutation,
and the length to which it runs, assure us of the pains he bestowed
on the work. Calvin is said to have spent no more than two or three
days in the composition of this elaborate paper; had the time been two
months and more, it would have been little, and few men, we apprehend,
could have got through the work in less time.
Signed by as many as thirteen ministers beside himself--for Calvin
would not forego the backing of his colleagues in such a cause--the
Refutation of the prisoner’s replies to his prosecutor’s Articles
of Inculpation was laid before the Court at their next meeting; and
in a spirit of entire judicial fairness, was by them ordered to be
forthwith submitted to the prisoner, for his observations in assent to,
or dissent from, the interpretations put upon his words. He was even
particularly told, as he had been before, that he was at liberty to
answer in the way and at the length he pleased.
The understanding of the Court when giving Calvin his instructions,
was that his Extracts were not to be accompanied by either note or
comment--they were to be ‘word for word’ from the writings of the
prisoner. But we see that he gave little heed to this injunction; for
many of the Articles are either prefaced or concluded by a comment;
Art. XVI. for example, begins in this way: ‘That he may corrupt the
saying of the apostle,’ &c.; XVII.: ‘To say that God is Father of the
Holy Ghost, is to confound the persons,’ &c.; XVIII.: ‘To show that
he plays with the word person,’ &c.; XXXV.: ‘After jumbling together
many insane and pernicious notions on the substance of the soul,’ &c.;
XXXVIII.: ‘That he has written and published horrible blasphemies
against the baptism of infants,’ &c. Calvin, in short, could not resist
the opportunity of helping the Judges to a conclusion in consonance
with his own views, and therefore adverse to those of his opponent.
When we turn to Calvin’s Refutation of the Errors of Michael Servetus,
we observe him setting out by saying that he will not imitate the
prisoner in the use of uncivil language, but confine himself strictly
to the matters in question. He would not be John Calvin, however,
did he keep his word; and truly his language is at times little less
offensive than that of Servetus; whilst his comments, uniformly
adverse, are ever studiously calculated to damage the prisoner in
the eyes of his Judges. ‘Whosoever,’ says Calvin in concluding his
work, ‘will duly weigh all that is here adduced, will not fail to see
that the whole purpose of Servetus has been to extinguish the light
we have in the true doctrine, and so put an end to all religion.’
But we, for our part, say, after some pains bestowed, that whoever
peruses the writings of Servetus without a foregone conclusion that
_any one among the various formulated systems of religious doctrine
he sees around him is the_ ABSOLUTE TRUTH, _and alone essential to
constitute Religiousness_, will not fail to discover that not only had
Servetus no thought of putting out the light of religion in the world,
but that he was animated by a most earnest desire, through another
interpretation of the Records which he, too, looked on as Revelations
from God, to set Christianity on another, and, as he believed, a
better foundation than it had yet obtained from the labours of Luther,
Calvin, and the rest of the Reformers. Servetus was, in truth, but one
among the host of Reformers of every shade and colour who made their
appearance on the field at the trumpet-call of Luther, and who had
but this in common: hostility to the ignorance and immorality of monk
and priest, to the pride and lust and abuse of power so conspicuous
in Pope and Roman Hierarch. And shall we in these days think of him
as impious and irreligious who held that it was less than reasonable
to speak of the coeternity of a Father and a Son, taking the words
in any common-sense acceptation; and that a single entity could not
be conceived as subdivided into three distinct entities or persons,
without loss of its essential unity, nor three distinct entities or
persons be thought of as amalgamated into one without loss of their
several individualities? Who said, moreover, that he believed God to be
the all-pervading essence and order of the universe; man to be fitted
for his state, each individually answerable for his own sin, not for
the sin of another, and that faith in the highest exemplar of humanity
as he conceived it, that had ever appeared on earth, added to a good
life and its associate charities, was that which was required for
salvation? Shall we, we ask, think of such a man as less pious, less
religious, less likely to be acceptable to God than one who believed
that there was a certain Word which was with God from the beginning,
and was indeed God, and yet another than God; or that God, beside his
proper all-sufficing substance, was supplemented by several hypostases
or offsets, which were at once himself, yet other than himself; that
from eternity God had elected and fore-ordained a relatively limited
proportion of mankind to salvation and eternal life, and doomed an
infinitely larger proportion to perdition and everlasting death?
Shall we, we say further, think that the man who was tolerant of the
speculative opinions of others, and whose business in life it was to
visit the sick and reach the healing potion, was less of a good, and a
true, and a useful member of society, than he who aspired through the
unseen, the unknown and the unknowable, to rule the world with a rod of
iron, who was utterly intolerant of other speculative opinions than his
own, and in enforcing his arbitrary rules for the regulation of life
and conversation, was merciless in the use of the scourge, the branding
iron, the sword, and the slow fire? Surely we shall not. Were greatness
associated in the world with true nobility of nature, light-bringers,
like Michael Servetus, would assuredly be set on a higher level than
conquerors of kingdoms.