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,
With thoughts that wandered through Eternity,
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 letter[111] 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
This even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice
To our own lips; (and tells us) we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor.
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:
The evil that men do lives after them,
The good is oft interred with their bones,
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.