CALVIN’S DEFENCE IS ATTACKED.
Even whilst the trial was proceeding, we have seen that Calvin was not
without opposition in his pursuit of Servetus. Amied Perrin, his great
political rival, had striven for mercy or a minor punishment to the
last; and he was not without followers in the Council. But they were
outnumbered and out-voted there, so that the light of the ‘blessed
quality that is not strained’ was quenched. Outside the circle of
the governing body also, more than one voice was raised against the
manifest aim of Calvin to have his theological opponent capitally
convicted. But it was by persons of inferior note. David Bruck, among
others, a man of talent and quondam minister of a congregation of
Anabaptists in the North, now living privately and respected under the
name of David Joris at Berne, went so far as to speak of Servetus as a
pious man, and to declare that if all who differed from others in their
religious views were to be put to death, the world would be turned into
one sea of blood.[115]
But the writer who received most notice from Calvin and his friends
was he who appeared under the assumed name of Martin Bellius. Taking
as his text the 29th verse of the 4th chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the
Galatians: ‘As then he that was born of the flesh persecuted him that
was born of the Spirit, even so is it now,’ Bell proceeded to show that
persecution to death on religious grounds, though it might be Judaism
was not Christianity, and that many learned men and eminent doctors
of the Church, both of older and more modern times, had been emphatic
in condemnation of all intolerance in the sphere of religion. Bell’s
book, small in bulk but weighty in argument, was felt as a home-thrust
by the Reformer of Geneva, his own words in favour of toleration among
others being quoted against him. It is often spoken of at the time as
the Farrago--Calvin himself so designates it when sending a copy of it
to his friend Bullinger. But neither Calvin nor his friends liked the
book; and it is in depreciation of its real significance that it is
spoken of as a medley.[116]
Premising an Introduction, addressed to Frederick, the reigning Duke of
Würtemberg, in which the writer sets forth his own views, he asks the
Duke whether he should think a subject of his deserving of death who,
avowing belief in God and his earnest desire to live in conformity with
the precepts of Scripture, should say that he did not think baptism
was properly performed on an infant eight days old; but was of opinion
that the rite should be deferred until years of discretion had been
attained and the recipient could give a reason for the faith that was
in him? Did the subject think further that if he were required by law
to baptize infants he was running counter to Christ’s ordinance, and
felt that he was doing violence to his conscience, Bell asks the Duke
again, ‘Did he think, if Christ were present as Judge, that He would
order the man who so delivered himself to be put to death?’ Replying to
his question himself, he says: ‘I venture to believe that He would not.’
Our author then proceeds to quote from the works of many writers,
who maintain that the punishment of heretics is no part of the civil
magistrate’s duty; from Erasmus, who declares that God, the Great
Father of the human family, will not have heretics, even hæresiarchs,
put to death, but tolerated in view of their possible amendment. ‘When
I think how reprehensible are heresy and schism,’ says the great
scholar, ‘I am scarce disposed to condemn the laws against them; but
when I call to mind the gentleness wherewith Christ led his disciples,
I shrink from the instances I see of men sent to prison and the stake
on the ground of their disagreement with scholastic dogmas.’ From Aug.
Eleutherius, who opines that ‘they are not always truly heretics
whom the vulgar so designate.’ From Lactantius, who says ‘Force and
violence are out of place in matters of faith; for religion cannot be
forced on mankind; words not stripes are here the proper instruments
of persuasion.’ From Augustin, who goes so far as to say that ‘for
the sake of peace even dogs are to be tolerated in the Church. The
Catholic servants of God are not to stain themselves with the blood of
their enemies, but to be examples of patience and forbearance. It is no
business of theirs to gather the tares for burning before the harvest
is ready; they who err are men, and it is man’s part to bear with the
erring; the tares do no real harm to the wheat; and if the erring be
not cured here, they do not escape punishment hereafter.’
There is much besides from others, which we spare the reader; but we
have to show that clemency for theological divergence was no novelty
in the age of Calvin; and no one will imagine for a moment that he had
forgotten what he had written himself, or was ignorant of a word that
had ever been said on the subject by others.
Martin Bell’s tractate was so eagerly seized upon by the public, and
proved so influential in turning the tide of self-gratulation on which
Calvin had been floating somewhat at his ease since the appearance
of his ‘Declaration’ and ‘Defence,’ that it was thought necessary to
find an antidote to the bane of reason and mercy, so modestly but so
convincingly presented in its pages. Calvin would probably have felt
himself constrained to take the field again, and, ‘confronting Bell
with self-comparisons,’ to answer him ‘point against point’ in person,
had he not had his friend De Beza at hand to take his place. Engaged at
the moment with his Commentary on Genesis, Calvin felt little disposed
to interrupt his work by entering anew on an old theme, though ever
ready to gird himself for the fight on one with novelty to recommend
it. The task of meeting Martin Bell he therefore delegated to De Beza,
who appeared anon in a volume three or four times the size of the
Farrago in answer to its plea for latitude in the interpretation of
the Scriptures, and against the infliction of death for the religious
divergence called heresy in any or all of the multifarious forms in
which it shows itself.
With the terrible text of the Jewish Bible, ‘If thy brother, thy son,
the wife of thy bosom, or the friend that is as thine own soul, entice
thee, saying, Let us go and serve other Gods; thou shalt not consent to
him, neither shall thine eye have pity on him, neither shalt thou spare
him, but thou shalt surely kill him, thy hand shall be first upon him
to put him to death,’ &c. (Deut. xiii. 6 and seq.), and much besides,
akin to this, assumed as the command of God, Beza had no very difficult
task before him in persuading himself and his party that they had
abidden by the Law in all that had been done; satisfied as they were
besides that those who gainsaid them were the enemies of God and man
when they presumed to defend doctrines dishonouring, it was said, to
the Supreme and destructive of the peace of the world.--God, in a word,
was with them; the Devil and corrupt humanity on the side of their
opponents, and there an end.
We do not observe, however, that Beza’s reply, though very
ably conceived, and written with the skill of the practised
controversialist, had any great influence. It was not reprinted in
a separate form, and although translated into Dutch, seems to have
been little read beyond the circle of Calvin’s friends and followers.
Short as was the time that had elapsed since Servetus perished, the
apologists of the man who sent him to his death were already in
the rear of public opinion on the subject. The jurisdiction of the
magistrate had come to be seen ever more and more clearly to lie within
the sphere of ACT, and to have nothing to do with OPINION.
A conclusion so wholesome as this was greatly strengthened by the
appearance of another book in immediate reply to Calvin’s ‘Declaration’
and ‘Defence,’ entitled: ‘Contra Libellum Calvini, &c. against Calvin’s
book, in which he strives to show that heretics are to be dealt with
capitally.’[117] This is the little work that is often referred to as
‘a Dialogue between Calvin and Vaticanus,’ ‘Dialogus inter Calvinum
et Vaticanum.’ In the Preface to the copy I have used, the work is
ascribed to Sebastian Castellio, and several short papers from this
distinguished scholar are appended to the text; but he most certainly
was not its author. An old and determined opponent of Calvin, whose
doctrine of Predestination and Election he had had the hardihood,
in a special pamphlet, to criticise and controvert, Castellio had
aroused the ire of Calvin; and it was on this ground probably that he
had the credit given him of having written the ‘Dialogus.’ Calvin’s
displeasure, we know, never meant anything less than personal hate and
persecution, so that, in his answer to what he styles the ‘calumnies’
of Castellio, after the preliminary abuse in which he calls him
‘faithless and unmannered,’ he says, ‘They who do not know thee to be
shameless and a deceiver, do not know thee aright. I should like to be
informed how thou wilt prove that I am cruel? By throwing the death of
thy master Servetus in my face, perhaps; and saying, that with my pen I
mangle the body of the man who came to his death through me; but did I
not entreat for him? His judges will bear me out in this; two of whom,
at least, were his particular patrons.’[118]
In the passage just quoted, Calvin seems to reply to what Vaticanus
has said in his introduction to the book that engages us, viz., that
Servetus was the first who had been put to death at Geneva on grounds
of religion, and that it was done at the instance and on the authority
of Calvin--‘_impulsore et authore Calvino_.’ Vaticanus continues:
‘Calvin will perhaps say, as is his wont, that I am a disciple of
Servetus. But let not this frighten anyone. I am no defender of the
doctrines of Servetus, but I shall so expose the false doctrines of
Calvin, that every one shall see as plain as noonday that he thirsted
for blood. I shall not deal with him, however, as he dealt with
Servetus, whom he proceeded to tear in pieces with his pen, after
having burned him and his books. I do not, therefore, discuss the
Trinity, Baptism, &c., seeing that I have not the books of Servetus,
whence I might learn what he says on these subjects, Calvin having
taken such pains to have them burned--_quippe combustos diligentia
Calvini_. I shall not burn the books of Calvin; their author is alive,
and his books may be had both in French and Latin, so that every
one may see whether I falsify aught he writes. But Servetus was a
blasphemer of God, says Calvin. The man himself, however, believed that
he honoured God, and persuaded himself that he glorified God in his
death. But the persuasion is false, says Calvin. Be it so; yet Servetus
himself was not false; had he been so, he would assuredly have saved
his life; he therefore died for his opinions.’
Without defending the views of Servetus we thus see Vaticanus
asserting the courage and consistency of the victim which had been
unjustly called in question by Calvin.
Coming to the burden of the book we find as many as 150 passages from
Calvin’s ‘Defensio orthodoxæ fidei’ commented and controverted, and in
addition, four from the reply of Zürich to the Council of Geneva.
By much the most complete and able of the works against Calvin and
those who would have heretics punished by being put to death, is that
of Minus Celsus of Sienna.[119] A fugitive from his native country
to escape arrest and punishment for having forsaken Popery, Minus
Celsus found safety at length after passing through many perils in
Switzerland. ‘Escaped from the hands of Antichrist, as he says, and
safe amid the Rhetian Alps,’ he was not a little scandalised to find
nothing of the unity of doctrine among the Reformed Churches he had
been led to expect before leaving his native country. ‘They held
together as one, indeed, in hate of the Pope, calling him Antichrist
and looking on the Mass as idolatry, but they differed on innumerable
other points among themselves, and not only persecuted but went the
length of putting each other to death, and this in no such primitive
way as by stoning, in old Hebrew fashion, but by roasting the living
man with a slow fire, _vivum lento igne torrendo_--punishment more
horrible than Scythian or Cannibal ever contrived.’
Celsus had heard of the execution of Servetus at Geneva, and been
assured by some who were present, persons worthy of all trust, that the
constancy of the sufferer was such that many of the spectators, finding
it impossible to imagine anything of the kind endured without the
immediate support of God, instead of feeling horror for a blasphemer
rightfully put to death, were led to look on him as a martyr to the
cause of truth, and so made shipwreck of the faith in which they had
hitherto lived.
This led Celsus to think of the treatise he had formerly written in his
native language on the proper way of dealing with heresy, and turning
it into Latin he resolved to have it printed. He did not live, however,
to carry out his purpose; his book was only published some years after
his death by a friend who gives no more than the initials of his name,
J. F. D., but adds M.D., whereby we learn that he was a physician.
‘No man,’ says Mosheim,[120] ‘can write more amiably or controvert more
gently than this Minus Celsus. He never uses a word that is either
bitter or insulting. His principal opponents are Calvin and Beza, of
course, but he does not name them specially when he controverts their
conclusions, although he proclaims his horror of all violence in
matters of faith. He does, indeed, speak of Calvin once by name, but it
is with mingled commendation and sorrow that ‘one who had deserved so
well of the Church on many counts, and who thought in earlier years
that religion was not to be furthered by severity or violence, should
have finally fallen away from his better persuasion. Why he changed, I
know not: God knows.’ Calvin did not live to see this excellent work
of the Siennese Celsus. Although written in his lifetime, the great
Reformer died twenty years before it saw the light. How it would have
affected him we can only say with our pious Celsus, God knows!