It has been often said, that from this time forward Calvin was supreme in Geneva, and governed absolutely. His government has been sometimes called an ecclesiastical theocracy established in the midst of a Christian republic. The assertion is vague and inaccurate. There can be no doubt that the final defeat of the Libertines was a great victory for Calvin, and that it increased his general influence in Geneva enormously. On all subsequent occasions his opinion was relied upon. The civil magistrates often asked his advice. When any important question or grave difficulty arose with regard to the foreign policy of the little state, Calvin was frequently applied to, requested to take part in the negotiations, and to exercise in behalf of Geneva the influence which he had obtained in those parts of Europe where the Reformation had been adopted. But, although Calvin's influence in the republic was very powerful, it is a mistake to say that the government ever assumed an ecclesiastical character. The distinction between the civil and religious powers was strictly preserved, and their domains carefully separated. The civil magistrates recognised the rights of the Venerable Company, and of the Consistory, in all questions of faith and religious and moral discipline; but they resisted any extension of their power beyond its due limits, controlled it within these limits, and exercised due authority over the pastors themselves. The Venerable Company had transferred one of their pastors to a country parish without asking the Council to authorize this step; they were desired not to act in such a manner in future. The registers of the Council contain the following entry: 'Nicolas Vandert, preacher at Jussy, does not do his duty in his calling, and does not visit the sick; resolved that he shall be dismissed, and another put in his place.' A little later another pastor was dismissed 'for incontinence.' The Council is informed that Pastor Bernard preaches 'with closed doors,' and thereupon desires him to preach 'with open doors.' Another pastor is warned 'that he is not to speak evil of the magistrates in his sermons.' Even Calvin himself was not beyond the reach of similar admonitions; 'On the 21st of May, 1548, the Council was informed that, in his sermon yesterday, Calvin asserted, with much anger, that the magistrates tolerated many offences. Wherefore it is ordained that he shall be summoned before the Council, and asked what was his intention in preaching to that effect; and if there is any such offence in the city, then the officers of justice shall have orders to see the law carried out.' The mutual recriminations still continued; on the 9th of July, Calvin was denounced because 'yesterday he was very violent in his sermon, speaking against baptism and certain crosses worn upon the clothes.' The Council decides to summon all the ministers before them and remonstrate, telling them that 'they ought not to protest in public, but first of all to bring their grievances before the Council, and afterwards to address the public, if they find that the Council takes no notice of their complaints.' There can be no doubt that the power of the pastors was very great; but that of the civil magistrates was equally great, and they had no hesitation in using it. [Footnote 103]
[Footnote 103: M. Amédée Roget, in a little pamphlet on the Church and State of Geneva during the lifetime of Calvin, published at Geneva in 1867, has fully established the truth of these facts, which he quotes from the registers of the Council.]
Calvin remained the victor in his struggle with the political Libertines; but he was engaged in another contest—a series of theological controversies with the heretical Libertines. He was laying the foundations of the religious system and independence of the reformed Christian Church, but he was also labouring to uphold the Christian evangelical faith within that Church. The three principal and most formidable characteristics of the sixteenth century were its political disturbances, its public immorality, and its ardent outburst of intellectual life, and Calvin was simultaneously resisting all of them. I will not attempt to follow him into the arena where he successfully opposed the numerous speculative theologians who hovered around the great reformers of the century,—Caroli, Bolsec, Castellio, Westphal, Gribaldo, Valentinus Gentilis, Biandrata, Osiander, and many others. But I will select two of the most daring thinkers with whom he was brought into contact, Michael Servetus and Lælius Socinus; both of them celebrated, one for his tragical end, and the other as the forerunner of his nephew, Faustus Socinus, the founder of the well-known sect of Socinians. Two very different sides of the character of Calvin are displayed in his connexion with these two men; his harsh severity towards those opponents whom he despised, and his moderation and almost gentle tolerance towards those whom he esteemed, and believed to be sincere and humble.
In the year 1509, the very same year in which Calvin was born at Noyon, Michael Servetus was born at Villanueva, a city of Arragon, where his father, a burgess of some eminence, was a notary. He received his early education in a Dominican convent, and his father afterwards sent him to study law at Toulouse, just as Calvin's father had wished him to pursue the same study at Orleans and Bourges. In like manner as Calvin in his youth had received assistance and protection from an ecclesiastic, so also the first patron of Servetus was a priest,—Quintana, father-confessor of the Emperor Charles V., whom Servetus accompanied to Italy, an obscure member of the imperial suite. In spite, however, of this patronage and of his youth, he was strongly imbued with the novel opinions of the time; for when he afterwards recalled the recollections of his visit to Rome, he says: 'I saw there with my own eyes the Pope carried on the heads of the princes of the land, and worshipped in the public squares by a whole people on their knees; so much so that those who could kiss his feet, or even his shoes, thought themselves blessed above all others. O beast, the most murderous of all beasts! O harlot, the most shameless of all harlots! Surely this was the beautiful harlot described in the Book of Isaiah.' [Footnote 104]
[Footnote 104: Isaiah, chap, xlvii. Henry, iii. 107.]
A little later, in 1530, Servetus was at Basle, holding communion with the already celebrated reformers who had taken up their abode there, with Œcolampadius, Capito and Bucer. Zwingli, the great reformer of German Switzerland, who was to be struck by death the following year on the battle-field of Cappel, was also at Basle, holding converse with his friends regarding the interests of their common cause. Œcolampadius said: 'I have got a rash, hot-headed Spaniard here, Michael Servetus, who is always raising the most difficult questions, and bothering me horribly. He is an Arian.' 'Brother Œcolampadius,' said Zwingli, 'look after him and be careful; the views of that Spaniard will be the ruin of the whole Christian religion. Unless Christ was truly God and the eternal God, he was not and could not have been our Saviour, and all that the holy prophets and apostles have taught must be false. Try by good and weighty arguments to bring the young man back to the way of truth.' 'I have tried,' answered Œcolampadius, 'but he is so vain, so presumptuous, and so argumentative that I can do nothing with him.' In 1534, four years later, Calvin also visited Basle, and made an impression upon these same reformers, the very reverse of that which Servetus had produced. They foresaw great danger to the reformed religion in one of these young men, and great strength and hope in the other. Their presentiments were not false.
Throughout 1531 and 1532 Servetus was wandering from Basle into Germany, and from Germany back to Basle; sometimes in the suite of the confessor of Charles V.; at others alone, and ardently engrossed by the notions which were seething in his brain, and from the realization of which he promised himself a brilliant future. There were no limits to his ambition and presumption; he proposed to inaugurate a very different kind of reformation from that which was going on around him: 'I am neither Catholic nor Protestant,' he said, and he already looked upon himself as the most important, as well as the newest reformer. He returned to Basle in 1531, and brought out his first work on the 'Errors of the Trinity.' It was printed at Hagenau, and he did not hesitate to put his real name on the title-page: 'by M. Servetus, otherwise Reves, a Spaniard from Arragon.' [Footnote 105]
[Footnote 105: De Trinitatis Erroribus, lib. vii. per M. Servetus, alias Reves, ab Aragonia Hispanum. In 8vo.]