To these letters, which were very numerous between 1540 and 1546, Calvin replied coldly but without acrimony. He evaded the questions of Servetus when they appeared insidious, and gave him wise and earnest advice; but he was evidently careful not to enter into regular correspondence with him, and anxious to avoid all appearance of intimacy, even as an opponent, with a man whom he did not esteem, and whose views and ideas outraged all his own. 'I was anxious to carry out your wishes,' he wrote to their common friend Frellon at Lyons; [Footnote 112] 'not that, from what I see of his present frame of mind, I have any great hope of doing much good to such a man, but in order to try once again if there are any means of subduing him;—which will be when God has so dealt with him that he is quite different to what he is now.'
[Footnote 112: February 13th, 1546.]
'As he wrote to me in a very haughty tone, I wished, if possible, to humble him by speaking more harshly than I am wont to do. I could do no otherwise, for I assure you that there is no lesson he is in such want of as one in humility; but it must come to him from God and no otherwise. Nevertheless we must put our hands to the work also. If by God's grace, shown both to him and to us, the answer you have asked me to send should prove profitable to him, I shall have reason to rejoice. But if he continues in his present mind, you will lose time if you entreat me to labour any further on his behalf, for I have other duties which are much more imperative. … I pray you to rest satisfied with what I have already done, unless you find him differently disposed.'
Servetus, however, continued to write to Calvin; no doubt hoping either to convince or to perplex him by his persistent correspondence and controversy. At length Calvin grew weary of it, and wrote: 'Neither now nor at any future time will I mix myself up in any way with your wild dreams. Forgive me for speaking thus, but truth compels me to do so. I neither hate you nor despise you; I do not wish to treat you harshly; but I must be made of iron if I could hear you rail against the doctrine of salvation and not be moved by it. Moreover, I have no time to concern myself any further with your plans and systems; all that I can say to you on this subject, is contained in my "Christian Institutes," to which I must now refer you.' [Footnote 113]
[Footnote 113: Henry, iii. 125-133. Stähelin, i. 429-431.]
Servetus was deeply wounded by this haughty language: he had made advances which Calvin had resisted, and laid snares from which he had escaped. The prudent reformer with his clear and resolute intellect could not show indifference to the self-confident visionary, who was capable both of lofty sincerity and low cunning, nor was it possible that he could be deceived by him. Even if there had not been any special and profound disagreement between these two men, they were antipathetic by nature, and anything that drew them together and brought them into contact, instead of uniting them, would only cause them to recoil more widely. From this time forward there was an end of all direct correspondence on the part of Calvin. He had previously written to Farel: [Footnote 114] 'Not long ago Servetus wrote to me, and sent with his letter a volume of his extravagant folly, which he put forward with great ostentation, and I was compelled to read the most unheard-of and bewildering things. He says that, if I like, he will come here; but I will not give him any assurance of my protection, for if he does come and if my authority prevails, I will never suffer him to depart from this city alive.' In September 1548, he wrote to Viret: 'I think you have seen my answer to Servetus. I have declined any further correspondence with such an obstinate and conceited heretic. It is certainly a case in which we ought to follow the precept of the apostle Paul. [Footnote 115] He is now attacking you, and it is for you to consider how far it is worth your while to refute his dreams. From henceforth he will get nothing more from me.'
[Footnote 114: February 13th, 1546.]
[Footnote 115: II Timothy ii. 23.]
Servetus was more annoyed by silence than he could possibly have been by controversy, and he sent back Calvin's copy of the 'Christian Institutes' full of marginal notes, in which he attacked the doctrines it contained. He determined at the same time to put forth his manifesto, his great work on the 'Restoration of Christianity;' which would, so he thought, effect a much greater social and religious revolution in Europe than the Reformation had done. But with a strange mixture of audacity and timidity, although he published it, he did not venture to proclaim himself as its author. He tried first of all to get it printed at Basle; not succeeding there he found a printer at Vienne, in the very diocese where he was living under the protection of the Archbishop, who consented to print it under the seal of secrecy. The production was completed in three months, between September 1552 and January 1553, under the superintendence of Servetus himself. Some say that one thousand and others that eight hundred copies were struck off, and bales were forwarded at once to Lyons, Châtillon, Frankfort, and Geneva. The book bore no name, either of author or printer, but, with an infatuation which would be incomprehensible if it were not for the paternal love of an author for his work, the three initial letters of the name and country of Servetus were placed at the end of it; M. S. V.—Michael Servetus, Villanueva.
The public indignation was great; especially in Lyons and Geneva, the former the centre of Catholicism, and the latter of Protestantism. The people of Geneva marvelled that in a city like Lyons, where Cardinal de Tournon and the Roman Inquisitor Matthias Ory resided, no steps were taken to stop the circulation of such a book and to discover and punish the author. There was a French refugee at Geneva, Guillaume de Trie, a zealous Protestant and follower of Calvin, who was in correspondence with a relative at Lyons, Antoine Arneys, who was an ardent Catholic; and, in order to bring De Trie back to the bosom of the Church, Arneys accused the reformers of being without discipline or rules of faith, and of sanctioning the most unbridled licence. De Trie, in his turn, accused the Catholic Church of indifference and inability to repress licence in her own domains; and the name of Servetus, his previous works, his new book, recently printed at Vienne under the very eyes of the Archbishop, and the doctrines taught in the book, were all brought forward in De Trie's letter to the Catholic of Lyons, in proof of the justice of his reproaches. He added: 'In order that you may not think I speak from mere conjecture, I send you the first sheet of the work.' And he did, in fact, send the title-page, index, and first four pages of the 'Restoration of Christianity.'