These words are very remarkable. They show first, that by the Sabbath day Calvin means, not the first day, but the seventh; second, that in his judgment as late as the time of this epistle, and of the meeting at Troas [A. D. 60], the Sabbath was the day for the sacred assemblies of the Christians, and for the celebration of the communion; third, “but that afterwards, constrained by the superstition of the Jews, they set aside that day, and substituted another.”
Calvin did not therefore believe that Christ changed the Sabbath to Sunday to commemorate his resurrection; for he says that the resurrection abolished the Sabbath,[967] and yet he believes that the Sabbath was the sacred day of the Christians to the entire exclusion of Sunday as late as the year 60. Nor could he believe that the apostles set apart Sunday to commemorate the resurrection of Christ, for he thinks that they did not make choice of that day till after the year 60, and even then they did it merely because constrained so to do by the superstition of the Jews!
Dr. Hessey illustrates Calvin’s ideas of Sunday observance by the following incident:—
“Knox was the intimate friend of Calvin—visited Calvin, and, it is said, on one occasion found him enjoying the recreation of bowls on Sunday.”[968]
Without doubt Calvin was acting in exact harmony with his ideas of the nature of the Sunday festival. But the famous case of Michael Servetus furnishes us a still more pointed illustration of his views of the sacredness of that day. Servetus was arrested in Geneva on the personal application of John Calvin to the magistrates of that city. Such is the statement of Theodore Beza, the life-long friend of Calvin.[969] Beza’s translator adds to this fact the following remarkable statement:—
“Promptness induced him to have this heresiarch arrested on a Sunday.”[970]
The same fact is stated by Robinson:—
“While he waited for a boat to cross the lake in his way to Zurich, by some means Calvin got intelligence of his arrival; and although it was on a Sunday, yet he prevailed upon the chief syndic to arrest and imprison him. On that day by the laws of Geneva no person could be arrested except for a capital crime; but this difficulty was easily removed, for John Calvin pretended that Servetus was a heretic, and that heresy was a capital crime.”[971]
“The doctor was arrested and imprisoned on Sunday the thirteenth of August [A. D. 1553]. That very day he was brought into court.”[972]
Calvin’s own words respecting the arrest are these:—