[63] For some account of the existing copies of the Christianismi Restitutio, see the Appendix to this book.
[64] It may be well to remark on the confusion in the notice of the volume or book which in Trie’s second letter, as we read it, is said to have been sent among other documents, twenty-four in number; whilst in his third epistle he regrets that the volume cannot be forwarded at the moment, because of its having been lent two years ago to a friend of Calvin, resident in Lausanne. The ‘great book’ first sent may have been the copy of Calvin’s ‘Institutes,’ annotated on the margins by Servetus; a conclusion that is borne out by the reference, by and by made in the impending trial, towards the end of the first day’s proceedings, to pages 421-424, where Baptism is the subject treated. The volume that cannot be forwarded at the time, because it had been lent to some one in Lausanne, is certainly the MS. copy of the ‘Restitutio Christianismi,’ sent by Servetus to Calvin some years before for his strictures, which he could never get returned, Calvin having lent it to Viret of Lausanne, and grown careless to take so much notice of the writer as would have been implied in recovering and returning him his work.
[65] They were leaves from the Institutions of Calvin, with annotations by Servetus.
[66] Chorier, Etat politique de Dauphiné, tome i., p. 335, quoted by D’Artigny.
[67] Calvin to Farel, Book I., p. 169.
Who loves not woman, wine, and song,
A fool is he his life-time long.
[69] Lucii Annæi Senecæ De Clementia Libri Tres, Paris, 1532. The work was published by Calvin at his own expense, as a warning, unquestionably against persecution on religious grounds. It is of great rarity in its original shape, but is reprinted in the Geneva Edition of his Opera Minora of the year 1597.
Seneca on Clemency is also to be found translated into English: ‘Lucius Annæus Seneca, his first Book of Clemency, written to Nero Cæsar,’ Lond. 1553. The sentence quoted above and commented by the French editor is rendered by the English translator briefly but not unhappily thus:
For it doth rather cowardice appear
Than clemency an injury in mind to bear:
’Tis he in whose command revenge doth lie
That’s merciful if he do pass it by.