To the third he says: ‘We do not deny that Baptism requires faith; but not such as is required in the communion of the Supper; and in respect of Baptism we see it as nugatory until the promise of God involved in the rite is apprehended in faith.’ He concludes by assimilating the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper to the Circumcision and Passover of the olden time.
Calvin, we thus see, addressed himself not only to the questions sent, but also in answer to the letter which doubtless accompanied them, in which the writer must have given some intimation of his own views.
That Calvin’s communication, couched in rigidly orthodox terms, though unobjectionable in style, was not calculated to satisfy Villeneuve, we cannot doubt. His mind was already as thoroughly made up—even more thoroughly made up, we apprehend, on some of the points advanced—than Calvin’s. We are not surprised, therefore, to find that the Genevese Reformer’s expositions were repudiated as little satisfactory by the physician of Vienne, or to discover that the correspondence on his part was not suffered to drop. He appears to have replied immediately, and must have written in sequence no fewer than thirty letters to Calvin on his favourite theological subjects, so many being printed in the ‘Christianismi Restitutio.’ In answer to these Calvin must also have sent him more than one or two, though certainly many fewer than thirty; for by the letter to Frelon, written evidently at an early period of the correspondence, we see him already weary of it.
With his hands more than full in administering the affairs of the Genevese Church, holding his political opponents the Libertines in check at home, and corresponding with friends and the heads of all the other Reformed Churches abroad, it is not wonderful that, besides feeling disquieted by the matter and offended with the manner of Villeneuve’s addresses, he had soon made up his mind to have nothing more to do with the writer. He saw, moreover, that he made no impression on him, each new epistle being, as he says to a friend, but ‘a wearisome iteration of the same cuckoo note.’ Calvin’s vocation, however, was to be helpful in what he believed to be God’s work, and to preach the Gospel as he apprehended it. True to his trust, therefore, and by way of meeting his troublesome correspondent’s further importunities,—as a balsam competent to heal the wounds and strengthen the weak places in the soul of the distempered man, he seems to have thought he might escape further molestation by referring him to his own ‘Institutions of the Christian Religion,’ his master work, the canon of the Church of which he was the founder and acknowledged head. In this view, as we venture to presume, Calvin sent Villeneuve a copy of his ‘Institutions,’ and referred him to its pages for satisfactory replies to all his propositions.
It is impossible to imagine that Servetus had continued until this time unacquainted with Calvin’s writings; he had doubtless read them all; but he may not have made the ‘Institutiones Religionis Christianæ’ the subject of the particular study on which he was now forced, as it were, by its author, and with the result that might have been foreseen: there was hardly a proposition in the text that was not taken to pieces by him, and found untenable, on the ground both of Scripture and Patristic authority.
In the course of the correspondence hitherto, Calvin had stood on the vantage ground, as critic of his correspondent’s views; but matters were now reversed, for Villeneuve became the critic of the Reformer. He by and by returned the copy of the ‘Institutions,’ copiously annotated on the margins, not only in no terms of assent, but generally with the unhappy freedom of expression in which he habitually indulged, and so little complimentary to the author himself, as it seems, that Calvin, in writing to a friend and in language not over-savoury, says:—‘There is hardly a page that is not defiled by his vomit.’ The liberties taken with the ‘Institutions,’ we may well imagine, were looked on as a crowning personal insult by Calvin; and, reading the nature of the man as we do, they may have been that, super-added to the letters, which put such rancour into his soul as made him think of the life of his critic, turned by him into his calumniator, as no more than a fair forfeit for the offence done.
It was at this time precisely, as it appears, that Calvin wrote that terribly compromising letter to Farel, so long contested by his apologists, but now admitted on all hands—as indeed how could it be longer denied, seeing that it is still in existence?—in which he says: ‘Servetus wrote to me lately, and beside his letter sent me a great volume full of his ravings, telling me with audacious arrogance that I should there find things stupendous and unheard of until now. He offers to come hither if I approve; but I will not pledge my faith to him; for did he come, if I have any authority here, I should never suffer him to go away alive.’[57]
Nor is this the only letter written at this time by Calvin which shows with what despite he regarded Servetus. Jerome Bolsec, a quondam monk, now a physician, opposed to the Papacy and but little less hostilely inclined to Calvin, speaking of the Reformer’s persecution of Servetus—‘an arrogant and insolent man, forsooth,’—and of Servetus having addressed a number of letters to him along with the MS. of a work he had written, and a copy of the ‘Institutions of the Christian Religion,’ full of annotations little complimentary to the author,—goes on to say: ‘Since which time Calvin, greatly incensed, conceived a mortal antipathy to the man, and meditated with himself to have him put to death. This purpose he proclaimed in a letter to Pierre Viret of Lausanne, dated the Ides of February (1546). Among other things in this letter, he says: “Servetus desires to come hither, on my invitation; but I will not plight my faith to him; for I have determined, did he come, that I would never suffer him to go away alive.” This letter of Calvin fell into my hands by the providence of God, and I showed it to many worthy persons—I know, indeed, where it is still to be found.’ Bolsec says further that Calvin wrote to Cardinal Tournon denouncing Servetus of heresy, some time before making use of William Trie in the same view to the authorities of Lyons and Vienne, and that the Cardinal laughed heartily at the idea of one heretic accusing another. ‘This letter of Calvin to Cardinal Tournon,’ says Bolsec in continuation, ‘was shown to me by M. du Gabre, the Cardinal’s secretary. William Trie also wrote several letters to Lyons and Vienne at the instigation of Calvin, which led to the arrest of Servetus; but he escaped from prison.’
These statements of Bolsec, like the letter to Farel, have been called in question and their truth denied by Calvin’s apologists; but they tally in every respect with what else we know, and explain some things that would have remained obscure without them. If Calvin wrote to Farel in the terms he certainly did, we have no difficulty in believing that he addressed his alter ego, Viret, in the same way. What is said of the letter to Cardinal Tournon, also, has every appearance of truth. The Cardinal took no notice of the heresy proclaimed from such a quarter as Geneva; or if he hinted at the matter to his friend the Archbishop of Vienne, Paumier’s good report of Doctor Villeneuve put a stop to further inquiry.[58]
More has probably been made of the letter to Farel, by the enemies of Calvin, than is altogether fair. Grotius, who was the first to notice it, says: ‘It shows that Antichrist had not appeared by Tiber only, but by Lake Leman also.’ When Calvin wrote to Farel, however, he did not contemplate the likelihood of Servetus ever falling into his hands. Neither, indeed, though grievously offending, had the Spaniard yet shown himself utterly incorrigible, a lost creature, fore-ordained of God, as it seemed, to perdition. At the time Calvin wrote the letter of February, 1546, to Farel