Marrinus.
‘Basle, April 9, 1552.’
The MS., even on a cursory perusal, had evidently frightened the worthy publisher of Basle: he would have nothing to do with it; but this did not put our author from his purpose of publication. Not going so far afield as Basle, he took Balthasar Arnoullet, bookseller and publisher, and William Geroult, manager of his printing establishment, both of Vienne, into his confidence, giving them to understand that though the book he wished to have printed was against the doctrines of Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, and other heretics, there were many reasons why neither his name as the author, nor Vienne as the place of publication, should appear on the title-page.
Arnoullet, like Marrinus, must have had misgivings about the reception the book was likely to meet with from the clergy of France, and, aware of the danger he incurred who printed and published aught out of conformity with the doctrines of the holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church, he too must have declined in the first instance to undertake the work. But Michel Villeneuve had been prosperous; he had money in his purse, and engaging not only to take the whole of the expenses on himself, but to add a gratuity of 100 crowns to the cost, Arnoullet consented at last to run the risk of publication, meaning, however, that the world at large should know nothing of him as instrumental in the business. No one then knew that Secerius of Hagenau had printed the ‘De Trinitatis Erroribus,’ or that its author, Michael Servetus, was Doctor Villeneuve. Why should it ever transpire that Balthasar Arnoullet of Vienne had printed the ‘Restitutio Christianismi,’ or that Monsieur Michel Villeneuve the physician was its writer? To keep the secret within their own circle, therefore, the work must not be composed in the usual place of business, and none but the most indispensable hands be employed upon it. A small house, away from the known printing establishment, was accordingly taken; type cases and a press were there set up, and the work once entered on proceeded regularly without interruption during a period of between three and four months, when the impression, consisting of 1,000 copies, was successfully worked off.
Arnoullet, although we shall by and by find him declaring his entire ignorance of the burden of the book, and charging his manager, Geroult, with having deceived him on this head and by misrepresentations induced him to meddle with the publication at all, must nevertheless have been well aware of its nature. The measures taken to keep the outside world in ignorance of what was going on, the arrangement with the author to be his own reader for press, and the premium paid, give the lie to all his asseverations. Servetus, too, in his determination to keep his name from the title-page, and leave this blank of the place of publication, shows that neither was he blind to the danger that waited on the production of such a book as the Restoration of Christianity in Roman Catholic France. The printing press, though eagerly welcomed on all hands at first, soon fell out of favour with the Church of Rome, and so continues with that conspiracy against the rights, the liberties, and the progress of mankind. But Michael Servetus was too vain, too thoroughly persuaded of his own apostolic mission to the world, to leave his book, the crowning labour of his life, without some sufficient mark of its paternity. On the last page, accordingly, we find the initials of his name and designation in capital letters, thus, M.S.V., immediately over the date MDLIII., the year of the intended publication. But even so much was not wanted to proclaim the author. Innocently or inadvertently he says in his Preface that he had formerly treated briefly of the subjects he is now about to discuss at greater length; and in the body of the work he may even be said to make his appearance in person, and in his proper name; for we there have Michael and Peter as interlocutors, precisely as in the old ‘Dialogi ij de Trinitate’ of the year 1532.
Printed with every precaution to secure secrecy, with nothing intentionally about it to lead the uninitiated to suspect what was meant by the M.S.V. at the end, or a hint, even had it been divined that Michael Servetus Villanovanus was thereby indicated, to show that he and Michel Villeneuve of Vienne were one and the same personage, it is obvious that the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ was not intended for publication or sale either in Vienne or France—probably not even in Basle or Geneva, in the first instance. Villeneuve would keep the place where he lived, and the country that sheltered him, as well as the nearest neighbouring land, out of the storm which he plainly foresaw would be raised by his daring innovations on accredited Christian doctrine, and his more than Luther-like denunciations of the Papacy. The whole impression was therefore made up into bales of 100 copies in each, of which five were confided to the safe keeping of Pierre Merrin, typefounder of Lyons—a brother in all likelihood of the Marrinus of Basle, with whose name we are already acquainted—in view of their being forwarded by water to Genoa and Venice. A bale or two we know were sent by Arnoullet to his agent at Frankfort; and as Frelon was now in the secret of Servetus, we can hardly doubt of his having taken some share in the venture and despatched at least a bale to the same great emporium of the book trade. It must have been from Frelon, indeed, that Calvin by and by obtained the couple of copies of the ‘Restitutio’ he required for the purposes of the prosecution he had instituted against its author; and it is almost certainly to him, not to Robert Etienne, the bookseller of Geneva, as has been said, that Calvin refers in his letter to the Frankfort Clergy ‘as a well-disposed person who will put no obstacle in the way of the seizure and destruction of the obnoxious book which he has learned had been sent for exposition and sale among them.’ The remainder of the impression—and there could now have been little of it left on hand—for safe stowage away from the Archiepiscopal city of Vienne, was confided by Arnoullet to the custody of a friend, Bertet by name, resident at Chatillon.[59]
The book on the ‘Restoration of Christianity,’[60] often spoken of, though so rare as seldom to be seen, comprises a series of disquisitions on the speculative and practical principles of Christianity, as apprehended by the author; thirty letters to John Calvin; a disquisition on as many as sixty signs of the reign of Antichrist, and an apologetic address to Philip Melanchthon and his followers.
‘The task we have set ourselves here,’ says the Author in his Preface or Introduction, ‘is truly sublime; for it is no less than to make God known in his substantial manifestation by The Word and his divine communication by the Spirit, both comprised in Christ, through whom alone do we learn how the divineness of the Word and the Spirit may be apprehended in Man. Hidden from human sight in former times, God is now both manifested and communicated to the world, manifestation taking place by the Word, communication by the Spirit, to the end that we may see him face to face as it were in Creation, and feel him intuitively but lucidly declared in ourselves. It is high time that the door leading to knowledge of this kind were opened; for otherwise no one can either know God truly, read the Scriptures aright, or be a Christian.’
How much the writer is in earnest is farther proclaimed by the Invocation to Christ and the Address to the Reader with which he concludes his Introduction: ‘O Christ Jesus, Son of God, Thou Who wast given to us from heaven, Thou Who in Thyself makest Deity visibly manifest, I, Thy servant, now proclaim Thee, that so great a manifestation may be made known to all. Grant then to Thy petitioner Thy good Spirit and Thy effectual Speech; guide Thou his mind and his pen that he may worthily declare the glory of Thy Divinity, and give pious utterance to the true faith concerning Thee. The cause indeed is Thine, for by a certain Divine impulse it is that I am led to speak of Thy Glory from the Father. In former days did I begin to treat of this, and again do I enter upon it; for now am I to be made known to all the pious; now truly are the days complete, as appears from the certainty of the thing itself and the visible signs of the times. The Light Thou hast said is not to be hidden; so woe to me do I not evangelise!
‘It rests with thee, then, O Reader, that thou show thyself well disposed towards Christ, even to the End, and that thou hear our subject discussed at length in words of truth without disguise.’
After a somewhat careful perusal of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ we know not how it could be better or more briefly characterised, in its theoretical portion at least, than as a paraphrase and new interpretation of the Gospel according to John, in which the Neo-platonic doctrine of the Logos is particularly discussed, and copiously interfused with pantheistic ideas, whilst the dogmatic teaching of the Church of Rome and its practical application is repudiated in toto, and the chief doctrines of Lutheran and Calvinistic Christianity are controverted.