Having by this time arrived at a better knowledge of the state of affairs around him, and more than ever aware of the possible danger in which he stood; beginning moreover to feel less confidence in the support which we may be certain had been privately promised him, face to face in fact with the man who had already sought his life and so nearly succeeded in bringing him to a fiery death, Servetus seems now to have seen the necessity of changing the somewhat confident tone he had hitherto maintained in defending his opinions: reticence takes the place of open assertion, and instead of any clear avowal or defence of the views he held, he is now found fencing with the obvious meaning of the language he has used, and the conclusions to which it leads, prevaricating too at times; in a word, doing all in his power to appear not to have written in the way the charges brought against him show from his works that he had.
The trial from this time may be said to have acquired new significance. The private prosecutor and his bail discharged, and the further conduct of the suit handed over to the public prosecutor of the city, gave it additional importance in the eyes of the community at large, and heightened the interest felt in the issues involved.
Thrown into fresh hands, proceedings were necessarily stayed for a few days to give the State Attorney time to get ready his case, so that there was no meeting of the Court until the 21st. Between this date and that of the suspension on the 17th, Calvin is said to have been busy among those of the Council he reckoned either as friends or not as avowed antagonists, satisfying their doubts or strengthening their presumptions of the prisoner’s guilt; showing them the importance to the cause of religion and society that he should be convicted; picturing him as perhaps even less dangerous, if that were possible, on account of the particular theological grounds set forth, than as the enemy of all religion, sole foundation, as he said, of the entire social fabric. The man had been already tried, convicted, and condemned to death by the Roman Catholics of Vienne. Would they, the Senators of Geneva, show themselves less zealous than the Papists of France in the cause of God and their own true faith? Surely they would not, but doing their duty and finding on the evidence, which Calvin relied on as overwhelming, declare the prisoner guilty of the heresies laid to his charge.
Whether seen from a Popish or Protestant point of view, though the matters in debate had no more to do with real piety, with morality, or the foundations of society than with the course of the seasons, Servetus certainly entertained opinions on various topics of transcendental theology different from those commonly received, and in so far was a heretic. Of this much Calvin had no difficulty in satisfying his supporters, who consequently felt themselves absolved of any scruples they might have entertained about condemning one to death on purely speculative grounds which they did not even pretend to understand.[78]
Although what is said above about Calvin’s private interference with the course of justice has been questioned, when we know that he denounced his opponent from the pulpit in no measured terms, and tampered with the ministers of the Swiss Churches when they were consulted on the case, we need not be too scrupulous in accepting the statement as true. He may have been alarmed by reports of something like wavering on the part of certain members of the Court, and even of questions raised as to the propriety of continuing a suit involving matters so much out of the usual course of criminal procedure as known at Geneva, and the competence of laymen to take such subjects into consideration at all. Rumours to this effect reaching his ears may have led him into a course the impropriety of which in calmer moments he might possibly have understood. But Calvin was wholly without that freedom from passion and that sense of relative equity which go to the constitution of the judicial mind. He lived in a perpetual imbroglio of quasi-criminal proceedings, mostly begotten by his own arbitrary legislation; and he was in the constant habit of interfering in suits before the Courts of Geneva, less as jurisconsult than as judge—as judge, too, in causes so commonly his own. Clerical writers who have lauded his comments on the criminal proceedings of Geneva have not seen these in their true bearings, or they would have expressed themselves more guardedly than they have done.[79]
That proposals had really been made at the meeting of the 21st to abandon further proceedings against the prisoner, though overruled by the majority, seems to be proclaimed by the resolution then come to, viz., ‘Inasmuch as the heresies charged against Michael Servetus appear to be of great importance to Christianity, resolved to continue the prosecution.’ Such a resolution, though we have no intimation of that which led up to it, coupled with Calvin’s activity out of doors, suffices to show that Servetus had really had a chance of escape from the grip of his pursuer at this particular moment. But the occasion passed; and by way of strengthening themselves in their determination to go on with the questionable business in which they were engaged, we now find the Councillors of the Protestant city of Geneva actually writing to the Popish authorities of Vienne, and making inquiry of them as to the grounds on which Michael Servetus of Villanova, physician, had been imprisoned and prosecuted by them, and how he had escaped from confinement.
To confirm themselves still further in their purpose to proceed, it was moreover resolved that the Councils of Berne, Basle, Zürich, and Schaffhausen, together with the ministers of their Churches, should be written to and informed of what had thus far been done and was still in progress. In yielding to the instigations of Calvin, the Court in these last acts is plainly enough seen to hesitate, and be indisposed to trust entirely to his guidance. They would have the authorities of the other Protestant cantons of Switzerland informed of what was going on, and feel the pulse of their confederates as to the propriety of proceeding farther, they, under all the circumstances, being likely to be more impartially disposed than the Church of Geneva and its distinguished head.
The Council of Geneva had in fact already had occasion to know that where simple justice, whether in the interest of the General or the Individual, was concerned, Calvin’s lead should not always be too blindly followed. In the case of Jerome Bolsec, whom Calvin had arraigned for heresy two years before, against whom he had used all his influence to secure a conviction, and in which he would have succeeded (and the man, almost as much a personal enemy as Servetus, would have been beheaded) had he not been foiled by the recommendations of the Swiss Churches and Councils, which were unanimous in counselling moderation, the minor Council of Berne even went so far as to express a distinct opinion against the enforcement of pains or penalties of any kind in cases of imputed heresy.
But Calvin in his prosecution of those who opposed him always shows himself both vindictive and pitiless. Speaking of the way in which he would have had Bolsec disposed of he says: ‘It is our wish that our Church should be so purged of this pestilence that it may not, by being driven hence, become injurious to our neighbours.’ These words will bear one interpretation only—Calvin would have had Bolsec put to death. But he was withstood in his design, and mainly so by the Church of Berne, the language of which must have been highly displeasing to him; for the Reporter, in counselling moderation, says: ‘How much easier is it to win a man by gentleness than to compel him by severity;’ and still more displeasing perhaps was that which follows: ‘It cannot be said of God that He blinds, hardens, and gives to perdition any man, without at the same time assuming that it is God who is the Author of human blindness and reprobation, and therefore the cause of the sin committed.’ Now Bolsec’s offence had been in saying that men are not saved because elect, but are elect because of their faith. ‘None are reprobate,’ continues the Reporter from Berne, ‘by the eternal decrees of God, save those who of their own choice refuse the election freely offered to all. How shall we believe that God ordains the fate of men before their birth; foredooming some to sin and death, others to virtue and eternal life? Would you make of God an arbitrary tyrant, strip virtue of its goodness, vice of its shame, and the wicked of the reproaches of their conscience?’ But this is to cut the ground from under the feet of Calvin. No wonder, therefore, that as the proud man would not, and the self-satisfied man could not, bring himself to admit his error, he would have had him who exposed and led to such an exposition of it put out of the way.[80]
It was whilst expecting replies from Vienne, and waiting the convenience of M. Rigot, the Attorney-General, that the Court proceeded to make inquiries of the prisoner concerning his relations with Arnoullet, the printer of the ‘Restoration of Christianity,’ a letter of his to a friend of the name of Bertet having now been put in and read to the Court. In this letter, dated July 14, 1553, Arnoullet informs his friend Bertet that he is still in prison, but is promised his liberty next week, having got six substantial sureties for his good behaviour in time to come. He had been villainously deceived, he says, by his manager Geroult, who corrected the rough proofs of the book, but never said a word of the heresies it contained.