‘I asked him,’ the letter proceeds, ‘whether it was all according to God? And he replied that it was; and further, that it contained a number of Epistles addressed to Mons. Calvin, which he was minded to translate into French. But this I forbade—without the permission of the author, which was refused. When last in Geneva, Geroult saw and informed M. Calvin that I had lately been there, without having waited on him. The truth is, that I did not think he would have me in such friendship now as in times past—by reason of my having had anything to do with such a monster, whom God look after! Geroult was in fact in league with the writer, and never let fall a syllable to me until after your departure for Frankfort [in charge of the Bale of the “Christianismi Restoratio” among other book merchandise]. This, as you know, gave occasion to your speaking to me so seriously as you did about the book in question.
‘As to what you say about my sending someone else to Frankfort,—understand me, that I will have no one go but yourself, and that you are to see every copy of the book destroyed, so that there shall be left of it neither a leaf nor half a leaf. Understand, too, that this is to be done without prejudice to anyone. I am only sorry that we have all been so grossly deceived in the business; but if God, our Father, leave us the other goods we possess—more by far than those we shall destroy—it will be well. As to what you say of my having known that Villanovanus had been rejected by the Christian Churches, and that avarice had something to do with my having undertaken the work, let it suffice that I deny this; and our long intimacy must have made you so well acquainted with me, that you will not doubt I now speak the truth. How the Inquisitor came to have your name, I cannot tell. I can only assure you that in all the interrogations to which I have been subjected by him I never named a living soul; nor indeed was there ever mention made of you in my hearing.... Be good enough to say to Mons. Calvin that I shall not be in Geneva again without seeing him; and that if I have not done my duty towards him in all respects, beg him to find some excuse for me. He who is the cause of this [meaning Geroult, doubtless] is now there; and when Monsieur Calvin shall have spoken with me, he will understand the reason of my saying nothing more at present. Make my respects to him meantime, and forgive me if I do not now write more particularly of our affairs.’
This letter we see by the date was written either shortly before or about the time of Servetus’s arrival in Geneva, whither Geroult, who was a native of the city, had betaken himself for safety on the arrest of Servetus and Arnoullet. Bertet, fearing that Arnoullet might suffer in the estimation of Calvin, seems to have thought that the best means of exculpating his friend of complicity with the writer of the heretical book was now to show the letter he had lately received from Vienne to Calvin; and he, we must conclude, laid it forthwith before the Court, with no purpose assuredly of aiding the prisoner in his defence. Arnoullet’s letter in exculpation of himself goes far, as we see, to compromise Geroult; and he being at this time in Geneva, his liberty, perhaps even his life, was brought into danger.[81]
The letter to Bertet being shown to the prisoner, he averred that he could not take it upon him to say whether it was from Arnoullet or not, he never having seen any of the publisher’s handwriting; he said, however, that it certainly was at Arnoullet’s establishment that the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ was printed, and that Arnoullet had been arrested and imprisoned at the same time as himself. Arnoullet’s disclaimer of having known anything of the burden of Servetus’s book must certainly be untrue. Unless all else we know in connection with the business be false, he must have had shrewd suspicions of its nature, and the suppression of his name as publisher, and of Vienne as the place of publication, shows that he was not without misgivings of possible unpleasant consequences following the appearance of the work were it known that he had had anything to do with it.
Arnoullet’s letter gave Calvin a hint which he did not fail to improve upon; for he too wrote to Frankfort informing his friends, the Protestant ministers there, of the bale of Servetus’s books that had been sent to their city—by Frelon, as I believe, not by Robert Etienne, the bookseller of Geneva, as has been said,[82]—recommending its seizure and the destruction of its contents.
Calvin begins his letter thus:—
‘I doubt not you have heard of Servetus, the Spaniard, who more than twenty years ago infected Germany with a villainous book, full of sacrilegious error of every kind. The scoundrel having fled from Germany and lain concealed in France under a false name, has lately concocted a second book out of the contents of the first, but replete with new figments, which he has had printed clandestinely at Vienne, a town not far from Lyons. Of this book we learn that many copies have been sent to Frankfort, in prospect of the approaching Easter fair. The printer, a pious and respectable person, when he came to know that the book was a mere farrago of Errors, suppressed the copies he had on hand. It were long did I enumerate the many Errors, the prodigious blasphemies against God, that are scattered over its pages. Imagine to yourselves a rhapsody made up of the impious ravings of every age; for there is no kind of impiety which this wild beast from hell has not appropriated. You will assuredly find in every page matters that will horrify you. The author is now in prison here at the instance of our magistracy, and I hope will shortly be condemned and punished. But you are to aid us against the further spread of such pestiferous poison. The messenger [the bearer of this] will tell you where the books are bestowed and their number; and the bookseller to whom they are consigned will, I believe, make no objections to their being given to the flames. Did he throw any obstacle in the way of this, however, I venture to think you are so well disposed, that you will take steps to have the world purged of such noxious corruption. You shall not want authority, indeed, for what you do in the business. If you are allowed to have your way, it will not then be necessary to seek the interference of your magistrates. But I have such confidence in you, that I feel persuaded my hint will suffice to guide your action. The matter, nevertheless, is of such moment, that I entreat you, for Christ’s sake, not to allow the occasion of showing yourselves zealous in your office to pass unheeded.
‘Farewell, &c.
‘Geneva, 6 Calends of September, 1553.’
The session of the 21st, preliminaries ended, was occupied in the beginning with a dispute between the prisoner and Calvin, who came into Court on this occasion again accompanied by a number of ministers, his colleagues, introduced, says the Record of proceedings, to maintain the contrary of the prisoner’s allegations in respect of the authorities he cites as favouring his views. Calvin thereupon, taking the lead, proceeded to interpret the passages of the Fathers referred to by the prisoner in a sense different from that put upon them by him, and showed satisfactorily that the word Trias or Trinity had really been used by writers before the date of the Nicæan Council.
It was on this occasion, as we learn from Calvin,[83] that on a copy of Justin Martyr being produced by him in support of his statement, Servetus expressed a wish to see a Latin translation as well as the original Greek, a slip which Calvin did not fail to turn to the prisoner’s disadvantage, for knowing that there was no Latin translation of Justin, he immediately challenged the prisoner with being ignorant of Greek. ‘Look’ee,’ says he in his Déclaration pour maintenir la vraie foy, ‘this learned man, this Servetus, who plumes himself on having the gift of tongues, is found to be about as much able to read Greek as an infant to say the A. B. C. ‘Seeing himself thus caught’ continues Calvin, ‘I took occasion to reproach him with his impudence. What means this, said I? The book has not been translated into Latin, and you cannot read Greek. Yet, you pretend you are familiar with Justin. Tell me, I pray you, whence you have the quotations you produce so freely as if you had Justin in your sleeve? But he with his front of brass, as was his wont, though he had leapt from the frying pan into the fire—sauta du coq à l’ânc—quite unabashed, gave not the slightest sign of feeling shame.’ No one, however, who has been at the pains to look into the works of Servetus will doubt for a moment that he was not only a competent Greek scholar, but well advanced in the Hebrew also, with both of which languages he shows that he was even critically acquainted. Seeing himself beaten on the occurrence of the word Trinity in the Greek of Justin, he may have thought to find a makeweight in a Latin translation against the original produced by Calvin. There is indeed an ample display both of erudition and linguistic accomplishments even in Servetus’s first work, the seven books on Trinitarian Error.
Another and still more significant discussion now arose between the Reformer and the prisoner—and in these ever-recurring debates we see the persistency with which Calvin stuck to his opponent—as to the sense in which the expression Son of God was to be understood. Servetus maintained that it was not properly applied to him who bore it until the moment of his birth. Calvin, on the contrary, insisted that in conformity with the usual interpretation of the first chapter of the Gospel according to John, the authority of the Creeds and the teaching of the Churches, the words must be held to refer to the Divine Word which became incarnate in Jesus Christ, having until then been a distinct subsistence in the essence of God from Eternity. In reply to this, Servetus explained and said that the common interpretation of the language of John was mistaken; the Son, as he declared, having only existed formally or as an idea, dispensation or mode in the mind of God previous to the Incarnation and Birth of Christ, not as an entity—a person, in the usual acceptation of the word, possessed of distinct individual existence.
Speaking authoritatively now and as from himself, Calvin rejoined that if the Word had not been a distinct reality in the essence of God, it could not have united itself as such with the humanity of Christ; that the body of Christ must then have been wholly of the substance of God; and being so—not being perfect man as well as perfect God—the redemption of mankind could not have been effected by his death. Why the impossibility, thus assumed, is not said. But let us pause an instant and think of one pious man tried for his life by another pious man, on grounds such as these!—grounds on which neither the one nor the other could find footing for a moment.