All the charges in the direction now taken, unsupported as they were by a shadow of evidence, fell to the ground. Servetus could say with truth that he was no disturber of the peace—had never in the whole course of his life provoked a personal quarrel, and if he had once drawn his sword, as hinted, it was not as aggressor, but in self-defence. By physical constitution he said he was indisposed to matrimony; his not having entered into that holy state being, as we have seen, one of the items laid to his charge! Far from having failed in chastity of life, he declared that he had been ever studious of Scripture precepts on the subject, and was even bold enough to think that he had always lived as a Christian. And truly and in so far as aught to the contrary was made to appear in the course of the protracted and searching trial to which he was subjected, Servetus must be held to come out stainless. The logical conclusion, however, that speculative theological opinions, whether in conformity with or adverse to accredited systems of belief, had no influence one way or another on man’s moral conduct, was lost upon Calvin and his age; and the vulgar world of to-day cannot yet be said to have bettered their opinion.
The prosecution, losing ground the longer it continued on this tack, reverted to what for it was the surer course—the assumed danger to the cause of society and the peace of Christendom from the publication of books having the character ascribed to those written by the prisoner. In spite of all the warnings he had had, said Mr. Attorney Rigot, the kind and repeated admonitions of learned theologians, sole authorities on such subjects, and the unanimous condemnation his first publication had encountered, he not only continued to adhere to his errors, but with a view to spread them farther had written and printed a second, which was in fact but a reproduction and enlarged edition of the first.
To this Servetus answered that he thought he should have offended God had he not done so; ‘he had acted,’ he said, ‘with as perfect sincerity as if his salvation had been in question.’ ‘Our Lord,’ he continued, and quoting the tenth chapter of Matthew, ‘commands us to speak in Light that we have been told in Darkness; and in the fifth chapter, the Evangelist says further that we are not to put the Light we have under a bushel, but to set it where it may be seen of all.’ Taking God and his conscience for guides, therefore, he thought he was but following the injunctions of the Scriptures and the ancient Doctors of the Church in all he had written, nor does he now think that he has done amiss, for his intentions were good; and, as the Evangelist already quoted (ch. v.) declares: ‘If the eye be single then is the whole body full of Light,’ he therefore believes that his intention having been good, the deed which followed must be accounted good also. As to the printing of the book entitled ‘The Restoration of Christianity,’ he had no regrets. He had written and had it printed because he hoped to bring back to its primitive meaning much that he thought was erroneous in current interpretations of Christian Doctrine; his title of itself showed that he intended the Restoration, not the Destruction, of Christianity, with which he had been charged. With all this, however, he did not presume to say that they who had written before him, and in a different sense, understood nothing of the Christian Religion; he only thought they had misconceived and misconstrued some things, they especially who had formulated their opinions subsequently to the date of the Council of Nicæa.
To the particular charge that he had spoken of the Doctrine taught in the Reformed Churches as being nowise Christian, and condemned all who did not think with himself, he replied that he never imagined that the Churches of Geneva and Germany were doomed to perdition because of their teaching; he only thought their ministers mistaken on some things.
At this point, a private letter addressed by the prisoner to Abel Poupin, one of the Ministers of Geneva, written many years before, was produced and read to the Court. Whence it came, or how it was obtained, is not said; but as highly characteristic of the writer, and foreshadowing the fate that was to befal him, it must have a place in our story.
Monsieur Abel!—Although it is most plainly shown, in my twelfth letter to Calvin, that the Law of the Decalogue had been abrogated, I shall add a few words that you may the better understand the innovation brought about by the advent of Christ. If you turn to Jeremiah xxxi., verse 31 et seq., you will find it stated distinctly that the law of the Decalogue was to be annulled. The prophet teaches that the Covenant entered into with the Fathers, when they left Egypt, was to be no longer in force. But this was the Covenant of the Decalogue. For in I Kings, chapter viii., it is said that the Covenant or Testimony—the Decalogue, to wit—was in the Ark with the Fathers at their exodus from Egypt, whence the Ark is called the Ark of the Covenant, that is of the Tables, or Ten Commandments of the Law. Now this was the form of the Covenant: God promised the Israelites that they should be his people, if they did according to the words of the Law, and they on their part engaged that they would obey them. Such was the Covenant. And it is of this Covenant that Jeremiah (chapter xviii.) speaks as being repealed, as does Ezekiel (chapter xvi.), and Paul likewise in his Epistle to the Hebrews. If God took us for his own under that Law, we should lie under the curse, and perish by its pressure. The Law therefore was repealed. God does not now receive us as his children but by faith in his beloved Son, Jesus Christ. See then what becomes of your Gospel when it is confounded with the Law. Your Gospel is without the One God, without true faith, without good works. For the One God you have a three-headed Cerberus; for faith a fatal dream, and good works you say are vain shows. Faith in Christ is to you mere sham, effecting nothing; Man a mere log, and your God a chimæra of subject-will. You do not acknowledge celestial regeneration by the washing with water, but treat it as an idle tale, and close the kingdom of heaven against mankind as a thing of imagination. Woe to you, woe, woe!
This, my third Epistle, is addressed to you with the wish that you may be brought to better thoughts, and I mean not to admonish you any more. It offends you, perchance, that I meddle in those battles of the angel Michael, and seek to bring you into the strife. But study the part I refer to carefully, and you will see that there are men who do battle there, exposing their lives for Christ’s sake. That the Angels speak truth is proclaimed by the Scriptures. But see you not that the question is of the Church of Christ fled from Earth these many years? Is it not of division, of difference that John himself makes mention? And who is the Accuser challenging us with transgression of the Law and its precepts? Accusation and seduction of the world, he says, were to precede the battle; the battle therefore was to follow, and the time is at hand, as he also tells us. And who are they who shall gain the victory over the Beast? They who do not accept his mark. I know for sure that I shall die in this cause; but my courage does not fail me because of this; I shall show me a disciple worthy of my master.
I much regret that, through you, I am not allowed to amend some places in my writings now in Calvin’s hands. Farewell, and look for no more letters from me.
I stand to my post and meditate, and look out for what may further come to pass. For come it will, surely it will come and that without long delay.[84]
This remarkable letter, interesting in so many respects, is unfortunately without a date; it is the last of three he had written, however, and must have been produced either in 1546, or early in 1547. Highly characteristic of the self-confidence and assurance of the writer, we see him as ready to challenge the Reformers as they were eager to denounce him. He does not call them heretics and blasphemers, it is true, nor does he speak of having them punished for the mistaken views they entertain; and therein he shows himself their superior. Crying woe upon them for their errors, he never hints at the propriety of burning them alive, though he is not blind to the great probability of being subjected himself to a fate of the kind.
The letter to Abel Poupin, said Servetus to his Judges, contains scholastic disputations on difficult subjects, in the course of which controversialists make use of strong language with no purpose but to enforce their views or bring their opponents to the same way of thinking as themselves, and not because they believe them to be lost souls by reason of the dissimilar opinions they entertain. For himself, he continues, he had had more objectionable terms of reproach applied to him, than any he had used to others; and these not by word of mouth or in private letters like his own, but through printed books both in the French and Latin tongues. What he had written to M. Abel, now more than six years ago, was with no view to publicity, but simply to elicit the truth—certainly with no intention of slandering the Republic of Geneva and its Churches.
On the important question of baptism, he admitted being of opinion that they who were baptized in their infancy were not truly baptized; but added, that if it were shown him he was mistaken in this, he was ready to amend and ask forgiveness.