... I had thought to have been silent about our affairs of Geneva, fearing that I should only add needlessly to your other anxieties; but lest rumours reaching you from other quarters should distress you more than knowledge of the truth, I think it best to tell you exactly what has happened.
When Ph. Berthelier was forbidden to present himself at the Lord’s Table some year and half ago, he then appealed to the Council against the decree of the Consistory. We were called into court to hold the scoundrel (nebulo) in check; and when the case had been heard, the Senate declared that he had been properly excommunicated. From that time until now he has been quiet; whether in despair of mending matters or through indifference, I know not. But now, and before the Syndicate of Perrin expires, he would have himself reinstated by the Council in spite of the Consistory. I was again summoned, and in copious words I showed that this could with no propriety be done; that it would not be lawful, indeed, to counteract in any such way the discipline of the Church. When my back was turned, however, the Consistory not having been further heard or represented, permission was given him by the Council to present himself at the Table. This being told to me, I took care immediately to have the Syndic summon a special meeting of the Council, at which I entered with such fulness into the question, as to leave nothing which in my opinion could be said further to make them change their mind—now vehement, now more persuasive, I strove to bring them to a right way of thinking. I even declared that I would sooner die, opposing their decree, than profane the Sacred Table of the Lord.... The Senate nevertheless replied that they saw no reason to depart from the judgment already given.
From this you will perceive that I should have nothing for it but to quit my ministry, did I suffer the authority of the Consistory to be trodden under foot, and consented to administer the Supper of Christ to the openly contumacious who declare that we Pastors of the Church are nothing to them. But, as I say, I would sooner die a hundred deaths than subject Christ to so foul a mockery. What I said yesterday at two meetings, I need not recapitulate. But the wicked and lost among us will now have all they desire. In so far as I am concerned, it is the Church’s calamity that distresses me. If God, however, give such licence to Satan that I am to be thwarted in my ministry by violent decrees, I am as good as dead in my office. But he who inflicts the wound will find the salve; and truly, when I see how the wicked have gone on all these years with such impunity, the Lord perhaps prepares some judgment for me, in respect of my unworthiness. Whatever befals, it is nevertheless for us to submit to his will. Farewell, and may God be with you always, guide you and protect you! Pray incessantly that He consider this our miserable Church!
Geneva, The day before the nones (4th) of September, 1553.
CHAPTER XI.
THE TRIAL IS RESUMED ON THE NEW ARTICLES SUPPLIED BY CALVIN.
It fell out, unfortunately for Servetus, that the decree of the Council against the Consistory was the immediate prelude to the resumption of his trial. The decision come to had been warmly contested by Calvin, as we see by the preceding letter, he looking on any interference of the civil magistrate in questions which he regarded from a purely ecclesiastical point of view, as a blow not only to his spiritual authority in Geneva, but to the cause of religion. He saw the late awards of the Council in favour of Berthelier and against the Consistory in the light of triumphs of his enemies over himself, and mainly due to the influence of his particular opponent, Amied Perrin, under whose presidency the adverse decisions had been obtained.
On the resumption of the Servetus trial, then, the hot blood engendered by the recent struggle had not yet had time to cool; and Calvin, on taking his place in the reconstituted Criminal Court, found himself once more not only face to face with his theological opponent, but set beside his chief political enemies, Perrin and Berthelier. Elate with the advantage just gained, they had kept their seats on the Bench, intending doubtless to do what in them lay to secure a further victory through Michael Servetus over the uncompromising Reformer. It is not difficult to imagine the influence, in the present state of affairs, which the attitude of these men had on the fate of our unhappy Servetus; for Calvin, with his many supporters acting as his spies, was well informed of the countenance they had given the prisoner privately, and seems to have construed their presence at this particular moment as a public demonstration in his favour. To convict Servetus was therefore to thwart them, and the discomfiture of the solitary stranger had become more than ever a personal and political necessity to the Reformer.
The articles from the works of Servetus from the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ exclusively, on this occasion, thirty-eight in number, had been laid before the Court so long back as September 1, and are headed: ‘Opinions or Propositions taken from the Books of Michael Servetus which the Members of the Church of Geneva declare to be in part impious and blasphemous, in part full of profound errors and absurdities, all of them alike opposed to the Word of God and the orthodox assent of the Church.’
September 15.—The Court constituted in the usual manner, with Servetus before them sworn to speak the truth, Calvin, who seems now to have taken the place of the Attorney-General, proceeded to interrogate the prisoner on the new Articles of Impeachment. One of the first of these, referring to the relationship of the Son to the Father in the mystery of the Trinity, appears to have given rise to another long, and we may imagine excited debate between Calvin and the prisoner; from which, however, the judges were able to gather so little light that they interposed, and came to a resolution to have any further discussion that might arise carried on in writing and in the Latin tongue, instead of by word of mouth and in French as heretofore.
The substitution of Latin for French had in fact become a necessity when the determination to consult the other Reformed Churches of the Confederation was adopted. Native to Geneva with its French-speaking population, French was little understood at Berne, Basle, Zürich, and Schaffhausen with their German inhabitants; but the liberally educated among them were generally familiar with Latin. Calvin, we must therefore presume, had presented his new Articles in French, so that they had to be translated and turned back into Latin; but the trial appears to have suffered no particular delay on this account. Presented anew in the Latin tongue and approved by the Court, they were ordered by it to be submitted to the prisoner, with the intimation that he was required to answer them, and to feel himself at liberty to alter or retract anything he might now think he had written unadvisedly; to explain anything he had said that was misunderstood; and to defend such of his opinions as were challenged, by the citation of Scripture in their support. Nor was he to be hurried in sending in his replies; he was to take his own time, and to enter as fully as he pleased into every question.
As it is part of our business here to learn on what grounds men of the highest culture burned one another to death three hundred and twenty-four years ago—and it is thought by some that there still remains such an amount of ignorance, bigotry, and intolerance in the world as might lead to a rekindling of the fires, were the power to do so but added to the will—we feel bound to make a somewhat particular study of the Articles on which the unfortunate Servetus was finally incriminated and doomed to die. We therefore proceed to lay before the reader, in slightly condensed form, these Articles, which will be seen, on the most cursory perusal, to involve none but topics of transcendental dogmatic theology—a subject which to reasonable men has now lost almost all the significance it once possessed, but which has still a large historical interest as showing, in contrast with present views, the progress that has been made from darkness into light; and as illustrating the great, yet persistently neglected, truth, that the religious feelings are no safe guides of conduct when dissevered from the other emotional elements of human nature in balanced action among themselves, enlightened by science and associated with reason. Religion has in fact at no time been the civiliser of mankind, as so commonly said, but has itself been the civilised through advances made in science or the knowledge of nature, and in general refinement. Brutal and blood-stained among savages and the barbarous but policied peoples of antiquity, Assyrians, Chaldæans, Egyptians, Hebrews; cruel and intolerant among Newer Nations well advanced in art and letters, but ignorant of the world they lived in and the universe around them, religion has only become humane as Science has been suffered to shed her ennobling light, and will first prove truly beneficent when Piety is seen to consist in study of the laws of nature, which are the laws of God, and Worship is acknowledged to be comprised in reverential observance of their behests. What adequate idea of God could be formed—if, indeed, it be possible for man to form any adequate idea of God!—so long as this earth—this mote in the ocean of Infinity—was thought of as the centre of the universe, the one object of God’s care, and a single family among the myriads that people it as the sole recipients of his revealed word and will!