‘Inasmuch as these words, ‘Trinity’ and ‘Persons,’ are found by us to be very serviceable in the Church of Christ, as by them the true distinction of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is more clearly expressed, and controversial discussions are better served by their means, we say that we have no such objection to them as forbids us to receive them from others or to make use of them ourselves. Therefore, do we again declare, as we have formerly declared, that we accept the words, and would not that they ceased to be used in the Churches. For neither in our expositions of the Scriptures or when preaching to the people do we shun them; and we have instructed others [in private]—docebimus alios, that they should not superstitiously avoid them. Did anyone, however, from religious scruples, feel indisposed to make use of the words—although we avow that such superstition is not approved by us, and we shall continue striving to correct it—still, this seems no sufficient reason why a man, otherwise pious and having like religious views as ourselves, should be rejected. His want of better knowledge in this direction ought not to carry us the length of casting him out of the Church, or lead us to conclude that he was therefore altogether unsound in the faith. Neither, meantime, are we to think evilly of the Pastors of the Church of Berne, if they refuse to admit anyone to the ministry who declines to use the words.’[102]
We leave the reader to draw his own conclusions from this, and only ask him to say, on its showing, what excuse can be found for Calvin’s deed in burning Servetus? Scattered throughout the writings of the Genevese Reformer we encounter many expressions which prove plainly enough how much against the grain he finally confessed partition in the unity of God. ‘The first principle to be acknowledged in the Scriptures,’ he says, ‘is the Being of One God; but as the same Scriptures speak of a Father, a Son, and a Holy Ghost, what have we for it—quid aliud restat—but to own three Persons in the Godhead? These, however,’ he proceeds in the usual orthodox fashion to say, and in contradiction to the words first made use of, ‘imply no plurality of persons, neither do they destroy the essential unity of God; for where were Quaternity to be found does the one God comprise in himself three properties—ubi autem quaternitas reperitur si unus Deus tres in se proprietates contineat?’[104] Where, indeed! But the question is of persons not of properties; as in the affair with Caroli it was of an Eternal Son not of an Eternal Word.
In another place we find him using such language as this: ‘The words of the Council of Nicæa are these: God of God—a hard expression I admit, for the removal of the ambiguity of which no better interpreter can be found than Athanasius, who indited it—Deum a Deo—dura loquutio fateor, sed ad cujus tollendam ambiguitatem nemo potest esse magis idoneus interpres quam Athanasius qui eam dictavit.’
Elsewhere, though we have omitted to note the place, he declares that the Athanasian symbol was never approved by any of the legitimate [i.e. Protestant] Churches—cujus symbolum nulla unquam legitima ecclesia approbâsset.’[105] Such writing is surely very noteworthy. Calvin’s acknowledgment of a Trinity is neither of his understanding nor his faith; it is enforced merely and obviously in opposition to the reason he had from God for his guidance. But Michael Servetus, whom he sent to a fiery death, not only does not deny, but expressly, and oftener than once, avows that he acknowledges a Trinity in the Essence of God. He, too, found the words Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the Scriptures; and, as little disposed as Calvin to gainsay a word they contain, he actually uses language the simple sense of which is that precisely under which Calvin seeks to shield himself; only he employs the word dispositions instead of properties. Calvin, when he attempts to reconcile the idea of a Trinity of persons co-existing with an unity of Being, and does not use language that contradicts itself, speaks no otherwise than Servetus, and arrives in fine at the same interpretation of the Trinitarian Dogma: the persons are dispositions to the one, properties to the other!
After the most careful study of the writings of Servetus we have been able to bestow, we have it forced upon us that had Calvin been so minded he could from them, more readily, and far more consistently, have defended their author as a sincerely pious, though in his opinion, a much mistaken man in his interpretation of Christian doctrine, than prosecuted him as the enemy of all religion, a monster, as he says, made up of mere impieties and horrible blasphemies! But to the intolerant bigot, engrossed by his own conceits and dislikes, all Servetus’s confiding piety was hypocrisy, his touching prayers mockery, and his eloquence as becoming in him as a coat of mail to a hog—‘qu’une jaserame un Truie’(!)
Nor can Calvin have credit given him for religious zeal, as the principal, still less as the sole ground for his prosecution of Servetus. He would condone the Church of Berne for repudiating him who denied the Trinitarian mystery, but could not forgive the Spaniard’s intemperate and disrespectful style of address to himself. In this lay the prime cause of offence to the man, accustomed to have all the world bowing down before him, who was always addressed as ‘Monsieur,’ not as ‘Maître,’ like the rest of the clergy, and whose appointments, however modest in our eyes, equalled those of a dignitary of the Church in neighbouring lands. One of Nicolas de la Fontaine’s counts against the man he did not even know, but whom he arraigned for life or death, is the objectionable language indulged in towards his pastor; and we have Calvin’s own words against himself when he says that Servetus’s ‘arrogance, not less than his impiety, led to his destruction;’ whilst he elsewhere owns, that ‘had Servetus but been possessed of even a show of modesty he would not have pursued him so determinedly on the capital charge.’
By way of conclusion here, let us observe that Calvin’s fundamental principle of Election by the Grace of God ought to have stayed his hand from all persecution on religious grounds. He is constantly spoken of as a man possessed of a peculiarly logical mind. But if it be by the eternal decrees of God that some are ordained to salvation and some to perdition, how should Servetus or anyone else come between God and his purposes? How should the Elect be prejudiced, or the Reprobate made worse by the act of man?
CHAPTER XX.
CALVIN DEFENDS HIMSELF.
Dissatisfaction with what had been done appears to have become general immediately after the execution of Servetus. It extended beyond the walls of the Council chamber and found wider expression than in the arrest of proceedings against Geroult. Ballads and pasquinades, little complimentary to Calvin and his party, circulated freely, and were all the more persistently spread in private if none dared to utter them in public or sing them in the streets. Calvin himself acknowledges that fear alone of consequences repressed for a time any open expression of abhorrence for the death of Servetus. Certain it is, that before the year was out, save among friends and obsequious followers, the act in which he had taken the prominent part came to be so unfavourably construed that he felt forced to appear as his own apologist, and in justification of his deed to proclaim his victim not only a heretic because of theological dissidence, with which the people of Geneva were familiar enough and not always greatly scandalised, but to hold him up as wholly without religious convictions himself, the open enemy of all religion in others, the conspirator against the moral well-being of the world, and the conscience-stricken craven in face of his impending fate!