To this task Calvin would seem to have been more especially incited by Bullinger, who loses no opportunity of showing himself hostile to Servetus; and even thinks that ‘were Satan to come back from hell and take to preaching for pastime, he would make use of much the same language as Servetus the Spaniard.’[106] Writing to Calvin at this time, and thinking doubtless of the growing unpopularity of his friend, Bullinger says: ‘See to it, dear Calvin, that you give a good account of Servetus and his end, so that all may have the beast in horror—ut omnes abhorreant a bestia!’ To which Calvin replies: ‘If I have but a little leisure I shall show what a monster he was.’[107]
Such were the inducements Calvin had for entering on the apologetic defence of himself through denouncing the errors, impugning the motives, and blackening the fame of Servetus to which he now applied himself and had ready for publication both in French and Latin early in the year 1554, the title of the French book in brief being ‘Déclaration pour maintenir la vraye Foy;’ that of the Latin, ‘Defensio Orthodoxæ Fidei de sacra Trinitate contra errores Michaelis Serveti, &c.’[108]
In his introduction Calvin informs the reader that he had ‘not at first thought it necessary to come forward with any formal refutation of the errors of Servetus,’ the ponderous absurdity of his ravings appearing so plainly that he imagined it would be like winnowing the wind to do so, for there was really no danger of anyone of sound mind and ordinary understanding not being found superior to such follies. ‘But better informed, knowing the poison to be deadly in its kind, and having regard to the amount of stupidity and confusion which God, to avenge Himself, inflicts on all who despise his doctrine, I have felt myself compelled as it were to take up the pen, and in exposing the errors of the man to furnish grounds for better conclusions. When Servetus and his like, indeed, presume to meddle with the mysteries of religion, it is as if swine came thrusting their snouts into a treasury of sacred things. May God pay all with the wages they deserve whose vicious proclivities lead them to burn after one novelty or another, which they can no more resist than can the man from scratching who has the itch!—pas plus que celui qui a la ratelle qui démange.’
‘The punishment that befel Servetus,’ he continues, ‘is always ascribed to me. I am called a master in cruelty, and shall now be said to mangle with my pen the dead body of the man who came to his death at my hands. And I will not deny that it was at my instance he was arrested, that the prosecutor was set on by me, or that it was by me that the articles of inculpation were drawn up. But all the world knows that since he was convicted of his heresies I never moved to have him punished by death. There needs no more than simple denial from me to rebut the calumnies of the malevolent, the brainless, the frivolous, the fools, or the dissolute.’
There is much in what precedes to challenge comment, and the language, self-condemnatory of the writer in one respect, if not purposely meant to mislead, is yet greatly calculated to do so in another. If Servetus’ teaching was such ponderous folly that it could by no possibility have any influence in the world, why did Calvin proceed against him from the first on the capital charge? It is God, too, who inflicts such stupidity on mankind as makes the intervention of John Calvin necessary to set things right; and the denial and vituperative epithets at the end of the paragraph last quoted do not cover an obvious intention on his part to have the reader conclude that he had had nothing to do with the doom which befel the Spaniard. But Calvin knew that by the law of Geneva the convicted heretic must die; and he had written to his friend Farel on August 20, within a week of the arrest, that he hoped the sentence would be capital at the least—spero capitale saltem judicium fore. All the favour Calvin ever asked for Servetus was that he might die by the sword instead of by brimstone and slow fire. He does not say so much indeed, but it almost looks as if he would have the world believe that he had moved to save the man’s life! We have his own acknowledgment, however, of the active part he took in the prosecution of Servetus at Geneva, and his expressed hope of what the sentence should be. This much he could not deny; the facts of the case put it out of his power. But he always shirked complicity with all that happened at Vienne. There there was underhand dealing and betrayal of trust, and he would fain have the world believe that he had had nothing to do with the ugly business. But here, too, everything we know, is against him, and all he says by way of freeing himself from the charge of having denounced Servetus to the authorities of Lyons seems but to strengthen the conclusion that he did. Calvin was an able man undoubtedly, but he was not a cunning man, and often lets his pen give expression to thoughts of things gone by, which he would not have suffered to appear had he been more artful.
In one of his epistles he says, ‘Nothing less is said of me than that I might as well have thrown Servetus amid a pack of wild beasts as into the hands of the professed enemies of the Church of Christ; for I have the credit given me of having caused him to be arrested at Vienne. But why such sudden familiarity between me and the satellites of the Pope? Is it to be believed that confidential letters could have passed between parties who had as little in common as Christ and Belial? Yet why many words to refute that which simple denial from me suffices to answer! Four years have now passed since Servetus himself spread this report. I only ask why, if he had been denounced by me, as said, he was thereafter suffered to remain unmolested for the space of three whole years? It must either be allowed that the crime I am charged withal is a pure invention, or that my denunciation did him no harm with the Papists.’
True, and answers to all he says are not far to seek. Why the familiarity with the satellites of the Pope? That he might be avenged through them on one whom he regarded at once as a dangerous heretic and a personal enemy. How should confidential letters have passed between parties who had so little in common as himself and the Roman Catholics of Lyons? Because he would have had them the instruments of his vengeance. If denounced by him, as said, how did Servetus remain unmolested for three whole years? Because denunciation for heresy of one who lived in good repute with his friends as a true son of the Church, by another standing in the very foremost ranks of heresy, was taken no notice of by Cardinal Tournon and his advisers.—All that Calvin says now seems but to demonstrate the truth of what we have from Bolsec, and may possibly have been the ground of the warning against the over free expression of his opinions which Servetus is said to have received long before the denouement that followed the printing of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio.’ Calvin continues:
‘Would that the errors of Servetus might have been buried with him; but as his ashes continue to spread a pestiferous stench I go on to expose his heresies, a task delayed till now through no fear of measuring myself with one like him, for I have coped with adversaries much more redoubtable than he, but because I had other work in hand of more importance as I believed. He, however, who contends that it is unjust to punish heretics and blasphemers, I say, becomes their deliberate associate. You tell me of the authority of man; but we have the word of God and his eternal laws for the government of his Church. Not in vain has He commanded us to suppress every human affection for the sake of religion. And wherefore such severity, if it be not for this, that we are to prefer God’s honour to mere human reason.’
But the St. Bartholomew and all the nameless horrors that have been perpetrated in the name of religion and to uphold what is called the honour of God, are the logical outcome of principles that lead to such language. Calvin’s treatment of Servetus was in truth nothing less than a direct encouragement to the Roman Catholics of France to persevere in their atrocities towards the Protestants. Geneva, which had been looked on as the bulwark of independent thought and of freedom to worship God according to conscience came to be regarded as the seat of another Inquisition. All and sundry who pretended to think for themselves, and who did not include Election and Predestination in their creed, must be silent. Did they speak or say a word against the rules and regulations of the modern propounder of the doctrine of God’s partiality, they were mercilessly hunted down, fined, imprisoned, scourged on the back, branded on the cheek, banished from their homes, or, as in the case of Servetus, put to death; even as the moving cause of all these atrocities would himself have been dealt with in France had he there avowed what were there styled the heretical opinions he entertained—the damnable doctrines he taught. Persecution which follows necessarily from the principles on which the Church of Rome is founded, could not be entered on by the Reformed Churches without a total abnegation of those to which they owe their existence.[109]
But it is not with Servetus’s doctrines alone that Calvin occupies himself in his ‘Declaration’ and ‘Defence.’ He must further darken the fame of the man whom he slew, for the consistency and fortitude he displayed when confronted with death, as we have seen him essaying to detract from the purity and probity of his life on his trial. ‘Servetus,’ says Calvin, ‘was only bold when he had no fear of punishment before him; but so overwhelmed was he in face of his impending fate, that he was lost to all and everything about him. Praying with the people he had said were Godless, he yet prayed as if he had been in the midst of the Church of God, and thereby showed that his opinions were nothing to him! Giving no sign of regret or repentance, saying never a word in vindication of his doctrines, what, I ask you, is to be thought of the man who, at such a time, and with full liberty to speak, made no confession one way or another, any more than if he had been a stock or a stone? He had no fear of having his tongue torn out; he was not forbidden to say what he liked; and though at last he declined to call on Jesus as the eternal Son of God (Calvin omits to say that he called devoutly with his latest breath on Jesus as Son of the eternal God), inasmuch as he made no declaration of his faith, who shall say that this man died a martyr’s death?’ ‘Theological hatred,’ says a late esteemed writer,[110] ‘never inspired words more atrociously cruel and unjust than these of Calvin;’ and we do not hesitate to indorse the dictum. Calvin’s challenge of Servetus’s fortitude in the face of death is most unjust. Servetus went bravely to his death; though to him, in the vigour of life, and possessed of all his powers,