The above extracts from confidential letters seem to show that Melanchthon was not himself quite clear as to the sense in which a Trinity of the Godhead was to be understood; a state of mind shared in, unless we much mistake, by more than one among the most influential men of the Swiss Churches, by none more certainly than by Calvin, their great head, himself, as we shall show. Melanchthon indeed in his next letter to the same friend, speaking of Servetus’s assumption that Tertullian did not think the Logos an hypostasis—a distinct substantial reality—proceeds:—‘To me Tertullian seems to think on this subject as we do in public—quod publice sentimus, and not in the way Servetus interprets him. But of these things more hereafter when we meet.’ Melanchthon would not therefore trust in writing, even to an intimate friend, all he thought on the subject of the Trinity; and truly there is matter enough when critically scanned in the first edition of his best-known work—‘The Loci Theologici’ of 1521—that puts him out of the pale of orthodox Trinitarianism.[23]
Neither was Joannes Œcolampadius without something of a fellow feeling for Servetus, although he repudiated his conclusions. Writing to Martin Bucer on July 18, 1531, shortly after the publication of the work on Trinitarian misconception, he informs his friend that he had heard from Capito of Strasburg, who tells him that the book is for sale among them there, and has rejoiced some of the enemies of the Church, as it will also afford matter of gratulation to the Papists of France when they see that writings of the kind are suffered to be published in Germany. ‘Read the book,’ continues the writer, ‘and tell me what you think of it. Were I not busy with my Job, I should be disposed to answer it myself; but I must leave this duty to another with more leisure at command. Our Senate have forbidden the Spaniard’s book to be sold here. They have asked my opinion of its merits, and I have said that as the writer does not acknowledge the coeternity of the Son, I can in no wise approve of it as a whole, although it contains much else that is good—Etiamsi multa alia bona scribat.’[24]
In the days of Philip Melanchthon and Joannes Œcolampadius we therefore see that men had private opinions on subjects to which they were committed by their subscriptions, which differed we know not how widely from their public professions, precisely as among the ancients, and ourselves at the present time: culture would still seem to make an esoteric and an exoteric doctrine a necessity of existence.
Made aware, as we are by these letters of the Reformers, that Servetus’s book was causing a considerable stir both in Switzerland and Germany, it seems, in so far as we have ascertained, to have been entirely neglected by the Roman Catholics of these lands as well as of France. We have searched in vain for any notice of it in French theological writings of the period; neither have we been able to discover, though condemned and ordered to be suppressed by the Emperor Charles V. when brought under his notice by Cochlæus and Quintana at Ratisbon, that it figures at any early date on the Roman Index of prohibited books. There are good reasons for believing, nevertheless, that Servetus’s book on Trinitarian Misconception had a large amount of influence on Italian ground. It had been sent south in numbers; and aware of this Melanchthon took it upon him by-and-by to address the Senate of Venice on the subject, informing them that a highly objectionable work was for sale among them, and suggesting that measures should be taken for its suppression. The Sozzini, uncle and nephew—Lælius and Faustus Socinus—and their followers, the Unitarians, have consequently been seen as the disciples of Servetus, though it may be that they were so only indirectly; for Servetus himself, as we shall find, declares that he does not deny a kind of trinity in the unity of God. But his trinity is modal or formal, not real or personal in the usual sense of the word.
If overlooked by theologians of the Latin races, the work of our author appears to have attracted all the more attention from the men of Teutonic descent who had espoused the cause of the Reformation. In their ranks in the early period of the sixteenth century the intelligence of Europe, in so far as the religious question was concerned, seems to have been concentrated. They took pains to inform themselves generally on all that was going on in the republic of letters, and in so much of it very particularly as bore on the subject they had most at heart. It is among the Swiss and German Reformers consequently that we find any particular notice taken of Servetus’s book on Trinitarian Error. They alone show themselves scandalised by the opinions of its author and his style of expressing them, jealous too, it might seem, at the intrusion of a mere layman into their domain—a phenomenon as yet perfectly unheard of, and startled further by the advances they discovered in the book upon all that they, as inheritors of apostolic traditions in common with their Roman Catholic brethren (from whom in matters of Dogma they differed so little), regarded as the truth. Paul of Tarsus preaching his own independent gospel to the Gentiles, proclaiming the universality of the fatherhood of God, the nothingness of Circumcision, and, in opposition to the whole Levitical code, that all days were alike holy and that it was not what went into the mouth of a man that defiled him, could scarcely have been more ominous to the intolerant Nazarene Church of Jerusalem than was the appearance of this daring innovator upon the religious stage of Germany. His book, everywhere freely sold in the first instance, must have been read by everyone of liberal education, though it became so scarce ere long, denounced and decried as it must have been universally by the ministers, that twenty years afterwards a copy, most pressingly wanted, and eagerly sought after, was nowhere to be found in Switzerland; so effectually had zealotry succeeded in having it committed to the flames!
Strasburg and Basle, however, must have been the emporiums whence the supplies of the ‘De Erroribus Trinitatis’ were sent forth; for after its author’s visit to the capital of Elsass and his happy delivery of this the first-born of his genius at Hagenau, we find him again in Basle and making himself obnoxious to Œcolampadius as before. Writing what we must presume to be a second or third letter to the Reformer, and complimenting him on what he is pleased to style his correspondent’s clear apprehension of Luther’s doctrine of Justification, Servetus goes on to make a personal request. ‘Somewhat fearful of writing to you again,’ he says, ‘lest I should molest you still more than I have already done, I yet venture to ask of you not to interfere with my sending the books to France which I have with me here, the book-fair of Lyons drawing near; for you of all men are better entitled than any one else to pronounce an opinion upon things unheard of until now. If you think it better that I should not remain here, I shall certainly take my leave; only, you are not to think that I go as a fugitive. God knows I have been sincere in all I have written, although my crude style perchance displeases you. I did not imagine you would take offence at what I say of the Lutherans; especially when from your own mouth I heard you declare you were of opinion that Luther had treated Charity in too off-hand a style; adding, as you did, that folks were charitable mostly when they had nothing else to think of. Melanchthon, too, as you know, affirms that God has no regard for charity. Such sayings, believe me, are more hurtful to the soul than anything I have ever written. And this all the more as I see that you are not agreed among yourselves on the subject of faith; for with my own ears I have heard you say one thing, which is otherwise declared by doctor Paulus, otherwise by Luther, and yet otherwise by Melanchthon;[25] and of this I admonished you in your own house; but you would not hear me.
‘Your rule for proving the Spirit, I think, deceives you; for, if in your own mind there be any fear, or doubt, or confusion, you cannot judge truly of me; and this the more because, although you know me in error in one thing, you ought not, therefore, to condemn me in others, else there were none who should escape burning a thousand times over. This truth is forced on us on all hands, most especially perhaps by the example of the Apostles, who sometimes erred. And, then, you do not condemn Luther in every particular, although you are well aware that he is mistaken in some things. I have myself entreated you to instruct me, which, however, you have not done. It is surely an infirmity of our human nature that none of us see our own faults, and so commonly look on those who differ from us as impious persons or impostors. I entreat you, for God’s sake, to spare my name and reputation. I say nothing of others who are not interested in the questions between us. You say that I would have no one punished or put to death, though all were thieves alike; but I call the omnipotent God to witness that this is not my opinion; nay, I scout any such conclusion. If I have spoken at any time on the subject (the punishment proper for heresy), it was because I saw it as a most serious matter to put men to death on the ground of mistake in interpreting the Scriptures; for do we not read that even the elect may err? You know full well that I have not treated my subject in so indifferent or indiscreet a manner as to deserve entire rejection at your hands. You make little yourself of speaking of the Holy Spirit as an angel, but think it a great crime in me when I say that the Son of God was a man.
‘Farewell.
‘Michael Serveto.’[26]
This letter, so characteristic of the writer, is full of interest even at the present hour. Servetus would have Œcolampadius instruct him; but the invariable complaint of all with whom he came in contact was that he could never be made to receive instruction; in other words, secure in his own conclusions, he thought his would-be instructors mistaken in theirs. And this, indeed, for good or ill, is characteristic of all who impress their age, and show themselves leaders in art, in science, in policy, or religion. Genius measures with its own rod, and is its own guide on the way it goes. The world is not moved by men who have all they own from teachers.
But especially worthy of note is the remark our writer makes on the serious responsibility men assume when they put each other to death for mistaken interpretations of Scripture. Had no scholar in modern times before Servetus come to so great and charitable a conclusion, we should still have to hallow the memory of the man who, more than three hundred years ago, had the head and the heart to proclaim so great a principle, in the enforcement of which in all its aspects the better spirits of the world still find such opposition; though it is not now by the infliction of death that bigotry and intolerance revenge themselves on their victims, the advocates of freethought and outspoken religious criticism.