he sacrificed his future reputation to a mistaken sense of duty to the truth and the cause of the
Reformation in Switzerland and his beloved France, where his followers were denounced and
persecuted as heretics. He is responsible, on his own frank confession, for the arrest and trial of
Servetus, and he fully assented to his condemnation and death "for heresy and blasphemy," except
that he counselled the magistrate, though in vain, to mitigate the legal penalty by substituting the
sword for the fire.^79
But the punishment was in accordance with the mediaeval laws and wellnigh universal
sentiment of Catholic and Protestant Christendom; it was unconditionally counselled by four Swiss
magistrates which had been consulted before the execution (Zurich, Berne, Basel, and Schaffhausen),
and was expressly approved by all the surviving reformers: Bullinger, Farel, Beza, Peter Martyr,
and (as we have already seen) even by the mild and gentle Melanchthon. And strange to say,
Servetus himself held, in part at least, the theory under which he suffered: for he admitted that
incorrigible obstinacy and malice deserved death,^80 referring to the case of Ananias and Sapphira;
while schism and heresy should be punished only by excommunication and exile.
Nor should we overlook the peculiar aggravation of the case. We may now put a more
favorable construction on Servetus’ mystic and pantheistic or panchristic Unitarianism than his
contemporaries, who seemed to have misunderstood him, friends as well as foes; but he was certainly
a furious fanatic and radical heretic, and in the opinion of all the churches of his age a reckless
blasphemer, aiming at the destruction of historic Christianity. He was thus judged from his first
book (1531),^81 as well as his last (1553),^82 and escaped earlier death only by concealment, practicing
medicine under a fictitious name and the protection of a Catholic archbishop. He had abused all
trinitarian Christians, as tritheists and atheists; he had denounced the orthodox doctrine of the Holy
Trinity, as a dream of St. Augustin, a fiction of popery, an invention of the devil, and a three-headed
Cerberus.^83 He had attacked with equal fury infant-baptism, as a detestable abomination, a killing
of the Holy Spirit, an abolition of regeneration, and overthrow of the entire kingdom of Christ, and
pronounced a woe on all baptizers of infancy who close the kingdom of heaven against mankind.
He had been previously condemned to the stake by the Roman Catholic tribunal of the inquisition,
after a regular trial, in the archiepiscopal city of Vienne in France, partly on the ground of his letters
(^79) Servetus appeared on a Sunday morning, August 13th, 1553, in one of the churches at Geneva and was recognized by one of the
worshippers, who at once informed Calvin of the fact, whereupon he was thrown into prison. "Nec sane dissimulo," says Calvin (Opera,
vol. VIII., col. 461, ed. Baum, Reuss, etc.), "mea opera consilioque jure in carcerem fuisse conjectum." Beza, in his Vita Calv., reports
the fact as providential that Servetus, "a quodam agnitus, Calvino Magistratum admonente," was arrested. Servetus had previously applied
for a safe-conduct from Vienne to Geneva, but Calvin refused it, and wrote to Farel, February 13th, 1546: "Si venerit, modo valeat mea
auctoritas, vivum exire numquam patiar." During the process, he expressed the hope, in a letter to Farel (August 2nd, 1553), that Servetus
might be condemned to death, but that the sentence be executed in a milder form (Opera xiv., col. 590): "Spero capitale saltem fore
judicium, poenae vero atrocitatem [ignem] remitti cupio." In the same letter he gives a sketch of the system of Servetus as teaching a
pantheistic diffusion of the deity in wood, stone, and even in devils.
(^80) "Hoc crimen," he says in the 27th of his letters to Calvin (Opera VIII., 708), "est morte simpliciter dignum." Calvin refers to this
admission of Servetus (VIII., 462) and charges him with inconsistency.
(^81) De Trinitatis Erroribus Libri Sept. Per michaelem Serveto, aliàs Reves ab Aragonia Hispanum. Anno M. D. XXXI. No place of
publication is given in the copy before me, but it was printed at Hagenau in the Alsace, as appears from the trial at Geneva. The book
excited the greatest indignation in Oecolampadius and Bucer. Luther called it an awfully wicked book (ein gräulich bös Buch). Bucer
thought the author ought to be torn to pieces.
(^82) Christianismi Restitutio ... MDLIII., secretly printed at Vienne in France, with his initials on the last page, M. S. V. (i e.: Villanovanus).
(^83) Such blasphemy of the Trinity appeared to be blasphemy of the Deity itself. Hence Beza calls Servetus "ille sacrae Triadis, id est
omnis verae Deitatis hostis, adeoque monstrum ex omnibus quantumvis rancidis et portentosis haeresibus conflatum."Calv. Vita, ad a.
- He charges his book with being "full of blasphemies." Servetus called Jesus "the Son of the eternal God," but obstinately refused
to call him "the eternal Son of God," in other words, to admit his eternal divinity.