730 THE KEFOKMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
that Servetus was an incorrigible and dangerous heretic, who deserved to die.^ But he did nothing to induce him to come to Geneva, as he wished, and left him severely alone. In 1548 he wrote to Viret that he would have nothing more to do with this desperately obstinate heretic, who shall force no more letters from him.^
Servetus continued to trouble Cahdn, and j)ublished in his Restitutio no less than thirty letters to him, but without dates and without replies from Calvin.'^ They are conceived in a haughty and self-sufificient spirit. He writes to the greatest divine of the age, not as a learner, or even an equal, but as a superior. In the first of these printed letters he charges Calvin with holding absurd, confused, and contradictory opinions on the sonship of Christ, on the Logos, and on the Trinity. In the second letter he tells him : " You make three Sons of God : the human nature is a son to you, the divine nature is a son, and the whole Christ is a son. . . . All such tritheistic notions are a three-headed illusion of the Dragon, which easily crept in among the sophists in the present reign of Antichrist. Or have you not read of the spirit of the dragon, the spirit of the beast, the spirit of the false prophets, three spirits? Those who acknowledge the trinity of the beast are possessed by tlu^ee spirits of demons. These thi-ee spirits incite war against the immacu-
^ See p. 692. Bolsec speaks of a similar letter to Viret, from which he quotes this passage : " Servetus cupit hue venire, sed a me accessitus. Ego autem nunquam commitlam, ut fidem meam eotenus ohstrictam habeat. lam enim constitutum habeo, si veniat, nunquam pati, ut salvus exeat." But no such letter has been found. Perhaps it was the same as the letter to Farel, which may have been sent first to Viret, as Farel was at that time in Metz (Henry, III. 133). Bolsec asserts also (p. 21) that Calvin informed the Cardinal de Tournon of the heresy of Servetus, but that the Cardinal laughed at the idea of one heretic accusing another.
2 "A me nihil posthac extorquebit." See Henry, II. 460; III. 1.34.
3 Restit. pp. 577-664 ; reprinted in Calvin's* Opera, VIIT. 645-714, from Chr. Theoph. de Murr's ed., with marginal variations of the Paris copy. The manuscripts are not extant.
§ 145. CORRESPONDENCE OF SEKVETUS. 731
late Laiiib, Jesvis Cluist (Apoc. 16). False are all the invisible gods of the Trinitarians, as false as the gods of the Babylonians. Farewell." ^ He begins the third letter with the oft-repeated warning (^scejnus te monui) not to admit that impossible monster of three things in God. In another letter he calls him a reprobate and blasphemer (improhus et hlanphemuH) for calumniating good works. He charges him with ignorance of the true nature of faith, justification, regeneration, baptism, and the kingdom of heaven.
These are fair specimens of the arrogant, irritating, and even insulting tone of his letters. At last Servetus himself broke off his correspondence with Calvin, who, it seems, had long ceased to answer them, but he now addressed his colleagues. He wrote three letters to Abel Poupin, who was minister at Geneva from 1543 to 1556, when he died. The last is preserved, and was used in evidence at the trial.^ It is not dated, but must have been written in 1548 or later. Servetus charges the Reformed Christians of Geneva that they had a gosj)el without a God, without true faith, without good works ; and that instead of the true God they worshipped a three-headed Cerberus. " Your faith in Christ," he continues, " is a mere pretence and without effect ; your man is an inert trunk, and your God a fabulous monster of the enslaved will. You reject baptismal regeneration and
1 " Draconis fiiit kcec triceps tUusio, qua in sophistas facile irrepsit, instante regno Antichristi. An non legisti ibi spiritum draconis, spiritum bestice, et spiritum pseudoprophetce tres spiritus? Tres sunt vere doiinoniorum spiritus, a quibus occupati tenentur, qui bestice trinitatem agnoscimt. Orbem hi tres spiritus concitant contra agnum immaculatum lesum Christum, Jilium Dei, apo. 16. Falsi ergo sunt trinitariorum invisibiles dii, adeo falsi, sicut dii Babyloniorum : cum prcesertim dii illi in Babylone colantur. Vale." Restil. pp. 580, 581.
2 It was not signed, but written very legibly by his own hand, and was acknowledged as his. Henry gives a facsimile of it at the end of his third volume, from the archives of Geneva. It is reprinted in Opera, VIII. 750 sq. " Every line of this letter," as Dyer (p. 309) well says, " betrays the heated and fanatical imagination of the writer, and his hatred of Calvin and the Genevese Church."