746 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
By the power of the resurrection all the primitive elements of the body and spirit have been renewed, glorified, and immortalized, and all these are communicated to us by Christ in baptism and the Lord's Supper. The Holy Spirit is the breath from the mouth of Christ (John 20 : 22). As God breathes into man the soul with the air, so Christ breathes into his disciples the Holy Spirit with the air. . . . The deity in the stone is stone, in gold it is gold, in the wood it is wood, according to the proper ideas of things. In a more excellent way the deity in man is man, in the spirit it is spirit." ^ " God dwells in the Spirit, and God is Spirit. God dwells in the fire, and God is fire ; God dwells in the light, and God is light ; God dwells in the mind, and he is the mind itself." In one of his letters to Calvin he says : "Containing the essence of the universe in himself, God is everywhere, and in everything, and in such wise that he shows himself to us as fire, as a flower, as a stone." God is always in the process of becoming.^ Evil as well as good is comprised in his essence. He quotes Isa. 45 : 7 : "I form the light, and create darkness ; I make peace, and create evil ; I am the Lord, that doeth all these things." The evil differs from the good only in the direction.
When Calvin charged him with pantheism, Servetus restated his view in these words : " God is in all things by essence, presence, and power, and himself sustains all things." ^ Calvin admitted this, but denied the inference that the substantial Deity is in all creatures, and, as the latter confessed before the judges, even in the pavement on which they stand, and in the devils.* In his last reply to
^ " Deltas in lapide est lapis, in auro est aurum, in li(/no lignum, secundum proprias ideas. Excellentiore iterum modo^ deitas in homine est homo, in spiritu est spiritus : sicid adjectio hominis in Deo est Deus, et adjectio spintus hominis in eo est spiritus sanctus." Rest. 182.
- "Semper est Deus injieri." ^ Calv. Opera, VIII. 518, art. XXXIV.
* Ibid. 550 : " Sed hinc non sequitur in omnibus creaturis substantialem esse deitatem. MuUo minus, quod ipse coram judicibus conjessus est, pavimentum, quod
§ 147. THE THEOLOGICAL, SYSTEM OF SERVETUS. 747
Calvin he tells him : " With Simon Magus you shut up God in a corner ; I say, that he is all in all things ; all beings are sustained in God." ^
He frequently refers with approval to Plato and the Neo- Platonists (Plotin, Jamblichus, Proclus, Porphyry ).2
But his views differ from the ordinary pantheism. He substitutes for a cosmopantheism a Christopantheism. Instead of saying, The world is the great God, he says, Christ is the great God.^ By Christ, however, he means only the ideal Christ ; for he denied the eternity of the real Christ.
4. Anthropology and Soteriology.*
Servetus was called a Pelagian by Calvin. This is true only with some qualifications. He denied absolute predestination and the slavery of the human will, as taught first by all the Reformers. He admitted the fall of Adam in consequence of the temptation by the devil, and he admitted also hereditary sin (which Pelagius denied), but not hereditary guilt. Hereditary sin is only a disease for which the child is not responsible. (This was also the view of Zwingli.)
pedibus calcamus, deitatis esse particeps, et in diabolis omnia deorum esse plena." In his Institutes (1. I. ch. 13, § 22), Calvin calls the promiscuous confusion of the Son of God, and the Spirit with all the creatures, " the most execrable " (^omnium maxime execrandum) of the opinions of Servetus.
^ " Cum Simone Mago tu Deum in angido recludis : ego eum dico esse omnia in omnibus. Entia omnia dico in Deo sustineri." In his abusive notes on Calvin's articles, written in prison. Opera, VIII. 548.
2 He also quotes for the same purpose Philo, Plutarch, Parmenides, Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, and the Jewish rabbis, Aben-Ezra and Moses Egyptius.
3 " Mundum Zoroaster et Trismegistus dixerunt, esse magnum Deum. Nos Christum dicimus esse magnum Deum, mundi dominum, et omnipotentem. . . . lesus Christus, factor mundi, fuit et est in Deo suhstantiallter, verius quam mundus, et per ipsum mundus secundaria in Deo consistlt." liest. 213. " Unicum est principium, unica verbi lux, lux omniformis, et caput omnium, lesus Christus dominus noster, principium creaturarum Dei." P. 162.
* See here the book De Regeneratione superna, et de regno Antichristi, in the Bestit., pp. 355 sqq.