770 THE REFORMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
of Christ, and infant baptism. He gave evasive or orthodoxsounding answers. He confessed to believe in the trinity of persons, but understood the word "person" in a different sense from that used by modern writers, and appealed to the first teachers of the Church and the disciples of the apostles.^ He denied at first that he had called the Trinity three devils and Cerberus ; ^ but he had done so repeatedly and confessed it afterwards. He professed to believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God according to his divinity and humanity ; that the flesh of Christ came from heaven and of the substance of God; but as to the matter it came from the Virgin Mary. He denied the view imputed to him that the soul was mortal. He admitted that he had called infant baptism "a diabolical invention and infernal falsehood destructive of Christianity." This was a dangerous admission ; for the Anabaptists were suspected of seditious and revolutionary opinions.
He was also charged with having, "in the person of M. Calvin, defamed the doctrines of the gospel and of the Church of Geneva." To this he replied that in what he had formerly written against Calvin, in his own defence, he had not intended to injure him, but to show him his errors and faults, which he was ready to prove by Scripture and good reasons before a full congregation.
This was a bold challenge. Calvin was willing to accept it, but the Council declined, fearing to lose the control of the affair by submitting it to the tribunal of public opinion. The friends of Servetus would have run the risk of seeing
1 "Respond quit croit en lessence divine en troys personnes et quil na point dogmatise en celle sorte. Vray est quil prent le nom de personne aultrement que les modernes ne le prennent et quil le prent comment les premiers docteurs de leglise et disciples des apotres lont prys." Opera, VIII. 738. I retain the ancient spelling.
■^ " Interroge sil entend que la Trinite soit troys diables et soit troys [uw] Cerberus, respond que non, et quil ne la point diet en ceste sorte et quil ne le veult point maintenir." Comp. with this the passage in his letter to Poupin which was afterwards produced in evidence and acknowledged by him : " Pro uno Deo habetis tricipitem Cerberum."
§ 151. THE FIRST ACT OF THE TRIAL. 771
him defeated in public debate. That charge, however, which seemed to betray personal ill-feeling of Calvin, was afterwards very properly omitted.
On the following day, the 16th of August, Berthelier, then smarting under the sentence of excommunication by the Consistory, openly came to the defence of Servetus, and had a stormy encounter with Colladon, which is omitted in the official record, but indicated by blanks and the abrupt termination: "Here they proceeded no further, but adjourned till to-morrow at mid-day."
On Thursday, the 17th of August, Calvin himself appeared before the Council as the real accuser, and again on the 21st of August.^ He also conferred with his antagonist in writing. Servetus was not a match for Calvin either in learning or argument ; but he showed great skill and some force.
He contemptuously repelled the frivolous charge that, in his Ptolemy, he had contradicted the authority of Moses, by describing Palestine as an unfruitful country (which it was then, and is now). He wiped his mouth and said, " Let us go on ; there is nothing wrong there."
The charge of having, in his notes on the Latin Bible, explained the servant of God in the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, as meaning King Cyrus, instead of the Saviour, he disposed of by distinguishing two senses of prophecy — the literal and historical sense which referred to Cyrus, and the mystical and principal sense which referred to Christ. He quoted Nicolaus de Lyra; but Calvin showed him the error, and asserts that he audaciously quoted books which he had never examined.
As to his calling the Trinity " a Cerberus " and " a dream of Augustin," and the Trinitarians "atheists," he said that he did not mean the true Trinity, which he believed himself,
1 On this and the subsequent encounter we have also an account from Calvin in his "Defence," which is more minute than the official report. Opera, VIII. 743 sqq.