788 THE REFOBMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
in the use of language, deceitful, and mendacious. He abused popery and the Reformers with unreasonable violence. He conformed for years to the Catholic ritual which he despised as idolatrous. He defended his attendance upon mass by Paul's example in visiting the temple (Acts 21 : 26), but afterwards confessed at Geneva that he had acted under compulsion and sinned from fear of death. He concealed or denied on oath facts which he had afterwards to admit.^ At Vienne he tried to lie himself out of danger, and escaped ; in Geneva he defied his antagonist and did his best, with the aid of the Libertines in the Council, to ruin him.
The severest charge against him is blasphemy. BuUinger remarked to a Pole that if Satan himself should come out of hell, he could use no more blasphemous language against the Trinity than this Spaniard ; and Peter Martyr, who was present, assented and said that such a living son of the devil ought not to be tolerated anywhere. We cannot even now read some of his sentences against the doctrine of the Trinity without a shudder. Servetus lacked reverence and a decent regard for the most sacred feelings and convictions of those who differed from him. But there was a misunderstanding on both sides. He did not mean to blaspheme the true God in whom he believed himself, but only the three false and imaginary gods, as he wrongly conceived them to be, while to all orthodox Christians they were the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit of the one true, eternal, blessed Godhead.
He labored under the fanatical delusion that he was called by Providence to reform the Church and to restore the Christian religion. He deemed himself wiser than all the fathers, schoolmen, and reformers. He supported his delusion by a fanciful interpretation of the last and darkest book of the Bible.
^ ToUin {Charakterbild, p. 38) defends Servetus's veracity by resolving his contradictory statements into innocent errors of memory and comparing them to the variations in the four Gospel narratives !
§ 157. CALVIN'S DEFENCE OF THE PENALTY. 789
Calvin and Farel saw, in his refusal to recant, only the obstinacy of an incorrigible heretic and blasphemer. We must recognize in it the strength of his conviction. He forgave his enemies; he asked the pardon even of Calvin. Why sliould we not forgive him? He had a deeply religious nature. We must honor his enthusiastic devotion to the Scriptures and to the person of Christ. From the prayers and ejaculations inserted in his book, and from his dying cry for mercy, it is evident that he worshipped Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour.^
§ 157. Calvhis Defence of the Death Penalty for Heretics.
The public sentiment, Catholic and Protestant, as we have seen, approved of the traditional doctrine, that obstinate heretics should be made harmless by death, and continued unchanged down to the close of the seventeenth century.
But there were exceptions. As in the case of the execution of the Spanish Priscillianists in the fourth century, the genuine spirit of Christianity and humanity raised a cry of indignation and horror through the mouths of St. Ambrose of Milan, and St. Martin of Tours ; so there were not a few in the sixteenth century who protested against the burning of Servetus. Most of these — Lelio Socino, Renato, Curio, Biandrata, Alciati, Gribaldo, Gentile, Ochino, and Castellio — were Italian refugees and free-thinkers who sympathized more or less with his heretical opinions. It was especially three professors in the University of Basel — Borrhaus (Cellarius), Curio, and Castellio — who were sus-
'^ Best. p. 356 : " 0 Christe Jesu, domine Deus noster, adesto, veni, vide, et pugna pro 7iobis." P. 576: "0 pater omnipotens, pater misericordia, eripe nos tniseros ab his tenebris mortis, per nomen Jilii tui Jesu Christi domini nostri. 0 Jili Dei, Jesu Christe, qui pro nobis mortuus es, ne moreremur, succitrre, iie moriamnr," etc. Comp. also the prayer at the beginning of his book, quoted above in § 146.