the rest. But they, too, still showed more or less of the ‘mark of the
Beast.’ They had rid themselves of the Mass and Transubstantiation, of
compromises for sin by payments in money, of monkeries, nunneries, the
invocation of saints, prayers to the Virgin, and so on; but they had
retained much that was objectionable--particularly a Trinity of persons
in the Godhead (tantamount, said Servetus, to the recognition of three
Gods instead of one God), and infant baptism.

By their strenuous insistance on the effects of Adam’s transgression
as compromising mankind at large, and Abraham’s readiness to sacrifice
his only son, they had moreover interspersed the religion of Christ
with such an amount of Judaism that their Christianity was in many
respects a relapse into the bonds of the Law, from which Christ had set
us free. A reformation of the Church had been commenced, therefore,
but was by no means completed; much still remained to be done; the
world was waiting, in fact, for a better interpretation of Christ’s
life and doctrine as contained in the Gospels, and this the studies
and meditations of Michael Servetus, he believed, qualified him in no
mean measure to supply. Hence the books on Trinitarian Error and the
Restoration of Christianity; and hence, also, the hostility of Calvin
and his followers, who were minded that they had already reformed and
restored, and verily represented, or were in fact, the true Church.

Like the leaders of other bands of enthusiasts of which the world
has seen so many, Servetus, relying on the New Testament record,
thought that the day was at hand when Christ should appear in the
clouds to judge the world and consummate all things. He overlooked
the fact that Paul, whom he resembled in so many respects, had had
the same fancy fifteen hundred years before him, and that matters had
nevertheless gone on much as they had always done, without the day of
judgment having dawned. Calvin with his educated understanding and
his experience of the world, ought to have seen Servetus as the pious
enthusiast he was in fact, and not as the enemy of God and Religion,
as well as of himself. Failing to cure him of his extravagant fancies,
he might safely have left him to indulge them, as being little likely
to compromise his own or any other system of Christianity, the Papacy
perhaps excepted, to which the would-be Restorer was truly much more
violently opposed than the Reformer. But hate had blinded Calvin;
considerations personal to himself had complicated and in some sort
superseded such as were associated with religion.

On the subject of Faith, to which Calvin’s system gave much less free
play than Luther’s, we find Servetus siding with him of the North
rather than him of the South. Neither of them, however, as we have
seen, had any conception of faith in the way Servetus understood
it. Faith, says he, consists in a certain compliant state of mind,
proclaimed by unquestioning assent. This, the true saving faith, is
of the kind avowed by Peter when he declared Jesus to be the Christ,
the Son of the living God. Yet faith even of this kind, distinctly as
it has the lead in Servetus’s Christology, is not yet all in all: to
become efficient or saving, it must be conjoined with Charity. ‘If
faith be not clothed with charity,’ says he, ‘it dies in nakedness;
and as habit is strengthened by action, the body by exercise, and
the understanding by study, so is faith strengthened by good works.’
The subject-will and fatalism, asserted by Calvin in his doctrine of
predestination and election, have therefore no real foundation in
Scripture; nay more, there is unreason in the assumption of such a
principle, and in the admonition given to mankind to do that which it
must be known beforehand they cannot do. ‘You speak,’ says our writer,
‘of free acts, yet really say that there is no such thing as free
action. But who so devoid of understanding as to prescribe free choice
to one incapable of choosing freely! It is mere fatuity besides to
derive subject-will from this: that it is God who acts in us. Truly God
does act in us; but in such wise that we act freely. He acts in us so
that we understand and will, choose, determine, and pursue. Even as all
things consist essentially in God, so do all things proceed essentially
from him. The Spirit of God is innate in man, and as the power to do is
one thing, so is the necessity to do another. Although God elects us as
the potter does his clay, it by no means follows that we are nothing
more than clay. Paul’s simile deceives you; it is not universally
applicable.’

The Law of Moses, Calvin has said, is still in force and to be observed
by us as truly as it was by the Jews; violating it, he says, we
violate the Law of God. Servetus’s reply to this is the burden of the
Twenty-third and three following Letters. ‘I fancy I hear some Jew or
Mussulman speaking here,’ says our respondent. ‘But to what is violence
done--is it to a stone, or to certain letters cut in a stone? Christ,
I say, accomplished the Law and then it was abrogated; in him we have
the New Covenant, the Old superseded; in him are we made free. The law
of Moses was unbearable; it slew the soul, it increased sin, it begat
anger; virtue itself through it became at times transgression, and
in compassion for our frailty it was annulled. You make God exercise
a rude and miserable people in a mill-round. What would you say were
some tyrant to require mountains of gold or the stars of heaven from
your Genevese, and threaten them with death for non-compliance with
his demands? But the Old Law bound men to impossibilities. Art thou
not then ashamed of slavery and tyrannical violence? Insisting on the
observance of this law, you yet go on dreaming with your Luther, and
saying that no one ever entirely fulfilled the commandment which says
“thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and soul.”
David and others, then, who said that they sought God with all their
heart and strove with all their might to keep his commandments,
are but liars to you. _And what, after all, are the laws of Moses?
If conformable to Nature then are they the laws of God, the author
of Nature, older than Moses, and to be observed of Christians
independently of Moses._ But God never required obedience of the kind
you imagined; he but asks of each according to his strength. Cease
then, O Calvin, to torture us with the law of Moses, and to insist on
its observance. It looks as if you had a mind to be pitied of God in
your impotency--of God who may be said so often to have had to take
pity on the Jews when they were under the law.’ Who shall say that
Michael Servetus was not in advance of John Calvin?

The twenty-seventh, eighth, and ninth epistles are only significant
as expositions of doctrinal views in their bearing on social life.
Is it lawful, he asks, for a Christian to assume the magistracy? to
administer the laws of the land and to take the lives of evil-doers? Of
course it is. The order of the world is maintained by law and justice.
But then to take life? Where there is hope of amendment, as in the case
of the woman taken in adultery, we see the penalty of death remitted:
Go, said Jesus to her, and sin no more. But even where there is malice
and unyielding obstinacy, recourse is to be had to chastisement of
other kinds than taking life. Among these, banishment, approved by
Christ, and excommunication, practised by the Church, are to be
commended. Schism and heresy were punished in this way whilst traces
of apostolic tradition remained. Criminals, in matters not pertaining
to the faith, are variously punished by the laws of every country; and
this is in conformity with natural law. They bear the sword aright and
lawfully who bear it in the cause of justice and to the repression of
crime; and it is not against gospel precepts that we serve as soldiers
in defence of our lives and possessions.

Servetus, we find, accords rather extensive powers to Bishops, whom,
in opposition to Calvin, he recognises, and to Ministers of the Church
generally. Bishops, like good shepherds, are to know their flocks, and
to take care that no infection gets in among them; ministers again--he
does not use the word priests--are privileged to reconcile sinners to
God, and to punish unbelievers by excommunicating them and delivering
them over to Satan and spiritual death. Their authority, however, is
only to be exercised under the guidance of the Spirit--what spirit he
does not say. Confession, too, he approves of, but the minister is not
to be consulted save in case of some grave doubt or difficulty arising.

Our writer is greatly displeased with Calvin’s interpretation of the
parable of the labourers in the vineyard, in which like wages are given
to those hired at every hour of the day; from which the Reformer infers
that there is no difference or distinction in glory, in faith, or in
works. ‘To you truly,’ says Servetus, ‘there needs no distinction as
to less or more; for with you these are all alike of non-avail, some
as you maintain being saved with, as some are saved without, merit of
their own. But it is faith that of the impious makes the pious, of the
dead the living. Ignorant of all gospel truth is he who does not attach
supreme significance to faith in Christ as the Son of God.’

The concluding epistle of the series must have given great offence to
Calvin, the writer reproaching him with setting the Christian on no
higher level than the vulgar Jew. ‘They are alike to you, indeed, alike
carnal, because to you are the benefits of Christ’s coming unknown;
to you who in the Supper partake of nothing more than a trope or
figure, and who treat baptism as the equivalent of a Levitical rite,
the sign of a thing that is not. But in the Supper we, nourished by
immortal food, for a terrestrial have a new celestial life imparted
to us, and how should he perish who has once partaken of Christ? May
God give you to receive all these things with a true understanding,
led by the spirit of truth, by Jesus Christ and the Father. Amen.’
Scouting the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, as he did, we
here find Servetus speaking as if he believed that it was the body of
Christ indeed that was partaken of in the Supper! To understand this
in him his pantheistic notions must again be taken into account. But
pantheism, when not detached from the idea of _personality_, in the
usual acceptation of the word, leads inevitably to such absurdity.
Speaking as he does now, Servetus forgets his philosophy and yields
himself up to his mysticism. With as much justice might he have said
that Cannibals partake of God when they eat one another, as that the
Christian communicant partakes of Christ when he joins the simple,
solemn, commemorative feast.

CHAPTER XVII.

‘CHRISTIANISMI RESTITUTIO’--THE RESTORATION OF CHRISTIANITY--DISCOVERY
OF THE PULMONARY CIRCULATION.

We have seen that Servetus could never recover his MS. of the
Restoration of Christianity from the hands of Calvin. But he had not
sent his work for the review of the Reformer without retaining a copy
for himself, and this he determined now to have printed and sent
abroad into the world. With this view he forwarded the Manuscript to
a publisher of Basle, Marrinus by name, with whom--if we may infer so
much from the address of the publisher’s letter to him declining the
work--he must have been on terms of intimacy. Marrinus’s letter is
short, to the point, and in the following terms:--

‘Gratia et pax a Deo, Michael carissime!--the grace and peace of God be
with you, dearest Michael! I have received your letter and your book;
but I fancy that on reflection you will see why it cannot be published
at Basle at this present time. When I have perused it [more carefully]
I shall therefore return it to you by the accredited messenger you
may send for it. But I beg you not to question my friendly feelings
towards you. To what you say besides I shall reply at greater length
and more particularly on another occasion. Farewell! Thy

  MARRINUS.

  ‘Basle, April 9, 1552.’

The MS., even on a cursory perusal, had evidently frightened the worthy
publisher of Basle: he would have nothing to do with it; but this did
not put our author from his purpose of publication. Not going so far
afield as Basle, he took Balthasar Arnoullet, bookseller and publisher,
and William Geroult, manager of his printing establishment, both of
Vienne, into his confidence, giving them to understand that though the
book he wished to have printed was against the doctrines of Luther,
Calvin, Melanchthon, and other heretics, there were many reasons why
neither his name as the author, nor Vienne as the place of publication,
should appear on the title-page.

Arnoullet, like Marrinus, must have had misgivings about the reception
the book was likely to meet with from the clergy of France, and, aware
of the danger he incurred who printed and published aught out of
conformity with the doctrines of the holy Roman Catholic and Apostolic
Church, he too must have declined in the first instance to undertake
the work. But Michel Villeneuve had been prosperous; he had money in
his purse, and engaging not only to take the whole of the expenses on
himself, but to add a gratuity of 100 crowns to the cost, Arnoullet
consented at last to run the risk of publication, meaning, however,
that the world at large should know nothing of him as instrumental in
the business. No one then knew that Secerius of Hagenau had printed
the ‘De Trinitatis Erroribus,’ or that its author, Michael Servetus,
was Doctor Villeneuve. Why should it ever transpire that Balthasar
Arnoullet of Vienne had printed the ‘Restitutio Christianismi,’ or
that Monsieur Michel Villeneuve the physician was its writer? To keep
the secret within their own circle, therefore, the work must not
be composed in the usual place of business, and none but the most
indispensable hands be employed upon it. A small house, away from the
known printing establishment, was accordingly taken; type cases and
a press were there set up, and the work once entered on proceeded
regularly without interruption during a period of between three and
four months, when the impression, consisting of 1,000 copies, was
successfully worked off.

Arnoullet, although we shall by and by find him declaring his entire
ignorance of the burden of the book, and charging his manager, Geroult,
with having deceived him on this head and by misrepresentations induced
him to meddle with the publication at all, must nevertheless have been
well aware of its nature. The measures taken to keep the outside world
in ignorance of what was going on, the arrangement with the author to
be his own reader for press, and the premium paid, give the lie to
all his asseverations. Servetus, too, in his determination to keep
his name from the title-page, and leave this blank of the place of
publication, shows that neither was he blind to the danger that waited
on the production of such a book as the Restoration of Christianity
in Roman Catholic France. The printing press, though eagerly welcomed
on all hands at first, soon fell out of favour with the Church of
Rome, and so continues with that conspiracy against the rights, the
liberties, and the progress of mankind. But Michael Servetus was too
vain, too thoroughly persuaded of his own apostolic mission to the
world, to leave his book, the crowning labour of his life, without some
sufficient mark of its paternity. On the last page, accordingly, we
find the initials of his name and designation in capital letters, thus,
M.S.V., immediately over the date MDLIII., the year of the intended
publication. But even so much was not wanted to proclaim the author.
Innocently or inadvertently he says in his Preface that he had formerly
treated briefly of the subjects he is now about to discuss at greater
length; and in the body of the work he may even be said to make his
appearance in person, and in his proper name; for we there have Michael
and Peter as interlocutors, precisely as in the old ‘Dialogi ij de
Trinitate’ of the year 1532.

Printed with every precaution to secure secrecy, with nothing
intentionally about it to lead the uninitiated to suspect what was
meant by the M.S.V. at the end, or a hint, even had it been divined
that Michael Servetus Villanovanus was thereby indicated, to show that
he and Michel Villeneuve of Vienne were one and the same personage, it
is obvious that the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ was not intended for
publication or sale either in Vienne or France--probably not even in
Basle or Geneva, in the first instance. Villeneuve would keep the place
where he lived, and the country that sheltered him, as well as the
nearest neighbouring land, out of the storm which he plainly foresaw
would be raised by his daring innovations on accredited Christian
doctrine, and his more than Luther-like denunciations of the Papacy.
The whole impression was therefore made up into bales of 100 copies in
each, of which five were confided to the safe keeping of Pierre Merrin,
typefounder of Lyons--a brother in all likelihood of the Marrinus of
Basle, with whose name we are already acquainted--in view of their
being forwarded by water to Genoa and Venice. A bale or two we know
were sent by Arnoullet to his agent at Frankfort; and as Frelon was now
in the secret of Servetus, we can hardly doubt of his having taken some
share in the venture and despatched at least a bale to the same great
emporium of the book trade. It must have been from Frelon, indeed, that
Calvin by and by obtained the couple of copies of the ‘Restitutio’ he
required for the purposes of the prosecution he had instituted against
its author; and it is almost certainly to him, not to Robert Etienne,
the bookseller of Geneva, as has been said, that Calvin refers in
his letter to the Frankfort Clergy ‘as a well-disposed person who
will put no obstacle in the way of the seizure and destruction of the
obnoxious book which he has learned had been sent for exposition and
sale among them.’ The remainder of the impression--and there could now
have been little of it left on hand--for safe stowage away from the
Archiepiscopal city of Vienne, was confided by Arnoullet to the custody
of a friend, Bertet by name, resident at Chatillon.[59]

The book on the ‘Restoration of Christianity,’[60] often spoken
of, though so rare as seldom to be seen, comprises a series of
disquisitions on the speculative and practical principles of
Christianity, as apprehended by the author; thirty letters to John
Calvin; a disquisition on as many as sixty signs of the reign of
Antichrist, and an apologetic address to Philip Melanchthon and his
followers.

‘The task we have set ourselves here,’ says the Author in his Preface
or Introduction, ‘is truly sublime; for it is no less than to make
God known in his substantial manifestation by The Word and his divine
communication by the Spirit, both comprised in Christ, through whom
alone do we learn how the divineness of the Word and the Spirit may
be apprehended in Man. Hidden from human sight in former times, God
is now both manifested and communicated to the world, manifestation
taking place by the Word, communication by the Spirit, to the end
that we may see him face to face as it were in Creation, and feel him
intuitively but lucidly declared in ourselves. It is high time that
the door leading to knowledge of this kind were opened; for otherwise
no one can either know God truly, read the Scriptures aright, or be a
Christian.’

How much the writer is in earnest is farther proclaimed by the
Invocation to Christ and the Address to the Reader with which he
concludes his Introduction: ‘O Christ Jesus, Son of God, Thou Who
wast given to us from heaven, Thou Who in Thyself makest Deity
visibly manifest, I, Thy servant, now proclaim Thee, that so great a
manifestation may be made known to all. Grant then to Thy petitioner
Thy good Spirit and Thy effectual Speech; guide Thou his mind and his
pen that he may worthily declare the glory of Thy Divinity, and give
pious utterance to the true faith concerning Thee. The cause indeed is
Thine, for by a certain Divine impulse it is that I am led to speak of
Thy Glory from the Father. In former days did I begin to treat of this,
and again do I enter upon it; for now am I to be made known to all the
pious; now truly are the days complete, as appears from the certainty
of the thing itself and the visible signs of the times. The Light Thou
hast said is not to be hidden; so woe to me do I not evangelise!

‘It rests with thee, then, O Reader, that thou show thyself well
disposed towards Christ, even to the End, and that thou hear our
subject discussed at length in words of truth without disguise.’

After a somewhat careful perusal of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’
we know not how it could be better or more briefly characterised,
in its theoretical portion at least, than as a paraphrase and
new interpretation of the Gospel according to John, in which the
Neo-platonic doctrine of the Logos is particularly discussed, and
copiously interfused with pantheistic ideas, whilst the dogmatic
teaching of the Church of Rome and its practical application is
repudiated _in toto_, and the chief doctrines of Lutheran and
Calvinistic Christianity are controverted.

Assuming the leading positions of the writer as guides, we should say
that in his philosophy he regards the world as a manifestation and
communication of God in time and space, manifestation taking place,
as he says, through the Word, communication through the agency called
Spirit. The first of things in which God showed Himself, he says, was
Light, which he speaks of as uncreated--_lux increata_, essence or
first principle of things--all existence, all generation being effected
by the energising power of light. In, and of, and first manifested
by light, God, however, is not identified therewith, any more than
with the things of creation, in all of which he is still held to be
immanent. God indeed in himself is supersensuous and incomprehensible,
for he transcends all things--mind as well as matter. When not sought
to be defined by negatives, God is to be thought of as Absolute Being,
and all existence, as deriving from him, is to be accounted divine,
although in diverse degrees.

The manifold manifestations which God makes of himself in nature are
referred to a single dispensation or mode, the mode of the Plenitude of
Substance, which comprises all other modes or dispensations in their
endless diversity, patterns or types of all things that be having
been present in the mind of God before they were in themselves. An
architypal universe is therefore assumed as having existed before the
actual world came into being, and this, says Servetus, is the Logos
of Scripture and Philosophy--the Divine Reason, wherein reflected
all things showed themselves visibly. _Ea ipsa erat λὀγος erat ratio
mirifica in qua omnia visibiliter relucebat._ The Logos--Divine
Word, Divine Wisdom, God himself, in fact--it is that is revealed
or manifested in Creation, as in the fulness of time it also became
incarnate in Christ; for, even as before Creation the world existed
ideally in God, so before the incarnation was Christ potentially
present in the Divine mind as the Divine word, in the same way as the
future plant is extant in the seed. From the beginning, therefore, it
was a virtual or potential Son, not any actual co-eternal Son, who
existed beside the Father, the Son first acquiring form and substance
in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and being made participant of the
Holy Spirit at the moment of his birth when he began to breathe; for
Servetus assimilated the abstraction entitled Spirit to breath or wind:
God, say the Scriptures, breathed into the nostrils of man and he
became a living soul.

Possessed, as he was, by the principles of the Neo-platonic and
other more ancient philosophies, Servetus assimilates Christ to
the Demiurgos, and makes of him the architect and fashioner of the
world--_ille mundi Architectus Christus_--Creator even of the elements
from which, intermingled, are educed the substantial forms of things.
How this was brought about if Christ only became a reality at his
birth, he does not say. But it is not a little interesting to note how
nearly our own Great King of transcendental song approaches some of
these fancies of our author, for Milton too speaks of Light as

            Offspring of heaven firstborn,
    Or of the eternal coeternal beam;
                 Since God is light,
    And never but in unapproached light,
    Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee,
    Bright effluence of bright essence increate.

A little further on he also has the Son as Agent in Creation:--

    And thou, my Word, begotten Son, by thee
    This I perform: speak thou and be it done.

Creation ended, he continues:--

    The filial Son arrived and sat him down
    With his great Father!

Into what labyrinths are men led when they give the rein to
imagination, and the demon of speculation divorced from science is
suffered to have his uncontrolled way!

Coming to a more particular analysis of the ‘Restitutio,’ we find the
first book treating of the man Jesus, in which he is shown to be, 1st,
Man; 2nd, Son of God; and 3rd, God.

I. The name Jesus [Joshua, Hebraice], says Servetus, is the name of a
man and was given on the day of the Circumcision; the cognomen Christ
[Χρίστος, Græce, the anointed], was bestowed by the Disciples, but
never admitted by the Jews, who only knew Jesus as the son of Joseph.
There was indeed frequent discussion among the disciples themselves,
whether Jesus was the Messiah or not; and we know that kings, in virtue
of the anointing at their coronation, were entitled Christs--Cyrus, for
instance, is called Masach by the Prophet, the word Christ being no
more than the Hebrew title translated into Greek.

II. It is as a Son of God,--υἵος Θεοῦ--that Jesus is spoken of in the
Scriptures. But if so, then is he to be thought of as engendered by
God as thou by thy father. God, it is true, is in a certain sense the
Father of all men as he is of Jesus; but we are his sons by adoption
as Jesus is his Son by nature. Jesus, indeed, was believed to be
the son of Joseph, but he was truly the Son of God, having, without
any sophistry, been engendered of his substance: the Word of God
overshadowed the Virgin like a cloud, and acted in her as generative
dew, comparable to the shower from heaven that causes the earth to
bring forth flowers and fruit. It follows, therefore, that the son of
the Virgin is also truly, naturally, the Son of God.

III. Christ is God, and is so called because in him is God
substantially, corporeally present; for he is God by his geniture as
by his flesh he is man (p. 15), God and man being truly conjoined in
one substance and made one body, one new man. As the Father is true
God, so, in bestowing his divineness (_Deitas_) on his only Son, did he
cause it to be that the Son should be true God.

Having spoken of God and Christ, he treats next of the Trinity. In the
beginning, it is said, was the word, Ὁ λὀγος, an expression whereby
inward Reason and outward Speech are implied. Some, says the writer,
have held that God can be defined no otherwise than by negations: ears
have not heard God speak, save by the voice of man; hands have not
touched Him, for He is incorporeal; place holds Him not, for He cannot
be circumscribed; and time gives no measure of Him, for, infinite, He
is without beginning and without end. But all this only speaks of what
God is not; it does not teach what God is. Now, no one knows God who
is ignorant of the mode in which He has willed to manifest Himself to
us, plainly exposed though it be in the sacred oracles. These, however,
the Sophists do not believe, because they will not see God in Christ
(p. 111). In the Word made flesh, in the face of Jesus Christ it is
that we see the Light--God Himself--shining upon us. In thinking of the
engenderment of Christ, and his appearance on earth, the veil of any
intervening time is to be rejected; Christ being to be conceived of as
having been eternally engendered in the mind of God, but only begotten
of his substance in time in the womb of the Virgin Mary. The man Christ
is therefore, and because of this, fitly spoken of as the first-born
Son of God, begotten before all worlds (pp. 56, 57), substantially
visible before creation, and possessed of eternal substance--_visibilem
cum_ (_Christum_) _substantialiter ante omnia fuisse et substantiam
æternam habere_ (p. 57)--the meaning of which we imagine to be this:
that the idea of Christ, present in the mind of God from eternity, took
form by his immediate agency in the womb of Mary, the wife of Joseph,
whose son the man Jesus was believed by his contemporaries to be,
though he was indeed the Son of God.

One of the items of transcendental belief, therefore, in which Servetus
differed wholly from the Reformers, had reference to the coeternity
of the Father and the Son. On this head he says particularly, ‘If
there were in eternity two incorporeal beings alike and equal, then
were these Twins rather than a Father and Son; and were a third Entity
added, like and equal to the other two, then were there a threefold
Geryon produced.’ These words, and others of corresponding import, were
found highly objectionable or blasphemous by the Reformers, as we have
already had occasion to say.

In connection with this part of his subject the writer adds several of
the comments he had appended to the Pagnini Bible, particularly the one
in which he discusses the verse of Isaiah, beginning: ‘A virgin shall
conceive and bear a son,’ &c., in which he maintains that the Almah,
the marriageable woman mentioned, refers immediately to Abija, the
youthful wife of Ahaz, then pregnant with Hezekiah.

Thus far advanced, it is now that we find the pantheistic conceptions
of our author most fully enunciated. Referring to the words quoted by
St. Paul, ‘In God we live, and move, and have our being,’ Servetus
maintains that God is in all things, and all things are in God; in his
own words, ‘It is God who gives its ESSE or essential being to every
existing thing--to inanimate creation, to living creatures in general,
and to man in especial.’

The fifth book treats of the Holy Spirit. ‘As the essence of God is
the Word,’ says our author, ‘in so far as manifestation is made in
the world, so, and in so far as communication is made, it is Spirit;
manifestation and communication, however, being ever co-ordinate and
conjoined. It is spirit that is the architype, eternally present in
God, from whom it proceeds’ (p. 163). And it is in this place that our
author explains or illustrates some of his metaphysical positions by
a reference to Anatomy, with which in various interesting particulars
he shows himself more satisfactorily intelligible than in his
transcendental speculations.

‘There is commonly said to be a threefold spirit in the body of man,
derived from the substance of the three superior elements--a natural,
a vital, and an animal spirit; there are, however, not really three,
but only two distinct spirits. One of these, the first, characterised
as _natural_, is communicated from the arteries to the veins by
their anastomoses, and is primarily associated with the blood, the
proper seat or home of which is the liver and veins. The second is
the _vital_ spirit, whose seat or dwelling-place is the heart and
arteries. The third, the _animal_ spirit, comparable to a ray of light,
has its home in the brain and nerves. In each and all of these is the
force--_energeia_--of the one spirit and light of God comprised. Now,
that the natural spirit is imparted from the heart to the liver, and
not from the liver to the heart, is proclaimed by the formation of man
in the womb; for we see an artery associate with a vein sent from the
mother through the navel of the fœtus; and in the adult body we always
find an artery and a vein conjoined. But it was truly into the heart of
Adam that God breathed the breath of life or the soul. From the heart,
therefore, it is that life is communicated to the liver; for by the
breathing into the mouth and nostrils it was that the soul was first
truly imparted, the breath tending directly to the heart.

‘The heart is the first organ that lives, and, situate in the middle of
the body, is the source of its heat. From the liver the heart receives
the liquor, the material as it were of life, and in turn gives life
to the source of the supply. The material of life is therefore derived
from the liver; but, elaborated as you shall hear, by a most admirable
process, it comes to pass that the life itself is in the blood--yea
that the blood is the life, as God himself declares (Genes. ix.; Levit.
xvii.; Deut. xii.).

‘Rightly to understand the question here, the first thing to be
considered is the substantial generation of the vital spirit--a
compound of the inspired air with the most subtle portion of the blood.
The vital spirit has, therefore, its source in the left ventricle
of the heart, the lungs aiding most essentially in its production.
It is a fine attenuated spirit, elaborated by the power of heat, of
a crimson colour and fiery potency--the lucid vapour as it were of
the blood, substantially composed of water, air, and fire; for it is
engendered, as said, by the mingling of the inspired air with the
more subtle portion of the blood which the right ventricle of the
heart communicates to the left. This communication, however, does not
take place through the septum, partition or midwall of the heart, as
commonly believed, but by another admirable contrivance, the blood
being transmitted from the pulmonary artery to the pulmonary vein, by
a lengthened passage through the lungs, in the course of which it is
elaborated and becomes of a crimson colour. Mingled with the inspired
air in this passage, and freed from fuliginous vapours by the act of
expiration, the mixture being now complete in every respect, and the
blood become fit dwelling-place of the vital spirit, it is finally
attracted by the diastole, and reaches the left ventricle of the heart.

‘Now that the communication and elaboration take place in the lungs
in the manner described, we are assured by the conjunctions and
communications of the pulmonary artery with the pulmonary vein. The
great size of the pulmonary artery seems of itself to declare how the
matter stands; for this vessel would neither have been of such a size
as it is, nor would such a force of the purest blood have been sent
through it to the lungs for their nutrition only; neither would the
heart have supplied the lungs in such fashion, seeing as we do that the
lungs in the fœtus are nourished from another source--those membranes
or valves of the heart not coming into play until the hour of birth,
as Galen teaches. The blood must consequently be poured in such large
measure at the moment of birth from the heart to the lungs for another
purpose than the nourishment of these organs. Moreover, it is not
simply air, but air mingled with blood that is returned from the lungs
to the heart by the pulmonary vein.

‘It is in the lungs, consequently, that the mixture [of the inspired
air with the blood] takes place, and it is in the lungs also, not in
the heart, that the crimson colour of the blood is acquired. There
is not indeed capacity or room enough in the left ventricle of the
heart for so great and important an elaboration, neither does it
seem competent to produce the crimson colour. To conclude, the septum
or middle partition of the heart, seeing that it is without vessels
and special properties, is not fitted to permit and accomplish the
communication and elaboration in question, although it may be that some
transudation takes place through it. It is by a mechanism similar to
that by which the transfusion from the _vena portæ_ to the _vena cava_
takes place in the liver, in respect of the blood, that the transfusion
from the pulmonary artery to the pulmonary vein takes place in the
lungs, in respect of the spirit.

‘The vital spirit (elaborated in the manner described) is at length
transfused from the left ventricle of the heart to the arteries of the
body at large, and in such a way that the more attenuated portion tends
upwards, and undergoes further elaboration in the retiform plexus of
vessels situated at the base of the brain, in which the _vital_ begins
to be changed into the _animal_ spirit, reaching as it now does the
proper seat of the rational soul. Here, still further sublimated and
elaborated by the igneous power of the soul, the blood is distributed
to those extremely minute vessels or capillary arteries composing the
choroid plexus, which contain or are the seat of the soul itself.
The arterial plexus penetrates even the most intimate part of the
brain, its constituent vessels, interwoven in highly complex fashion,
being distributed over the ventricles, and sent to the origins of the
nerves which subserve the faculties of sensation and motion. Most
wonderfully and delicately interwoven, these vessels, although spoken
of as arteries, are really the terminations of arteries proceeding to
the origins of nerves in the meninges. They are in truth a new kind
of vessels; for, as in the transfusion from arteries to veins within
the lungs we find a new kind of vessels proceeding from the arteries
and veins, so, in the transfusion from arteries to nerves, is there a
new kind of vessels produced from the arterial coats and the cerebral
meninges.’ ‘Chr. Rest.’ p. 170.

There can be no question as to the fact that, in the above quotation,
the passage of the blood from the right to the left side of the heart
through the lungs by the pulmonary artery and vein, is proclaimed,
and a farther transmission of its more subtle part at least from the
left ventricle of the heart to the arteries of the body is indicated.
After so much said, however, the account halts. There is no notice of
any transfusion from the arteries to the veins of the body, and so
of a _return_ of the blood by their means to the right side of the
heart--nor do we believe that anything of the kind was present to the
mind of the writer. The truth is that Servetus was not thinking of
a circulation of the blood in the sense in which we understand the
term, but of a means of engendering the vital and animal spirits. ‘The
blood,’ he says happily and well, ‘is not sent to the lungs in such
large quantity for their nourishment only. As in the fœtus, so in the
adult are they nourished from another quarter.’ To Servetus as to his
age the liver was the fountain of the blood, and the venous system
connected with it the channel by which materials for the growth and
nourishment of the body were supplied. The heart again was the source
of the heat of the body, and, with the concurrence of the lungs, the
elaboratory of the vital spirits; the arterial system in connexion with
it being the channel by which the spirit that gives life and special
endowment to the bodily organs is distributed.

Though Servetus saw that the black blood which is attracted, as he
says, by the diastole of the heart from the vena cava acquires the
florid colour in its passage through the lungs, he never hints at
the black blood of the systemic veins having been the florid blood
of the arteries. We are not, however, to overlook his remark, though
it is only by the way, of ‘the natural spirits being communicated
from the arteries to the veins by their _anastomoses_.’ Servetus may
consequently have had an _intimation_ of the systemic circulation; but
he did not think out his thought. He does not speak of an intermediate
system of vessels between the arteries and veins of the body as of
certain other corresponding vessels of the lungs; and when we find
him making the arteries of the brain terminate in the nerves or
meninges--the source of the nerves to the old physiologists, we can
only conclude that he believed the arteries of the body to end in like
manner in the several tissues to which they are distributed. From what
he says further concerning the life of the fœtus in utero, we learn
positively that Servetus had not divined the systemic circulation. ‘The
embryo lives through the soul of the mother,’ says he, ‘it is as it
were a part of the mother, the vital spirit being communicated to it by
the umbilical arteries.’ Instead of _afferent_ canals of the blood from
the heart of the fœtus to the placenta of the mother, consequently,
Servetus believed the umbilical arteries to be _efferent_ channels of
the vital spirit of the mother to the heart of the fœtus. He at the
same time, doubtless, saw the umbilical veins as the channels by which
material for its growth and nutrition was brought from the mother to
be distributed by the venous system proceeding from the liver and vena
cava, in conformity with the physiological views of his age. Servetus
did not think of the fœtal heart save as the passive recipient of life.
He never heard its rapid tick tack, nor dreamt of it any more than he
did of the heart of the adult as the agent in the general distribution
of the blood in a great circle from arteries to veins, from veins to
arteries, unbroken in the embryo, but complicated when independent life
is assumed by the necessary passage through the lungs.

Imperfectly, incompletely, therefore, as the great function of the
circulation is conceived by Servetus, his account of so much of it as
belongs to the pulmonary system is all his own and an immense advance
on aught that had been imagined before. Had his ‘Restoration of
Christianity’ been suffered to get abroad in the world and into the
hands of anatomists, we can hardly imagine that the immortality which
now attaches so truly and deservedly to the great name of Harvey would
have been reserved for him. But save to a few theologians, who gave
no heed to his physiological speculations, Servetus’s book remained
unknown in the republic of letters, for more than a century after it
had fallen from the press--no naturalist had seen it during all that
time. So effectually had it been hunted out and made away with, that
of the thousand copies printed, two only, as we have seen, are now
known to survive. The ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ of Michael Servetus,
consequently, never influenced either speculation or discovery in
connection with the circulation of the blood. But reading the book
as we are now suffered to do, let us not overlook in its author the
Physiological Genius of his age. Who shall say what amount of influence
the ‘Restoration of Christianity’ might have had upon both Science
and Religion had it been suffered to see the light! For it is not the
possession only, but the pursuit of truth that truly ennobles man; and
in Servetus’s incomplete induction in the sphere of physics we see
the path fairly entered on that has given to modern science all its
triumphs. Nor pause we here: in the domain of letters and criticism,
he is nowise less in advance of his age than in physiology. Who
among biblical scholars before Servetus had seen the applicability
of so much that is said in the Psalms and prophetical books of the
Jewish Scriptures to men and events contemporaneous with, when they
had not preceded, the times in which their authors lived? Servetus’s
contemporaries among the Reformers without exception set out from the
_letter_ of the New Testament as the source of their faith, the warrant
for the conclusions they built upon its text. But he declared that
_there was a Christian Doctrine before there was any New Testament_;
and we now know that this came not into existence until thirty, forty,
sixty, and in parts as many as 150, years had passed after the great
moral teacher of Nazareth had expiated his superiority to the shows and
superstitions and errors of his day by the cruel death of the cross.

Had biblical criticism become a science a century sooner than it did,
the world might now by possibility be nearer the goal of truth as
regards the Religious Idea than it is, and grave doubts have sooner
arisen as to the competency of the barbarous Jews to solve the mystery
of the ‘Something not ourselves’ which we are led by our nature to
conceive and think of as _Cause_, and to imagine as over and above this
‘bank and shoal of Time,’ whereon we pass our lives.

Quitting physiological discussion for his proper subject, our author
approaches the practical part of his theory of Christianity. Faith
is the first element, and is spoken of as an emotion rather than a
cognition--a spontaneous movement of the heart, not an act of the
understanding, its essence being belief in the man Jesus Christ as
the Son of God (pp. 297-300). The end and object of the whole New
Testament teaching, he says, is to lead men to a belief of this kind
(p. 293), whereby they are reconciled and made acceptable to God,
conceive a detestation for sin and become exemplars and exponents of
the Christian virtues--Love, Hope, and Charity. ‘Faith of this kind,’
he continues, ‘makes us aware of our poverty, of our misery. For if we
believe that the man Jesus is the Son of God, the Saviour of the world,
we already admit that the world lies in sin and so needs saving.’

Unlike the other Reformers of the Church, Servetus, in this his latest
work as in his first, makes much less of the Fall of Man and the wrath
of God as consequences of Adam’s transgression. Original sin can hardly
be said to have a place in his system. Sin, he even says, was not
brought forth on earth, but arose in heaven, through a revolt of the
angels under Satan, who, utterly opposed to God in all things, seduced
man from his allegiance and so obtained the empire which it was the
purpose of Christ’s coming to regain. Instead of holding the heart of
man as utterly evil and corrupt, he says, ‘that good works are proper
and spontaneous to the individual. By the death of a sinless being on
whom, as sinless, Satan had no hold, he was thrown out of the law,
forfeited the rights he had acquired, through the disobedience of man,
and God recovered the empire he had lost.’ Satan, therefore, performs
a highly important part in the Christology of Servetus; but it differs
notably from that both of the Roman Catholic and Reformed Churches, in
this: that Christ does not suffer death to satisfy divine justice and
reconcile God to mankind, but to traverse the Devil in the rights he
had acquired by guile. But all such speculations belong to a former age
of the world. They are the fossils of the speculative stratum in the
nature of man, and only of interest now to reasonable people as records
of the chimæras and incongruities that are engendered by imagination
dissevered from science, when the understanding, instead of leading, is
led, and the unknowable is assumed as foundation adequate to support
conclusions affecting the lives of men in this world and their fate in
Eternity.

Servetus then makes little or nothing of the ‘Corruption of human
nature’ as consequence of Adam’s transgression, so much insisted on by
the Reformed Clergy, and he entirely rejects their assumption of man’s
incompetence of himself to do anything good. Satan, however, is still
seen as the opponent of God in the Restored as in the Reformed system.
‘The Devil intruded himself into all flesh,’ says our ‘Restorer.’
‘_Satan is Sin dwelling within us_, and to us is disease and death (p.
385); these being the consequences of Adam’s transgression (p. 358).’
So much our author felt himself bound to accept in a literal sense,
for so he finds it written; but he proceeds forthwith to interpret
the text in his own way, and declares that _Adam’s transgression
brought no real guiltiness on mankind; for such can never be incurred
through another’s, but only through each man’s own deed_, a previous
knowledge of what is good and evil being the indispensable condition to
responsibility. But as a knowledge of good and evil is only attained
when men arrive at years of discretion, so did Servetus think that
mortal sin was not committed, nor even guilt incurred, before the
twentieth year (pp. 363 and 387). Though made subject to corporal death
and _scheol_ by Adam’s fault, men do not for this die spiritually;
they will be restored at the last day when Christ comes to judge the
world: ‘As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive’ (1
Corinth. xv.), say the Scriptures [of the apostle Paul]; and these
words, according to our author, mean that men will not be condemned to
the second or spiritual death because of Adam’s disobedience, but only
when, knowing good and evil, they have done much amiss of themselves.
Servetus, therefore, speaks of that as a punishment for sin to which
teeming nations of the East look forward as reward for the ills of
life--Nirwana, a state of unconscious, everlasting rest! Servetus
himself has no special place,--no hell either of temporary or eternal
torture for wrong-doing.

We do not remember to have met with the word _atonement_ in Servetus’s
writings. He had evidently passed beyond the idea of the vengeful
Hebrew God and the shedding of blood as a propitiatory means believed
in by the Christians of his day, and still so commonly accepted in our
own; Servetus’s religion was as comprehensive as that of his great
Master. ‘Turks,’ says he, ‘pray aright when they address themselves
to God, though they neither know nor believe that God ever promised
anything to the patriarchs.’

JUSTIFICATION is the dogma that is next entered on, and is said to be
by _grace_: ‘We are justified,’ says Servetus, following Paul, ‘when we
believe in Christ as the Son of God,’--in the way he apprehended the
sonship, being of course to be understood. But, escaping from leading
strings, we find him elsewhere declaring, and still in advance of his
day, that all who of their own natural motion lead good lives, be
they Jews or Pagans, are justified before God, and that the good life
suffices to have men resuscitated in glory. ‘God,’ says he, ‘does not
repute us just of his own good grace only, but also by the merits of
our works; in other words, of our lives.’

In the book on the perdition of the world and its restoration
by Christ, which follows, our author has much on the subject of
baptism--the means or preliminary, in his eyes, to REGENERATION. He
will not, however, allow that unbaptized infants can possibly be
looked on as lost souls. ‘The little children whom Christ blessed,’
says he, ‘were not baptized. How should the most clement and merciful
Lord condemn those who had never sinned? Did he ever say to the little
ones unbaptized: Go ye accursed into everlasting fire? How should
he curse those he blessed? They seem to me to attempt to befool me
who say that the salvation of an unconscious infant depends on my
will to baptize or to leave it unbaptized.’ Opposed to the baptism of
infants as a meaningless and inefficient ceremony, Servetus was all the
more emphatic in his insistence on the indispensableness of the rite
performed later in life. ‘Jesus was circumcised indeed as an infant,’
says he, ‘but only baptized when he was thirty years of age. We ought
not, therefore, to approach the LAVER OF REGENERATION before this age
if we would imitate Christ.’ ‘Pædobaptism,’ says he, ‘is a detestable
abomination, an extinction of the Holy Spirit in the soul of man, a
dissolution of the Church of Christ, a confusion of the whole Christian
faith, an innovation whereby Christ is set aside and his kingdom
trodden under foot. Woe to you, ye baptizers of infancy, for ye close
the kingdom of heaven against mankind--the kingdom of heaven into which
ye neither enter yourselves, nor suffer others to enter--woe! woe!’ He
who is baptized in his infancy, consequently, who believes that he is
properly baptized and so neglects the regenerative rite in years of
discretion, according to Servetus, loses his chance of instant entrance
into Christ’s kingdom on his death. In his comprehensive charity,
however, we fancy Servetus must have a salvo for such neglect, though
we have missed it. If he has failed to set it forth in words, we feel
assured that it was nevertheless alive in his heart.

In the book on the Power of Satan and Antichrist, Servetus attacks
the Papacy in terms of measureless reprobation, likening the Pope to
the Antichrist of the Apocalypse, calling him the son of perdition,
and speaking of his dominion as the reign of God’s opposite on earth
(p. 393). In exalting himself above his fellow-men and requiring them
to look on him as a god, the Pope has usurped the forbidden kingdom.
The imposition of a spiritual papacy, he maintains, has brought more
mischief on the spiritual world than the carnal Adam brought on the
world of flesh. For his sin was Adam condemned to the pain of corporeal
death, and for theirs are the beast and his ministers (the pope and his
council) doomed in the Apocalypse to the pains of everlasting fire (p.
394).

Against monastic vows of all kinds, Servetus is here most vehemently
outspoken. According to him, they are mere sacrileges of tradition.
He does not object to the celibate life, however, which he says he
has chosen for himself; but Peter, he thinks, would be amazed did he
see the shaven, cowled, and bedizened priests engaged in their mimic
play, whereby they lead the people to the most open idolatry. But it
is the mendicant monk that he has in more especial abhorrence. Him he
compares to the locust, which, eating up everything it encounters,
leaves desolation behind. ‘The locust,’ he says, ‘has by nature a sort
of monk’s cowl; add to this a wallet, and you have a begging friar
complete; in other words, a hooded devil.’

In the book on the Lord’s Supper, our author speaks of course of the
papistical transubstantiation, the annihilation of the _bread_ as bread
and its transmutation into mere _whiteness_. ‘I rather wonder,’ says
he, ‘whether Satan was the circumcisor of common sense from the brains
of those who of _bread_ make _not-bread_, and in its stead produce a
vendible whiteness; for these puny sacrificators, for a mouthful of
whiteness given without wine, make us count out our money (p. 510).
To such degradation of mind are these men brought that they call that
the true body of Christ, which, in the whiteness they imagine, rats
and dogs might devour. Never was there any such blindness as this
among the Jews--blindness the more notable as the Papists say they are
infallible (p. 511). But as circumcision of the foreskin makes the Jew,
and circumcision of the heart the Christian, so does circumcision of
the scalp make the sham Jew, the papal sacrificial priest and slave of
Antichrist.’

He is scarcely more complimentary when he speaks of the views of
the Reformers on the subject of the Supper, styling the Lutherans
_Impanators_, and the Calvinists _Tropists_, the Roman Catholics being
of course _Transubstantiators_. If we understand him aright, he looks
on the Supper as something more than a simple commemorative feast,
to be first partaken of immediately after adult baptism, to which it
is the necessary complement; but we are startled after what, as we
interpret it, he has just said in this sense, when we by and by find
him speaking as if he believed that the body and blood of Christ were
really partaken of in the Christian Communion (p. 281 and Letter xxx.
to Calvin). The contradictory statements met with in the writings of
Servetus, however, as we have had occasion oftener than once already to
say, can only be harmonised by taking note of his pantheistic views. In
the instance before us, for example, on the pantheistic principle, as
God is in and of the substance of all things, so was He in Christ, or
Christ, in so far, was God. In consonance with the _letter_, therefore
the bread and wine of the solemn rite are flesh and blood. The language
of mysticism, however, is often little intelligible to the naturalist,
who in his incapacity here may be likened to those who, with ears
otherwise acute, cannot distinguish certain extremely acute or grave
sounds, or who, with eyes otherwise excellent, see no difference
between such opposite colours as red and green. Like the Reformers of
all denominations, Servetus maintained the CUP to be an indispensable
element in the celebration of the Supper. In the Papal Mass, he says,
there is no true Communion. The bread is not broken in common, and
the wine is appropriated by the Sacrificator, even as the Babylonian
Priests of old appropriated the oblations of the altar: ‘Quorban,’ says
the Popish Priest as he drinks, to the lookers on, ‘it will do you
good, too.’ (p. 522).

Singularly enough, when we think of what he has to say in disparagement
of the Roman Catholic priesthood, we find him recognising in
_ministers_ a power to absolve men from their sins and reconcile them
to God--_potestas ministris est remittendi peccata et reconciliandi
homines Deo_ (p. 516). This, we can only conclude, is said because of
what he found in the Sacred Text;[61] no word of which, as we know,
would he gainsay. But that Michael Servetus, mystic though he was,
believed in his soul that one man can absolve another of his sin, we
do not think possible. He did not surmise that the fourth gospel was
only written a hundred and fifty years after the death of Jesus, and by
a Neo-platonic philosopher, presumably of Alexandria, fashioner, like
Paul of Tarsus, of a Christology and Christianity of his own.

In illustration of the character of the man, the study of whose
life engages us, the prayer with which he concludes the book on the
‘Restoration of Christianity’--for here the work does end in fact, all
that follows being but by way of appendix--ought not to be overlooked.
It is in immediate sequence to a renewed phillipic against the
baptizers of infants, and to the following effect:--

‘Almighty Father! Father of all mercy, free us miserable men from
this darkness of death, for the sake of thy Son Jesus Christ Our
Lord. O Jesus Christ, thou Son of God, who died for us, help us, lest
we perish! We, thy suppliants, pray to thee as thou hast taught us,
saying, Hallowed be thy Name; thy kingdom come; and do thou, Lord,
come! thy bride the Church, praying in the Apocalypse, says, Come! The
spirits of thy children, praying here, say, Come! Let all who hear this
pray and cry aloud, and with John exclaim, Come! Thou Who hast said, I
come quickly (Apocalypse xxii.) wilt surely come, and with thy coming
put an end to Antichrist. So be it. Amen!’

The first of the additions to the system of ‘Restored Christianity’ are
the thirty letters to Calvin, which we have already analysed, in what
seemed the appropriate place.

The book or chapter on the ‘Sixty signs of the reign of Antichrist, and
of his presence among us,’ which follows, need not detain us. The signs
are for the most part arbitrarily assumed by the writer, on the ground
that his own views are the truth, those of the Papists and Reformers
mistaken, false, or short of the truth. Having shown to his own
satisfaction that every evil-doer, in the shape of an exalted personage
who has ever appeared in the world, even from Satan, Nimrod, and
Nebuchadnezzar, prefigured the Pope, and that the Pope is Antichrist,
he then very logically concludes that all the dogmas and doctrines
sanctioned by the Papacy are of the Devil. Under this category he
places the doctrine of the Trinity in the foremost rank, then the
Baptism of Infants, the Mass, Transubstantiation, all but everything,
in short, characteristic of Roman Catholic Christianity. As in so many
other places, he is here also ready with a prayer, which we quote as
ever-recurring testimony to the sincerely, but misunderstood, pious
nature of the man:--

‘O Christ Jesus, Son of God, most merciful Liberator, who hast so often
freed thy people from their straits, free us too from this Babylonian
Captivity of Antichrist, from his hypocrisy, his tyranny, his idolatry!
Amen.’

The concluding part of the ‘Restoration of Christianity’ is an address
to Melanchthon and his colleagues on the Mystery of the Trinity and
the discipline of the ancient Church. We have seen that Melanchthon
of all the Reformers was the one who seemed to be most taken by the
theological speculations of the seven books on Trinitarian error. ‘I
read Servetus a great deal,’ says he to his friend Camerarius; and
if he found the work objectionable in many respects, as he says, it
yet contained matter that would not be put aside, but that forced
itself on his attention, and may be presumed to have influenced his
final conclusions on some of the highest and most difficult doctrines
of orthodox Christianity. Certain it is that the first and earlier
editions of his highly popular work, the ‘Loci Theologici,’ differ
notably from those that appeared subsequently to the publication
of Servetus’s ‘De Erroribus Trinitatis.’ In the first and earlier
editions there is nothing said of God, whether as One or Triune,
of Creation, the Incarnation, and other purely speculative matters.
‘These subjects,’ he says, ‘are wholly incomprehensible, and we more
properly adore than attempt to investigate the mystery of Deity. What,
I ask you,’ he continues, ‘has been the outcome of the scholastic
and theological discussions that have gone on for all these ages?’
But the metaphysics of Christianity were not passed over in any such
way by Servetus. His earliest work even meets us in some sort as a
complementary criticism of the ‘Loci’ of Melanchthon, and that it was
so held by the Reformer seems to be demonstrated by the many changes
and additions to be noticed in the revised edition of the work of the
year 1535, the first that was published after the appearance of the ‘De
Erroribus Trinitatis’ and ‘Dialogi duo de Trinitate.’[62]

Finding himself very freely handled in the revised editions of the
‘Loci,’ his _errors_, as they are designated as matter of course, being
assimilated to those of Paul of Samosata and others, and his references
to Tertullian and the ante-Nicæan Fathers proclaimed irrelevant,
Servetus retorts, and, throwing moderation to the winds, proceeds
in the diatribe we have before us to pour out the vials of his
displeasure on the head of the great Wittemberg scholar and theologian.
Our Restorer of Christianity does, it is true, see Melanchthon as
somewhat nearer the mark than Luther, Calvin, and Œcolampadius; but the
references made to Athanasius, Augustin, and the Fathers who came after
the Council of Nicæa, are all put out of court--their conclusions are
of non-avail; for they had all bowed the knee to the Beast, and bore
his mark. The true Church of Christ had already forsaken the earth in
their day, and their teaching on the Trinity, Baptism, the Supper, &c.,
was nought. Strange to say, as proceeding from a scholar, himself no
indifferent master of the Latin tongue, he reproaches Melanchthon with
the elegance of his Latinity. The Holy Ghost, says he, never spoke in
fine phrases! (P. 674.)

It is difficult to conceive a man not utterly bereft of reason and
common sense, living among Roman Catholics and in times of deadly
persecution for heresy, writing in the style of Servetus on the Papacy
and the most accredited tenets of Christianity. Yet is it impossible
to imagine that he was blind to the danger he incurred in doing so;
neither do we believe that he knowingly and advisedly staked his life
against the cause he certainly had so much at heart. He may have said,
indeed, that he believed he should die for his opinions; but we see him
taking what he must have meant as sufficient precautions against such
a contingency; and when first brought face to face with the prospect
of accomplishing the destiny he foreshadowed, we find him showing
anything but the recklessness of the true martyr. We presume that the
security in which he had dwelt so long under his assumed name, the
immunity from suspicion of heresy he had enjoyed since the publication
of his first work, and the latitude allowed him by his clerical friends
of Vienne in discussing the heresies of the Reformers--and it may be
also some of a minor sort of their own--misled him. His seven books on
erroneous conceptions of the Trinity appear to have been little, if at
all, known to the ecclesiastics of France; and he probably imagined
that in appealing to the press again and keeping his work from the
booksellers’ shops of the country of his adoption, he would continue
to be overlooked. Anything of a heretical nature he should publish now
might possibly be challenged by the German and Swiss Reformers; but
they were heretics in the eyes of the Viennese, and, provided he did
not openly proclaim himself the author, their ill report, if perchance
it ever reached France, would do the author of the ‘Restoration of
Christianity’ no harm, if it did not even tend to exalt him among
orthodox adherents of the Church of Rome.

Every reasonable precaution therefore taken that the new book on the
Restoration of Christianity should not get abroad in France, Servetus
seems to have thought himself safe against detection and pursuit. He
was in fact altogether unknown, as we have said, in the place of his
residence as Michael Serveto, alias Revés, of Aragon, in Spain. He
was M. Michel Villeneuve, Physician of Vienne, and living under the
patronage of its Archbishop. There was, however, so strong a family
likeness between the ‘Seven Books and Two Dialogues on Trinitarian
Error’ and the ‘Restoration of Christianity,’ or the views therein
contained, that the most cursory comparison of the two works would
have disclosed their common parentage, even if the writer of the
‘Restoration’ had not himself hinted plainly enough at the fact. He
must have thought himself perfectly safe in his incognito at Vienne,
and seems not to have dreamt of danger from abroad. There could be no
reason, therefore, why Calvin, and through him the other Reformers
of Switzerland, should not be made aware of what he had been about.
He would in truth take his place beside or above them all as the
real Restorer of Christianity, proclaimer, as he believed himself to
be, of the true doctrine concerning Christ as the naturally begotten
Son of God; of the Salvation to be secured by faith in him as such;
of the Regeneration to be effected by baptism performed in years of
discretion, and of the absurdity implied in imagining division in the
essence of God, and instead of the One great Creator of heaven and
earth, having a Three-headed chimæra for a Deity! In this view, as we
conclude, he sent a copy of his book to Calvin; and with consequences
which it will now be our business to follow to their disastrous
conclusion; for all that remains of the life of Michael Servetus, cut
short in the flower of his age, is entirely subordinated to influences
brought to bear on it through the printing of this work and the
interference of the Reformer of Geneva.[63]

CHAPTER XVIII.

CALVIN RECEIVES A COPY OF THE ‘CHRISTIANISMI RESTITUTIO.’

Frelon, the publisher of Lyons, whom we already know as the medium of
communication between Villeneuve and Calvin in their correspondence,
was probably by this time in the secret of the Spaniard. The friend of
Calvin as well as intimate with Villeneuve, had he not already been
confided in by the subject of our study, he must have been informed by
Calvin who Michel Villeneuve really was. The correspondence had long
ceased, but the intercourse between the Bookseller and the Reformer
continued, and the ‘monthly parcel’ was still the vehicle for new books
and literary gossip between Lyons and Geneva. By Frelon’s February
dispatch of the year 1553, we therefore conclude that there went a
copy of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ hot from the press, specially
addressed to Monsieur Jehann Calvin, Minister of Geneva. That it was
accompanied by a letter from Frelon we may also presume, giving in all
innocency and confidence--little recking what use would be made of the
information--those particulars connected with the printing of the work
which Frelon must have had from Villeneuve, and which Calvin by and by
imparted to the authorities of Lyons and Vienne.

Frelon may be supposed not yet to have read the ‘Christianismi
Restitutio;’ but aware of Villeneuve’s appreciation of the Church
of Rome, and trusting to the author’s own account of his work as
especially hostile to the papacy, he may have thought that it would not
be otherwise than well received by Calvin. It is only with Frelon as
go-between that we can account for the book having reached Calvin at
the early date it did, and for the particular information he possessed
concerning Arnoullet as the printer, and the precautions that had been
taken to keep the world ignorant of what had been done. That there was
no intention of betraying trust on Frelon’s part, we need not doubt;
and still less, as we believe, need we question the fact that it was
not only with the author’s consent, but by his express desire, that the
first copy of the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ sent abroad went to the
Reformer.

Servetus himself could at this time have had as little idea, as Frelon,
of the deadly hate with which Calvin was animated towards him. They
had corresponded and differed, had quarrelled and called each other
opprobrious names; but controversialists did so habitually, when they
got heated; and the epithets then so freely bandied about were scarcely
seriously meant, and hardly ever seriously taken: they were but the
seasoning to the matter, nothing more. Servetus was in truth far too
vain, and at the same time too much under the spell of Calvin, to
leave him of all men else in ignorance of the important work of which
he had just been happily delivered. With the earliest opportunity
therefore that occurred, and before the book had been seen by another,
as we believe, he sent a copy to Calvin, meaning it doubtless as
a compliment--a return perhaps for the copy of the ‘Institutiones
Religionis Christianæ’ we credit him with having received from its
author.

It is not difficult to imagine the alarm that must at once have taken
possession of Calvin’s mind when he saw the errors, the heresies, the
blasphemies, as he regarded them, which in bygone years he had vainly
sought to combat, now confided to the printed page and ready to be
thrown broadcast on the world. And more than this: if his ire had been
already roused by the strictly confidential correspondence to the
extent of leading him to threaten the life of the writer, did occasion
offer, what additional anger must now have entered into his heart,
when, besides the offensive heretical matter of the book, he found
himself taken to task, publicly schooled, declared to be in error, and
his most cherished doctrines not only controverted, but proclaimed
derogatory to God, and some of them even as barring the gates of heaven
against all who adopted them! What, too, on second thoughts, may have
been his exultation when, in perusing the book, he found his enemy
committing himself so egregiously in abusing the Papacy, and supplying
evidence that would convict him at once of blasphemy against God and
the Church, and, in sending him to the stake--as he foresaw it must in
a Roman Catholic country--would rid the world at once of an agent of
Satan, and a personal enemy!

CHAPTER XIX.

CALVIN DENOUNCES SERVETUS THROUGH WILLIAM TRIE TO THE ECCLESIASTICAL
AUTHORITIES OF LYONS.

Calvin’s mind must have been immediately made up after perusing the
‘Restoration of Christianity.’ He would denounce its author as a
heretic and blasphemer to the ecclesiastical authorities of France,
and--_Deus ex machina_--an instrument was at hand to further his
purpose. There lived at this time in Geneva a certain William Trie,
a native of Lyons, a convert from the Romish to the Reformed faith,
and, as proselyte, well known to Calvin. Trie, it would appear, had
not been left altogether at peace in his new profession of faith. He
had a relation, Arneys by name, resident in Lyons, who did not cease
from reproaching him by letter as a renegade, and exhorting him to
think better of it, and return to the faith he had forsaken. Trie would
seem to have been in the habit of showing his letters to Calvin, and
of having aid and advice from him in answering them; Calvin, it was
said, upon occasion even dictating the epistles in reply. But now he
could use the neophyte in his own as well as the general behalf, and
set about the business forthwith under cover of a letter from the
convertite Trie to his relation Arneys:--

    Monsieur mon Cousin,--I have to thank you much for your fine
    remonstrances, and make no question of your friendly purpose
    in seeking to bring me back to the point from which I started.
    As I am not a man of letters like you, I do not enter on the
    points and articles you bring up against me. Not, indeed, but
    that with such knowledge as God has given me, I could find
    plenty to say in the way of reply; for, God be praised, I am
    not so ill-grounded as not to know that the true Church has
    Jesus Christ for its head, from whom it cannot be dissevered,
    and that there is neither life nor salvation apart from Holy
    Scripture. All you say to me of the Church, I therefore hold
    for phantasm, unless Christ, as having supreme authority,
    presides therein, and the Word of God is made the foundation of
    its teaching. Without this, all your formulas are nothing....
    As to what you say about there being so much more of freedom,
    or latitude of opinion, with us here than with you, still we
    should never suffer the name of God to be blasphemed, nor
    evil doctrines and opinions to be spread abroad among us,
    without let or hinderance. And I can give you an instance
    which, I must say, I think tends to your confusion. It is
    this: that a certain heretic is countenanced among you, who
    ought to be burned alive, wherever he might be found. And
    when I say a heretic, I refer to a man who deserves to be
    as summarily condemned by the Papists, as he is by us. For
    though differing in many things, we agree in believing that in
    the sole essence of God there be three persons, and that his
    Son, who is his Eternal Wisdom, was engendered by the Father
    before all time, and has had [imparted to him] his Eternal
    virtue, which is the Holy Spirit. But when a man appears who
    calls the Trinity we all believe in, a Cerberus and Monster
    of Hell, who disgorges all the villainies it is possible to
    imagine, against everything Scripture teaches of the Eternal
    generation of the Son of God, and mocks besides open-mouthed
    at all that the ancient doctors of the Church have said--I ask
    you in what regard you would have such a man?... I must speak
    freely: What shame is it not that they are put to death among
    you who say that one God only is to be invoked in the name
    of Christ; that there is no service acceptable to God other
    than that which He has approved by His word; and that all the
    pictures and images which men make are but so many idols which
    profane His majesty?... What shame, say I, is it not, that
    such persons are not only put to death in no easy and simple
    way, but are cruelly burned alive? Nevertheless, there is one
    living among you who calls Jesus Christ an idol; who would
    destroy the foundations of the faith; who condemns the baptism
    of little children, and calls the rite a diabolical invention.
    Where, I pray you, is the zeal to which you make pretence;
    where are your guardians and that fine hierarchy of which you
    boast so much? The man I refer to has been condemned in all
    the Churches you hold in such dislike, but is suffered to live
    unmolested among you, to the extent of even being permitted to
    print books full of such blasphemies as I must not speak of
    further. He is a Spanish-Portuguese, Michael Servetus by name,
    though he now calls himself Villeneuve, and practises as a
    physician. He lived for some time at Lyons, and now resides at
    Vienne, where the book I speak of was printed by one Balthasar
    Arnoullet. That you may not think I speak of mere hearsay I
    send you the first few leaves as a sample, for your assurance.
    You say that our books, which contain nothing but the purity
    and simplicity of Holy Scripture, infect the world; yet you
    brew poisons among you which go to destroy the Scriptures
    and all you hold as Christianity. I have been longer than I
    thought; but the enormity of the case causes me to exceed I
    need not, I imagine, go into particulars; I only pray you to
    put it somewhat seriously to your conscience, and conclude for
    yourself, to the end that when you appear before the Great
    Judge you may not be condemned. For, to say it in a word, we
    have here no subject of difference or debate, and ask but this:
    That God himself may be heard. Concluding for the present, I
    pray that He may give you ears to hear, and a heart to obey,
    having you at all times in His holy keeping.

    (Signed) GUILLAUME TRIE.

    Geneva, this 26th of February [1553].

This on the face of it is no letter from one young man to another.
It is the artful production of the zealot and bigot in one, well
informed of the antecedents of the man he is denouncing, and but poorly
disguised by the name under which he is writing. The letter from first
to last is Calvin’s, and was accompanied by the two first leaves of
the newly printed book, the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ containing the
title and table of contents, sufficient, as Calvin knew full well, to
alarm the hierarchs of Papal Christianity, which in their estimation
needed no restoration, and was indeed susceptible of none; whilst any
discussion of such transcendental topics as the Trinity, Faith in
Christ, Regeneration, Baptism, and the Reign of Antichrist, smacked at
best of schism when undertaken by a layman even of orthodox views, but
became flat blasphemy when treated by such a one in any adverse sense.

Cardinal Tournon, at this time Archbishop of Lyons, was the implacable
enemy of all innovators, and in his zeal for what he believed to be
the truth well disposed to resort to the severest measures against
the spread of heresy, which to him and his co-religionists, then as
now, was most especially embodied in the principles of Luther and
Calvin’s Reformation. Exposed as were the south and east of France from
their contiguity with Switzerland to infection of the kind, Tournon
had not relied exclusively on himself and his own subordinate clergy
as watchers over the faith of the district under his charge. He had
further summoned to his aid one of the regularly trained inquisitors
from Rome, Matthew Ory by name, who designated himself: _Pénitencier du
Saint Siége Apostolique, et Inquisiteur général du Royaume de France et
dans toutes les Gaules_. This man, as we may imagine, had a real relish
for his calling and was watchfulness itself in ferreting out heresy,
as, with all of his kind, he was relentless in pursuing it to the death.

The notable letter of Trie to Arneys was immediately brought under the
notice of the clergy of Lyons, as Calvin intended and foresaw that it
would be; and by one of them, was communicated to Ory, the Inquisitor,
and to Bautier, Vicar-General, and Canon of the Cathedral Church of
Lyons. Here was work of more than common interest to the Inquisitor,
who proceeded forthwith, under date of March 12, 1553, to write to
Villars, Auditor of Cardinal Tournon, absent at the moment from Lyons,
but no farther away than his Château of Roussillon, a few miles distant
from Vienne.

The letter of Ory is highly characteristic of the jesuitical, stealthy,
and underhand style of dealing with all that belongs to free thought
and open speech. Premising a few sentences on indifferent and private
matters, he comes anon to the real gist of his letter and says: ‘I
would advise you in all secrecy of some books that are now being
imprinted at Vienne, containing execrable blasphemies against the
divinity of Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity, the author and printer
of which are both living among you. The Vicar-General and I have seen
one of the chapters of this publication, and are of like mind about
the propriety of your taking an early opportunity of conferring with
Monseigneur (the Cardinal) and making him more particularly acquainted
with the business; so that on your return home the necessary orders may
be given by Monseigneur to M. Maugiron, the Vibailly of Vienne, and
the police. So much at this time M. the Vicar-General desires that you
should know through me; but you are to proceed so secretly that your
left hand shall not know what your right is about--_mais si secrètement
que vostre main senextre n’entend point ce que c’est_. Only whisper
in the ear of Monseigneur and inform us if he has any knowledge of a
certain Villeneufve, a physician, and one Arnoullet, a bookseller, both
of Vienne, for it is to them that I refer.’

On the following day the Vicar Bautier left Lyons for Roussillon and
saw the Cardinal, who immediately sent a letter to Louis Arzelier,
Grand Vicar of the See of Vienne, summoning him to Roussillon.
After a long conference, Arzelier was ordered to return to Vienne
and deliver an autograph letter from the Cardinal to M. de Maugiron,
Lieutenant-General of Dauphiny, in which however there is nothing
said of the affair he has at heart (for this he will only trust to be
communicated by word of mouth by M. the Vicar to M. the Lieutenant);
but appealing to the known zeal of his correspondent for the honour of
God and his church, and adding, in anticipation of what he knew would
follow, a request that he should immediately summon the Vibailly to his
assistance, in order that he, on his part, might undertake what M. the
Vicar might see necessary to be done. Two things only are especially
to be required of the Vibailly: the one that he use extreme dispatch,
the other that the business be kept as secret as possible. Roussillon,
March 15, 1553.

Acting at once on the advice of the Cardinal, Maugiron sent to
the Vibailly, bidding him hold himself ready to act in a certain
unspecified contingency. Next day, March 16, the two Vicars in company
with the Vibailly proceeded to the office of the Sieur Peyrolles, Lay
official of the Primate, before whom Bautier, as the party immediately
interested in virtue of his office, made a deposition to the effect
that within the last few days letters had been received from Geneva
addressed to a personage resident in Lyons, in which great surprise
was expressed that a certain Michael Servetus, otherwise called
Villanovanus, should be then living unmolested at Vienne; that four
printed leaves of a book written by the said Villanovanus had also been
forwarded from Geneva and examined by brother Ory, Inquisitor of the
Faith, by whom they had been found heretical; and, to conclude, that
the Cardinal Archbishop, having been made acquainted with the matter,
had written to M. de Maugiron requesting him to take cognizance of the
business with all secrecy and dispatch. Bautier, at the same time, put
in the Geneva letter of Trie, and the four leaves of the printed book
entitled ‘_Christianismi Restitutio_,’ in support of his allegations;
the letter of the Inquisitor and that of the Cardinal to Maugiron being
added as further documents on which the Procurator of the King and the
Justiciary were to proceed.

The judicial authorities of Vienne lost no time in obeying their
instructions. On the same day they met at the house of M. Maugiron,
and having consulted with him, they sent to M. Michel de Villeneuve,
desiring his presence and saying they had something to communicate to
him. Being from home when the message arrived, and not appearing for a
couple of hours, the authorities were fearful that he had been somehow
warned of the danger which threatened him and so had fled; but their
fears were unfounded: he came at length, and with a perfectly confident
air, it is said. The authorities informed him that they had certain
informations against him which would make it necessary for them to
visit and search his lodgings for books or papers of a heretical
tendency. Villeneuve replied that he had lived long at Vienne on good
terms with the clergy and professors of theology, and had never until
now been suspected of heresy; but he was quite ready to open his rooms
to them or those they might delegate, to make what search they pleased.

The Grand Vicar and the Vibailly, accompanied by the Secretary of the
Cardinal Governor of Dauphiny, then proceeded with Villeneuve to his
apartments, which adjoined and were among the dependencies of the
archiepiscopal palace, and made a particular examination of his papers;
but they found nothing more compromising than a couple of copies of his
apology or pamphlet against the Parisian Doctors, of which they took
possession.

Next day, the 17th, the Judges made a perquisition in the house of
Arnoullet, the publisher and printer, in his absence, he being away
at the time on business at Toulouse; and there also they had Geroult,
the superintendent of the printing establishment, brought before them.
After a lengthened interrogatory of the foreman, in which nothing was
elicited, they proceeded to search the house and printing office,
examining Arnoullet’s papers minutely, but without finding a word
to compromise him in any way. The workmen on the establishment were
then severally examined. They were shown the printed leaves of the
‘Christianismi Restitutio’ and asked if they knew anything of the
book of which the leaves were a part; or if they recognised the type,
or could give any information as to the books they had had a hand in
composing or printing during the last eighteen months or so. But they
all agreed in saying that the four leaves shown them had not been
printed in the office; and among all the books that had issued from
their presses during the last two years, a list of which was supplied,
there was not one in the octavo form. The search and inquiry over, the
officials had the entire staff of the printing establishment brought
into their presence, and cautioned them against saying a word of all
they had been asked about, on pain of being declared suspected or even
convicted of heresy and punished accordingly.

On the 18th, Arnoullet, having but just returned from Toulouse, was
visited and examined; but all the papers about him being found in
order and his replies in complete conformity with those of his manager
Geroult, he too was dismissed. The authorities found themselves at
fault, but by no means satisfied that the information they had had
from Geneva was groundless. An adjournment was therefore resolved
on, an informal consultation being, however, held meantime at the
archiepiscopal palace of Vienne. And it is not perhaps without
significance that it is only now that we find the archbishop of
Vienne, Pierre Paumier, named in connection with the proceedings, and
his palace spoken of as the place of assembly. It was at this moment
in fact that Paumier had the first intimation of what was going
on. At the meeting it was decided that nothing had been discovered
sufficiently positive to warrant the arrest of anyone.

The archbishop of Vienne, once made a party to the proceedings, appears
to have taken up the case warmly. The known protector and frequent
associate of Villeneuve the physician, he seems to have thought it
incumbent on him to show the world that he had no sympathy with heresy,
and nothing in common with a suspected heretic. He accordingly wrote
immediately to Brother Ory, the Inquisitor, begging him to come to
Vienne and have some conversation with him on matters touching the
Faith. In the course of the interview which followed, Ory suggested
that, in order to have further or more satisfactory information against
Villeneuve, Arneys should be made to write again to his relation Trie
at Geneva, and ask him to send the whole of the printed book from which
the leaves already forwarded had been cut. Returning to Lyons, Ory
himself, we must presume, dictated the letter which Arneys was required
to write to his cousin Trie. This epistle unhappily has not reached
us. It would have been both curious and interesting to have had the
Inquisitor of three centuries and a half ago brought so immediately
before us, as we should there have had him. But as Ory doubtless led
the pen at Lyons, so did Calvin assuredly guide it again at Geneva
in reply; and as his letter has been preserved, we come face to face
with one who is still more interesting to us than brother Matthew
Ory, Inquisitor of the kingdom of France and all the Gauls--with the
great head of the Reformed Churches of France and Switzerland, at the
zenith of his power, though not without misgivings as to its stability,
zealous as brother Ory could have been in upholding the Faith as he
apprehended it, and as ruthless as Cardinal Tournon in dealing with all
who called it in question. The letter is to the following effect:--

    Monsieur mon Cousin!--When I wrote the letter you have thought
    fit to impart to those who are taxed therein with indifference
    and neglect, I thought not that the matter would be taken up
    so seriously as it seems to be. My sole purpose was to show
    you the fine zeal and devotion of those who call themselves
    pillars of the Church, suffering as they do such disorder
    among themselves, yet persecuting so cruelly poor Christians
    who only desire to obey God in simplicity. As the instance was
    so notable, however, and I was advised of it, an opportunity
    presented itself, as I thought, of touching on it, the matter
    falling, as it seemed, fairly within the scope of my writing.
    But as you have shown to others the letter I meant for yourself
    alone, God grant that it tend to purge Christianity of such
    filth, of pestilence so mortal to man! If your people are
    really so anxious to look into the matter as you say, there
    will be no difficulty in furnishing you, besides the printed
    book you ask for, with documents enough to carry conviction to
    their minds. For I shall put into your hands some two dozen
    pieces written by him who is in question, in which some of his
    heresies are set prominently forth. Did you rely on the printed
    book by itself, he might deny it as his; but this he could not
    do if his own handwriting were brought against him. In this
    way, the parties you speak of, having the thing completely
    proven, will be without excuse if they hesitate further, or
    put off taking the steps required. All the pieces I send you
    now--the great volume as well as the letters in the handwriting
    of the author--were produced before the printed work; but I
    have to own to you that I had great difficulty in getting these
    documents from Mons. Calvin. Not that he would not have such
    execrable blasphemies put down; but that, as he does not wield
    the sword of justice himself, he thinks it his duty rather to
    repress heresy by sound teaching, than to pursue it by force.
    I importuned him, however, so much, showing him the reproaches
    I might incur did he not come to my aid, that he consented at
    length to entrust me with the contents of my parcel to you.
    For the rest, I hope, when the case shall have been somewhat
    farther advanced, to obtain from him something like a whole
    ream of paper, which the fine fellow--_le Galand_--has had
    printed. At the moment, I fancy you are furnished with evidence
    enough, and that there need be no more beating about the bush,
    before seizing on his person and putting him on his trial. For
    my own part, I pray God to open the eyes of those who speak of
    us so evilly, to the end that they may more truly judge of the
    motives by which we are actuated.

    As I learn by your letter that you will not trouble me further
    with the old proposals, I, on my side, will do nothing to
    displease you; hoping nevertheless, that God will lead you to
    see that I have not, without due consideration, taken the step
    you disapprove. Recommending myself to your favour, and praying
    God to give you his, &c., I remain,

                                         (Signed) GUILLAUME TRIE.

    Geneva, this 26th of March.

The art and purpose so plainly to be seen in the foregoing letter need
not be dwelt on. Anxious to escape appearing in the odious light of
informer, Calvin was still eager to furnish the zealots of the Church
he had quitted himself, and by the heads of which he was looked on
as standing in the foremost ranks of heresy, with evidence which he
believed would assuredly bring the man he held in despite to a cruel
death by fire. But Ory, whose special business was the prosecution
of heretics, and who knew much better than Calvin what constituted
evidence against them, was aware that the MS. book and the two dozen
pieces, written as said by Michael Servetus, were not adequate to
convict Michel Villeneuve of the charge against him. Handwriting,
it seems, could be put out of court as evidence in cases of heresy,
through simple denial on oath by the party accused. The point upon
which evidence was particularly required, by Ory and his coadjutors,
was in fact the _printing_ of the book entitled the ‘Restoration of
Christianity;’ and none of the pieces furnished gave any assurance
either that Michel Villeneuve was the writer, or Arnoullet and Geroult
the printers of this. Arneys must therefore be desired to write to
Cousin Trie once more, and ask him to do his best with M. Calvin to
furnish evidence of the kind required. So anxious indeed were Ory and
his friends for this, that they despatched this, the third letter of
Arneys to Trie, by a special messenger, who was ordered to wait and
bring back the answer with all speed.

The answer came in due course, hardly, however, so soon as we can
fancy it was looked for, but to the following effect:--

    Monsieur mon Cousin!--I had hoped I should satisfy your
    demands, in essentials at least, by sending you, as I did, the
    handwriting of the author of the book. With my last letter,
    indeed, you will find an acknowledgement by the man himself
    of his real name, which he had disguised, and the excuse he
    makes for calling himself Villeneuve, when his proper name is
    Servetus or Revés. For the rest, I promise you, God willing,
    to furnish you, if need be, not only with the entire book he
    has just had printed, but with another in his handwriting, in
    addition to the letters [already forwarded]. I should indeed
    have already sent the book [in MS.] which I refer to, had it
    been in this city; but it has been at Lausanne these two years
    past. Had M. Calvin kept it by him, I believe he would long
    ago, for all it is worth, have returned it to the writer; but
    having lent it for perusal to another, it was, as it seems,
    retained by him. I have formerly heard Monsieur [Calvin] say
    that, having given answers sufficient to satisfy any reasonable
    man, to no purpose, he had at length left off reading more of
    the babble and foolish reveries, of which he soon had had more
    than enough, there being nothing but reiteration of the same
    song over and over again. And that you may understand that
    it is not of yesterday that this unhappy person persists in
    troubling the Church, striving ever to lead the ignorant into
    the same confusion as himself, it is now more than twenty-four
    years since he was rejected and expelled by the chief Churches
    of Germany; had he remained in that country, indeed, he would
    never have left it alive. Among the letters of Œcolampadius,
    you will see that the first and second are addressed to him
    under his proper name and designation: _Serveto Hispano
    neganti Christum esse Dei Filium, consubstantialem Patri_--To
    Servetus the Spaniard, denying that Christ is the Son of God,
    consubstantial with the Father. Melanchthon also speaks of
    him in some passages of his writings. But methinks you have
    really warrant enough in what is already sent you to dive
    deeper into the matter, and to put him on his trial. As to the
    printers of the book, I did not send you the table of contents
    as any proof that Balthasar Arnoullet and William Geroult, his
    brother-in-law, were the parties; but of the fact that they
    were so we are well assured, nor indeed will it be possible for
    them to deny it. The printing was probably done at the author’s
    expense, and he may have taken the impression into his own
    keeping; he must have done so, indeed, if you find it has left
    the premises of the persons named. I rather think I omitted to
    say that when you have done with the epistles, I beg you will
    be good enough to return them to me. And now, commending myself
    to your good grace, and praying God so to guide you that you
    may do all that is agreeable in his sight,

                                             I am yours, &c.,

                                                    GUILLAUME TRIE.

    Geneva, this last day of March, 1553.

It must still be needless to say that neither is this any letter of
young Trie. What could he have known of the printed works of Michael
Serveto, alias Revés, or of his being condemned by the Churches of
Germany--which by the way he never was--or of his expulsion from that
country--which is also against the fact? What intimation could he have
had that Œcolampadius had written to Servetus, the Spaniard, combating
his heresies and that Melanchthon had mentioned him in sundry passages
of his work, the ‘Loci communes’? Calvin, on the other hand, was not
only well informed of much that had happened to Michael Servetus from
the date of their meeting in Paris in 1534, even to the hour in which
he was now writing by the hand of William Trie, but was himself the
author of some of the statements put into the mouth of that worthy.[64]

CHAPTER XX.

ARREST OF SERVETUS AND ARNOULLET, THE PUBLISHER.--THE TRIAL FOR HERESY
AT VIENNE--SERVETUS IS SUFFERED TO ESCAPE FROM PRISON.

April 4. After the receipt of Trie’s third epistle, a solemn council
was convened within the Archiepiscopal Château of Roussillon, at which
were present the Cardinal Tournon, the Archbishop of Vienne, the two
Grand Vicars, the Inquisitor Ory, and many Ecclesiastics and Doctors
in Divinity. There and then the letters of Trie, the printed leaves of
the ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’ and more than twenty epistles addressed
to John Calvin, were examined with every care and attention, all being
reported the work of Michael Servetus, alias Revés, living at Vienne
under the assumed name of Michel Villeneuve. The documents being held
of the most seriously compromising character, the Cardinal Archbishop
of Lyons and the Archbishop of Vienne, with the concurrence of the
whole assembly, now gave orders for the arrest of Michel Villeneuve,
Physician, and Balthasar Arnoullet, bookseller, to answer for their
faith on certain charges and informations to be laid against them.

The Archbishop of Vienne returned home in the afternoon in company
with his Grand Vicar, Arzelier, and having summoned the Vibailly de la
Cour to the Palace, informed him of the resolutions come to and the
pleasure of the Cardinal. In order that nothing might transpire, and no
understanding be come to between the parties incriminated, the Vicar
and Vibailly agreed so to arrange matters that Villeneuve and Arnoullet
should be arrested at the same moment, but imprisoned separately. The
Vibailly accordingly proceeded to the house of Arnoullet, and having
sent in a message desiring him to bring a copy of the New Testament
but just printed, Arnoullet was arrested on the spot, and carried off
to the Archiepiscopal prison. Proceeding next to the house of M. de
Maugiron, the Lieutenant-Governor of Dauphiny, then indisposed, and
on whom it was known that Doctor Villeneuve was in attendance, the
Vibailly informed the Doctor that there were several prisoners sick
and some wounded in the hospital of the royal prison who required
his services, as was indeed the case. Doctor Villeneuve replied that
independently of his profession making it imperative on him immediately
to obey such a summons, he still took pleasure in being so usefully
employed. He therefore went at once; and whilst engaged in his visit,
the Vibailly sent requesting the presence of the Grand Vicar. On his
arrival Villeneuve was informed that certain charges having been made
and informations laid against him, he must consent to hold himself a
prisoner until he had given satisfactory answers to the questions that
would be put to him. The gaoler, Anton Bonin, was then summoned and
enjoined to guard the prisoner strictly, but to treat him respectfully,
according to his quality. He was to be allowed his personal attendant
or valet, Benoît Perrin, a lad fifteen years of age, to wait on him;
and his friends were to have free access to him.

April 5. Archbishop Paumier now hastened to inform Brother Ory, the
inquisitor, that they had Villeneuve in custody, and begged him to come
immediately to Vienne. Ory, like a vulture swooping on the carcass,
is said to have made such haste--_pressa tellement sa monture_--that
he arrived in an incredibly short space of time at Vienne. As it was
then about the hour of the midday meal, however, the Archbishop and
he, thinking it well to recruit the inward man before entering on
the serious business they had on hand, sate themselves quietly down
to table and dined. The cravings of nature satisfied, Arzelier the
Vicar-General, and De la Cour the Vibailly of Vienne, were summoned
to the Palace--the secular in aid of the spiritual arm--and the party
proceeded to the prison.

Having had Michel Villeneuve, sworn physician, and now prisoner at
their instance, brought before them in the Criminal Court of the
Palace, they proceeded to question him on matters of which they at the
moment knew more than he, though we may well believe his fears pointed
in the true direction. Informing the prisoner, as a preliminary, that
he was bound to answer truthfully to the interrogatories put to him,
which he promised to do, he was then sworn on the Gospels and asked his
name, his age, his place of birth, and his profession.

His name, he replied, was Michel Villeneuve, doctor in medicine,
forty-four years of age, and a native of Tudela, in the kingdom of
Navarre, residing for the present, as he had done during the last
twelve years or thereabouts, at Vienne.

Asked where and in what places he had lived since he left his native
country; he said that some seven or eight and twenty years ago, before
the Emperor Charles V. left Spain for Italy, in view of his coronation,
he had entered the service of brother John Quintana, the Confessor of
the Emperor, being then no more than fifteen or sixteen years old; that
he had gone to Italy in the suite of the Emperor, and been present
at his coronation at Bologna. That he then accompanied Quintana to
Germany, in which country he resided for about a year, when his patron
died; since which time he had lived without a master, first at Paris,
having had lodgings in the Collége de Calvi, and then in the Collége
des Lombards, engaged in the study of Mathematics. From Paris he had
gone to Lyons, and spent some time between that city and Avignon, but
had finally settled at Charlieu, where, having lived practising his
profession, for about three years, he had finally been induced by
Messeigneurs the Archbishop of Vienne and the Archbishop of Maurice,
to quit Charlieu and establish himself at Vienne, in which city, as
said, he had lived since then to the present time.

Asked whether he had not had several books printed for him? he replied
that at Paris he had a book printed, the title of which was: _Syruporum
universa ratio ad Galeni censuram disposita_--a treatise on Syrups
according to the principles of Galen; and a pamphlet entitled: _In
Leonartum Fussinum, Apologia pro Symphoriano Campeggio_--an apologetic
address to Leonard Fuchs for Symphorian Campeccius. He had further
edited and annotated the ‘Geography of Ptolemy.’ Other than these,
the works now named, he had written none, nor had he had any others
printed for him; but he admitted that he had corrected the text of many
more, without adding to them anything of his own, or taking from them
anything of their writers.

Being now shown two sheets of paper, printed on both sides and having
marginal annotations in writing, and admonished that the matter of the
writing might bring him into trouble, he was informed, further, that
he, if he were the writer, might be able to explain or to say in what
sense he understood what was there set down. One of the propositions in
the writing was particularly pointed out to this effect: _Justificantur
ergo Parvuli sine Christi fide, prodigium, monstrum dæmonum!_--Infants
therefore are justified without faith in Christ, a prodigy, a portent
of devils! and he was informed that if he understood the words to
say that infants had not by their regeneration [through baptism,
understood] received the perfect grace of Christ and so were acquitted
of Adam’s sin, this would be to contemn Christ. He was therefore
required to declare how he understood the words. He replied that he
firmly believed that the grace of Christ, imparted by baptism, overcame
the sin of Adam, as St. Paul declares (Rom. v.): ‘Where sin abounds
there doth grace more abound;’ and that infants are saved without faith
acquired, but through faith then infused by the Holy Ghost.

Having shown him how necessary it was that he should alter several
words in the written matter, he promised to do so, saying however that
he was not prepared at a moment’s notice to say whether the writing was
his or not. It was very long, indeed, since he had written anything.
On examining the character particularly, however, he now thinks it
must be his. In all that concerns the faith he yet begs to say that
he submits himself entirely to his holy mother the Church, from whose
teachings he has never wished to swerve. If there be some things in
the papers before the Court open to objection, he believes he must
have written them inconsiderately, or only advanced them as subjects
for discussion. He then goes on to say that, having now looked closely
at the writing on the two leaves, he acknowledges it as his, having
the opportunity at the same time of explaining the sense in which he
would have it understood. If there were anything else, he concluded,
that was found objectionable or that savoured of false doctrine, he
was ready on having it pointed out to him to alter and amend it. The
two leaves paged from 421 to 424, and treating of baptism,[65] were
then ordered to be marked by the clerk of the Court, and with the other
papers produced, to be taken under his charge; after which the sitting
was suspended.

April 6. Sworn as before upon the Gospels to speak the truth (and from
what we know and have just seen feeling assured how indifferently he
had hitherto kept his word), Villeneuve was further interrogated as
follows: 1st. How he understands a proposition in an epistle numbered
xv., wherein the Living Faith and the Dead Faith are treated of in
terms that seem perfectly Catholic, and wholly opposed to the errors
of Geneva, the words being these, _Mori autem sensim dicitur in nobis
Fides quando tolluntur vestimenta_--now faith dies perceptibly in us
when its vestments are thrown off? To this he answered that he believed
the vestments of faith to be works of charity and mercy. 2nd. Shown
another epistle, numbered xvi., on Free will, in opposition to those
who hold that the will is not free, he is asked how he understands
what is there said? With tears in his eyes he replies, ‘Sirs, these
letters were written when I was in Germany, now some five and twenty
years ago, when there was printed in that country a book by a certain
Servetus, a Spaniard; but from what part of Spain I know not, neither
do I know in what part of Germany he dwelt, though I have heard say
that it was at Agnon (Hagenau in Elsass), four leagues from Strasburg,
that the book in question was printed. Having read it when I was very
young--not more than fifteen or sixteen--I thought that the writer said
many things that were good, that were better treated by him, indeed,
than by others.’ Quitting Germany for France, without taking any books
with him, Villeneuve went on to say, that he had gone to Paris with a
view to study mathematics and medicine, and had lived there, as already
said, for some years. Whilst residing there, having heard Monsieur
Calvin spoken of as a learned man, he had, out of curiosity, and
without knowing him personally, entered into correspondence with him,
but begged him to hold his letters as private and confidential--_sub
sigillo secreti_. ‘I, on my part,’ he proceeds, ‘seeking brotherly
correction, as it were, but saying that if he could not wean me from
my opinions or I wean him from his, I should not feel myself bound to
accept his conclusions. On which I proposed certain weighty questions
for discussion. He replied to me shortly after, and seeing that my
questions were to the same effect as those discussed by Servetus,
he said that I must myself be Servetus. To this I answered that,
though I was not Servetus, nevertheless, and that I might continue
the discussion, I was content for the time to personate Servetus, and
should reply, as I believed he would have done, not caring for what he
might please to think of me, but only that we might debate our views
and opinions with freedom. With this understanding we interchanged
many letters, but finally fell out, got angry, and began to abuse each
other. Matters having come to this pass, I ceased writing, and for ten
years or so I have neither heard from him nor he from me. And here,
gentlemen, I protest before God and before you all, that I had no
will to dogmatise, or to substitute aught of mine that might be found
adverse to the Church or the Christian Religion.’

The prisoner being shown a third epistle numbered xvii., on the Baptism
of Infants, in which he says, ‘_Parvuli carnis non sunt capaces doni
Spiritus_--Infants as mere carnal beings are incapable of receiving the
gift of the Spirit,’--was desired to say in what sense he meant these
words to be taken. He answered that he had formerly been of opinion
that infants were incompetent in the matter, as stated; but that he had
long given up such an opinion and now desired to range himself with the
teaching of the Church. Shown a fourth epistle, numbered xviii., its
heading or argument being, ‘Of the Trinity, and the Generation of the
Son of God, according to Servetus,’ he acknowledged it as having been
written by him in the course of his discussion with Calvin, when he was
assuming the part of Servetus; but as he had said of the former letter,
No. xvii., so he says of this, that he does not now believe what is
there set down, everything in the letter having only been propounded
to learn what Calvin might have to advance in opposition to the views
set forth. A fifth letter, the burden of which is, ‘Of the glorified
flesh of Christ absorbed in the Glory of the Deity more fully than it
was at the Transfiguration,’ being handed to him, he said that when he
addressed his correspondent on this subject, he felt at greater liberty
than usual to say all he thought of it individually, and was now ready
to answer any question put to him bearing upon it. None, however, were
asked.

But the letters to Calvin were not yet done with. A whole bundle of
them, fourteen in number, was exhibited, and the prisoner informed
that the judges found much matter there for which very particular
answers would be required. Having looked at the letters, the prisoner
said he saw that they were all addressed to Calvin long ago, and with
a view to learn from him what he thought of the questions raised, as
already said. But he added that he was by no means now disposed to
abide by all he had written of old, save and except in respect of
such views as might be approved by the Church and his Judges. He was
therefore ready to answer to each particular head on which he might be
interrogated. This the Judges proposed to do at their next meeting,
and meantime having ordered a schedule of the principal points upon
which there appeared to be error against the faith to be drawn up from
the writings, all the documents being duly labelled and signed, the
session was suspended until the morrow.

Immediately after the second interrogatory to which he was subjected,
Servetus on his return to prison sent his servant Perrin to the
Monastery of St. Pierre to ask the Grand Prior if he had received the
300 crowns owing to him--Villeneuve by M. St. André. The money having
been received, was remitted by the hands of Perrin to his master. Had
Servetus put off his message to the Prior but for an hour, he would
have lost his money, the Inquisitor Ory having given fresh orders to
the gaoler to guard M. Villeneuve very strictly, and to suffer him to
see and have speech of no one without his--the Inquisitor’s express
permission. Ory, we may presume, had not only no favour for Servetus,
but, with so much against him as already appeared, could have had
little doubt of bringing conviction home to him and so having him sent
in smoke as an acceptable sacrifice to heaven. But Villeneuve had
friends among his other judges who were every way disposed to aid him,
if it were possible. Matters certainly looked very black indeed: Michel
Villeneuve was plainly Michael Servetus of evil theological reputation;
flagrant heresy was already manifest in the documents produced, and
his answers to the interrogatories were so little satisfactory that
acquittal from the charges laid against him, even at the outset of
the process, seemed out of the question. The judges, however, were
not all Brother Orys nor Cardinal Tournons, though most of them
were churchmen, and, to their honour, both tolerant and merciful in
circumstances where their creed prescribed intolerance and deadening of
the heart to pity. Servetus had however to be sent back to his prison;
but the door of the cage might be left open and the bird allowed to
fly. And everything leads to the conclusion that this was exactly what
was done.

Connected with the prison there was a garden having a raised terrace
looking on to the court of the palace of justice; and, abutting on the
garden wall, a shed, by the roof of which and a projecting buttress
on the other side a descent into the court-yard of the palace could
easily be made. The garden as a rule was kept shut, but prisoners
above the common in station were permitted to use it for exercise and
also for occasions of nature. Having enjoyed this privilege from the
first, Servetus appears to have scrutinised everything in the afternoon
of April 6, after the conclusion of his second examination. On the
morning of the seventh he rose at four o’clock and asked the gaoler,
whom he found afoot and going out to tend his vines, for the key of the
garden. The man, seeing his prisoner in velvet cap and dressing-gown,
not aware that he was completely dressed and had his hat under his
robe de chambre, gave him the key and went out shortly afterwards to
his work. Servetus, on his part, when he thought the coast must be
clear, left his black velvet cap and furred dressing-gown at the foot
of a tree, leaped from the terrace on to the roof of the outhouse and
from that, without breaking any bones, gained the open court of the
Palais de Justice Dauphinal. Thence he made for the gate of the Pont
du Rhône, which was at no great distance from the prison and passed
into the Lyonnais--these latter facts being by and by deposed to by a
peasant woman who had met him. Two hours or more elapsed before his
escape became known in the prison, the gaoler’s wife having been the
first to discover it. She in her zeal and alarm committed a hundred
extravagances; and in her vexation tore her hair, beat her children,
her servants, and some of the prisoners who chanced to come in her
way. Her rage that anyone should have had the audacity to break the
dauphinal prison of Vienne, of which her husband was custodier, was
such, that she even ran the risk of her life by clambering to the
roof of a neighbouring house, in her eagerness to find traces of the
fugitive.

The authorities, informed of what had happened, did all that became
them, ordering the gates of the town to be shut and more carefully
guarded than usual through the next few days and nights. Proclamation
was made by sound of trumpet and beat of drum, and almost every house
not only of the town, but of the neighbouring villages, was visited.
The magistrates of Lyons and other towns, in which it was thought
probable their late prisoner might have taken refuge, were written to
by the Vienne authorities and inquiries made whether or not he had
money in the bank, or had drawn out any he might have had there.
His apartments were again visited, and all his papers, furniture and
effects inventoried and put under the seal of justice.

In the town of Vienne it was generally thought that the Vibailly De la
Cour had been the active party in favouring the evasion of Villeneuve.
He was known to be intimate with the doctor, who had lately carried
his daughter successfully through a long and dangerous illness, and
had been loud in praise of the skill and devotion that had been shown
with so happy a result. Chorier,[66] the historian of Dauphiny, hints
guardedly at something of the kind when he speaks of the imprisonment
of M. Villeneuve on religious grounds. ‘It fell out,’ says Chorier,
‘that by his own ingenuity and the assistance of his friends, M.
Villeneuve escaped from confinement.’

In the record of proceedings after the flight the only thing mentioned
is the fact of the gaoler having given the prisoner the key of the
garden; on all else there is absolute silence; whence, as D’Artigny
says, we may infer that there is mystery of some sort connected with
the escape. We, for our part, should have no difficulty in finding a
key to the mystery, had there been fewer grounds for the presumption of
friendly connivance than there undoubtedly were in the business. John
Calvin, arch-heretic in the eyes of the Gallic Church and its heads,
could not, we must presume, have been held in the highest possible
esteem by the Cardinal Archbishop of Lyons, to say nothing of brother
Mathias Ory, Inquisitor of the king of France and all the Gauls. But
the arrest of Villeneuve and the proceedings against him thus far, had
depended entirely on information supplied by the Reformer of Geneva.

The managers of the process against Servetus were men much too astute,
much too clear-sighted not to see that it was John Calvin who was
writing under the mask of William Trie; and one among them at least may
have known that the state of feeling between the Reformer of Geneva
and the Physician of Vienne had long been such that he of Geneva might
not be indisposed to make use of them to wreak his vengeance against a
personal enemy under the guise of a common heretic. The Judges indeed
must all have seen from the letters of Villeneuve to Calvin that the
two men were at daggers-drawn, and that the provocation on either part
was neither new nor slight, but of long standing, and, judging by his
present attitude, on Calvin’s side deadly. We can fancy brother Mathias
Ory chuckling over the sweet simplicity of the Viennese mediciner’s
sorry subterfuge in pretending to enact the part of ‘Servetus the
Spaniard, though he was no such personage, and knew nothing of the
place in Spain where he was born!’

The authorities of Vienne, however, had no desire to have their friend
Villeneuve burned alive for heresy on testimony gratuitously supplied
by the arch-heretic of Geneva, and thereby give him, whom they hated
and feared far more than a thousand lay schismatics, a triumph not only
over an enemy, but over themselves, for their lack of insight and zeal
as guardians of the only saving faith. And then, and in addition to all
this, there was Monseigneur Paumier to be considered--Paumier, under
whose patronage Villeneuve had settled at Vienne and lived so long in
the very shadow of the archiepiscopal palace, on terms of intimacy with
its distinguished occupant. How should the great man escape suspicion
of heresy himself if it were known that he had been living as a friend
with one who held all the most holy mysteries of the Roman Religion
as mere vanities or inventions of the Devil! The man had lived, it is
true, long and peaceably among them, respected in his life and trusted
in his calling; and if Calvin found heresy and to spare in his writings
against the tenets which he as well as they held in common, they
discovered outpourings enough there against Predestination and Election
by the Grace of God, Effectual calling, Justification by Faith, and the
rest, that formed the groundwork of the objectionable doctrines both of
Luther and Calvin. If M. the Vibailly De la Cour connived at the escape
of Villeneuve, and that he did there can hardly be a doubt, we may be
well assured that he acted with the concurrence of his more immediate
associates in the administration of justice--lay and clerical. The
Vibailly remained unchallenged in his office; the gaoler was not
dismissed, and Arnoullet the printer, for the present at least, was
set at liberty. Nothing of all this could have happened had Justice
not consented to be hoodwinked. The gaoler’s wife, in fact, seems to
have been the only person in downright earnest in the business of the
escape.

CHAPTER XXI.

DISCOVERY OF ARNOULLET’S PRIVATE PRINTING ESTABLISHMENT--SEIZURE AND
BURNING OF THE ‘CHRISTIANISMI RESTITUTIO’ ALONG WITH THE EFFIGY OF ITS
AUTHOR.

The remainder of the month of April was spent in making a renewed
and more particular examination of the books, papers, and letters of
Villeneuve, and in having copies made of the letters addressed to
Calvin, the originals of which were placed for safe custody under the
official seals. And here, if our surmises be well founded: that the
authorities of Vienne had really no wish, on testimony supplied by
Calvin, to convict of heresy a man who had always comported himself as
a good Catholic and still professed himself a true son of the Church,
every way disposed to receive instruction and bow to the decisions
of those who must know so much better than himself what was the true
saving faith--the matter would probably have ended, in so far as those
of Vienne were concerned. But Ory, the Inquisitor, nowise anxious
like the others to hush up so promising an affair, had by some means
been informed in the beginning of the month of May that there had
been a couple of presses kept at work away from the proper printing
establishment of Arnoullet.

Of this significant fact, no mention had been made either by Villeneuve
or Arnoullet on their examination, and whence Ory had the intimation
we are left to conjecture. There seems hardly room for doubt, however,
that it reached him through the old channel, viz., Arneys; that Arneys
had the news he gave to Ory from Trie, and that Trie had the tale he
told from Calvin. Frelon, as we have seen, must have been in the secret
of Servetus, and Frelon was also the friend of Calvin; from Frelon
alone could Calvin have had the particular information he shows he
possessed concerning the terms on which the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’
was printed; and it was only from Calvin that Trie could have obtained
intelligence of the kind he communicates to his relative Arneys of
Lyons. The process against Servetus, as we know, began from Lyons; and
from Lyons was it now resuscitated. But who living there was so likely
to have heard of a printing press worked privately at Vienne, twelve
miles away, as he who had all he knew about the heretic Villeneuve from
Geneva, and had been the instrument in setting on foot the movement
that was now to proceed to more disastrous issues?

With the new and important hint but just received, Ory sped off to
Vienne from Lyons, his head-quarters; and he may possibly have used
even greater diligence on this occasion than he did before when he is
said to have spurred his steed so vigorously. Summoning the Vibailly
and Grand Vicar to his side, the three proceeded immediately to the
premises that had been indicated as the private printing place of
the publisher Arnoullet; and entering, sure enough, they found three
compositors at work, Straton, Du Bois, and Papillon by name. It is
not difficult to imagine the terror of these men at the sight of
such visitors. Before proceeding to interrogate them severally, the
Inquisitor took care to address them generally on the enormity of the
crime of which he assumed they had been guilty, and to say that they
deserved the severest punishment for having withheld the important
information they could have supplied. When proceedings were commenced
against their master and M. Villeneuve, he said, they must be aware
that it had been specially enjoined upon all and sundry, under pain of
being dealt with as heretics, to communicate whatever they knew about
the book, which he declared they must have known to be written by
Villeneuve and printed by their master Arnoullet. Stretching a point,
as we may imagine, he told the men further, that he had proofs in his
hands that they were the very parties who had worked at the composition
and printing of the book in question. He now, therefore, exhorted them
to speak the truth and to ask pardon if they had been guilty or hoped
for favour, the authorities he added, indeed, intending correction, not
punishment.

The workmen, terribly alarmed, fell as with one accord upon their
knees, and Straton, speaking for himself and the others, owned that
they had printed an octavo volume entitled ‘Christianismi Restitutio,’
but were not aware that it contained heretical doctrines, being
ignorant of the Latin language in which it was written, and never
having heard that it did, until after the prosecution had been set on
foot. He informed his questioner further that he and his associates
had been steadily engaged on the book from the feast of St. Michael to
January 3 last--over three months--when the printing was completed;
yet more, that they had not dared to give information of their part
in the business for fear of being burned alive; and to conclude, they
now sought forgiveness, and threw themselves on the mercy of the
authorities. More particularly questioned, Straton said that Michel de
Villeneuve had had the book in question printed at his own expense,
and had corrected the proofs in person. To end the tale, and he may
have thought to make amends for his past silence, he said further that
on January 13 he had despatched five bales of the book to the care of
Pierre Merrin, typefounder, of Lyons.

Delighted with the great discovery just made, inasmuch as they would
now have grounds of their own to proceed upon, the three associates
hastened to communicate the information they had acquired to the
Archbishop of Vienne, who in turn imparted it to Cardinal Tournon.
Next day the Inquisitor Ory and the Grand Vicar Arzelier set off for
Lyons. Proceeding at once to the establishment of Pierre Merrin, they
questioned him as to what he knew of the business, and particularly
about certain bales, five in number, that had lately come into his
possession and were believed to contain heretical books. Merrin, having
no motive for concealment, informed his visitors that about four months