THE CASE OF SERVETUS.

IT had been a favourite design of the late celebrated Dr. McCrie, to publish the life of Calvin, and to set at rest the question of Servetus’s death, by instituting original researches in the archives and public library of Geneva.

This labor was entrusted to his able son, the Revelation John McCrie, who visited the above city for that purpose, and devoted more than a year to collecting valuable historical data for his father. But the venerable Doctor died when on the eve of undertaking the work which was to crown his literary career. The Revelation John McCrie accepted as a sacred inheritance from his father, and a fruit of his laborious investigation, the now easy and distinguished task of rehabilitating the Reformer in public opinion, when a premature death disappointed the expectations of his friends and relatives.

The rehabilitation of Calvin, however, was delayed only to become the more sure by being entrusted to his enemies, and taking place in the very city where the scenes reproachfully ascribed to him were enacted. A Unitarian clergyman of considerable talent and learning, the Revelation A.

Reilliet, stimulated by the example of Dr. McCrie, ransacked the archives of Geneva, investigated carefully all the manuscripts and correspondence of the times, preserved in the public libraries of Europe, which bore on this case; and although avowing bitter hostility to Calvinism, yet, as an impartial historian, he published, in 1844, the detailed result of his investigations, which is a complete verdict of acquittal of the mischievous and ungrounded charges brought against Calvin, in reference to Servetus’s death.

The conclusion to which Mr. Reilliet arrives, upon evidence which can never be contested, may be summed up as follows: Servetus, although opposed to the Trinity, was anything but a modern Unitarian. While the latter denies the divinity of Christ, he denied his humanity, and considered him the absolute God; thus he was one degree further removed from Unitarianism than the orthodox; otherwise, a thorough Pantheist, who asserted, even before his judges, that the bench on which he sat was God.

When Servetus came to Geneva, he had just escaped from the prison at Vienne, where the Romish bishops had him sentenced to be burned by a slow fire. He concealed himself in a tavern under an assumed name. But learning that the ministers had lost all influence upon a government which hated their rigid morals, that Calvin at the time was thwarted by them in everything, and that Geneva had become untenable for him, he emerged from secrecy, in the hope of placing himself at the head of a political party, and driving both Reformers and the Reformation from Geneva, and substituting his own rules and tenets. The trial of Servetus was equally that of Calvin; indeed, the fate of the latter was at times the more imminent of the two, the President of the Court, and influential members of the Council being his avowed and personal enemies. The struggle was forced upon him; the acquittal of the one was to be the sentence of the other. The awe of the Protestant governments might have saved Calvin from death, but not from imprisonment or perpetual exile, if Servetus had succeeded.

The Court was partial to Servetus, and would fain have saved him, if his triumphant over-bearance had not ruined his cause; yet, they would not pass sentence upon him, but left the case to the decision of the four Protestant governments of Berne, Basle, Zurich, and Schaffhausen. These all urged that the sentence of the Romish Bishops be carried out against Servetus, and left no other alternative to the weak government of Geneva. In the meantime the King of France claimed energetically the execution of the heretic who had escaped from his kingdom under sentence. Servetus entreated as a favor to be executed in Geneva, and not by the slow fire of the Romish Bishops.

A most important point established by Reilliet is, that the condemnation of, Servetus was purely political. He was sentenced by the magistrates of Geneva, not as a heretic, but as rebel, who attempted to subvert the constitution of Geneva. The purely theological quarrel disappeared before this motive for condemning him. The judicial sentence in the list of charges brought against Servetus, does not mention at all, either the attacks against Calvin, or those against the ministers of Geneva. Servetus well understood that if he could free himself from the suspicion of being a man of bad repute, and dangerous to the public tranquillity, his doctrine by itself would not form a sufficient motive for condemning him, or, at least, would not draw down a very severe castigation.

When the sentence was irrevocably passed, Calvin and his colleagues used all their efforts to have the punishment mitigated, by at least substituting the sword for the fire, but “the little council rejected the request of Calvin.

It is to him, notwithstanding, that men have always imputed the guilt of that funeral pile, which he wished had never been reared!”

WHO ARE CALVIN’S REVILERS?

CALVIN thought heresies injurious to the Church and to the State deserved to be punished with civil penalties, and he gave evidence to prove that Servetus was such an heretic. This he did in the sixteenth century, when such was the universally prevalent opinion. It is therefore concluded that Calvin was a ferocious bigot and monster of cruelty — that such is the spirit of the system of religion he taught — and that such, therefore, is the spirit of every one who now believes that system.

And who are they that, against all charity and reason, and common sense, thus teach and affirm? They are, first, Papists; secondly, Unitarians; and thirdly, Infidels. In retorting upon them the shamelessness of their conduct, I will use the language of another. 1. What effrontery can be more gross than the Popish denunciation of Calvin for his share in the trial, and his supposed share in the condemnation of Servetus! The Church of Rome may well bear a grudge at Calvin. He has been, and by the influence of his writings and of the churches which he had a hand in forming, he continues to be one of their most formidable foes; but this constitutes no reason for such impudent injustice as that with which she is chargeable when she hunts his memory as a persecutor. We do not refer to Rome’s systematic and wholesale persecution we ask, from whom was Servetus fleeing when he came to Geneva, where he was apprehended and tried? He was fleeing from the Romish Inquisition at Vienne, in France. He was about to be condemned by that body to the flames, for the very heresy for which he was subsequently condemned at Geneva. Meanwhile, he made his escape. Did the Romish Church in tenderness, and relenting here, allow the matter to drop? No; though the accused had fled, she pursued the case — condemned Servetus to the flames — burnt him in effigy amid a pile of his works, sharing the same fate — pronounced him an outlaw, liable to the stake the first moment he returned to the territory of France. Nay, hearing that he had been apprehended at Geneva, whither he had gone — not kidnapped by Calvin, but as to the safest asylum then existing — she applied to the Genevese magistrates to have him delivered up to her summary justice, requesting that he might be sent back to them, that they might “inflict the said sentence (of death), the execution of which would punish him in a way that there would be no need to seek other charges against him!” The magistrates refused to surrender their prisoner. Not that they had any wish, probably, to carry out the trial; it would have saved them much trouble to have resigned him into the hands of those from whom he had fled; but by the laws of Geneva, often, and even recently acted upon, the magistrates were not entitled to surrender an accused prisoner, even though the crime were committed beyond their territory.

They were bound to try the case for themselves. It is owing to this accident, and nothing surely could be more purely accidental, that Servetus was burnt at Geneva by Protestant and Erastian magistrates, and not at Vienne by Popish inquisitors. But for this accident we should never have heard of “Calvin and Servetus.” The name of the latter would have been lost among the thousands and tens of thousands of Romish autos-da-fe ; and Gibbon would have had all the cruelty without being “scandalized.” It may be added, that on the poor man himself being asked, whether he would remain at Geneva, or go back to Vienne, he implored them to try him at Geneva, and asked them, “above all, that they would not send him back to Vienne.” “This,” adds Reilliet, “was, amid two evils, to shun the more certain.” Servetus had had experience of the intolerance of Popery and of Protestantism, and, contrary to the opinion of Gibbon, he thought himself safer with the latter. And here as we have seen, he would probably have escaped, had not the Popish king of France demanded his execution.

Such is the connection of the Church of Rome with the case of Servetus; and is it possible not to he filled with disgust when Papists chime in with the infidel cry against the Reformed Church and, above all, against John Calvin, as the atrocious persecutor of Servetus to death? From the language which is often used, one would suppose not only that. the Church of Rome was unstained with human blood, but, that she had been a sorrowing and sympathizing defender of Servetus during all the days of his trial, and particularly on the day of his execution; that she had stood by him when Protestant Christendom was up in arms against him; and that she fain, at any sacrifice, would have rescued and honored him. How widely different the facts of history! Servetus was twice condemned to be burnt; and the first condemnation to burning was by the Church of Rome! and, marvellous to tell, her educated supporters have the face of brass to turn around and denounce Calvin, and all who hold the theological views and system of Calvin, as the exclusive persecutors of Servetus, and in representing him as guilty of a crime so atrocious as to overbalance and obliterate all the autos-da-fe of the Romish Church through revolving centuries! Was ever such matchless effrontery manifested out of the Church of Rome? Ah, the insolence and credulity of Popery! 2. And now in regard to Infidelity. She came too late into the world in an avowed form to be a very open persecutor, unless, indeed, we class many of the leading officials of the Romish Church, including popes and cardinals in the number. There can be little question that, under a thin disguise, not a few of them were sceptics; and if they were persecutors, as we know they were, then we have a specimen of persecution in its most shocking form — persecution by men for believing what they themselves do not believe. But the intolerance of Infidelity is not confined to such cases. Socinianism may be fairly ranked with scepticism. It disclaims all that is peculiar in divine revelation. Now none have been greater partisans of Servetus — none more fierce denouncers of Calvin, than just the Socinian party. Indeed, if there were any religious body bearing the Christian name, to which Servetus might be said to belong, the Socinian would be that body. His creed was nearer to theirs than any other. His party have all along given themselves out as the friends of free inquiry, of candor, and toleration — indeed, they have assumed a monopoly of such qualities. They are, par excellence, the men of liberty, civil and religious.

All else are but bigots and slaves. The small amount of what they believe, and its freedom from the mysterious, they hold, gives them an advantage over others in the way of loving and practicing freedom.

But what says history in regard to their practice of freedom? Though but a small party, seldom ,allied with divil power as a religious body, they have continued to give full evidence that the spirit of intolerance is not limited to Popery or orthodox Protestantism — that it is natural to man and that there is nothing in their religious system, as there is in evangelical religion, to stay or extinguish it. Early in the days of the Reformation, Francis David, superintending officebearer of a Socinian Church in Transylvania was thrown into prison, where he died, by his own Socinian friends. For what reason? Because he held that Christ, being a creature should not be prayed to, while Socinus held that he should be so worshipped. This was all the difference in belief between David and Socinus — an inconceivably smaller difference than between Calvin and Servetus; for both “rational Christians” held that Christ was merely a creature; and yet there was imprisonment, terminating in death. Does this discover remarkable candor and liberty? Does it afford any ground for the Socinians to triumph, not over Calvin — for he had nothing to do with the sentence — but over the Erastian magistrates of Geneva when they condemned Servetus as a blasphemer as well as a heretic, to the flames? It would seem that indifference and scepticism in religion do not diminish severity in judging of others. Socinus, according to the difference at issue, was a greater persecutor than the magistracy of Geneva. Nor was this a solitary instance; the same spirit has appeared in later times. The Socinians assembled at Zurich in 1818, and the Socinian authorities, in Church and State, as well as the Socinian populace in the Canton de Vaud in 1824, and for several years together, not forgetting the same parties in Geneva itself, at the same period, all betrayed a spirit of as real persecution as ever appeared in Christendom; and then, it is to be remembered, that these intolerant and violent proceedings appeared not in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, but in the first quarter of the nineteenth, at a period boasting of its advancement in knowledge, and liberality, and freedom. In short, with the exception of Popery, which persecutes upon principle, and which, therefore, is ever at home in the business, the latest persecuters in Christendom have been the Socinian sceptical party — the very party which, all the while, has been making a boast of its love of free inquiry, and almost monopolizing the name of freedom. Persecuting proceedings at the present moment, in the same quarters of Switzerland, show, it would seem, that Socinianism and Infidelity do not mean to make any change in the intolerant character which has hitherto belonged to them. Republicans in civil politics, and Socinians, if not Infidels in religion, have the honor, along with old Popery, of being the persecutors of 1846. Perhaps at the existing moment the former surpass the latter. It would be difficult, in any Popish country, pretending to any measure of light or freedom, to parallel the legislative proeeedings and the practical doings of the Canton de Vaud, under Socinian and Infidel rule, during the last six months.

But, to bring out the intolerance of Infidelity proper, we must turn back for a little into the last, the eighteenth century. Avowed Infidels have taken great credit to themselves as the friends and patrons of freedom, and have even cried out bitterly against the supposed severity and intolerance of evangelical religion, particularly in its Calvinistic form. They have had no patience for the uncharitable and persecuting spirit, of “the saints,” and hence “Calvin and Servetus” has proved quite a stock in trade to them. But have they really any great ground of boasting? The fact of their being obliged to go so far back — nearly 300 years — for a single case, is rather against their theory. We do not need to turn so far back for illustrations of the persecuting character of Infidelity. Montesquieu, in his “Esprit des Lois,” lib. 12, c., 5, has the candor to say: “I have not said that it is not necessary to punish heresy. I have only said that it is necessary to be very circumspect in punishing it.” We dare say that none of the much calumniated Reformers of the sixteenth century would quarrel with the statement. Is it necessary to remind the reader of the sentiment of Rousseau? “The only way to hinder fanaticism (in other words, evangelical religion,) is to restrain those who preach it. I see but one way to stop its progress, and that is to combat it with its own weapons. Little does it avail to reason or convince; you must lay aside philosophy, shut your books, take up the sword, and punish the knaves .” Not long after the days of Rousseau, there was an opportunity of showing what French Infidelity understood by “fanaticism.” Christianity in any form — corrupted, as well as true — including the Bible and the Sabbath, were denounced as a fanaticism; and the disciples of Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, etc., engaged in a fierce and bloody persecution of the Christian name, in point of atrocity surpassed only by the Popish persecutions of the middle ages. Where were the charity, and candor, and tolerant of Infidelity in the days of the French Revolution? And yet her crimes were perpetrated in the sacred name of liberty! It might be shown that leading British Infidels, such as Hume and Gibbon, whatever might be their professed principles, were intolerant in practice, so far as their circumstances, and the spirit of the age, and indifference to all religion, would allow. It is notorious that in their writings, they took the side of the oppressor and the persecutor, when he was arrayed against, evangelical truth and its friends. Their sympathies were not with the religious sufferer, though suffering in the cause of civil freedom, but with the tyrant and the persecutor. Their practical treatment, too, of men holding evangelical truth, did not correspond with their professed creed of universal toleration and non-responsibility for error. They will ever be found sarcastically or otherwise, wounding the feelings of Christians, ridiculing and condemning them; and, in short, discovering anything but a tolerant and charitable spirit. Holding the views which these Infidels maint,ained on the subject of truth and error, they ought to have been forbearing and kind; at least, full of commiseration for evangelical Christians. Is this their spirit? Was it this spirit which characterized Hume in his social intercourse; or Gibbon, when, denouncing Calvin, he declared that he was more scandalized by his supposed connection with the death of Servetus, than with all the burnings of the Church of Rome? Even a recent and partial biographer of the former (Burton,) speaking of an early work, says: “Though his philosophy (Hume’s) is sceptical, his manner is frequently dogmatical; and while illustrating the feebleness of all human reasoning, he seems as if he felt an innote infallibility in his own!”

But the inconsistencies or former philosophers are small compared with those of a modern statesman and author, whose religious as well as philosophical standing we feel some difficulty in ascertaining. We allude to Lord Brougham. No man of any name in modern times has been more unmerciful upon Calvin than his Lordship; and certainly no one has betrayed more ignorance of the real facts of the case which has drawn forth so keen condemnation. Yet, of all men, Lord Brougham should have been the most tolerant and candid. If he does not belong to the sceptical, he at least belongs to the very liberal school. He has proclaimed as the very foundation of toleration, and that with a most oracular voice, that a man is no more responsible for what he believes than for the hue of his skin or the height of his stature, his name was wont to be associated with the advocacy of all that was free, whether civil or religious. Surely, then, Brougham should have pitied Calvin, and been kind and charitable in his judgment. The Reformer believed, as a general doctrine, that flagrant and incorrigible heretics and blasphemers should be punished. Such was his deliberate conviction. For this conviction he was no more responsible than for the hue of his skin and the height of his stature. And why, then, does Lord Brougham blame him, and mercilessly misrepresent and traduce him for this his sober belief, any more than for his complexion and his stature?

Does the result not plainly show, that Liberalism in religion and politics, whatever it may pretend, is essentially intolerant and pcrsecuting? and if this be its character in the hands or heart of Lord Brougham, who had so many reasons for being, in this respect, on his good behavior, how much stronger must the same intolerant persecuting spirit prove in those who are less under restraint! Well may we ask, is Brougham the man to condemn the intolerance of Calvin? Intolerance himself without a reason — or rather in the face of strong reasons to the reverse — intolerant in the nineteenth century, is he the man, especially holding his own doctrine of non-responsibility, to rebuke the intolerance of the sixteenth century?

What can be more ludicrous and inconsistent? Nothing save what proceeds from the same mint, and the new coinage has appeared but yesterday.

Lord Brougham sets himself Forth as the very patron and pattern of Freedom in every Form; so much so that contrary to his own principles, he is entitled to rebuke with all severity the great Genevan Reformer, within the British Senate, 300 years after he has passed to his account.

Surely, then modern Liberalism must be tolerant and charitable; indeed the very foe of whatever savors of persecution. What is the fact? Lord Brougham but the other day, vindicated the Scottish site-refusers, contending that their proceedings were involved in the just rights of landed property! The man who condemns Calvin as the most atrocious of persecutors, sees no persecution (pity but that he could feel enough to know it!) in hundreds and thousands of his countrymen, far more devout and religiously intelligent than himself, being denied a piece of ground on which they may worship God, and being compelled, for summer and winter together, to conduct their service under the open canopy of heaven.