Servetus and Calvin. Robert Willis
and putting an extinguisher, as it were, upon his own as well as other vain attempts to give a rational explanation of the mystical Neo-Platonic Logos-Doctrine of the Fourth Gospel, of which the Trinitarian Church-Dogma is the outcome. Hampered, however, by the idea that everything in the Bible is the word of God, Servetus insists on trying to find, for himself and his readers, something like an acceptable interpretation of the leading words of the Imaginative Mystical Discourse entitled the Gospel according to John. In this he fails, as might have been anticipated; and then, his eyes being opened to the fact, he has nothing for it but to conclude that the orthodox Trinitarian mystery were well discarded from the thoughts and the beliefs of man. ‘To believe, however,’ he continues, ‘suffices, it is said; but what folly to believe aught that cannot be understood, that is impossible in the nature of things, and that may even be looked on as blasphemous! Can it be that mere confusion of mind is to be assumed as an adequate object of faith?’ (Ib. f. 33, b.)
The Trinitarian doctrine of dogmatic Christianity Servetus held to have been a great obstacle to the spread of the religion of Christ. Opposed to the conception of the Oneness of Deity to which the Jews had finally attained, the religious system in which it was made so prominent an element, could not possibly be accepted by them; neither, on the same ground, could it be received by Islam; for Mahomet, whilst he acknowledged Jesus as a prophet and power in the world, born of a Virgin, too, like other distinguished individuals, in some incomprehensible manner, never for a moment thought of him as the Son of God; for ‘God,’ says he, ‘as he is not engendered, so neither does he engender.’
But it is not in connexion with the subject of the Trinity alone that Servetus shows the advances he had made on his age in the sphere of Biblical exposition. Commenting on the text, ‘No man hath ascended up to heaven but he who came down from heaven’ (John iii. 13), he says: ‘It is the spiritual heaven that is here to be understood, and this exists wherever Christ is; “to ascend to heaven” means no more than to discourse of heavenly things. “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” says the text (Ib. xiv. 9), i.e., says our expositor, ‘he who appreciates the priceless treasures of Christ’s love easily attains to a knowledge of God the Father. But how should an invisible, intangible Word give us to know God?’ (‘De Tr. Err.’ f. 46 et seq.)
There are others among the accepted doctrines of the reformed Churches which, as repudiated by Servetus and so arraying the whole of their adherents against him and influencing his fate, require a passing notice at our hands. Justification by Faith, for instance, he maintains, comes not by belief in the merits or sufferings of Christ, but by belief in his worth or dignity as Son of God. On this ground, he says, the Lutherans do not understand what Justification really is. It is by belief of the kind he specifies, however, that we show our obedience to God, accept the new covenant instead of the old law, become the children of our heavenly Father, and have the Holy Spirit imparted to us. Such belief is, in fact, the very kernel of the Christian dispensation, and that on which the new covenant of grace reposes. It is the real rock on which Peter was to build the Church, against which the gates of hell should not prevail. But as hell does seem to have got the upper hand, he adds, we can only conclude that neither the Church on the rock nor the true Faith is now to be found among us. The Lutheran Justification by Faith, in a word, is mere magical fascination and folly (f. 82–84, Conf. ‘Ep. ad Calvin.’ xiii.).
But Faith, even the most fervent, is not yet sufficient for salvation. The Justification thereby attained is still no more than negative in kind; to become positive, it must be associated with Love, i.e., with Charity in the widest sense of the word; with the Love, that is the fulfilment of the law, whereby alone do we secure for ourselves treasures in heaven. Faith is the entrance, Charity the sanctuary—Fides ostium, Charitas perfectio; and there is a fine passage in the ‘Christianismi Restitutio’ (p. 349), comparable in some sort to Paul’s eloquent outburst on the excellence of that much misused sentiment. When Servetus speaks of Charity, therefore, it is not the eleemosynary idea of his day that is meant, with its mendicant friars, its convent doles, and its engendered sloth and beggary; neither is it the mistaken view of later days, which gives indolence and improvidence a legal claim on industry and thrift. It is of the nobler, truer kind that, beside good works, gives man a right to think and to speak unfettered, and forbids him to fancy that his brother is damned for divergency in theological opinion.
To the leading Calvinistic doctrines of Predestination and Election, involving as they do fettered instead of free will, Servetus is still more violently opposed than to the Lutheran Justification by Faith. ‘In your fatal, not to say fatuous, necessity of all things, or your servile will,’ says he, at a later period in his life, ‘there is a certain show of folly, seeing that you would have a man do that which you must know he cannot do. You speak of free acts, yet tell us there is no such thing as free action. And it is absurd in you to derive the servile will you abet from this: that it is God who acts in us. Truly God does act in us, and in such wise that we act freely. He acts in us so that we understand and will and pursue. Even as all things consist essentially in God, so do all acts proceed essentially from him. But the power in us to do is one thing, the necessity of doing is another; and though God may deal with us as the potter deals with his clay, it does not follow that we are nothing more than clay, and have no power of action in ourselves.’ (Ib f. 79, b, et ‘Epist. ad Calvinum,’ xxii.)
Another of the most essential doctrines underlying Pauline Christianity, original sin, is made little of by Servetus. Although I spent much time in reading his books, I do not appear to have made a note of more than one or two passages in which he refers to that subject; and when he does, it is by the way rather than more particularly. It is on the necessity of faith in Christ, as he understands the Sonship, that he dwells continually, making of this the prime factor in his scheme of restored Christianity. ‘This faith it is,’ says he, ‘that first makes us aware of our poverty, of our misery; for if we believe that Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, we already assume that the world is sinful, and requires saving’ (‘Chr. Rest.’ p. 349). He does not refer particularly to what is called ‘the Fall,’ neither does he say very pointedly how the world came into the sorry plight in which he admits that he finds it. The reason usually assigned must have appeared unsatisfactory to an understanding so clear as that of Servetus, when unclouded by fancies of his own creating; but we can hardly think he mends matters by ascribing the origin of sin to heaven and the rebellion of the angels, as he does, instead of to the earth and Adam’s disobedience. Far from maintaining that the heart of man is corrupt and evil by nature, he holds that the cause of good works and well-doing is proper and spontaneous to the individual, who is only answerable for his own sin, not for the sin of another. Faith in Christ, therefore, as the naturally-begotten Son of God; Charity, in which are comprised all the virtues, and a good life, in so far as we can make it out, form the backbone of Servetus’s Christianity, as it is unfolded in his earliest work on ‘Current Misconceptions of the Trinity.’32
CHAPTER VI.
THE AUTHORITIES OF BASLE TAKE NOTICE OF HIS BOOK. HE WRITES TWO DIALOGUES BY WAY OF APPENDIX TO IT AND LEAVES SWITZERLAND.
Failing to make any impression on the Swiss and German Reformers whose countenance he had been so anxious to gain, we have seen Servetus in his letter to Œcolampadius declaring his readiness to quit Basle, to which he must have returned, if it were only not said that he went as a fugitive, and giving something like an engagement to his correspondent to review and, reviewing, to modify or retract some things he had said in his book. That some such engagement was given we conclude from the letter of Œcolampadius to the magistrates of Basle, to which we shall refer immediately, and from which it would seem that it was through the forbearance, if not even the more friendly interference, of the Reformer that our author escaped arrest and imprisonment at this time. The seven books or chapters on erroneous ideas of the Trinity had not fallen stillborn from the press; neither had the presence of the writer in Basle passed unobserved. The book being seen as heretical in the highest degree by the ministers, the presence of its writer among them was felt as matter of grievance by both clergy and laity; so that the Civic Council held it within the scope of their duties to