Servetus and Calvin. Robert Willis
fermenting in his mind. There is, it is true, commonly enough, so much more of policy than of piety among hierarchs of the Church of Rome, and indeed of any church largely possessed of wealth and culture, that their real opinions and beliefs have often been made subject of debate. But Quintana was a monk, although a liberal one, and he was Charles V.’s confessor. Of the Emperor’s orthodoxy, bigotry, and hatred of heresy, however, there can be no question; so that, though policy moved him for a time to entertain as his spiritual adviser a man more tolerant than the general, the occasion for this ceasing, Charles was not likely to find himself altogether at his ease with one at his elbow much more liberally disposed than himself. Quintana consequently on the return to Spain, being absolved of his office of confessor, but handsomely provided for in the Church, Charles recalled Loaysa, his former director in matters of faith, from Rome, and lapsed into the groove of intolerance from which considerations of state had for a moment withdrawn him.
From the false account Servetus gives of the cause of his quitting Quintana, we therefore think it probable that soon after the settlement of matters at Augsburg in the early autumn of 1530, he had incautiously betrayed the state of his mind on some point of the religious question, and been dismissed from his service by the confessor. Service of any sort, indeed, from the estimate we are led to form of the mental constitution of Michael Servetus, could only have been a bondage never patiently to be endured, but to be shaken off at the earliest possible opportunity. His was not a nature that could brook a master; and we have the assurance of Œcolampadius that Michael Servetus was in Basle and making himself obnoxious by his theological fancies previous to the month of October 1530. The coronation at Bologna having taken place in the autumn of 1529, and the Diet of Augsburg assembled at midsummer 1530, Servetus could not, thus, have been in the following of Quintana for more than a year, or eighteen months—no long term if reckoned by the lapse of time, but certainly covering a vast area in the sphere of his mental development. He may have had little leisure for the study of books, but he had his eyes open to the doings of men; and his inner senses were awakened to truths, his reason to conclusions, that influenced him through the rest of his life, and possibly had no insignificant part in bringing him to his untimely end.
CHAPTER IV.
INTERCOURSE WITH THE SWISS REFORMERS.
It would appear that Œcolampadius, Bucer, Bullinger, Zwingli and others, their friends, had had a sort of ‘clerical meeting’ for talking over the theological questions of the day at Basle in the autumn of 1530. On this occasion Œcolampadius informed his friends that he had been troubled of late by a hot-headed Spaniard, Servetus by name, overflowing with Arian heresies and other objectionable opinions, maintaining particularly that Christ was not really and truly the Eternal Son of God; but if not, then was he not, and could not be, the Saviour—were Christus nit rächter, warer, ewiger Gott, so were er doch und könte nit seyn unser Heiland. Waxing warm in his tale, and fearing that such poison, as he conceived it, would not be poured into his ears alone, but would reach those of others, he was minded that measures should be taken against such a contingency. To this Zwingli, addressing him as brother Œcolampady, replied, that ‘there did seem good ground for them to be on their guard; for the false and wicked doctrine of the troublesome Spaniard goes far to do away with the whole of our Christian religion.’ ‘God preserve us,’ said he, ‘from the coming in among us of any such wickedness. Do what you can, then, to quit the man of his errors, and with good and wholesome argument win him to the truth.’ ‘That have I already done,’ said Œcolampady; ‘but so haughty, daring and contentious is he, that all I say goes for nothing against him.’ ‘This is indeed a thing insufferable in the Church of God,’ said Zwingli—Ein unleydenliche Sach in der Kyrchen Gottes. Therefore do everything possible that such dreadful blasphemy get no further wind to the detriment of Christianity.’14
Besides the personal communication with Œcolampadius of which we have this interesting notice, Servetus must have written him several letters—unfortunately lost to us—about the same time, for we have two from the Reformer to the Spaniard, which have happily been preserved. In one of these (probably the second that was written), Servetus having, as it seems, complained that he had been somewhat sharply handled by his correspondent, Œcolampadius replies that he, for his part, thinks that he himself has the greater reason to complain. ‘You obtrude yourself on me,’ he says, ‘as if I had nothing else ado than to answer you; asking me questions about all the foolish things the Sorbonne has said of the Trinity, and even taking it amiss that I do not criticise and in your way oppose myself to those distinguished theologians, Athanasius and Nazianzenus. You contend that the Church has been displaced from its true foundation of faith in Christ, and feign that we speak of his filiation in a sense which detracts from the honour that is due to him as the Son of God. But it is you who speak blasphemously; for I now understand the diabolical subterfuges you use. Forbearing enough in other respects, I own that I am not possessed of that extreme amount of patience which would keep me silent when I see Christ dishonoured.’ He then goes on to criticise and rebut Servetus’s theological views—his denial of Two natures in the One person of Christ, and his opinion that in the prophetical writings of the Old Testament it is always a prospective or coming Son of God that is indicated. ‘You,’ continues Œcolampadius, ‘do not admit that it was the Son of God who was to come as man; but that it was the man who came that was the Son of God; language which leads to the conclusion that the Son of God existed not eternally before the incarnation.’
To satisfy the Reformer, or seeking to get upon a better footing with him, Servetus appears now to have composed and sent him a Confession of Faith, which has come down to us. On the face of this there was such a semblance of orthodoxy that Œcolampadius found nothing at first to object to in its statements; but having conversed with the writer and heard his explanations, he had come to see it as utterly fallacious, misleading, and inadmissible. He concludes by exhorting his correspondent to ‘confess the Son to be consubstantial and coeternal with the Father, in which case,’ he says, ‘we shall be able to acknowledge you for a Christian.’15
CHAPTER V.
THE REFORMERS OF STRASBURG—PUBLICATION OF THE WORK ON TRINITARIAN ERROR.
The letter of Œcolampadius, as we have it, is without date, but must have been written from Basle at the close of 1530, or the beginning of 1531, and so before the book on Trinitarian Error had been published, as we find no mention made of the work. By this time, however, Servetus must have had the treatise ready for press, for it was now that he put it into the hands of Conrad Kœnig or Rous, a publisher, having establishments both at Basle and Strasburg. Kœnig was not a printer himself; but accepting the work for publication he sent it to Jo. Secerius, of Hagenau, in Alsace, a well-known typographer of the day, to be put into type. To Hagenau accordingly went the MS., followed by the author to superintend the printing; intending from thence to proceed to Strasburg, where he was anxious to have interviews with the leading Reformers of that city, Martin Bucer and W. F. Capito, and propound to them, as he had done to the Switzers, the new views of Christian doctrine at which he had arrived.
From what we know already we might conclude that he found little more encouragement from the ministers of Strasburg than he had had from those of Basle. Servetus himself, however, appears to have thought otherwise, and left them with the impression that neither of the Strasburgers was so wholly opposed to his views as Œcolampadius in particular had shown himself at Basle. We find him, by and by, in fact, speaking as if he even believed that in the first instance they were alike disposed to abet rather than condemn his conclusions. And this, from what came out subsequently, seems really to have been the case, in so far, at least, as Capito stands concerned. Capito was, in fact, the most advanced and truly tolerant of all the early Reformers, and if we may rely on the report we have of his opinions from the author of the ‘Antitrinitarian Library,’16 he was really not behind Servetus in his rejection of the orthodox tripartite Deity. A kindly sympathy with a young enthusiast, full of fancies