What ground is there
for throwing the odium of Servetus's death upon Calvin alone?--Why, the
mild Melancthon wrote to Calvin[1], expressly to testify his concurrence in
the act, and no doubt he spoke the sense of the German reformers; the Swiss
churches _advised_ the punishment in formal letters, and I rather think
there are letters from the English divines, approving Calvin's conduct!--
Before a man deals out the slang of the day about the great leaders of the
Reformation, he should learn to throw himself back to the age of the
Reformation, when the two great parties in the church were eagerly on the
watch to fasten a charge of heresy on the other. Besides, if ever a poor
fanatic thrust, himself into the fire, it was Michael Servetus. He was a
rabid enthusiast, and did every thing he could in the way of insult and
ribaldry to provoke the feeling of the Christian church. He called the
Trinity _triceps monstrum et Cerberum quendam tripartitum_, and so on.
Indeed, how should the principle of religious toleration have been
acknowledged at first?--It would require stronger arguments than any which
I have heard as yet, to prove that men in authority have not a right,
involved in an imperative duty, to deter those under their control from
teaching or countenancing doctrines which they believe to be damnable, and
even to punish with death those who violate such prohibition.
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