metrically opposed to the spirit and to the universal sentiment of the age. The Romish church had diffused the notion that the spirit of the judicial laws of the Old Testament still constituted the rule and standard of the Christian church. Of necessity, therefore, a regard for the public peace, and the preservation of the church of Christ from infection, required the punishment of heretics and blasphemers.* Toleration of errorists was deemed sinful, and their destruction a Christian duty. Men were taught to believe that temporal penalties were God's appointed means for making men virtuous and religious. The gibbet, the stake, the cell, and various other modes of torture, were therefore the chief arguments employed. Priests became inquisitors. The pulpit was the inciter to slaughter: and Te Deums resounded through cloistered walls in commemoration of the deaths of infamous heretics. Persecution, in short, was the avowed policy of the church. Now the Reformers, be it remembered, were all Romish theologians, trained up in the bosom of the Roman church, and imbued with these fatal sentiments, which were every where applauded.t

The liberty of the Reformation, also, had been abused to the greatest licentiousness, both of opinion and of practice. Such heresies in doctrine, and excesses in conduct, were all employed as arguments against the Reformers. While, then, tolerance of error was a standing reproach in the mouth of Rome, * See Clarke's Hist. of Intol., vol. 1. p. xviii. and xxi. + Viller on the Reformation, p. 260.

against their cause, the reformers, deluded in their first principles-blinded by the universal opinion of all parties—and driven, in self-defence, to oppose themselves to all heresy continued to approve and to practise upon those views which are now condemned as intolerance and persecution. Calvin, therefore, was led to think that his previous views would encourage heresy, and injure the cause of the reform; and for once, he allowed his better judgment to be warped, and fully endorsed the principle that heresy must be restrained by force. But still he utterly disclaimed all right or power to employ that force on the part of the church. He transferred it altogether to the civil authorities, and therefore to the hands of the community, generally, by whom it has been ultimately abolished. Tried, therefore, by the universal judgment of his age, Calvin was not intolerant; and when condemned by the free and liberal views of the present time, he meets his sentence in common with all men, whether civilians or theologians, and with all the reformers, whether continental or anglican.* So that the whole guilt of the persecuting tenets of the reformers must ultimately rest upon that mother from whose breasts these all had drawn the milk of intolerance, and by whose nurture they had been trained up in the way of persecution.

*Scott's Contin., vol. 3, 420, 432, 433, 435, 437, 438, D'Aubigné Hist. of Ref., vol. 3, p. 630. Beza's Life, p. 109, 110, 156, 197.

The romish church, therefore, as has been truly said, is answerable for the execution of Servetus.

If, however, there ever was a case in which the execution of the penalty of death could have been properly inflicted, it was in that of Servetus. Never had man so blasphemed his Maker, so outraged christian feeling and all propriety, so insulted the laws in force for his destruction, and so provoked the slumbering arm of vengeance to fall upon him.*

Servetus had been driven from every attempted residence on account of his unbearable conduct. He had been tried and condemned to be burned to death by the romanists at Vienna, from whose hands he had just escaped when he came to Geneva.t He was well aware of the intolerant character of the laws of the city of Geneva, enacted against heretics by the Emperor Frederick I. when under imperial and romish jurisdiction-which had been often exercised before that time—and which were still in force. Calvin, regarding his sentiments and conduct with just abhorrence, and believing it to be his duty, for the reasons stated, to oppose them, gave him previous notice, that if he came to the city of Geneva, he should be under the necessity of prosecuting him. There was, therefore, no previous

* Beza's Life, p. 163, 203. Philad. ed.

+ Scott ibid. 423, Beza ibid. 163.

Scott ibid. 347, 356, 374, 430, 443. Beza ibid. 167, 180, and 199.

When Ser

malice in Calvin towards him. vetus had come, and Calvin had brought his character and opinions to the view of the authorities, his interference in the matter there ceased. He never visited the court, except when required to do so. The Senate, instead of being influenced by him in the course they pursued, were, the greater part of them, at that very time opposed to him. The whole matter was, at Servetus' request, submitted to the judgment of the other cities, who unanimously approved of his condemnation. †

Servetus, too, acknowledged the justice of his own sentence, if guilty of the charges made against him,—and which were all sustained, and actually sought and hoped to have the same sentence inflicted upon Calvin. He therefore forced death upon himself, and threw himself, as it were, into the burning fire; Calvin having exerted his utmost influence, up to the very last, to have the mode of execution altered.

Now when it is remembered that at this very time the flames were consuming the victims of romish persecution, and also those of Cranmer, who is called a pattern of humility that Davides fell a victim to the intolerance of Socinus§-that the English reformers applauded the execution of Servetus -that his punishment was regarded as the

*Scott ibid., p. 434, 440. Beza's Life ibid. 168, 283. Scott ibid. 427, 436. Beza's Life ibid. 169, 195. Waterman's Life of Calvin, p. 103, 105.

§ Scott, ibid. 439. Williams' Relig. Liberty, p. 135.

common cause of all the churches-and that for fifty years no writer criminated Calvin for his agency in this matter-may we not say to those who now try Calvin by an ex post facto law-let him that is guiltless among you cast the first stone? So much for the charge of intolerance.

SECTION VI.

CALVIN VINDICATED FROM THE CHARGE OF A WANT OF NATURAL AFFECTION AND FRIENDSHIP.

EQUALLY futile and untrue is another charge made against Calvin, that he was entirely destitute of tenderness and all natural affection, and that no expression of kindness can be found in his writings. That his intellectual powers were pre-eminent, and held his passions, appetites and desires in complete subjection to the dictates of prudence and calm sobriety, is unquestionably true. But that Calvin possessed deep feeling, and was susceptible of the strongest and most tender emotions, we believe to be incontrovertibly certain. "I had intended," he says, on his return to the people of Geneva, who had so cruelly treated him, "to address the people, entering into a review of the past, and a justification of myself and my colleagues; but I found them so touched with remorse, so ready to anticipate me in