where accusers are referred to the Churches, when the matters in question bear upon Religion only. So too in the time of Constantine, when the Arian heresy was broached, and accusations were brought on the part both of Athanasius and Arius, the great Emperor, by his Council and the Councils of the Churches, decided that, according to the old doctrine, suits of the kind could not be entertained by civil tribunals— not even in the case of such notorious heresy as that of Arius, but were to be taken into consideration and decided by the Church. Further, that heretics were either to be brought to reason by argument, or were to be punished by banishment, when they proved refractory and refused to amend. Now that banishment was the award of the ancient Churches against heretics can be proved by a thousand histories and authorities. Wherefore, my Lords,. in consonance with Apostolic teaching and the practice of the ancient Church, your petitioner prays that the Criminal Charge under which he lies may be discharged.

Secondly, my Lords, I entreat you to consider that I have committed no offence within your territory; neither, indeed, have I been guilty of any elsewhere: I have never been seditious, and am no disturber of the peace. The questions I discuss in my works are of an abstruse kind, and within the scope and ken of men of learning only. During all the time I passed in Germany, I never spoke on such subjects save with colampadius, Bucer, and Capito; neither in France did I ever enter on them with anyone. I have always disavowed the opinions of the Anabaptists, seditious against the magistrate, and preaching community of goods. Wherefore, as I have been guilty of no sort of sedition, but have only brought up for discussion certain ancient doctrines of the Church, I think I ought not to be detained a prisoner and made the subject of a criminal prosecution.

In conclusion, my Lords, inasmuch as I am a stranger, igno

rant of the customs of this country, not knowing either how to speak or comport myself in the circumstances under which I am placed, I humbly beseech you to assign me an Advocate to speak for me in my defence. Doing thus, you will assuredly do well, and our Lord will prosper your Republic. In the City of Geneva, the 22nd day of August, 1553MICHAEL SERVETUS,

In his own cause.

This well-worded, and in its demands most reasonable address, strange to say, received no notice beyond an order to the clerk of the Court to enter it on the minutes; the prisoner being at the same time curtly admonished to go on answering the questions addressed to him. But how hardly the poor man was being used by his self-constituted Judges we shall see by the tenor of the next petition he addressed to them. He had been thrown into one of the foul cells or dungeons appropriated to criminals of the vilest class, accused of crimes against person and property; and there, in addition to mental anguish, he had to suffer all the bodily miseries that filth, foul air, cold and vermin inflict.

The feeling evinced of late by the Court, in the prisoner's favour, appears now to have extended to the town; the liberal party, the native Genevese, opposed to Calvin, making of his prosecution of the solitary stranger a handle against him; his friends on the contrary speaking of it as proclaiming him the undaunted defender of the cause of God and religion! The trial we therefore see had become the occasion of alarm to one political party in the state, of hope to another, and

of peculiar significance to both. Under present circumstances, matters proceeding in nowise to his satisfaction, Calvin must come again to the front; and we have it on unquestionable authority that it was at this, the very crisis in the fate of Servetus, that the Reformer was guilty of the crying injustice of availing himself of his pulpit, and in the face of numerous congregations denouncing and vilifying his opponent in no measured terms, exposing his unorthodox opinions in their most glaring and repulsive aspects, proclaiming what he characterised as their impious, blasphemous, demoralising nature, and thundering reproaches on the mistaken sympathy that had lately begun to be entertained for the author of such infamies. By right or by wrong Calvin was resolved that his old theological enemy, now turned, as he believed, into their tool for his humiliation by his political opponents, should not escape

him.

CHAPTER VII.

THE TRIAL CONTINUED THE ATTORNEY-GENERAL

CEIVES FRESH INSTRUCTIONS FOR ITS CONDUCT.

RE

IN the course of this extraordinary trial there seems never to have been the slightest difficulty made about shifting the grounds of the Accusation. The particulars on which the prisoner was interrogated were scarcely the same in all respects on any two successive days, and often wide as the poles asunder of the proper articles of impeachment produced against him. The petition just presented by the prisoner was thus, without scruple as without challenge, now made the ground of a series of questions and harangues by the prosecutor, studiously calculated to prejudice him in the eyes of his Judges.

Rigot had in fact made a great mistake in his own articles of inculpation. The prisoner, as it seemed, was even likely to escape through his mismanagement ; but, otherwise advised, and as if to make amends for the line he had taken at first, he now showed himself either indisposed or afraid to follow further the dictates of his own more equitable nature. He had been in conclave with Calvin and received

fresh instructions

from him, as Servetus affirmed without being contra dicted. Rigot, in truth, was no longer free, but cowed by the stern resolve of the man of mind and iron will.'

August 28.-Abandoning the moderate tone he had hitherto observed, and taking the petition of the prisoner for his text, Rigot now entered on the task prescribed him of showing that the early Christian Emperors, contrary to the allegation in the petition, did take cognisance of heresy, and by their Laws and Constitutions consigned all who denied the doctrine of the Trinity to death. But the prisoner,' said Rigot, 'his own conscience condemning him and arguing him deserving of death, would have the magistrate deprived of the right to punish the heretic capitally. To escape such a fate it is that he has now put forward the false plea that for false doctrine the guilty are never to be summarily punished. Not to seem to favour the errors of the Anabaptists, moreover, ever rebellious against the authority of the magistrate, it is that the prisoner in his petition now pretends to repudiate their doctrines; yet can he not show a single passage in his writings in which he reprobates their principles and

1 In the summary of the trial given by Trechsel from the archives of Berne, the articles now brought forward by Rigot, and the questions founded on them, are in the handwriting of the amanuensis usually employed by Calvin to make copies of his letters and papers; and beyond question were all dictated by Calvin himself. He perceived that he could trust Rigot no further without risk of failure, and so resumed the position he had taken with Trie, his servant Fontaine, and even in person, as we have seen.

1 Die Antitrinitarier: Michel Servet und seine Vorgänger, S. 307.