CHAP. II. TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY. 77 26. The Protestant theologians did not fail to entangle themselves in this intricate wilderness. Me- Protestant lanchthon drew a large portion of the Lutherans tenets. into what was afterwards called Arminianism; but the reformed churches, including the Helvetian, which, after the middle of the century, gave up many at least of those points of difference which had distinguished them from that of Geneva, held the doctrine of Augustin on absolute predestination, on total depravity, and arbitrary irresistible grace. 27. A third source of intestine disunion lay deep in recesses beyond the soundings of human reason. Trinitarian The doctrine of the Trinity, which theologians controversy. agree to call inscrutable, but which they do not fail to define and analyse with the most confident dogmatism, had already, as we have seen in a former passage, been investigated by some bold spirits with little regard to the established faith. They had soon however a terrible proof of the danger that still was to wait on such momentous aberrations from the prescribed line. Servetus, having, in 1553, published, at Vienne in Dauphiné, a new treatise, called Christianismi Restitutio, and escaping from thence, as he vainly hoped, to the Protestant city of Geneva, became a victim to the bigotry of the magistrates, instigated by Calvin, who had acquired an immense ascendency over that republic. He did not an abstract of the dispute by command of Sixtus V. In this he does not decide in favour of either side, but the pope declared the Jesuit propositions to be sanæ doctrinæ articuli, p. 258. The appearance of Molina's book, which was thought to go much farther towards Pelagianism, renewed the flame. Clement VIII. was very desirous to condemn Molina; but Henry IV., who now favoured the Jesuits, interfered for their honour. Cardinal Perron took the same side, and told the pope that a Protestant might subscribe the Dominican doctrine. Ranke, ii. 295 et post. Paul V. was also rather inclined against the Jesuits; but it would have been hard to mortify such good friends, and in 1607 he issued a declaration postponing the decision sine die. The Jesuits deemed themselves victorious, as in fact they were. Id., p. 353. This book is among the scarcest in the world, ipsa raritate rarior, as it is called by Schelhorn. Il est reconnu, says De Bure, pour le plus rare de tous les livres. It was long supposed that no copy existed except that belonging to Dr. Mead, afterwards to the Duke de la Valière, and now in the Royal library at Paris. But a second is said to be in the Imperial library at Vienna; and Brunet observes, on connoît à peine trois exemplaires, which seems to hint that there may be a third. Allwoerden, in his life of Servetus, published in 1727, did not know where any printed copy could be found, several libraries having been named by mistake. But there were at that time several manuscript copies, one of which he used himself. It had belonged to Samuel Crellius, and afterwards to La Croze, from whom he had borrowed it, and was transcribed from a printed copy belonging to an Unitarian 78 SERVETUS CHRISTIANISMI RESTITUTIO.' PART II. leave, as far as we know, any peculiar disciples. Many, however, among the German Anabaptists, held tenets minister in Transylvania, who had obtained it in England between 1660 and 1670. This celebrated book is a collection of several treatises, with the general title, Christianismi Restitutio. But that of the first and most remarkable part has been differently given. According to a letter from the Abbé Rive, librarian to the Duke de la Valière, to Dutens, which the latter has published in the second edition of his Origines des Découvertes attribuées aux Modernes, vol. ii. p. 359, all former writers on the subject have been incorrect. The difference, however, is but in one word. In Sandius, Niceron, Allwoerden, and, I suppose, others, the title runs: De Trinitate Divina, quod in ea non sit indivisibilium trium rerum illusio, sed vera substantiæ Dei manifestatio in verbo, et communicatio in spiritu, libri vii. The Abbé Rive gives the word invisibilium, and this I find also in the additions of Simler to the Bibliotheca Universalis of Gesner, to which M. Rive did not advert. In Allwoerden, however, a distinct heading is given to the 6th and 7th dialogues, wherein the same title is repeated, with the word invisibilium instead of indivisibilium. It is remarked in a note, by Rive or Dutens, that it was a gross error to put indivisibilium, as it makes Servetus say the contrary of what his system requires. I am not entirely of this opinion; and if I understand the system of Servetus at all, the word indivisibilium is very intelligible. De Bure, who seems to write from personal inspection of the same copy, which he supposed to be unique, gives the title with indivisibilium. The Christianismi Restitutio was reprinted at Nuremberg, about 1790, in the same form as the original edition, but I am not aware which word is used in the title-page; nor would the evidence of a modern reprint, possibly ot taken immediately from a printed copy, be conclusive. The Life of Servetus by Allwoerden, Helmstadt, 1727, is partly founded on materials collected by Mosheim, who put them into the author's hands. Barbier is much mistaken in placing it among pseudonymous works, as if Allwoerden had been a fictitious denomination of Mosheim. Dictionnaire des Anonymes (1824), iii. 555. The book contains, even in the title-page, all possible vouchers for its authenticity. Mosheim himself says, in a letter to Allwoerden, non dubitavi negotium hoc tibi committere, atque Historiam Serveti concin nandam et apte construendam tradere. But it appears that Allwoerden added much from other sources, so that it cannot reasonably be called the work of any one else. The Biographie Universelle ascribes to Mosheim a Latin His tory of Servetus, Helmstadt, 1737; but, as I believe, by confusion with the former. They also mention a German work by Mosheim on the same subject in 1748. See Biogr. Univ., arts. Mosheim and Servetus. The analysis of the Christianismi Restitutio, given by Allwoerden, is very meagre, but he promises a fuller account, which never appeared. It is a far more extensive scheme of theology than had been promulgated by Servetus in his first treatises; the most interesting of his opinions being, of course, those which brought him to the stake. He distinctly held the divinity of Christ. Dialogus secundus modum generationis Christi docet, quod ipse non sit creatus nec finite potentiæ, sed vere adorandus verusque Deus. Allwoerden, p. 214. He probably ascribed this divinity to the presence of the Logos, as a manifestation of God by that name, but denied its distinct personality in the sense of an intelligent being different from the Father. Many others may have said something of the same kind, but in more cautious language, and respecting more the conventional phraseology of theologians. Ille crucem, hic diadema. Servetus, in fact, was burned, not so much for his heresies, as for some personal offence he had several years before given to Calvin. The latter wrote to Bolsec in 1546, Servetus cupit huc venire, sed a me accersitus. Ego autem nunquam committam, ut fidem meam eatenus obstrictam habeat. Jam enim constitutum habeo, si veniat, nunquam pati ut salvus CHAP. II. LELIUS SOCINUS. 79 not unlike those of the ancient Arians. Several persons, chiefly foreigners, were burned for such heresies in England under Edward VI., Elizabeth, and James. These Anabaptists were not very learned or conspicuous advocates of their opinions; but some of the Italian confessors of Protestantism were of more importance. Several of these were reputed to be Arians. None, however, became so celebrated as Lælius Socinus, a young man of considerable ability, who is reckoned the proper founder of that sect which takes its name from his family. Prudently shunning the fate of Servetus, he neither published anything, nor permitted his tenets to be openly known. He was, however, in Poland not long after the commencement of this period; and there seems reason to believe that he left writings, which, coming into the hands of some persons in that country who had already adopted the Arian hypothesis, induced them to diverge still farther from the orthodox line. The Anti-Trinitarians became numerous among the Polish Protestants; and in 1565, having separated from the rest, they began to appear as a distinct society. Faustus, nephew of Lælius Socinus, joined them about exeat. Allwoerden, p. 43. A similar letter to Farel differs in some phrases, and especially by the word vivus for salvus. The latter was published by Wytenbogart, in an ecclesiastical history written in Dutch. Servetus had, in some printed letters, charged Calvin with many errors, which seems to have exasperated the great reformer's temper, so as to make him resolve on what he afterwards executed. The death of Servetus has perhaps as many circumstances of aggravation as any execution for heresy that ever took place. One of these, and among the most striking, is, that he was not the subject of Geneva, nor domiciled in the city, nor had the Christianismi Restitutio been published there, but at Vienne. According to our laws, and those, I believe, of most civilised nations, he was not amenable to the tribunals of the republic. The tenets of Servetus are not easily scertained in all respects, nor very interesting to the reader. Some of them were considered infidel, and even panthe istical; but there can be little ground for such imputations, when we consider the tenor of his writings, and the fate which he might have escaped by a retractation. It should be said in justice to Calvin that he declares himself to have endeavoured to obtain a commutation of the sentence for a milder kind of death. Genus mortis conati sumus mutare, sed frustra. Allwoerden, p. 106. But he has never recovered, in the eyes of posterity, the blow this gave to his moral reputation, which the Arminians, as well as Socinians, were always anxious to depreciate. De Serveto, says Grotius, ideo certi aliquid pronuntiare ausus non sum, quia causam ejus non bene didici; neque Calvino ejus hosti capitali credere audeo, cum sciam quam inique et virulente idem ille Calvinus tractaverit viros multo se meliores Cassandrum, Balduinum, Castellionem. Grot. Op. Theolog. iv. 639. Of Servetus and his opinions, he says, in another place, very fairly, Est in illo negotio difficillimo facilis error, p. 655. 80 RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE. PART II. 1578; and acquiring a great ascendency by his talents, gave a name to the sect, though their creed was already conformable to his own. An university, or rather academy, for it never obtained a legal foundation, established at Racow, a small town belonging to a Polish nobleman of their persuasion, about 1570, sent forth men of considerable eminence and great zeal in the propagation of their tenets. These, indeed, chiefly belong to the ensuing century; but, before the termination of the present, they had begun to circulate books in Holland.b 28. As this is a literary, rather than an ecclesiastical history, we shall neither advert to the less learned sectaries, nor speak of controversies which had chiefly a local importance, such as those of the English Puritans with the established church. Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity will claim attention in a subsequent chapter. 29. Thus, in the second period of the Reformation, Religious those ominous symptoms which had appeared in intolerance. its earlier stage, disunion, virulence, bigotry, intolerance, far from yielding to any benignant influence, grew more inveterate and incurable. Yet some there were, even in this century, who laid the foundations of a more charitable and rational indulgence to diversities of judgment, which the principle of the Reformation itself had in some measure sanctioned. It may be said that this tolerant spirit rose out of the ashes of Servetus. The right of civil magistrates to punish heresy with death had been already impugned by some Protestant theologians as well as by Erasmus. Luther had declared against it; and though Zwingle, who had maintained the same principle as Luther, has been charged with having afterwards approved the drowning of some Anabaptists in the lake of Zurich, it does not appear that his language requires such an interpretation. The early Anabaptists, indeed, having been seditious and unmanageable to the greatest degree, it is not easy to show that they were put to death simply on account of their religion. But the execution of Servetus, with circumstances of so much cruelty, and with no possible pretext but the error of his opinions, brought home to the minds of serious men the b Lubienecius, Hist. Reformat. Polo- chism; Bayle, art. Socinus; Mosheim; nica; Rees, History of Racovian Cate- Dupin; Eichhorn. CHAP. II. CASTALIO ANSWERED BY BEZA. 81 importance of considering whether a mere persuasion of the truth of our own doctrines can justify the infliction of capital punishment on those who dissent from them; and how far we can consistently reprobate the persecutions of the church of Rome, while acting so closely after her example. But it was dangerous to withstand openly the rancour of the ecclesiastics domineering in the Protestant churches, or the usual bigotry of the multitude. Melanchthon himself, tolerant by nature, and knowing enough of the spirit of persecution which disturbed hist peace, was yet unfortunately led by timidity to express, in a letter to Beza, his approbation of the death of Servetus, though he admits that some saw it in a different light. Calvin, early in 1554, published a dissertation to vindicate the magistrates of Geneva in their dealings with this heretic. But Sebastian Castalio, Castalio, under the name of Martin Bellius, ventured to reply in a little tract, entitled "De Hæreticis quomodo cum iis agendum sit variorum Sententiæ." This is a collation of different passages from the fathers and modern authors in favour of toleration, to which he prefixed a letter of his own to the Duke of Wirtemberg, more valuable than the rest of the work, and, though written in the cautious style required by the times, containing the pith of those arguments which have ultimately triumphed in almost every part of Europe. The impossibility of forcing belief, the obscurity and insignificance of many disputed questions, the sympathy which the fortitude of heretics produced, and other leading topics, are well touched in this very short tract, for the preface does not exceed twenty-eight pages in 16mo. 30. Beza answered Castalio, whom he perfectly knew under the mask of Bellius, in a much longer answered treatise, "De Hæreticis a Civili Magistratu by Beza. Puniendis." It is unnecessary to say that his tone is that of a man who is sure of having the civil power on his side. As to capital punishments for heresy, he acknowledges that he has to contend, not only with such |