abiding by his convictions, and, with the warning but just given him, rather than belie himself, verily courting death. What would have happened had Galileo been as conscientious and firm as Servetus ?

CHAPTER IX.

THE COURT DETERMINES TO CONSULT THE COUNCILS AND CHURCHES OF THE FOUR PROTESTANT CANTONS.

It was at this time and on the suggestion of Servetus— as Calvin affirms, of the Council, according to its own minutes—that a resolution was come to, by which the Church of Geneva was no longer to have the sole say in the final decision of the guilt or innocence of the prisoner. The Councils and the other reformed Churches of Switzerland, it was resolved, were to be consulted on the merits of the case. There was a pre

cedent for such a course; it had been followed only two years before, under somewhat similar circumstances, when Jerome Bolsec was tried for heresy at the instance of Calvin. Calvin and the Ministers were consequently directed by the Court to extract from the works of the prisoner, and to deliver in writing, but without note or comment, the particular passages involving the erroneous or heretical opinions in debate between the prosecution and him.

This appeal to the Swiss Churches we cannot help thinking of as fatal to Servetus. If his own concluding reply to the deputation which visited him in prison

did not lead to it, it was probably suggested to him by Berthelier, who knew that it had saved Bolsec. But Berthelier was not theologian enough correctly to appreciate the dissimilarity of the propositions involved in the two cases; and he certainly took no note of the difference in the political circumstances of the several times, or he would not have given the advice we presume he did.

From the letters which Calvin now wrote to several of his friends, particularly to Sulzer, of Basle, we learn that he was much averse to the idea of this appeal to the Churches. Having been foiled by them in his prosecution of Bolsec, he must have feared that what had happened before might happen again. He knew that he was less considered abroad than at home, and seems not to have apprehended that the appeal now resolved on, was not only to ensure his own triumph, but to make the Reformed Churches of Switzerland participators in his sin of intolerance and abettors of the error (to give it no worse name) he committed when he brought Servetus to his death.

CHAPTER X.

THE TRIAL IS INTERRUPTED THROUGH DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CALVIN AND THE COUNCIL.

THE Churches were to be appealed to, then, and Calvin applied himself immediately to make the best he could of the case as it stood. With the diligence that distinguished him, we need not doubt of his having been soon ready with the Articles upon which the trial of Servetus may be said to have entered on its third, if it were not its fourth and definite, phase.1 But a notable interval elapsed before we find the Council giving any heed to the new Articles of Indictment, or taking steps to have them despatched to the Cantons. The Council had business of another kind to engage them, with Calvin and his friends as their opponents on grounds of policy, instead of their instigators and guides in a trial for heresy. It was at this precise time that the struggle to which we have alluded in our review of the political situation took place between Calvin and the Council on the right exercised by the Consistory to excommunicate or deprive of Church privileges

1 First under Calvin with Nicolas de la Fontaine as his agent; then under Colladon engaged by Calvin ; next under Rigot as public prosecutor. and now under Calvin and the Swiss Churches.

those who were known to have infringed one or another of its arbitrary religious, moral, or sumptuary regulations. Philibert Berthelier, having offended in this direction, had fallen under the ban of the Consistory some time before; but, having now appealed to the Council for redress against what he held to be an unjust award, his party were powerful enough not only to obtain a decision in his favour, but to have the Consistory deprived of the right to excommunicate at all.

This was felt, of course, as a heavy blow by Calvin and his supporters. Berthelier, formally absolved of the Consistorial interdict, was declared at liberty to present himself at an approaching celebration of the Solemn Supper. And he would probably have shown himself there, and an unseemly scene would have ensued; for Calvin was as resolute to have his authority respected within the walls of St. Peter's Church, as the Council could have been to have theirs upheld within the precincts of the City. Berthelier himself, however, being advised that though he was fully entitled to present himself at the Table, it would perhaps be as well did he abstain from doing so for the present, took the hint and stayed away. But several members of the Libertine party-each of whom we must presume, in Calvin's estimation, might have subscribed himself as

Parcus Deorum cultor et infrequens, uninformed of this, and expecting countenance from the presence of their leader, offered themselves among