happen to any one of you. Though he has said that you have no God, he yet asks you to join him in his prayers!'

But this is not all we have on the last moments of Servetus. Writing to his friend, Ambrose Blaurer, soon after the fatal October 27, Farel says, 'You ask me about Servetus, so justly punished by a pious magistracy. I was at Geneva when the sentence was delivered, and with him when he died. The wretched man could not be brought to say that Christ was the Eternal Son of God. When I urged him on the subject, he desired me to point to a single place in the Scriptures in which Christ is spoken of as the Son of God before his birth. All that could be done had no effect in turning him from this error; he said nothing against what was urged, but went on his way; we could by no means obtain what we desired, viz., that he should own his error and acknowledge the truth. We exhorted, we entreated, but made no impression. He beat his breast, asked pardon for his faults, invoked God, confessed his Saviour, and much besides, but would not acknowledge the Son of God, save in the man Jesus. Nor was I alone in my exhortations; some of the brethren also interposed, and admonished him ingenuously to admit and say that he hated his errors; but he only replied that he was unjustly condemned to death. On this I said: "Do you, who have so greatly sinned, presume to justify yourself? If you go on thus I shall leave you to the judgment of God, and

accompany you no farther. I meant to exhort the people to pray for you, hoping you would edify them; and thought not to leave had rendered your till you you last breath." After this he said nothing more of himself, although when I spoke of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, whom we preach in our churches, and in whom the faithful believe, he said that it was right and good to do so; but when I went on to say that he did not really think thus, and had written otherwise, he would not admit it. He told me by the way that he had had some things from a man who enjoyed no small reputation among some of us. But though I do not doubt of Erasmus having been infected in no trifling degree by the writings of the Rabbins, I know that in his later works at least he expresses himself otherwise than in those of earlier date. But the unhappy Servetus could not readily be made to imbibe the truth and put it to increase; neither could he be cured of his errors by the sound teaching of others.

'It were long did I repeat-I do not think, indeed, I can remember-all that was said between seven in the morning and mid-day. In sum, however, although he made no particular confession of his faith, God hindered his name and doctrine from being impugned by any open contumelious expression.'

When he came in sight of the fatal pile, the wretched Servetus prostrated himself on the ground, and for a while was absorbed in prayer. Rising and advancing a few steps, he found himself in the hands

of the executioner, by whom he was made to sit on a block, his feet just reaching the ground. His body was then bound to the stake behind him by several turns of an iron chain, whilst his neck was secured in like manner by the coils of a hempen rope. His two books -the one in manuscript sent to Calvin in confidence six or eight years before for his strictures, and a copy of the one lately printed at Vienne-were then fastened to his waist, and his head was encircled in mockery with a chaplet of straw and green twigs bestrewed with brimstone. The deadly torch was then applied to the faggots and flashed in his face; and the brimstone catching, and the flames rising, wrung from the victim such a cry of anguish as struck terror into the surrounding crowd. After this he was bravely silent; but the wood being purposely green, although the people aided the executioner in heaping the faggots upon him, a long half-hour elapsed before he ceased to show signs of life and of suffering. Immediately before giving up the ghost, with a last expiring effort he cried. aloud Jesu, Thou Son of the eternal God, have compassion upon me!' All was then hushed save the hissing and crackling of the green wood; and by-andby there remained no more cf what had been Michael Servetus but a charred and blackened trunk and a handful of ashes. So died, in advance of his age, one of the gifted sons of God, the victim of religious fanaticism and personal hate.

CHAPTER XIX.

AFTER THE BATTLE-VÆ VICTORIBUS!

EVEN before the trial of Servetus had come to an end we have seen it attracting the attention of some of the freer minds of Geneva such as were not overawed by the dominant spirit of Calvin or not absorbed in the political strife of the hour. A criminal suit on the ground of a new interpretation of Scripture, as it had been made in fine so clearly to appear, struck reasonable men not only as illogical but as indefensible in a city whose autonomy and entire religious system were founded on a right of the kind assumed by itself. Calvin's dictum, that Servetus's purpose was the overthrow of all religion, was not seen to be borne out by the facts of the case when calmly considered, and, to the popular apprehension, was wholly belied by the pious bearing of the man in the last hours of his life. Even Farel, misled as he was by his fanaticism, could not help saying to the people, that after all the man may have meant well.'

The protracted trial at an end, the sacrifice made, the Councillors of Geneva seem immediately to have come to their senses, and discovered that they had trans

gressed the true limits of their authority in condemning to death one who owed them no allegiance, who had been guilty of no crime or misdemeanour whether within the bounds of their jurisdiction or elsewhere, and whose heresies implied no rejection of the Scriptures as the Word of God, or of the teaching of Christ and his Apostles as the means of salvation. Servetus's heresy amounted to no more than repudiation of what he maintained to be erroneous interpretations of the language of the Gospels, of metaphysical assumptions from heathen philosophies, and mystical procedures unwarranted by a line whether of the Old or the New Testament. They overlooked the fact that the presence of the man among them was due to flight from the fate that waited on all who had the courage of their opinions amid the blood-stained intolerance of Roman Catholicism; that he was only another among the host of refugees--their spiritual Dictator himself not excepted-who now crowded the streets of Geneva; and that, but for the hostile interference of Calvin, he, like so many more, would have been welcomed as 'a bird escaped from the net of the fowler;' sheltered had he elected to remain, furthered on his way had he chosen to depart.

That thoughts of the kind had taken possession of the Council is proclaimed by the fact of their quashing the indictment preferred by Farel and the Consistory against Geroult, Arnoullet's foreman, three days after the death of Servetus, on the score of the