Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/147

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 127 not be inflamed by enthusiasm, or insensibly subside in lanqnor and indifference. II. The chain of authority Avas broken, which restrains the bigot from thinking as he pleases, and the slave from speaking as he thinks ; the popes, fathers, and councils were no longer the supreme and infallible judges of the world ; and each Christian Avas taught to acknowledge no law but the scriptures, no interpreter but his own conscience. This freedom, however, was the consequence, rather than the design, of the Reformation. The patriot reformers were ambitious of succeeding the tvrants whom they had dethroned. They imposed with equal rigour their creeds and confessions ; they asserted the right of the magistrate to punish heretics with death. The pious or personal aniinosity of Calvin proscribed in Servetus ■*- the guilt of his own rebellion ;*2 and the flames of Smithfield, in which he was afterwards consumed, had been kindled for the Anabaptists by the zeal of Cranmer.** The nature of the tiger was the same, but he w^as gradually deprived of his teeth and fangs. A spiritual and temporal kingdom was possessed by the Roman pontiff: the Protestant doctors were subjects of an humble rank, without revenue or jurisdiction. His decrees were consecrated by the antiquity of the Catholic church ; their arguments and disputes were submitted to the people ; and their appeal to private judgment was accepted, beyond their account which I have seen of this shameful transaction. See likewise the AbW d'Artigny, Nouveaux M^inoires d'Histoire, S:c. , ii. p. 55-154. [The remarkable theological heresies of Servet were as obnoxious to the Protestants as to the Catholics. For an account of his system see H. Tollin's Das Lehrsystem >fichael Servets, in 3 vols. (1876-S). The documents of the trial of Servet may be con- veniently consulted in the edition of Calvin's works by Baum, Cunitz, and Reuss, vol. 8. There is a good account of the transaction in Roget's Histoire du peuple de Geneve, vol. 4 (1877).] hecatombs which have blazed in the Auto da Fes of Spain and Portugal, i. The zeal of Calvin seems to have been envenomed by person.Tl malice, and perhaps envy. He accused his adversary before their common enemies, the judges of Vienna, and betrayed, for his destruction, the sacred trust of a private corre- spondence. 2. The deed of cruelty was not varnished by the pretence of danger to the church or state. In his passage through Geneva, Servetus was an harmless stranger, who neither preached, nor printed, nor made prosel)nes. 3. A Catholic inquisitor yields the same obedience which he requires, Vjut Calvin violated the golden rule of doing as he would be done by : a rule which I read in a moral treatise of Isocrates (in Nicole, torn. i. p. 93, edit. Battie), four hundred years before the publication of the gospel. *A -otryoi-rf? v<^' i-cptov 6pyi^fo-fle, TaOra To?^ aAAoic u^ noiriTe. [The part taken by Calvin in the transaction seems to have been chiefly the furnishing of the documents on which Servetus was condemned.] ■"See Burnet, vol. ii. p. 84-86. The sense and humanity of the young king were oppressed by the authority of the primate.
 * ^The article of Servet in the Dictionnaire Critique of Chauffepi^ is the best
 * •"! am more deeply scandalized at the single execution of Servetus, than at the