Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/107

Rh to bring religion back to more winning simplicity and purity. Having made a MS. copy of it, he sent it to Calvin, requesting an opinion on its merits. It was on its reception that, writing to his friend Farel, Calvin made use of the following language: "Servetus wrote to me lately, and besides his letter sent me a great volume full of his ravings, telling me with audacious arrogance that I should there find things stupendous and unheard of until now. He offers to come hither if I approve; but I will not pledge my faith to him: for, did he come, if I have any authority here, I should never suffer him to go away alive." "We see already by what feeling Calvin was animated: he hates the man who did not acknowledge his superiority, as he was accustomed to see others do, and who dared to criticise his opinions. Not only did he not even condescend to offer any strictures upon Servetus's work, but he never sent back the MS., although repeatedly asked for it.

Servetus, who had kept another copy for himself, determined to have the book printed anonymously. Arrangements were made with Balthasar Arnoullet, printer at Vienne, and, as secrecy was of capital importance, a small house away from the known printing-establishment was taken; type, cases, and a press, were there set up, and in a period of between three and four months an edition of 1,000 copies was successfully worked off. The whole impression was then made up into bales of 100 copies each, and confided to friends at Lyons, Frankfort, etc., for safe-keeping, until the moment of putting them in the market abroad had come.

The book on "The Restoration of Christianity" comprises a series of disquisitions on the speculative and practical principles of Christianity as apprehended by the author; thirty of the letters he had written to Calvin; and other writings of minor importance. It is in this book that Servetus shows himself the most far-sighted physiologist of his age, by anticipating the discovery of the circulation of the blood.

Through Frelon a copy of the book, "hot from the press," was especially addressed to "Monsieur Johann Calvin, minister of Geneva." We leave for the reader to imagine what additional anger must now have entered the Reformer's heart, when, besides the offensive and, as he regarded it, heretical matter of the book, he found the letters written to him made public, himself publicly schooled, his most cherished doctrines proclaimed derogatory to God, and some of them as barring the gates of heaven! What the reader, perhaps, could not imagine is, that the "high-minded" man who had emphatically denounced the "right of the sword" in dealing with heresy, was now ready to become instrumental in having it applied to Servetus. He became the denunciator of Servetus to the Catholic authorities of Vienne; he betrayed friendship and trust by furnishing them with