Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 12.djvu/114

104 and there was silence for a moment. The terrible sentence pronounced, the silence that followed was first broken by Servetus; not to sue for mercy, for he knew there was no appeal, but to entreat that the manner of carrying it out might be commuted for one less dreadful. "He feared," he said, "that, through excess of pain, he might prove faithless to himself, and belie the convictions of his life. If he had erred, it was in ignorance; he was so constituted, mentally and morally, as to desire the glory of God, and had always striven to abide by the teachings of the Scriptures." His appeal to the humanity of the judges, however, met with no response. He prayed God to forgive his enemies and persecutors, and then exclaimed: "O God, save my soul! O Jesus, Son of the Eternal God, have compassion upon me!" From the Hôtel-de-Ville he was taken to Champel. While on the way thither, Farel, the minister who accompanied him, tried to wring from him an avowal of his error, and the prayer, "Jesus, thou Eternal Son of God!" The unhappy Servetus, with a martyr's faith, only replied in broken invocation, "Jesus, thou Son of the Eternal God, have compassion upon me!"

"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, while 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 fagots 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, a long half-hour elapsed before he ceased to show signs of life and suffering. Immediately before giving up the ghost, with a last expiring effort, he cried aloud, 'Jesus, thou Son of the Eternal God, have compassion upon me!' All was then hushed save the crackling of the green wood; and by-and-by there remained no more of what had been Michael Servetus but a charred and blackened trunk, and a handful of ashes."

Thus perished a noble man of whom his age was not worthy—the victim of murderous religious bigotry. But the crime that had been committed shocked the humanity of Geneva, even in that dark period, and, before the year was out, Calvin was driven to self-defense, and displayed the remorseless traits of his character by libeling the man whom he had slain. It is said that, in this persecution unto death, he only manifested the spirit of his age, and must be judged by that standard. While this may be true, it is also happily true that in the lapse of centuries better standards have arisen, by which the character of Calvin will be given over to execration, while that of Servetus will be increasingly honored as that of an heroic Christian martyr.