Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

534
Trinitate et fide catholica et de hereticis), Gentile deserved death by fire.
The Council, instead, pronounced the milder sentence of death by the
sword (Aug. 15). It seems that Calvin’s advice, which had been
disregarded in the case of Servetus, now prevailed in the case of Gentile.
The fear of death induced Gentile to withdraw his charges against the
orthodox doctrine, and to sign a brief confession of faith in three divine
Persons in one Essence, and in the unity, coequality, and coeternity of the
Son and Holy Spirit with the Father. He was released of the sentence of
death; yet in view of his perjury, his heresies, and false accusations against
the Church of Geneva, he was condemned by the magistrates to make an
amende honorable, that is, in his shirt, bareheaded, and barefooted, with a
lighted torch in his hand, to beg on his knees the judge’s pardon, to burn
his writings with his own hand, and to walk through the principal streets
under the sound of the trumpet. The sentence was carried out on the
second of September. He submitted to it with surprising readiness, happy
to escape death at such a cheap price. He also promised on oath not to
leave the city without permission.
But he was hardly set at liberty when he escaped and joined his friends
Gribaldo and Alciati at Farges. Soon afterwards he spent some time at
Lyons. He studied the ante-Nicene Fathers, who confirmed his
subordinationism, and wrote a book (Antidota) in defence of his views and
against the chapter on the Trinity in Calvin’s Institutes. He declared that
the orthodox terms of homoousia, person, substance, trinity, unity, were
profane and monstrous, and obscured the true doctrine of the one God. He
also attacked the doctrine of the two natures in Christ and the
communication of attributes as idle speculations, which should be banished
from the Church. He borrowed from Origen the distinction between the
original God (aujtoqeo>v), that is, the Father and the derived or secondary
God (qeo>v, deutero>qeov, eJtero>qeov) that is, the Son. The Father alone is
God in the strict sense of the term—the essentiator; the Son is essentiatus
and subordinate. He spoke most disrespectfully and passionately of the
orthodox views. Calvin refuted his opinions in a special book (1561).
Gentile roused the suspicion of the Catholic authorities in Lyons and was
imprisoned, but was set free after fifty days on his declaration that his
writings were only opposed to Calvinism, not to orthodoxy.
But he felt unsafe in France, and accepted, with Alciati, an invitation of
Biandrata to Poland in the summer of 1563.