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

535
After the royal edict, which expelled all the Antitrinitarians, he returned to
Switzerland, was apprehended by the authorities of Bern, convicted of
heresies, deceits, and evasions, and beheaded on the tenth of September,
1566. On the way to the place of execution, he declared that he died a
martyr for the honor of the supreme God, and charged the ministers who
accompanied him with Sabellianism. He received the death-stroke with
firmness, amid the exhortations of the clergy and the prayers of the
multitude for God’s mercy. Benedict Aretius, a theologian of Bern,
published in the following year the acts of the process with a refutation of
Gentile’s objections to the orthodox doctrine.
The fate of Gentile was generally approved. No voice of complaint or
protest was heard, except a feeble one from Basel. Calvin had died more
than two years before, and now the city of Bern, which had opposed his
doctrinal and disciplinary rigor, condemned to death a heretic less gifted
and dangerous than Servetus. Gentile himself indirectly admitted that a
teacher of false religion was deserving of death, but he considered his own
views as true and scriptural. f956
The death of Gentile ends the history of Antitrinitarianism in Switzerland.
In the same year the strictly orthodox Second Helvetic Confession of
Bullinger was published and adopted in the Reformed Cantons.
§ 132. THE EUCHARISTIC CONTROVERSIES. CALVIN AND
WESTPHAL.
I. The Sources are given in § 117. See especially Calvin’s Opera, vol.
IX. 1–252, and the Prolegomena, pp. i-xxiv. The correspondence
between Bullinger, à Lasco, Farel, Viret, and Calvin, on the
controversy, in his Opera, vols. XV. and XVI. The letters of
Melanchthon from this period in the Corpus Reform. vols. VII.–IX.
The works of Westphal are quoted below.
II. Planck (neutral): Geschichte des Protest. Lehrbegriff’s (Leipzig,
1799), vol. V. Part II. 1–137.—EBRARD (Reformed): Das Dogma vom
heil. Abendmahl, II. 525–744.—NEVIN (Reformed), in the
“Mercersburg Review” for 1850, pp. 486–510.—MÖNCKEBERG
(Lutheran): Joachim Westphal und Joh. Calvin, 1865.—WAGENMANN
in HERZOG, XVII. 1–6.