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

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mystical turn of mind that he made the Apocalypse the basis of his
speculations, while the sober and judicious Calvin never commented on this
book.
Servetus declared, in his first work, that the Bible was the source of all his
philosophy and science, and to be read a thousand times. f1038 He called it a
gift of God descended from heaven. f1039 Next to the Bible, he esteemed the
ante-Nicene Fathers, because of their simpler and less definite teaching. He
quotes them freely in his first book.
We do not know whether, and how far, he was influenced by the writings
of the Reformers. He may have read some tracts of Luther, which were
early translated into Spanish, but he does not quote from them. f1040
We next find Servetus in the employ of Juan Quintana, a Franciscan friar
and confessor to the Emperor Charles V. He seems to have attended his
court at the coronation by Pope Clement VII. in Bologna (1529), and on
the journey to the Diet of Augsburg in 1530, which forms an epoch in the
history of the Lutheran Reformation. f1041 At Augsburg he may have seen
Melanchthon and other leading Lutherans, but he was too young and
unknown to attract much attention.
In the autumn of 1530 he was dismissed from the service of Quintana; we
do not know for what reason, probably on suspicion of heresy.
We have no account of a conversion or moral struggle in any period of his
life, such as the Reformers passed through. He never was a Protestant,
either Lutheran or Reformed, but a radical at war with all orthodoxy. A
mere youth of twenty-one or two, he boldly or impudently struck out an
independent path as a Reformer of the Reformation. The Socinian society
did not yet exist; and even there he would not have felt at home, nor would
he have long been tolerated. Nominally, he remained in the Roman Church,
and felt no scruple about conforming to its rites. As he stood alone, so he
died alone, leaving an influence, but no school nor sect.
From Germany Servetus went to Switzerland and spent some time at
Basel. There he first ventilated his heresies on the trinity and the divinity of
Christ.
He importuned Oecolampadius with interviews and letters, hoping to
convert him. But Oecolampadius was startled and horrified. He informed
his friends, Bucer, Zwingli, and Bullinger, who happened to be at Basel in