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

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Servetus was a mystic theosophist and Christopantheist. Far from being a
sceptic or rationalist, he had very strong, positive convictions of the
absolute truth of the Christian religion. He regarded the Bible as an
infallible source of truth, and accepted the traditional canon without
dispute. So far he agreed with evangelical Protestantism; but he differed
from it, as well as from Romanism, in principle and aim. He claimed to
stand above both parties as the restorer of primitive Christianity, which
excludes the errors and combines the truths of the Catholic and Protestant
creeds.
The evangelical Reformation, inspired by the teaching of St. Paul and
Augustin, was primarily a practical movement, and proceeded from a deep
sense of sin and grace in opposition to prevailing Pelagianism, and pointed
the people directly to Christ as the sole and sufficient fountain of pardon
and peace to the troubled conscience; but it retained all the articles of the
Apostles’ Creed, and especially the doctrines of the Trinity and
Incarnation. It should be noticed, however, that Melanchthon, in the first
edition of his Loci (1521), omitted these mysteries as objects of adoration
rather than of speculation, f1091 and that Calvin, in the controversy with
Caroli, spoke lightly of the Nicene and Athanasian terminology, which was
derived from Greek philosophy rather than from the Bible.
Servetus, with the Bible as his guide, aimed at a more radical revolution
than the Reformers. He started with a new doctrine of God and of Christ,
and undermined the very foundations of the Catholic creed. The three most
prominent negative features of his system are three denials: the denial of
the orthodox dogma of the Trinity, as, set forth in the Nicene Creed; the
denial of the orthodox Christology, as determined by the Oecumenical
Council of Chalcedon; and the denial of infant baptism, as practised
everywhere except by the Anabaptists. From these three sources he derived
all the evils and corruptions of the Church. The first two denials were the
basis of the theoretical revolution, the third was the basis of the practical
revolution which he felt himself providentially called to effect by his
anonymous book.
Those three negations in connection with what appeared to be shocking
blasphemy, though not intended as such, made him an object of horror to
all orthodox Christians of his age, Protestants as well as Roman Catholic,
and led to his double condemnation, first at Vienne, and then at Geneva.
So far he was perfectly understood by his contemporaries, especially by