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

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than by sympathy with heresy or love of toleration, which had very few
advocates at that time. When he perceived that the majority of the Council
was inclined to a sentence of death, he quitted the Senate House with a few
others.
The Council had no doubt of its jurisdiction in the case; it had to respect
the unanimous judgment of the Churches, the public horror of heresy and
blasphemy, and the imperial laws of Christendom, which were appealed to
by the attorney-general. The decision was unanimous. Even the wish of
Calvin to substitute the sword for the fire was overruled, and the papal
practice of the auto-da-fé followed, though without the solemn mockery of
a religious festival.
The judges, after enumerating the crimes of Servetus, in calling the holy
Trinity a monster with three heads, blaspheming the Son of God, denying
infant-baptism as an invention of the devil and of witchcraft, assailing the
Christian faith, and after mentioning that he had been condemned and
burned in effigy at Vienne, and had during his residence in Geneva
persisted in his vile and detestable errors, and called all true Christians
tritheists, atheists, sorcerers, putting aside all remonstrances and
corrections with a malicious and perverse obstinacy, pronounced the
fearful sentence:—
“We condemn thee, Michael Servetus, to be bound, and led to the
place of Champel, there to be fastened to a stake and burnt alive,
together with thy book, as well the one written by thy hand as the
printed one, even till thy body be reduced to ashes; and thus shalt
thou finish thy days to furnish an example to others who might wish
to commit the like.
“And we command our Lieutenant to see that this our present
sentence be executed.” f1193
Rilliet, who published the official report of the trial in the interest of
history, without special sympathy with Calvin, says that the sentence of
condemnation is “odious before our consciences, but was just according to
the law.” Let us thank God that those unchristian and barbarous laws are
abolished forever.
Calvin communicated to Farel on the 26th of October a brief summary of
the result, in which he says: “The messenger has returned from the Swiss
Churches. They are unanimous in pronouncing f1194 that Servetus has now