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

852
Servetus suffered nearly half an hour. See the anonymous Historia
deMorte Serveti, ascribed to a Genevese, who was an enemy of Calvin.
Henry, III. 200 sq.
ft1198 Jean Senebier (b. at Geneva, 1742; d. 1809), Hist. litter. de Genève
(Gen. 1786, 3 vols.), I. 215: “Il seroit àsouhaiter que nos larmes
eussent pu éteindre le bûcher de cet infortuné.” Quoted by Henry, III.
207.
ft1199 Leben Joh. Calvin’s, III. 209 sq.
ft1200 Mosheim compares him with Calvin in genius, yet calls his method “a
model of confusion.” Staehelin (I. 428) likewise thinks that in
intellectual endowment he was equal (ebenbürtig) to the greatest men
of his great century, even to Calvin, but that he lacked the chief
qualification of a reformer—moral character. Tollin puts him on a par
with Calvin and Luther. But such exaggeration is refuted by history.
The fruits are the test of a man’s true greatness.
ft1201 Restit. pp. 564, 570, 586, 664, 700, 718.
ft1202 Tollin (Charakterbild, p. 38) defends Servetus’s veracity by resolving
his contradictory statements into innocent errors of memory and
comparing them to the variations in the four Gospel narratives!
ft1203 Rest. p. 356: “O Christe Jesu, domine Deus noster, adesto, veni,
vide, et pugna pro nobis.” P. 576: “O pater omnipotens, pater
misericordiae, eripe nos miseros ab his tenebris mortis, per nomen filii
tui Jesu Christi domini nostri. O fili Dei, Jesu Christe, qui pro nobis
mortuus es, ne moreremur, succurre, ne moriamur,” etc. Comp. also
the prayer at the beginning of his book, quoted above in § 146.
ft1204 The Sicilian, Camillo Renato wrote a long poem, De injusto Serveti
incendio, which is copied by Trechsel, I. 321-28, from the Simler
collection in Zürich. Several poems came from Italian refugees in the
Grisons.
ft1205 On these later Antitrinitarians, see the preceding chapter. They were
deistic; Servetus pantheistic. Trechsel says (I. 269): “In Servet schien
sich die produktive Kraft des Antitrinitarianismus erschoepft zu haben.
Von der Hoehe der Genialitaet und speculativer Weltbetrachtung sank
er zu der Stufe des trivialen ohnmaechtigen Zweifels hinunter, und die
jugendliche Frische und Fülle, die sich in den Ideen des spanischen
Arztes offenbarte, wich einem altklugen, verstaendelnden,
halbaufgeklaerten Wesen, das sich in einer Fluth von subjektiven