Rise and Establishment of Protestantism at Geneva - James Aitken Wylie

ministers, his colleagues, were introduced by the
Attorney-General. They were wanted to give their
evidence as to the meaning of the word person, as
used in certain passages of the Fathers. Servetus
taught that the person of the Son of God had no
existence prior to the Incarnation. He held that
Christ existed from all eternity only as an idea, not
as a person, in the essence or bosom of God, and
that the term Son of God is applied in Scripture to
Christ Jesus as a man.[10] He cited passages from
Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Clement, favorable as he
thought to this opinion; and it was to give judgment
on Servetus' interpretatin of these passages that the
pastors were now summoned. The service asked of
them they rendered.
At the meeting on the 23rd, the Attorney-
General produced a new indictment against
Servetus. It differed considerably from that which
Fontaine had given in when the prisoner was first
arrested, and which had been drawn up by Calvin.
This new indictment dropped the theological errors
of Servetus out of view altogether, well-nigh, and
gave marked prominence to his offenses against
345