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Updated: June 4, 2025
Where was the stern little city which Calvin taught and ruled? The place that knew him knows him no more. Disappointed in my search for Calvin, I sought compensation in Servetus. I found the stone placed by modern Calvinists to mark the spot where the Spanish heretic was burned.
After Calvin reached Geneva he entered into a long correspondence with Doctor Servetus, and the debate which had been planned was carried on by correspondence. Servetus proposed to Calvin that the postponed debate should take place in Geneva. Calvin replied that if Servetus came to Geneva he would burn him alive.
Bartholomew's massacre, Charles IX was conscientious toward the cathedral and attended mass during three hours; in the evening he filled the streets of Paris with rivers of blood. John Calvin was conscientious toward his logical system. He was very faithful to his theology, but he had no conscience toward his fellows, and burned Servetus without a sympathetic throb.
At length he was condemned, and the religious world shuddered at the thought of seeing the pile lighted by a champion of the Reformation and religious freedom. Loud and awful shrieks were heard in the prison when the tidings of his sentence were conveyed to Servetus.
But this great and good man, towards the close of the same Treatise, forgetting the principles which he had been inculcating, devotes one solitary page to the cause of intolerance: this page he concludes with these remarkable expressions: "Master Calvin did well approve himself to God's Church in bringing Servetus to the stake in Geneva."
From genuine bigots they have no right to expect mercy. He who applauded the bringing of Servetus to the stake must have deemed the utter extermination of Atheists a religious duty.
Then will the infidel freely concede that Servetus' murder was rather the fault of his age than Calvin's crime, and the Christian will find in Paine, if not a guide, at least a learned philosopher and a loyal friend. Charity assumes as many shapes as Prospero's busy sprite. I was once waiting for a train in a small Missouri town, where everybody turns out to "see the keers come in."
"That's just the kind that always makes the worst heretics," roared the deacon. "Wasn't Servetus that kind of a person? And didn't Calvin have to burn him at the stake? I tell you, deacon, it takes a good deal of the horror out of those times when you have a case of the kind come right up before your eyes." "What? Somebody being burned?" exclaimed the other deacon, raising his hands in horror.
Before the Reformation was fifty years old, Servetus, one of the greatest men of his age, a scholar, philosopher, and man of irreproachable character, was burned at Geneva for heretical views concerning the nature of the Trinity; Calvin, the great organizer of Protestant theology, giving, if not the order for this odious crime, at least the nod of approval for its commission.
Is it still trembling and shivering, crouching and crawling, before its ignorant confession of faith? Had such men as Robert Collyer and John Stuart Mill been present at the burning of Servetus, they would have extinguished the flames with their tears. Had the Presbytery of Chicago been there, they would have quietly turned their backs, solemnly divided their coat-tails and warmed themselves.
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