The printer was more prudent; so great was the suspicion which the doctrines of Servetus had already inspired, that he did not put his own name on the book, nor that of the place at which it was published. The work was a violent attack upon the doctrine of the Trinity, written with vigour and a certain glitter of imagination and subtlety of thought, but its rash speculations were vague and superficial. It was received with prompt and severe disapproval both by Catholics and Protestants. Father Quintana spoke of Servetus with contempt, as a young man who had certainly belonged to his suite, and whom he knew by sight, but whom he had never suspected of holding such impious opinions. Even the most gentle of the German and Swiss reformers openly expressed their indignation. Melancthon urged Œcolampadius to take heed lest such doctrines should be imputed to the Swiss reformers. {296} Bucer denounced the work from the pulpit, and went so far as to say that the author of it deserved to be torn limb from limb. The Government of Basle caused the book to be seized, and even, so it is said, imprisoned the author. But the imprisonment, if it took place, must have been short, for Servetus almost immediately published a second work [Footnote 106] on the same subject, still in his own name, in which he explained, apologized for, and retracted almost the whole of the first; not, however, on the ground that his notions were false, but that they were crude and imperfect. [Footnote 106: _Dialogorum de Trinitate_. Lib. ii. _de Justitia regni Christi_, cap. iv. In 8vo. 1532.] Indeed, in addition to the attacks on the Trinity, this book disclosed a much more wild and impious pantheism than the first had done. The second work received little attention, either favourable or unfavourable, but the impression produced by the first was permanent. Servetus saw that he had very little chance of success either in Germany or Switzerland, and he went elsewhere to try and realize his dreams of success and power.