In order to accomplish this transformation of protestantism, Servetus began by associating with the reformers of German Switzerland and of Germany. Œcolampadius, having examined him, declared that he could not count him a christian unless he acknowledged the Son as partaking through all eternity of the real Godhead of the Father. Melanchthon was alarmed at hearing his doctrines: 'His imagination is confused,' he said; 'his ideas are obscure. He possesses many marks of a fanatical spirit.[177] He raves on the subjects of Justification and the Trinity.... O God! what tragedies this question will occasion among our posterity!'[178] We may easily understand the painful impression Servetus made on these two men, the most tolerant of the sixteenth century. He was, as we have said, a mystic rationalist; but rationalism and protestantism, which many persons confound together, are two opposite poles. Nothing excited the indignation of the reformers more than this pride of human reason which pretends unaided to explain God, and to accomplish without his help the moral renovation of man. The Spanish doctor, finding himself thus rejected by the German divines, quitted those parts sore vexed and exclaiming: 'May the Lord confound all the tyrants of the Church! Amen.'[179] He went to Paris under the name of Michael de Villeneuve. Servetus had an object in going to France. If he succeeded in planting his standard in that mighty country, near that university which had been for so many ages the queen of intelligence, his triumph (he thought) would be secure. He willingly left Germany to the Germans. That French nation which has the prerogative of universality, which succeeds in everything, which is so intelligent, so frank, so communicative, so practical and so active—he will select to be the organ of the second Reformation. Servetus thought the French reformers more daring than those of Saxony. He had heard of a young doctor of great ability, who desired to carry the reform farther than Luther, and he thought he had found his man. But he was mistaken; that man was far above his empty theories. [Sidenote: CALVIN AND SERVETUS ON THE TRINITY.]