[Footnote 413: See Calvin to C. and T. Zollicoffre, March 28, and the same to Peloquin and De Marsac, Aug. 22, 1553. Servetus was burned Oct. 27.] [Footnote 414: Two months before the execution Calvin wrote to Farel, Aug. 20, 1553: "Spero capitale saltem fore judicium _pœnæ vero atrocitatem remitti cupio_;" and on the 26th of October, he again wrote, "_Genus mortis conati sumus mutare_, sed _frustra_. Cur non profecerimus, coram narrandum differo." Calv. Opera, ix. 70, 71. As it is thus in evidence not only that Calvin _did not burn_ Servetus, but _desired him not to be burned_, and made an ineffectual attempt _to rescue him from the flames_, we might anticipate for the stale calumny a speedy end, were not the tenacity of life characterizing such inventions so notorious as to have passed into a proverb.] [Footnote 415: Melanchthon, for example, after expressing his entire satisfaction with Calvin's treatise, and his conviction that the church both now and hereafter owes and will owe him gratitude for it, adds: "Affirmo etiam, vestros magistratus _juste fecisse, quod hominem blasphemum_, re ordine judicata, _interfecerunt_." Mel. to Calvin, Oct. 14, 1554, Opera (Bretschneider), viii. 362.] [Footnote 416: Laborie, one of the heroic "five," sending from prison an account of his examination, states that, when one of his judges asked him whether he did not know that God had by Moses sanctioned the punishment of heretics, he freely admitted it: "Hæreticos certe puniendos _facile concessi_, et in exemplum proposui _impurum illum canem Servetum_, qui Genevæ ultimo supplicio affectus fuit: verum sedulo caverent, _ne in Christianos et Dei filios_ velut hæreticos animadvertant," etc. Letter in Crespin, Actiones et Monimenta Martyrum (Genevæ, 1560), fol. 291.] [Footnote 417: "Ego qui natura timido, molli et pusillo animo esse fateor." Preface to the Psalms.] [Footnote 418: "Porro, an propositum esset mihi famam aucupari, patuit ex brevi discessu, præsertim quum nemo illic sciverit me authorem esse." Ibid.] [Footnote 419: "Me tamen non tanta sustinnit magnanimitas, quin turbulenta ejectione plus quam deceret lætatus sim." Ibid.] [Footnote 420: "Præstantissimus Christi minister, M. Bucerus me iterum simili qua usus fuerat Farellus, obsecratione, ad novam stationem retraxit. Jonæ itaque exemplo, quod proposuerat, territus," etc. Ibid.]