“Knox was the intimate friend of Calvin—visited Calvin, and, it is said, on one occasion found him enjoying the recreation of bowls on Sunday.”[968] Without doubt Calvin was acting in exact harmony with his ideas of the nature of the Sunday festival. But the famous case of Michael Servetus furnishes us a still more pointed illustration of his views of the sacredness of that day. Servetus was arrested in Geneva on the personal application of John Calvin to the magistrates of that city. Such is the statement of Theodore Beza, the life-long friend of Calvin.[969] Beza’s translator adds to this fact the following remarkable statement:— “Promptness induced him to have this heresiarch arrested on a Sunday.”[970] The same fact is stated by Robinson:— “While he waited for a boat to cross the lake in his way to Zurich, by some means Calvin got intelligence of his arrival; and although it was on a Sunday, yet he prevailed upon the chief syndic to arrest and imprison him. On that day by the laws of Geneva no person could be arrested except for a capital crime; but this difficulty was easily removed, for John Calvin pretended that Servetus was a heretic, and that heresy was a capital crime.”[971] “The doctor was arrested and imprisoned on Sunday the thirteenth of August [A. D. 1553]. That very day he was brought into court.”[972] Calvin’s own words respecting the arrest are these:— “I will not deny but that he was made prisoner upon my application.”[973] The warmest friends of first-day sacredness will not deny that the least sinful part of this transaction was that it occurred on Sunday. Nevertheless the fact that Calvin caused the arrest of Servetus on that day shows that he had no conviction that the day possessed any inherent sacredness. John Barclay,[974] a learned man of Scotch descent, and a moderate Roman Catholic, who was born soon after the death of Calvin, and whose early life was spent in eastern France, not very remote from Geneva, published the statement that Calvin and his friends at Geneva “Debated whether the reformed, for the purpose of estranging themselves more completely from the Romish church, should not adopt Thursday as the Christian Sabbath.” Another reason assigned by Calvin for this proposed change was, “That it would be a proper instance of Christian liberty.”[975]