The concluding part of the ‘Restoration of Christianity’ is an address
to Melanchthon and his colleagues on the Mystery of the Trinity and
the discipline of the ancient Church. We have seen that Melanchthon
of all the Reformers was the one who seemed to be most taken by the
theological speculations of the seven books on Trinitarian error. ‘I
read Servetus a great deal,’ says he to his friend Camerarius; and
if he found the work objectionable in many respects, as he says, it
yet contained matter that would not be put aside, but that forced
itself on his attention, and may be presumed to have influenced his
final conclusions on some of the highest and most difficult doctrines
of orthodox Christianity. Certain it is that the first and earlier
editions of his highly popular work, the ‘Loci Theologici,’ differ
notably from those that appeared subsequently to the publication
of Servetus’s ‘De Erroribus Trinitatis.’ In the first and earlier
editions there is nothing said of God, whether as One or Triune,
of Creation, the Incarnation, and other purely speculative matters.
‘These subjects,’ he says, ‘are wholly incomprehensible, and we more
properly adore than attempt to investigate the mystery of Deity. What,
I ask you,’ he continues, ‘has been the outcome of the scholastic
and theological discussions that have gone on for all these ages?’
But the metaphysics of Christianity were not passed over in any such
way by Servetus. His earliest work even meets us in some sort as a
complementary criticism of the ‘Loci’ of Melanchthon, and that it was
so held by the Reformer seems to be demonstrated by the many changes
and additions to be noticed in the revised edition of the work of the
year 1535, the first that was published after the appearance of the ‘De
Erroribus Trinitatis’ and ‘Dialogi duo de Trinitate.’[62]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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