It was on this occasion, as we learn from Calvin,[83] that on a copy of Justin Martyr being produced by him in support of his statement, Servetus expressed a wish to see a Latin translation as well as the original Greek, a slip which Calvin did not fail to turn to the prisoner’s disadvantage, for knowing that there was no Latin translation of Justin, he immediately challenged the prisoner with being ignorant of Greek. ‘Look’ee,’ says he in his _Déclaration pour maintenir la vraie foy_, ‘this learned man, this Servetus, who plumes himself on having the gift of tongues, is found to be about as much able to read Greek as an infant to say the A. B. C. ‘Seeing himself thus caught’ continues Calvin, ‘I took occasion to reproach him with his impudence. What means this, said I? The book has not been translated into Latin, and you cannot read Greek. Yet, you pretend you are familiar with Justin. Tell me, I pray you, whence you have the quotations you produce so freely as if you had Justin in your sleeve? But he with his front of brass, as was his wont, though he had leapt from the frying pan into the fire--_sauta du coq à l’ânc_--quite unabashed, gave not the slightest sign of feeling shame.’ No one, however, who has been at the pains to look into the works of Servetus will doubt for a moment that he was not only a competent Greek scholar, but well advanced in the Hebrew also, with both of which languages he shows that he was even critically acquainted. Seeing himself beaten on the occurrence of the word Trinity in the Greek of Justin, he may have thought to find a makeweight in a Latin translation against the original produced by Calvin. There is indeed an ample display both of erudition and linguistic accomplishments even in Servetus’s first work, the seven books on Trinitarian Error. Another and still more significant discussion now arose between the Reformer and the prisoner--and in these ever-recurring debates we see the persistency with which Calvin stuck to his opponent--as to the sense in which the expression Son of God was to be understood. Servetus maintained that it was not properly applied to him who bore it until the moment of his birth. Calvin, on the contrary, insisted that in conformity with the usual interpretation of the first chapter of the Gospel according to John, the authority of the Creeds and the teaching of the Churches, the words must be held to refer to the Divine Word which became incarnate in Jesus Christ, having until then been a distinct subsistence in the essence of God from Eternity. In reply to this, Servetus explained and said that the common interpretation of the language of John was mistaken; the Son, as he declared, having only existed _formally_ or as an idea, dispensation or mode in the mind of God previous to the Incarnation and Birth of Christ, not as an entity--a _person_, in the usual acceptation of the word, possessed of distinct individual existence.