But neither, as we may imagine, were the words of the deputation in this direction found of any avail in leading the prisoner to their views. Civil tribunals, he maintained, were utterly incompetent in matters of faith, and had no right of the sword in cases of imputed heresy. The Code of Justinian was in truth no authority, having been compiled in times when the Church had already lapsed from its original purity. The violent repressive measures it sanctioned were wholly unknown to the Apostles and their immediate successors. Besides all this, he held the Church of Geneva to be specially precluded from giving an opinion or pronouncing a judgment upon his views; his opponent and personal enemy, Calvin, wielding such paramount authority there, as to make him in fact and in himself the Church. How little all this, however true (and all the less, perhaps, because true), was calculated to win either Calvin or his followers to more friendly feelings, may be imagined; but it shows us the brave, consistent, conscientious, religious man, face to face with fate, and a proffered opportunity to conciliate and save his life, abiding by his convictions, and, with the warning but just given him, rather than belie himself, verily courting death. What would have happened had Galileo been as conscientious and firm as Servetus? CHAPTER IX. THE COURT DETERMINES TO CONSULT THE COUNCILS AND CHURCHES OF THE FOUR PROTESTANT CANTONS. It was at this time and on the suggestion of Servetus--as Calvin affirms, of the Council, according to its own minutes--that a resolution was come to, by which the Church of Geneva was no longer to have the sole say in the final decision of the guilt or innocence of the prisoner. The Councils and the other reformed Churches of Switzerland, it was resolved, were to be consulted on the merits of the case. There was a precedent for such a course; it had been followed only two years before, under somewhat similar circumstances, when Jerome Bolsec was tried for heresy at the instance of Calvin. Calvin and the Ministers were consequently directed by the Court to extract from the works of the prisoner, and to deliver in writing, but without note or comment, the particular passages involving the erroneous or heretical opinions in debate between the prosecution and him. This appeal to the Swiss Churches we cannot help thinking of as fatal to Servetus. If his own concluding reply to the deputation which visited him in prison did not lead to it, it was probably suggested to him by Berthelier, who knew that it had saved Bolsec. But Berthelier was not theologian enough correctly to appreciate the dissimilarity of the propositions involved in the two cases; and he certainly took no note of the difference in the political circumstances of the several times, or he would not have given the advice we presume he did.