proper all-sufficing substance, was supplemented by several hypostases or offsets, which were at once himself, yet other than himself; that from eternity God had elected and fore-ordained a relatively limited proportion of mankind to salvation and eternal life, and doomed an infinitely larger proportion to perdition and everlasting death? Shall we, we say further, think that the man who was tolerant of the speculative opinions of others, and whose business in life it was to visit the sick and reach the healing potion, was less of a good, and a true, and a useful member of society, than he who aspired through the unseen, the unknown and the unknowable, to rule the world with a rod of iron, who was utterly intolerant of other speculative opinions than his own, and in enforcing his arbitrary rules for the regulation of life and conversation, was merciless in the use of the scourge, the branding iron, the sword, and the slow fire? Surely we shall not. Were greatness associated in the world with true nobility of nature, light-bringers, like Michael Servetus, would assuredly be set on a higher level than conquerors of kingdoms. CHAPTER XII. THE TRIAL IS CONTINUED, AND SERVETUS ADDRESSES LETTERS TO CALVIN AND HIS JUDGES. On returning to his dungeon after his examination on September 15, Servetus addressed his prosecutor in the following characteristic epistle, which the reply to Art. XXI. appears to have suggested: To John Calvin, health!--It is for your good that I tell you you are ignorant of the principles of things. Would you now be better informed, I say the great principle is this: _All action takes place by contact_. Neither Christ nor God himself acts upon anything which he does not touch. God would not in truth be God were there anything that escaped his contact. All the qualities of which you dream are imaginations only, slaves of the fields as it were. But there is no virtue of God, no grace of God, nor anything of the sort in God which is not God himself; neither does God put quality into aught in which he himself is not. All is from him, by him, and in him. When the Holy Spirit acts in us, therefore it is God that is in us--that is in contact with us, that actuates us.