Calvin’s charge was therefore, as we see, to no halting or half-way conclusion. He proceeded from the first for a capital conviction--he hoped it would be nothing short of this; and being so, he knew the kind of death the man must die. It is a poor show of humanity, therefore, that he makes at the end of his letter. But there is a phrase at the beginning of the epistle which deserves very particular notice: ‘_Iam novum habemus cum Serveto negotium_--we have now on hand a _new business_ with Servetus.’ But there was no _older business_ with Servetus at Geneva. It was at Vienne that this took place. Writing to Farel, his oldest and most trusted friend, Calvin reverts in mind to the fact, and his words reflect or echo back his inward thought. Of the justice of this surmise we seem to find confirmation in Viret’s letter of August 22, which we have seen in reply to the one in which Calvin inquires after a copy of the book on Trinitarian Error; for there the pastor of Lausanne says: _Nunc vobis est alia cum Serveto disputatio_--and now you have _another_ contention with Servetus;[96] an obvious reference to a passage in one of the Reformer’s letters of the same tenor as that he has just addressed to Farel. Calvin, it is notorious, always shirked acknowledgment of the part he played in the affair of Vienne. Even the self-complacency that comes of theological zeal did not permit him to find an excuse for underhand dealing, and the violation of a correspondence that was private and entirely confidential. He was, by no means, insensible to the infamy that cleaves to an act of the kind, however, and in his own case could say, ‘Zebedæus has been perfidiously showing confidential letters of mine, which I wrote to him fifteen years ago from Strasburg!’[97] Farel’s reply to the last epistle of Calvin, dated from Neufchatel on September 8, is as follows: I have returned from Normandy, restored to my usual good state of health.... It is a wonderful dispensation of God that has brought Servetus to this country. I wish he may come to his senses, late though it be. It will indeed be a miracle if he prefer death, and, turning to God, consent to edify the spectators--he dying one death who has caused the death of so many others!