If Calvin, then, as we apprehend, had every reason to anticipate an answer in his favour from the Churches, so do we find Servetus possessed by the assured hope that he would be acquitted, or, at most, be found guilty of nothing involving a heavier penalty than banishment from the Republic of Geneva. Of heresy he did not think for a moment he had been more guilty than every one of the Reformers whom he had been accustomed to hear spoken of in the polite circles of Vienne not only as schismatics, but as heretics of the deepest dye. If his ‘Restoration of Christianity’ had been burned by the hangman of Vienne, had not Calvin’s ‘Institutions of the Christian Religion’ been summarily condemned by the whole Catholic world, and put on the Index of prohibited books by the Roman Curia? So sure does Servetus appear to have felt of final acquittal at this time--guiltless of blasphemy as in his soul he knew himself to be, and bolstered by the false hopes of his false friends, that whilst the scales of justice were still trembling on the beam, he, from his filthy cell, in rags, and devoured by vermin, even he aspired to become the accuser of the man by whom he was himself accused, and subjected to all the indignities he endured! It could only have been under the excitement of some such persuasion that he now wrote the following extraordinary letter to the Council:-- _To the Syndics and Council of Geneva._ My most honoured Lords,--I am detained on a criminal charge at the instance of John Calvin, who has accused me, falsely saying that in my writings I maintain-- 1st. That the soul of man is mortal, and 2nd. That Jesus Christ had only taken the fourth part of his body from the Virgin Mary. These are horrible, execrable charges. Of all heresies and crimes, I think of none greater than that which would make the soul of man to be mortal. In every other there is hope of salvation, but none in this. He who should say what I am charged with saying, neither believes in God nor justice, in the resurrection, in Christ Jesus, in the Scriptures, nor, indeed, in anything, but declares that all is death, and that man and beast are alike. Had I said anything of the kind--said it not in words only, but written and published it, I should myself think me worthy of death. Wherefore, my Lords, I demand that my false accuser be declared subject to the law of retaliation, and like me be sent to prison until the cause between him and me, for death or other penalty, is decided. To this effect I here engage myself against him, submit myself to all that the Lex Talionis requires, and declare that I shall be content to die if I am not borne out in everything I shall bring against him. My Lords, I demand of you, justice, justice, justice! From your prison of Geneva, this 22nd of September, 1553. MICHAEL SERVETUS, pleading his own cause.