The Churches and Councils consulted, then, were at one in their condemnation of Servetus. But it has been presumed that ecclesiastical conclusion and innuendo backed by civilian assent, might still have failed to bring matters to the issue aimed at by the prosecution, had not political considerations intervened to complicate and sway judicial action. We are ready enough to believe that there was so much common sense in the Senate of Geneva, and such a feeling of the impossibility of attaining to absolute certainty in questions of dogmatic theology, that they were even more indisposed than they plainly show themselves to have been to come to a final decision in the case of their prisoner. But to assume that political considerations had the lead in the condemnation of Servetus, would, we venture to think, be a great mistake. To remove the prosecution from the sphere of theology to that of policy, were to take from it its chief interest and significance. But the arrest was made, the trial was begun, and the sentence was delivered exclusively on theological grounds. The political element that got mixed up with the business, was no more than an accident, and cannot truly be said to have influenced the judgment finally given. The four Swiss cantonal Councils and Churches which condemned Servetus, condemned him on theological grounds alone; they knew little or nothing of the political strife that agitated Geneva, and were not swayed by it in their decision. Servetus himself, ill-advised and misled by those who had access to him, fully persuaded of the truth of his opinions, and relying on their consonance with Scripture, as he read it, may be said to have left his Judges one way only out of the difficult and delicate position in which they found themselves; and this was by finding him guilty of the theological errors laid to his charge. He appeared to be opposed not only to every religious principle as known to them, and as understood alike by Catholics and Protestants, but he had used such objectionable language in speaking of subjects held so sacred as the Trinity and the Baptism of Infants, that even the most tolerant in the present day would find it inexcusable; how much less warrantable must it have appeared amid the universally prevalent intolerance of three centuries ago! Nevertheless, it may be that the mind of every member of the Council had not yet been made up as to the _degree_ of the prisoner’s guiltiness, or even granting him guilty of everything imputed to him, that he, therefore, deserved to die; and die he must if they so declared him. * * * * *