The meeting of the Court on the 26th, then, not so fully attended as we have said by the usual opponents of Calvin as by his supporters, had to face the painful duty of pronouncing sentence on their prisoner at last. A resolution finding him guilty of the charges alleged, and so deserving of death, must now have been moved by one of the members--by whom we are not informed--for we find it immediately met, on the part of Perrin, by a counter-resolution, declaring him not guilty. Perrin, we must presume, maintained that the charges were not of a nature that fell properly under their cognisance as a Court of Criminal Justice. Nothing had been brought home to the prisoner that showed him to be a disturber of the public peace, and so came within the sphere of what he held to be their proper jurisdiction. Perrin must, therefore, have argued that the Court could only pronounce him not guilty. But this would plainly have been to stultify the whole of their proceedings during the last two months and more. The Court, by the laws of the country, was competent in causes of every complexion, and the prosecution had proceeded from the first on the ground of theological criminality. The proposition of the First Syndic, consequently, could not be entertained, but was rejected as a matter of course. Perrin then moved that the cause should be remitted to the Council of the Two Hundred. But this proposal was also negatived: the General Council in its capacity of Criminal Court, could not waive its right of decision in a case in which its competence was recognised, and such ample pains had been taken to get at the merits of the case. Perrin must then, doubtless, have pleaded for some punishment short of the extreme penalty of death awarded to the heretic by the law of the land. This last effort failing like the others, and the Records of the Court giving no intimation of any further motion in favour of the prisoner, the following resolution was moved, and by a majority of votes adopted: ‘Having a summary of the process against the prisoner, Michael Servetus, and the reports of the parties consulted before us, it is hereby resolved, and, in consideration of his great errors and blasphemies, decreed, that he be taken to Champel, and there burned alive; that this sentence be carried into effect on the morrow, and that his books be burned with him.’[98] The sentence once resolved on, appears to have been immediately communicated to Calvin, and he in the same hour proceeded to inform his most intimate friend Farel of the result. In anticipation of the event, he had, indeed, written to Farel some days before, begging him to come to Geneva. The clergy of the city having acted with Calvin to a man in the prosecution, it was thought more seemly that a stranger should attend the prisoner in his last moments, than one of themselves; hence Calvin’s first letter of October 14, in anticipation of the final sentence, and to the following effect: