In another place we find him using such language as this: ‘The words of the Council of Nicæa are these: God of God--a hard expression I admit, for the removal of the ambiguity of which no better interpreter can be found than Athanasius, who indited it--_Deum a Deo--dura loquutio fateor, sed ad cujus tollendam ambiguitatem nemo potest esse magis idoneus interpres quam Athanasius qui eam dictavit_.’ Elsewhere, though we have omitted to note the place, he declares that the Athanasian symbol was never approved by any of the legitimate [i.e. Protestant] Churches--_cujus symbolum nulla unquam legitima ecclesia approbâsset_.’[105] Such writing is surely very noteworthy. Calvin’s acknowledgment of a Trinity is neither of his understanding nor his faith; it is enforced merely and obviously in opposition to the reason he had from God for his guidance. But Michael Servetus, whom he sent to a fiery death, not only does not deny, but expressly, and oftener than once, avows that he acknowledges a Trinity in the Essence of God. He, too, found the words Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the Scriptures; and, as little disposed as Calvin to gainsay a word they contain, he actually uses language the simple sense of which is that precisely under which Calvin seeks to shield himself; only he employs the word _dispositions_ instead of _properties_. Calvin, when he attempts to reconcile the idea of a Trinity of persons co-existing with an unity of Being, and does not use language that contradicts itself, speaks no otherwise than Servetus, and arrives in fine at the same interpretation of the Trinitarian Dogma: the _persons_ are _dispositions_ to the one, _properties_ to the other! After the most careful study of the writings of Servetus we have been able to bestow, we have it forced upon us that had Calvin been so minded he could from them, more readily, and far more consistently, have defended their author as a sincerely pious, though in his opinion, a much mistaken man in his interpretation of Christian doctrine, than prosecuted him as the enemy of all religion, a monster, as he says, made up of mere impieties and horrible blasphemies! But to the intolerant bigot, engrossed by his own conceits and dislikes, all Servetus’s confiding piety was hypocrisy, his touching prayers mockery, and his eloquence as becoming in him as a coat of mail to a hog--‘_qu’une jaserame un Truie_’(!)