There is much in what precedes to challenge comment, and the language, self-condemnatory of the writer in one respect, if not purposely meant to mislead, is yet greatly calculated to do so in another. If Servetus’ teaching was such ponderous folly that it could by no possibility have any influence in the world, why did Calvin proceed against him from the first on the capital charge? It is God, too, who inflicts such stupidity on mankind as makes the intervention of John Calvin necessary to set things right; and the denial and vituperative epithets at the end of the paragraph last quoted do not cover an obvious intention on his part to have the reader conclude that he had had nothing to do with the doom which befel the Spaniard. But Calvin knew that by the law of Geneva the convicted heretic must die; and he had written to his friend Farel on August 20, within a week of the arrest, that he hoped the sentence _would be capital at the least_--_spero capitale saltem judicium fore_. All the favour Calvin ever asked for Servetus was that he might die by the sword instead of by brimstone and slow fire. He does not say so much indeed, but it almost looks as if he would have the world believe that he had moved to save the man’s life! We have his own acknowledgment, however, of the active part he took in the prosecution of Servetus at Geneva, and his expressed hope of what the sentence should be. This much he could not deny; the facts of the case put it out of his power. But he always shirked complicity with all that happened at Vienne. There there was underhand dealing and betrayal of trust, and he would fain have the world believe that he had had nothing to do with the ugly business. But here, too, everything we know, is against him, and all he says by way of freeing himself from the charge of having denounced Servetus to the authorities of Lyons seems but to strengthen the conclusion that he did. Calvin was an able man undoubtedly, but he was not a cunning man, and often lets his pen give expression to thoughts of things gone by, which he would not have suffered to appear had he been more artful.