If we are to understand the _retractârit scriptis_ of the above as a promise from Servetus to retract in a future work what he has said in his first, he certainly did not keep his word in the ‘Dialogi de Trinitate,’[34] which he published in the course of the following year. In the Preface to these dialogues, it is true, he informs the candid reader that he retracts all he had ‘lately written in the seven books of erroneous conceptions concerning the Trinity, not because what I say there is false, but because the work is imperfect and written as it were by a child for children. I pray you nevertheless to hold by so much as you find there that may help you to understand the subjects discussed. All that is barbarous, confused and faulty, ascribe to my inexperience and the carelessness of the printer. I would not that any Christian were offended by what I say; for God is used sometimes to make known his wisdom to the world by weak vessels. Look at the thing itself, therefore, I pray you, and if you take good heed, my stammering will prove no hindrance to you.’ The reputed printer of Servetus’s Treatise and Two Dialogues, Jo. Secerius, has no particular name as a typographer. But these little works are by no means incorrectly printed; they show few typographical errors--so few that they must almost certainly have been read for press by the writer himself. The printer therefore is not to be blamed for any shortcomings of the kind referred to by the author--if there be defect it is his own, and it was the matter not the manner that had been found fault with. But the Preface is apologetic in directions uncalled for, and is meaningless in fact. Servetus did not think himself a weak vessel; neither did he look on his work as the work of a child for children; and as for any retractation of his opinions, nothing seems to have been further from his mind. On the contrary the mysticism of the writer of the Fourth Gospel appears to have taken a firmer hold of our author than it had done before, and to have acted as fresh ferment to the mystical element so abundant in his proper nature. There may be modification of some of the views already enunciated, but from none of them is there recession. The opposition he met with from the leading Reformers seems even to have added point and precision to his writing. He is more outspoken than before, and is still less chary in the kind of language he uses towards opponents. The usual conception of a _partitioned_ Deity he declares to be simply blasphemous; they who seriously entertain it are fools, and so blind that were Christ to come among them now and declare he was the Son of God, they would crucify him anew. The Dialogues, instead of any denial and retractation, are a reiteration and defence of almost all he has said in his first production; although, indeed, we do observe that where he can he occasionally approximates somewhat to more orthodox views; in that