The blot on Calvin's name through the execution of Servetus has been extenuated by his adherents, but the certainty of his complete hostility to the unfortunate physiologist, who insisted in dabbling in theology at a dangerous time, is now settled. Long before Servetus' execution at Geneva, Calvin actually secured through his well-developed system of {255} espionage and delation, extending even into Catholic countries, the persecution of Servetus by the Catholic ecclesiastical authorities in France. The details of this have now been traced very clearly. When Servetus, thinking to find protection where freedom of interpretation of Scriptures was preached, came to Geneva his fate was sealed. Calvin himself made it a personal matter to secure his conviction and bring about his execution. A number of the reformers are on record agreeing that Calvin's action in this case was eminently right, and even the gentle Melanchthon would not condemn it. Nothing makes so perfectly clear as this that the claim made for the Reformation of fostering or encouraging liberty of thought is founded entirely on a misconception of what the reformers were trying to do. The reformers wanted liberty of religious thinking for themselves, but they were not ready to grant it to others. After all, we in America do not need to appeal to foreign history in order to understand that very well, for the Puritan disciples of Calvin, driven out of England by Anglican religious persecution and intolerance, made a home for themselves in New England, where they practised the bitterest intolerance and absolutely refused to allow anyone to live in their communities unless he or she, as Ann Hutchinson learned to her cost, conformed unquestioningly to their religious tenets and practices.