It is much of a piece with this, his desiring that the rigour of Servetus’s death might be mitigated; for as the laws against heretics were in force at Geneva, the tribunal that judged Servetus could not, after his conviction of heresy, absolve him from death, nor change the manner of it, as Calvin says he would have had it; and therefore his desiring that the rigour of it might be abated, looks too much like the practice of the inquisitors, who when they deliver over an heretic to the secular arm, beseech it so to moderate the rigour of the sentence, as not to endanger life or limb. This was the part that Calvin acted in the affair of Servetus, which I have represented in the most impartial manner, as it appears to me; and am sorry I am not able to wipe off so foul a stain from the memory of this otherwise excellent and learned reformer. But when his enemies charge him with acting merely from principles of malice and revenge in this matter, I think it an evident abuse and calumny. He was, in his own judgment, for persecuting and destroying heretics, as appears from the treatise he published in vindication of this practice, entitled, “A declaration for maintaining the true faith, held by all Christians concerning the Trinity of persons in one only God, by John Calvin, against the detestable errors of Michael Servetus, a Spaniard. In which it is also proved, that it is lawful to punish heretics; and that this wretch was justly executed in the city of Geneva.” Geneva, 1554. This principle was maintained by almost all the fathers and bishops of the church since the three first centuries, who esteemed heresy as one of the worst of impieties, and thought it the duty of the civil magistrates to employ their power for the suppression of it, and for the support and establishment of the orthodox faith. And though the first reformers abhorred the cruelty of the papists towards the protestants, they had nevertheless the same abhorrence of what they counted heresy that the papists had, and agreed with them in the lawfulness of suppressing it by the civil power. So that Calvin acted in this affair from a principle, though a mistaken principle of conscience, and had the encouragement and approbation of the most learned and pious reformers of the times he lived in.