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of Jesus, and who appealed to reason as authority, son is the devil's harlot, and can do nothing but blaspheme." That same year he was provoked, by the admission of fondness for skepticism by Erasmus, to say: "It is characteristic of a Christian's mind to delight in assertions. The Christian wishes to be as certain as possible, even in things that are unnecessary and outside of Scripture. Take away assertions, and you have taken away Christianity." He was too kind-hearted to have any man killed for mere opinions; but he tried to have Zwingli's adherents banished, and among his last books is one advising that the Jews be enslaved and the synagogues burned. His disciples sent heretic after heretic to the scaffold. Interest in theology became so keen all over Germany as to bring on her, during the seventeenth century, the worst war ever waged for religion, while the great poets of the sixteenth, Hutten, Sachs and Fischart, had no successor until long afterwards. It is doubtful whether any German painter has yet appeared equal to Luther's contemporaries, Holbein, Durer and Cranach; and there is much truth in these lines of Clough's (Amours de Voyage, Canto I. v.): "Luther, they say, was unwise; like a half-taught German, he could not

See that old follies were passing most tranquilly out of remembrance."

"He must, forsooth, make a fuss, and distend his huge Wittenberg lungs and

Bring back Theology once yet again in a flood upon Europe."

Nowhere was this deluge more destructive than at Geneva, where religious interests became so absorbing that Calvin was able to establish such proscription of amusements as had never before been attempted. A woman was whipped for singing ordinary words to a

psalm tune; and among the criminals sent to prison were a whole family who had allowed dancing at a wedding, a bride who had gone to church with her hair hanging down too far, and a man who had read an indecent book. Four hundred people were punished, in 1558 and 1559, for dancing, laughing in church, dressing too gaily, and similar offences. Novel-reading, theatricals and games of chance, were strictly prohibited, and staying away from church became criminal for the first time in history.

Desire to obey the Bible literally caused a hundred and fifty witches to be burned within sixty years, and it was at Calvin's request that a citizen of Geneva, named Gruet, was put on the rack for disrespect to the clergy, and beheaded as a blasphemer. A paper had been found in his house, proving that he had written these shocking words: "If I wish to dance and enjoy myself, what have just laws to do with that? Nothing." The cross-examination brought out his disbelief that the State has any right to punish conduct which injures no one, however contrary to scripture. He was also charged at his trial with disbelief in Moses; but it was not until some years after his execution that he was discovered to have written a manuscript, which was promptly destroyed, and which was said to be grossly anti-Christian by the bigot who afterwards bore false witness against Servetus. Gruet's real offence was dislike of persecution; and the wickedness of shedding his blood was aggravated by the failure of his petition, conceding that he had done wrong and promising amendment, to find such favor with Calvin and the magistrates of Geneva as would probably have been given by the Inquisition.

Calvin's most famous victim was Servetus, who had been obliged to take refuge in France under an assumed name because he had published a book which Luther called horribly wicked. He had asserted that the persons in the Trinity are merely attributes, insisted on the necessity of morality, and denied the pre-existence of Jesus. In his exclusion from Protestant lands he became a physician, and discovered that the blood moves through the lungs. He aroused no opposition among Catholics by teaching that the only way to understand the Bible or any other book correctly, is to accept it as written directly for readers in the author's own day. This success made him venture to write his "Restoration of Christianity," where he treated the principal rites and doctrines of both Protestants and Catholics with unprecedented boldness. He sent a copy in manuscript to Calvin, who wrote to one of his friends a letter, still extant, declaring that if the author should ever come to Geneva, "I will never suffer him to depart alive." Servetus wrote soon after to another clergyman: "I am sure I shall die for this; but I do not falter in soul, for I would be a disciple like the Master."

He

The book was printed secretly in France, where Servetus resided, but all the copies were seized before any could be sold, and he was arrested as the author. This was in consequence of a letter from Geneva, declaring that the physician ought to be burned alive. was discharged for lack of evidence, but the case against him became complete when his letters to Calvin were sent on by the latter to be used by the Inquisition. Servetus was then confined in prison, but he escaped, and spent some months wandering to and fro. The news that he was in hiding at Geneva was brought one

Sunday to Calvin, who had him arrested that very day.

The only charge against him was his opinions; these had never been published or uttered in Geneva, and no heretic was liable to any penalty worse than banishment by her laws, but he was at once put on trial for his life. The leading prosecutor was Calvin, who also preached against Servetus and wrote a letter expressing the hope that he would be put to death. The charges presented against him were drawn up by Calvin, and included disrespect toward the latter, sedition in fleeing from the Inquisition, irreverence toward the Old Testament, denial of the pre-existence of Jesus, of the damnation of unbaptized babies, and of the efficacy of infant baptism, as well as disbelief in immortality. The last charge was utterly false, and was promptly denied by Servetus, who asked in vain for legal advice.

He pleaded that he had done nothing worse than suggest abstruse problems to scholars and that heretics ought not to be put to death. A violent discussion on that point took place between him and Calvin, who repeated the false charge of disbelf in immortality when he drew up a new list of heresies, mainly about preexistence, for consideration by the ministers and magistrates of Basel, Bern, Schaffhausen and Zurich. They decided in favor of capital punishment, and the court of magistrates at Geneva voted that Servetus be burned alive, according to an ancient law which had been repealed ten years before. Calvin tried to have the sword substituted for the stake; but Servetus perished in the flames, with a crown of leaves and straw covered with sulphur on his head, and at his waist a printed copy of his last book, together with the manuscript which he had loaned to Calvin and had been unable to recover.

Green wood was used to prolong his sufferings, which lasted half an hour. With him perished every copy but two of his book, which was known only by name until late in the eighteenth century, while his discovery about the blood, fully stated therein, had to be made anew and published independently. His murder was censured severely by advanced thinkers like Castalio and the uncle of that Socinus who became the founder of Socinianism, but most of the orthodox approved of burning Servetus.

The Reformation had already passed beyond its second period, that of reactionary conservatism with incidental persecution. This was all the more cruel on account of the alarm created among both Catholics and Protestants by the Anabaptists, revolutionary mystics, among whom there was much opposition to all ceremonies, dogmas and institutions. The third and last stage of the Reformation, its bloody period, began with the religious war of 1546, in Germany, and closed there with the thirty years' war in 1648. The burning of Servetus, in 1553, was soon surpassed in horror by the Massacre of St. Bartholomew. War after war cursed France during the latter part of this century; and it was only by losing thousands of lives, both on the scaffold and in battle, and suffering every other calamity, that the Dutch achieved political and mental independence.

In England, the Reformation had no years of heroism and no religious wars before 1642. Between that year and 1558, when persecutions of Protestants ceased at the accession of Elizabeth, there was a lucid interval when there was much less controversy than on the Continent, and much more progress in manufactures, commerce, literature and science. Subordination of