5 2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



known with a Franciscan friar named Quintana, who was con- 

 fessor to the Emperor Charles V, to Bologna, to the coronation 

 of that monarch. And here, in Italy, it is supposed that he 

 met with opinions which strengthened his desire for liberty of 

 thought, for about this time he thus expresses himself : " For my 

 own part I neither agree nor disagree in every particular with 

 either Catholic or Reformer. Both of them seem to me to have 

 something of truth and something of error in their views ; and, 

 while each sees the other's shortcomings, neither sees his own. 

 God, in his goodness, give us all to understand our errors, and 

 incline us to put them away/' . . . 



Leaving Bologna, the emperor with his suite proceeded to 

 Germany to hold the Diet of Augsburg. And here Servetus 

 probably saw and spoke to some of the leading Reformers. 



Soon after this, however, he quitted the service of Quintana, 

 and we find him seeking the friendship of certain of the Reform- 

 ers, CEcolampadius and Bucer. He must have had the power of 

 winning friends, for Bucer, in a letter, speaks of him as his dear 

 son, "filius meus dilectus." 



In 1531 Servetus published at Hagenau his first book, De 

 Trinitatis Erroribus. This production of a young man only 

 twenty-one or twenty-two years of age, crude as it was, excited 

 remark from Luther and Melanchthon. In the Table-Talk of 

 1532 Luther refers to it as "a fearfully wicked book which had 

 lately come out against the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Vision- 

 aries like the writer do not seem to fancy that other folks as well 

 as they may have had temptations on this subject. But the sting 

 did not hold ; I set the Word of God and the Holy Ghost against 

 my thoughts and got free." 



Melanchthon confesses he has read Servetus much. "I see 

 him indeed sufficiently sharp and subtle in disputation, but I do 

 not give him credit for much depth. He is possessed, as it seems 

 to me, of confused imaginations, and his thoughts are not well 

 matured on the subjects he discusses." 



CEcolampadius wrote : " Our senate have forbidden the Span- 

 iard's book to be sold here. They have asked my opinion of its 

 merits, and I have said that as the writer does not acknowledge 

 the co-eternity of the Son, I can in no wise approve of it as a 

 whole, although it contains much else that is good." 



Servetus now followed this with Two Dialogues on the Trinity, 

 explanatory and additional to the former work. Thus he pub- 

 lished two books against the principal dogma of the Church in 

 less than two years, without hesitating to put his name on the 

 title-page of both. He was very young, extremely zealous for his 

 new opinion, and perhaps unacquainted with the principles of 

 the Reformers. He may have thought that if they wrote freely 



