50 Dj* Craigie's Observations on the 



bodies ; and, to escape the paternal authority which the Inqui- 

 sition exercises over her erring children, he fled from Spain to 

 France, where he studied anatomy and medicine, and taught 

 mathematics at Paris. From Paris he proceeded to Charlieu 

 near Lyons, thence to Toulouse, and eveniually travelled through 

 several of the provinces of Germany, every where propagating his 

 opinions, and every where persecuted. It must have been some 

 time in the course of this erratic mode of life that he published 

 his first work denominated De Trinitatis Erroribus, in 1531, 

 probably at Basil ; for it is without place. From Germany he 

 returned to France, and was in the city of Vienne in Dauphiny 

 in 1553, when he published his second work, entitled Christiav- 

 ismi Restitutio, and which is still more rare and valuable than 

 the former. It required not the publication of this work to 

 proclaim Servetus as the most impious of heretics, equally ab- 

 horred by the Catholic church and the new but not less violent 

 proselytes of Calvin. At the instigation of the latter, who 

 represented Servet as a wicked heretic, whose errors could only 

 be expiated by the sword, several Genevese apprehended him in 

 Vienne and conveyed him to Geneva, where he was brought to 

 the stake on the 27th of October 1553, at the age of 44. It is 

 impossible to doubt that this barbarous execution throws on the 

 character of Calvin a stain which all his services in the cause of 

 reformation cannot efface. Even Portal, who, like a good Ca- 

 tholic, remarks on this occasion, that one heretic put another to 

 death, cannot refrain from bestowing on the Genevese the civil 

 epithets o{Jhurbe and ignorant, while he allows the victim the 

 merit of being one of the greatest geniuses of Europe. 



It is in the fifth book of his second work Christianismi Res- 

 titutio, and not in the treatise De Trinitatis Erroribus, which 

 has been vainly searched by many curious persons, that Servet 

 delivers his ideas of the small circulation. The work is ex- 

 tremely rare; and for my knowledge of his views I am indebted 

 to De Bure, who has faithfully transcribed the passage from the 

 original copy preserved in the Library of the President De Cotte, 

 — supposed to be the only one in existence *. From this ex- 



• " Vitalis spiritus in sinistro cordis ventriculo suam originem babet, ju- 

 vantibus maxinie pulmonibus ad ipsius perfectionem. Est spiritus tenuis, 

 caloris vi elaboratus, flavo colore, ignea potentia, ut sit quasi ex puriore san- 

 guine lucens, vapor substantiam continens aquae, aeris, el ignis. Generatur 



