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would obtrude upon men by their severity ; and thus was he Inconsistent with himself , in practising persecution at the same time that he condemned it ; not considering , that by this unhappy conduct he justified the Popish persecutions : for if his persuasion that he was himself in the rignt , and Michael Servetus in the wrong , was a sufficient ground for his having him put to death ; the like persuasion ^ which , doubtless , some of the Popish persecutors had , must have been a sufficient ground
for their putting Protestants to death . 4 C And , lastly , it must be considered that Calvin looked upon Servetus as a very wicked man , and his notions to have been abominably blasphemous . This renders his case vastly different from those who persecuted such as they acknowledged to be good Christians , and for things they owned to be comparatively trifles 5 though I don ' t ' allege this as sufficient to justify Calvin , whose proceedings , I own , were unwarrantable ; ana he seems to me to have widely mistaken the case
of Servettis , whose opinions were frantic , and called for the skill of & physician rather than an executioner . Though he indeed esteemed them of an horrible nature , and to proceed from the wickedness of hi * heart , rather than the weakness of his head : a presumption which cannot surely be too much condemned , as it has caused so much mischief and cruelty in the world . But would any one think that man ' s intellectuals were sound who held— That the soul of Christ is God ,
and that the flesh of Christ is God 1 and that as well the flesh as thor soul were in the very substance of the Godhead from all eternity : that the substantial Godhead is in all his creatures : that the soul of many sflthough it be not God , is made God b y the Spirit , which is God him * 3 elf V And yet these were some of the notions which Mr . Knoxr € Against the Adversaries of God ' s Predestination / p . 2 O 8 , 2 QQj tells us he maintained .
cc Such circumstances incline me to judge as favourably as I can of Calvin ., while I freely declare my utter abhorrence of the feet itself * . ** Having laid before your readers this interesting passage , I beg leave ^ Sir , to put a few questions to them , hoping they will not be esteemed unworthy of notice .
1 What is the history of M . Pilloniere ? Is there any satisfactory account of it on record ? Did he continue a Protestant to the end of life ? Was he in communion with the Church of England ? 2 f Is the Mr . Knox whom Mr * Pierce quotes * the celebrated John Knox , the Scottish reformer ? What is the passage
referred to , at full length ? What authority does Knox quote for the truth of his representation of the opinions of Servetus ? 3 . Does not Mr . Pierce depart from his tistial liberality in degrading the character of Servetus on such authority , and in
branding the man from whose opinions he differed with lunacy ? Had he forgotten that our Lord ' s friends said of him r on account of his teaching , " He is beside himselff , " and that F&stus repeated the same stupid charge with regard to the * P . 38 * --44 > f Mark iii 31 *
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* ¦ ^ . ¦ - * 578 The Inquirer .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1806, page 578, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1730/page/18/
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