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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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514 Mr . Bakewell on the State ef Morals and Religion at Gefteva ,
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partial research into facts aSid cifcffimstaftces was not necessary for the purpose ; an active imagination was more serviceable , and Dr . S . appears to me to have been greatly indebted to
it , for the supply of his materials , as his representations bear little , resem ^ blaoce to the past or present state of Geneva . I am glad , however , that Dr , S . has directed the attention of
your readers to the history of the Church of Geneva during the golden age of its orthodoxy : few persons in England nor does Dr . S- himself , possess any correct knowledge of the spirit of that Church , at least he did not before he wrote the postscript to his two letters , otherwise it would nfevel have entered his mind to cite
the case of Servetiis , as the last instance of cruel intolerance in that city . For nearly a century after the murder of Servetus 5 the most bitter Spirit of persecution inspired the orthodox clergy of Geneva ; many persons were sentenced to death for
dissenting from the creed of Calvin ; and banishment , fine and imprisonment , were lavishly dealt out to minor heretics . Indeed , it would be difficult to narafe a place , where excessive intolerance and cruel persecution were go incessantly active as at Geneva , in the Massed titles that preceded the death of the venerable Benedict Pictet .
Cruelty seems to have been here a prominent feature of the Calvinistic diureh * and test the victims to orthodoxy should not be sufficiently numerous , sorcery was made a capital crime , punishable by death , and in tlie short space of sixty years , so many persons were burned for this
supposed offence , that if we compare the whole population of Geneva with that of England only , and suppose & proportional number of sorcerers to have been executed here f » the reign of George the Third * it would amount to owe hundred a | td twentyfive thousand ! * iTbe ease of
NiGhristian virtue ; but candour obliges me to notice thte polite forbearance of the Doctor , in not associating the adjective ruthless with its almost inseparable adjuncts ( monster or villain ) : these he left to be supplied \> y the reader . * The population of Geneva amounted to about 12 , 000 , and the executions for sorcery in sixty years were one hundred and fifty .
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colas Antoine ls ^ ' ^ gj ^ r 'In ^^ rl ^ etly stated b ^ '&krwSmiiA y - ^ - l ^ -yiiff he was a poor man evidently deranged , who was strangled and burned for apostatizing to Judaism , There is much reason to believe that Nicolas Antoine was a sincere but timid tJnitariau , who became deBrious from
the extreme agitation of mind excited by the struggle between -ft sense of duty and a dread of punishment . I shall quote what I have stated respecting hina in the second volume of my Travels r it is extracted principally from Pieot's Histoire de Geneve . The
writers of the time when the execution took place were too much prejudiced to give a fair statement , but sufficient is shewn to prove ; the diabolical spirit of the orthodox clergy , by whom the persecution was instigated . " Nicolas Antoine embraced the
Protestant religion at the ag £ of twenty : he is described as possessing very amiable manners and correct morals : he was appointed pastor in a Genevese church near Gex * a few miles north of Geneva . He was much addicted to the study of the Hebrew Scripture , and was said to be inclined to Judaism .
taking all his texts from the Old Testament and repeating the Apostles' Creed with , a faint voice . His congregation was much attached to him , and did not notice his peculiarities , till preaching one day on tbe second Psalm , he declared that the
prophecy did not relate to Christ but to DavkL The next day he was seized with a brain fever ^ and exclaimed agajnst the Trinity , During his frenzy , he escaped from his keepers , and was taken to the hospital at Geneva
to be cured * but the pastors of Geneva desired that he might be put in prison . In this state of mental derangement he was examined and declared to be a heretic who deserved death ; he was strangled and burned under the walls of Geneva in 1632 , at
the age of thirty . Granting that a sincere conversion to the religion of Moses were a crime , yet how slight is the evidence of that crime in this case ! Indeed the annals of the Church of Rome present few instances of intolerant cruelty , to compare with the execution of Nicolas
Antoine . There were at that time some of the Gerierese pastors who did not approve of the act , and a few
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1824, page 514, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2528/page/2/
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