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began to suspect that men ' s itiinds were not yet prepared for a full disclosure of the truth ; and , in order to allay the ferment which he had excited , he published ( A . D . 1532 ) Two Dialogues on the Trinity , " in which he strove to soften down some of the expressions which he had used in his former publication . At the opening of these " Dialogues" he says , •« Quse nnper contra receptam de Trinitate sententiam lib . viii . scripsi ; nunc otnnia
retracto , non quia falsa sunt , sed quia imperjecta , et a parvulo parvulis scripta ; quod autem ita barbarus , confusus et incorrectus prior liber prodierit , imperitiae meae , et typographi incuriae est adscri bend urn . " But his attempts td rectify the mistakes , to improve the style , and to elucidate the argument of his former publication , tended only to exasperate and inflame the minds of his opponents ; and passages not unfrequently occur in the theological writings of his contemporaries , in which they inveigh with great bitterness against him and his doctrines . The Protestants of that age appear to have
been seized with a pious horror at the thought of submitting the doctrine of the Trinity to the test of argument ; and Servetus , who had not only done this , but done it in a bold and uncompromising spirit , brought down upon himself the whole weight of their vengeance . They feared that the agitation of this question might prejudice the cause of the Reformation in the eyes of their Catholic brethren , and laboured with all their zeal to silence those who had the temerity to transgress the prescribed bounds of Trinitarian orthodoxy : but the more discerning among them foresaw , that , in spite
of all the efforts which were made to put down Servetus , the great controversy which he had started would one day or other embroil the Christian world in disputes of which it was impossible to foresee the issue . Melancthon , writing to Camerarius on this subject , expresses himself in the following terms : " You ask my opinion about Servetus . I find him sufficiently acute and cunning in argument ; but I cannot allow him the praise of solidity . He seems to me to labour under a confusion of ideas , and not to have
very clear notions of the matter upon which he treats . On the subject of Justification he evidently ventures beyond his depth . With respect to the Trinity you know 1 was always apprehensive that these things would sooner or later break out . Good God ! What tragedies will this question excite among posterity , —whether the Logos is an hypostasis , and whether the Holy Spirit is an hypostasis ? I satisfy myself with those words of Scripture which command us to invoke Christ , which is to attribute to him the honour
of divinity , and is full of consolation . " Servetus remained at Lyons between two and three years , and seems to have supported himself there as a corrector of the press . From Lyons he removed to Paris , where he abandoned the study of the law in favour of that of medicine , to which he devoted himself with such assiduity and success , under the direction of Sylvius and Fernelius , two of the most eminent physicians of the age , that he was soon enabled to take his doctor ' s degree . It was during his residence at Paris that he first became personally known to Calvin , with whom he was anxious to hold a
religious discussion : but his own inclination being probably overruled by the advice of his friends , the discussion never took place . This was in the year 1534 ; but it appears that he was at Lyons again in the year following , where he was employed in superintending the publication of an edition of Ptolemy ' s Geography . In the Preface to this work he speaks of having visited Italy , and being acquainted with the Italian language . This journey into Italy , however , has oeen entirely overlooked by many of his biographers , and is not even mentioned by La Roche , whose account of him is on the whole drawn up with great accuracy ,. Servetus himself alludes to it not only in the
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Biographical Notices of Eminent Continental Unitarians * 329
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1831, page 329, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2597/page/41/
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