Free Republic

Geneva was a church-city-state of 15,000 people, and the church constitution now recognized "pastors, doctors, elders and deacons," but the supreme power was given to the magistrate, John Calvin. In November 1552, the Council declared Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion to be a "holy doctrine which no man might speak against." Thus the State issued dogmatic decrees, the force of which had been anticipated earlier, as when Jacques Gruet, a known opponent of Calvin, was arrested, tortured for a month and beheaded on July 26, 1547, for placing a letter in Calvin's pulpit calling him a hypocrite. Gruet's book...

Michael Servetus Biography Abstract Michael Servetus is in more than one respect one of the most remarkable men of the sixteenth century; while the tragic death which he suffered made him the first and most conspicuous martyr to the faith whose history we are following. Records of the life of Servetus are scanty and inconsistent, and the gaps in them have often been filled up by conjectures which have later proved to be mistaken. Servetus, Michael, in Spanish, Miguel Serveto (1511-1553), Spanish physician and theologian, who was executed for his beliefs by the Calvinist government of Geneva. He was born...

John Murray No treatment of the subject of God’s sovereignty has surpassed in depth of thought, in reverence of approach, and in eloquence of expression that which we find in the last three chapters of Book I of the Institutes. It is sufficient to be reminded of one or two of the classic statements which we find in these chapters to appreciate anew the intensity of Calvin’s faith in the all-pervasive and over-ruling providence of God. “So it must be concluded,” he says, “that while the turbulent state of the world deprives us of judgment, God, by the pure light of...

THE EXECUTION OF SERVETUS FOR BLASPHEMY, HERESY, & OBSTINATE ANABAPTISM, DEFENDED By John Knox Are ye [the Anabaptist] able to prove, [as ye have maliciously accused us], that we teach the people not to convert from their sins and wicked imaginations, to the last hour of their departure? do we promise to all thieves and murderers the same grace and favour that David, Peter, and this thief found? I trust thy own conscience knoweth the contrary. Permit or suffer we (be they never so high) manifest offenders to live amongst us, after their own appetites? And yet ashamest thou not...

Michael Servetus Michael Servetus (1509 or 1511-1553), a Spaniard martyred in the Reformation for his criticism of the doctrine of the trinity and his opposition to infant baptism, has often been considered an early unitarian. Sharply critical though he was of the orthodox formulation of the trinity, Servetus is better described as a highly unorthodox trinitarian. Still, aspects of his theology—for example, his rejection of the doctrine of original sin—did influence those who later founded unitarian churches in Poland and Transylvania. Public criticism of those responsible for his execution, the Reform Protestants in Geneva and their pastor, John Calvin, moreover,...