had the power, refrained not from torturing and burning those who did not
accept their own particular belief. This they did not merely out of a
spirit of revenge conceived against those who had formerly condemned their
fathers and brethren to the stake, but sometimes we see instances of
Reformers slaughtering Reformers, because the victims did not hold quite
the same tenets as those who were in power. Poor Michael Servetus shared
as hard a fate at the hands of Calvin, as ever "heretic" did at the hands
of the Catholics; and this fate was entirely caused by his writings. This
author was born in Spain, at Villaneuva in Arragon, in 1509. At an early
age he went to Africa to learn Arabic, and on his return settled in
France, studying law at Toulouse, and medicine at Lyons and Paris.

But the principles of the Reformed religion attracted him; he studied the
Scriptures in their original languages, and the writings of the fathers
and schoolmen. Unhappily his perverse and self-reliant spirit led him into
grievous errors with regard to the doctrine of the Trinity. In vain the
gentle Reformer Oecolampadius at Basle reasoned with him. He must needs
disseminate his opinions in a book entitled _De Trinitatis Erroribus_,
which has handed the name of Servetus down to posterity as the author of
errors opposed to the tenets of the Christian Faith. Bucer declared that
he deserved the most shameful death on account of the ideas set forth in
this work. In his next work, _Dialogues on the Trinity_ and _A Treatise on
the Kingdom of Christ_, Servetus somewhat modified his views, and declared
that his former reasonings were merely "those of a boy speaking to boys";
but he blamed rather the arrangement of his book, than retracted the
opinions he had expressed.

He also annotated Pagnini's Latin version of the Sacred Scriptures,
entitled _Biblia sacra latina ex hebraeo, per Sanctum Pagninum, cum
praefatione et scholiis Michaelis Villanovani (Michel Servet). Lugduni, a