He should be the author, not of sin, but of the possibility of sin in order
that virtue might be possible, there being no virtue where it is impossible
to commit sin; but therein lies a mystery which faith alone can solve, and
which Aristotle at any rate has not solved, therefore let us not place
reliance on Aristotle.

This disguised freethinker, for he does not appear to me to be anything
else, was one of the most original thinkers of the period intermediate
between the Middle Ages and Descartes.

MICHAEL SERVETUS; VANINI.--Such instances of temerity were sometimes
fatal to their authors. Michael Servetus, a very learned Spanish physician
who perhaps discovered the circulation of the blood before Harvey,
disbelieved in the Trinity and in the divinity of Jesus, and, as he was a
Platonist, perceived no intermediaries between God and man save
ideas. Persecuted by the Catholics, he sought refuge at Geneva, believing
Calvin to be more merciful than the Inquisitors, and Calvin burned him
alive.

Vanini, half a century later, that is at the commencement of the
seventeenth, a restless, vain, and insolent man, after a life full of
sudden changes of fortune, and yet distinguished, was burnt alive at
Toulouse for certain passages in his _De admirandis ... arcanis_, and
for having said that he would not express his opinion on the immortality of
the soul until he was old, a Jew, and a German.

BRUNO; CAMPANELLA.--Giordano Bruno, an astronomer and one of the
first to affirm that the sun was the centre of the world, professed,
despite certain precautions, a doctrine which confused God with the world
and denied or excluded creation. Giordano Bruno was arrested at Venice in