[ . . ] When Calvin burnt Servetus
. . this, . . was almost unanimously applauded by all sections of
Protestants. [ . . ] Only one man of eminence ventured openly to oppose it,
and that man, who may be regarded as the first avowed champion of
complete religious liberty, was also one of the most eminent of the
precursors of rationalism. He wrote under the name of Martin Bellius, but his
real name was Châtillon, or, as it was generally latinised,
Castellio.[1]
Castellio was a Frenchman, a scholar of remarkable acquirements, and
a critic of still more remarkable boldness. He had been at one time a
friend of Calvin, and had filled a professorship at Geneva, but the
daring spirit which he carried into every sphere soon scandalised the
leaders of the Reformation. Having devoted himself early to Biblical
criticism, he had translated the Bible into Latin, and in the course of his
labours he came to the conclusion that the Song of Solomon was simply a
Jewish love song, and that the allegory that was supposed to underlie
it was purely imaginary. A still graver offence in the eyes of the
Geneva
theologians was his emphatic repudiation of the Calvinistic doctrine
of predestination. He assailed it not so much by any train of arguments,
or by an appeal to authority, as on the broad grounds of its repugnance
to our sense of right, and he developed its moral atrocity in a manner
that elicited from Beza a torrent of almost frantic invective. Driven
from Geneva, he at last obtained a professorship at Basle, where he
denounced the murder of Servetus, and preached for the first time in
Christendom the duty of absolute toleration, based upon the rationalistic
doctrine of the innocence of error. The object of doctrines, he said, is
to make men better, and those which do not contribute to this end are
absolutely unimportant. The history of dogmas should be looked upon as a
series of developments, contributing to the moral perfection of mankind.
First of all, polytheism was supreme. [ . . ] 'To discuss the
difference between the Law and the Gospel, gratuitous remission of sins o
r imputed righteousness, is as if a man were to discuss whether a
prince was to come on horseback, or in a chariot, or dressed in white or in
red.' To persecute for such questions is absurd,
and not only absurd but atrocious. For if the end of Christianity be
the diffusion of a spirit of beneficence, persecution must be its extreme
antithesis ; and if persecution be an essential element of a religion,
that religion must be a curse to mankind.
Such new and startling sentiments as these, coming from a writer of
considerable eminence, attracted much attention, and aroused great
indignation. Both Calvin and Beza replied in a strain of the fiercest
invective. Calvin especially, from the time when Castellio left Geneva,
pursued him with untiring hatred, laboured hard to procure his expulsion
from Basle, denounced him in the preface to an edition of the New
Testament[2] as 'one who had been chosen by Satan to deceive the thoughtless and
indifferent,' and attempted to blast his character by the grossest
calumnies. In the friendship of
Socinus, Castellio found some compensation for the general hatred of
which he was the object, and he appears to have inclined greatly to the
doctrines of his friend. Separated alike from the Protestants and the
Catholics, his prospects in life were blighted, he sank into a condition
of absolute destitution, and is said to have been almost reduced to
literal starvation, when death relieved him of his sufferings. A few
kindly sentences of Montaigne, who pronounced his closing scene to have been
a disgrace to mankind,d have in some degree rescued this first apostle4
of toleration from oblivion.
Some years after the murder of Servetus, Beza, in relating its
circumstances, declared that Castellio and Socinus were the only men who had
opposed it ; and although this statement is not strictly true,[3] it but
very little exaggerates the
unanimity that was displayed. When we recollect the great notoriety of
this execution, and also its aggravated character, so general an
approbation seems to show clearly not only that the spirit of early
Protestantism was as undoubtedly intolerant as the spirit of Catholicism, which
is an unquestionable fact, but also that it flinched as little from the
extreme consequences to which intolerance leads. It seems to show that
the comparative mildness of Protestant persecutions results much more
from the circumstances under which they took place, than from any sense
of the atrocity of burning the heretic. (etc)
[1] His name was originally Châtillon or Châtellion,
which, after the fashion of the age, he latinised into Castellio ; but
at the beginning of his career, some one having called him by mistake
Castalio, he was so charmed by the name, which, by reminding him of the
Castalian fount, seemed a good augury for his literary career, that he
adopted it. See, for a full account of his life, Bayle, art.
Castalio, and Henry, Life of Calvin ;, and, for a short notice,
Hallam, Hist. of Literature, vol. i. p. 557. Besides the works
I have noticed in the text, Castalio translated the dialogues of the
famous Socinian Ochino, and an anonymous German work of the mystical
school of Tauler, edited the Sibylline verses (his preface is given to the
recent edition by Alexander [Paris, 1846]), wrote a defence of his
translation of the Bible (which translation seems to have been an
indifferent performance), and published some minor essays or dialogues.
[2] See Bayle and Henry. Castellio, when publishing his edition of the
Bible, made the preface the vehicle of a warm appeal for toleration
(which is given in Cluten). Calvin, among other things, accused him of
stealing wood for his fire—and accusation which was solemnly refuted. Bayle
has collected much evidence to show that Castellio was a man of
spotless character, singularly loved by those about him, intensely amiable,
keenly sensible of the attacks of which he was the object. Castellio has
himself made a collection of the epithets Calvin in one short work
heaped upon him : 'Vocas me subinde in Gallico libello : blasphemum
calumniatorem, malignum, canem latrantem, plenum ignorantiæ et
bestialitatis, sacrarum literarum impurum corruptorem, Dei prorsus derisorem,
omnis religionis contemptorem, impudentem, impurum canem, impium,
obscœnum, torti perversique ingenii, vagum, baltronem, nebulonem vero
appellas octies ; et hæ omnia longe copiosius quam a me r
ecensentur facis in libello duorum foliorum et quidem perparvorum.'
[3] It is sufficiently refuted by Beza himself in his answer to
Castellio, when he speaks of those who objected to the burning of Servetus (he
calls them 'emissaries of Satan') as belonging to a sect. He also
specifies two or three writers, of whom the principal seems to have been
Clebergius. I have never been able to meet with the work of this author,
but Beza represents him as objecting absolutely to all forms of
persecution, and basing this objection on the absolute innocence of honest
error ; which doctrine again he rested on the impossibility of ascertaining
certainly religious truths, as demonstrated by the continuance of
controversy. [ . . ] Hallam has also exhumed three or four books or
pamphlets that were written at the same time in favour of toleration. Acontius
(Acanacio) seems to have been one of the most distinguished of these
authors. Hallam says (Hist. of Literature) his book is, 'perhaps,
the first wherein the limitation of fundamental articles of Christ
ianity to a small number is laid down at considerable length. He
instances among doctrines which he does not reckon fundamental, those of the
Real Presence and of the Trinity.' Acontius was born at Trent. He
adopted sceptical or indifferent opinions, verging on Socinianism ; he took
refuge in England, and received a pension from Elizabeth. There is a
full notice of him in an anonymous French history of Socinianism of very
great research (1723), ascribed to Guichard or to Lamy [ . . ]. The
hand of Socinus was suspected in some of these works. That of Bellius was
by some ascribed to him. So, too, was a work now attributed to an
author named Minos Celso, concerning whom scarcely anything is known, except
that, like Socinus, he was born at Sienna. (See Biog.
Univ., arts. Servetus and Celso.)
\ Some notes omitted — (WPT) \