over to Protestantism and then seceded, imprudently visited Rome,
was there arrested, and dying, his body was dug up and burnt, and the
rigour of Calvin, who seized Servetus, the author of the "Christianismi
Restitutio," and in part the discoverer of the circulation of the blood,
when he happened to pass through Geneva, and committed him to the
flames.

[Sidenote: End of patristicism.] Criticism had thus, in its earlier
stage, produced well-marked results. As it developed it lost none of its
power. It had enthroned patristic theology; now it wrenched from its
hand the sceptre. In the works of Daille it showed that the fathers are
of no kind of use--they are too contradictory of one another; even
Jeremy Taylor speaks of their authority and reputation as clean gone for
ever. In a few years they had sunk into desuetude, a neglect shared by
many classical authors, whose opinions were now only quoted with a
respectful smile. The admiration for antiquity was diminishing under the
effect of searching examination. Books were beginning to appear, turning
the old historians into ridicule for their credulity. [Sidenote: The
burning of Servetus by Calvin.] The death of Servetus was not without
advantage to the world. There was not a pious or thoughtful man in all
reformed Europe who was not shocked when the circumstances under which
that unhappy physician had been brought to the stake at Geneva by John
Calvin were made known. For two hours he was roasted in the flames of a
slow fire, begging for the love of God that they would put on more wood,
or do something to end his torture. Men asked, with amazement and
indignation, if the atrocities of the Inquisition were again to be
revived. On all sides they began to inquire how far it is lawful to
inflict the punishment of death for difference of opinion. It opened
their eyes to the fact that, after all they had done, the state of
civilization in which they were living was still characterized by its
intolerance. In 1546 the Venetian ambassador at the court of Charles V.
reported to his government that in Holland and Friesland more than
thirty thousand persons had suffered death at the hands of justice for
Anabaptist errors. From such an unpromising state of things toleration
could only emerge with difficulty. It was the offspring, not of charity,
but of the checked animosities of ever-multiplying sects, and the
detected impossibility of their coercing one another.

[Sidenote: The Reform