SECTION IV.

A glance at the state of the christian world down to the period of Servetus' sufferings.

Rightly to appreciate the character of Servetus, and judge of his actions, it will be necessary to consider the state of the christian world in his day. To form an accurate judgment of the reformers, their religious views, and plans of reform, so as duly to estimate their moral worth, and the consistency of their measures, requires that we look back to the days of Christ and his apostles, compare the systems they adopted with the New Testament; that we also glance at the gradual corruption of christianity, and the gross darkness of the middle ages; and that we remember that the reformation was but the dawn of a brighter day; otherwise we shall not be prepared to make due allowance for the imperfection of their views, spirit and conduct. Nothing more than a glance at these things is intended in this place.

Christianity, as taught by Jesus and his apostles, was a system of pure truth, stated with the

greatest simplicity, perfectly consistent with reason, and adapted to the common sense of mankind. The primitive gospel was a declaration of plain facts: on the ground of which a few simple, but most important, doctrines were established. Its positive institutes were few and simple, without the least mixture of superstition: they naturally associated with its leading truths and the great ends of its introduction. Its precepts were most holy and perfectfully adapted to the present state of man. Its temper was mild and unassuming. The whole system was easy to comprehend, and calculated to lead to the highest pitch of moral excellence possible in a state of mortality. Such was the christian religion as taught by its founders. To its primitive simplicity, and original purity of doctrine and practice, it should be the aim of every reformer to restore it. In the degree in which reformers aim at this point should the value of their labors be estimated.

The sun of righteousness which arose in the land of Judea, and darted its rays to distant countries, was soon enveloped in clouds, which continued to accumulate, until the darkness of error and superstition, under the christian name, covered the earth. The gospel began to be cor rupted while some of its first teachers, the

apostles of Jesus, were yet living. A fondness for ceremony and outward show, with a desire to shun reproach, led some to judaize christianity, and associate with it the ceremonies of Moses, while others, by their false philosophy, disguised its leading facts, and corrupted its simple doctrines. Scarcely had a spirit of worldly ambition been prevented rising among our Lord's disciples while he was yet with them: after his decease, though his apostles were cured of this mania, and exercised no domination, showed no spirit of intolerance, these baleful plants soon sprang up, and grew with rapidity, among his professed followers. Influenced by narrow views, or sinister motives, there were those, in the first and best days of the church, who attempted to curtail the liberties of christians, and to make themselves heads and leaders of parties. With difficulty was the genuine spirit and prac tice of christianity preserved even under the fostering care of its founders.

Among the great corruptions of the christian doctrine, the most leading and prominent consisted in a departure from that simple fact, which the New Testament lays as the foundation of the whole system, the messiahship of the man Jesus, and the gradual transformation of

the most humble and lowly, though the most glorious, of all the messengers of God, of a person who was born, suffered and died, who called himself the Son of man, and whom his apostles declared to be a man, into the seli-existent and eternal God. The corruption of the most leading and fundamental doctrine of the gospel must necessarily have obscured the whole system, and confused the ideas of christians upon · most other subjects. The notion that Christ is truly God naturally subverted the doctrine of the divine unity, and introduced a world of unintelligible jargon about three persons, or subsistences, in one individual being, which, under the name of the holy trinity, produced the most violent contentions, and for ages distracted and tore in pieces the church. Nor is it to be won dered that when men departed so far from reason and scripture, and spent their time in contending about what is incomprehensible, confusion and every evil work should ensue. Opposition to this grand corruption of the christian doctrine was, in the eyes of some of the reformers an unpardonable crime, of this imaginary crime Servetus was guilty, and for it he suffered an ignominious death.

Among the corruptions of the ordinances of Jesus Christ, that of baptism is not the least,

associated as it has been with the notion of he reditary depravity, and imagined to introduce innocent babes from a state of wrath into a state of grace and acceptance with God. Infant baptism and original sin were opposed by Servetus as corruptions of christianity; this was deemed criminal by the reformers, who were very strenuous for those points.

A departure from the plain declarations of scripture, and the sober use of reason in matters of religion, destroyed the simplicity of christianity, both in doctrine and worship: and, by the application of an abstruse and unintelligible phraseology to almost every thing which related to faith and practice the whole was gradually turned into mystery. Then for a man to use his reason and refuse to admit the truth of what he could not understand was thought criminal. Servetus used his reason in judging of the sense of scripture, and rejected such doctrines as he thought unreasonable. The reformers were still for retaining many unintelligible doctrines, of course his conduct gave them great offence.

Though Jesus had taught that his disciples are all brethren and fellow servants, and his apostles disavowed dominion over the faith of others, claiming no lordship over God's heritage, the teaching of the great Master, and the