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1:38Amen. All right. Well, we hopefully today are going to conclude the history series for summer 2019. And I'm hoping we will conclude by finishing up John Calvin. We started out with lectures on world views, then we moved to a series of historical figures. We did two major Anabaptist figures this time: Mikal Sadler, and of course Valtazar Hubmeier, which I think both were just remarkable individuals. James tells me that he'll be getting those up on YouTube here shortly. If any of you are interested in going back and viewing some of those lectures from this past summer, and tell me again, James, how do you go about doing that? ebcbrian.org/slash youtube. Yeah, ebcbrian.org/slash YouTube. There they will pop up in more orderly fashion. Actually, you just put Emmanuel Baptist Church Sunday School, they pop up, but they're scattered all over the place. Okay. There's a playlist on YouTube that has them in order. Okay. All right, got that. So.

3:03So, John Calvin, part three. And I don't think I have my cell phone here. There we go. So, all right, so we left off last time, Calvin, and you know, he was never intending to go to Geneva. He just stops over there, you know, basically in the Hotel 6 for overnight stay. And he is planning, you know, to head on the next morning to Strasbourg. But you got Pharrell or Farrell finds out he's there, knows he's the author of the Institutes, knows that his brother Pierre, who had so assisted him there in Geneva previously, he goes to the hotel room and basically tells him, you know, the Lord's calling you to stay here. And Calvin agrees to stay, very reluctantly, I might add, but he does, and they immediately get themselves all kinds of trouble. And I wished I had had time to put the quote, you know, the thing that really tipped the cart over was when he refused to give communion to some very powerful, wealthy individuals who he full well knew were living in flagrant open sin.

4:30And of course, they basically run them out of town. That's an overly simplistic summary, but I'm just trying to get you all caught up. And he now gets to go to Strasbourg. And as I told you before, there he meets Busser, who's the reformer leader in that city, and he gets along with him great. Busser had a wonderful family life, which he greatly admired. And it's Busser really that ultimately, you know, I mentioned very briefly last time, you know, he had this friends that tried to get him to marry this very wealthy lady who had been, you know, perfect, they thought, match for him. And he turned her down. There's actually a second lady that was put forward to him and turned her down too. And told friends, well, I probably just should not get married. And then it's Busser that comes to him and reminds them that in his very congregation you have this young lady, Italette Debure, who was a widow. She, you know, formerly, she and her husband had been Anabaptists, and Calvin brought them back to the Reformed faith. And Italette knew Calvin very, very well. She and her husband would attend many of his lectures, and she She, in fact, read the entire institutes, which is something I must confess I have not yet done. Okay, she read the entire thing. Of course, it was shorter back then. He hadn't finished it. So now that I think about it. But anyway, she, of course, readily accepted. She was actually almost destitute because her husband had died, had two children, and Calvin marries her. So, let's see.

6:29I'm not working again, James. There we go. All right, now, so, and that, of course, just tells you what I've already told you. Her husband, Jean Strudner. And by the way, Eva has good French, and I mess up. Please correct me because my French is terrible, even though I'm from Louisiana. I'm from the northern part, not the southern part, where the necks are quite red. Okay, so anyway, you got, you know, he's now there. And just very briefly, Booser was always giving errands to him. He's sending them off here, sending them off there for different conferences. And it's kind of interesting. You know, this is a time period in which shortly hereafter you're going to have the 30 Years' War, this very bloody, nasty war between the, you know, the Protestants in northern Germany and the Catholics. But there was also a lot of conferencing going on. On between the two groups. Apparently, they would meet in a neutral area and have these big debates. And Calvin took part in quite a few of these. Yes, sir. Back in the day, were the words to identify these people, were they using the words reformer, Protestant, Anabaptist, or did those words come later?

7:49Those words pretty much come later. Yeah. Protestant is pretty early on because that's at the Diet of Spire where this group of Protestants, even though they're not called that yet, they brought a list of protestations. And that's where the word Protestant comes from. We're protesters. See, you're more radical than he thought you were. How about that? Okay, well, anyway, now you have, did I mention this? This archbishop writes a letter, meantime, while he's up in Strasbourg to the city of Geneva, basically addressed to all the citizens. And he's trying to get them to come back to the Roman Catholic faith. And it was a pretty good letter, to be frank, and very persuasive, and it was having quite an impact. I mentioned this last time, don't recall. I did. Okay, and Calvin, of course, is going to write a reply, the reply to Soleto, which is a major apologetic of the period. And the folks down there, of course, this is the guy who wrote the letter, huh? You know you're going backwards on the slide. Oh, is that what it is? Okay. Well, I am supposed to mention it again. And so.

9:16Yeah, I'm still going backwards. Now you're going backwards. All right. Okay. So anyway, so we got Calvin married. Sorry about that, folks. Y'all keep watching me on that, too. And let's talk a little briefly. You know, I think I mentioned last time as well that Italette, it's a very fortunate thing he marries her because Calvin was in such horrible health throughout the entirety of his life. So let's talk about that in just a second. He suffered constantly from horrible migraines. Now, y'all know anything about migraines? Anybody suffer?

9:59Well, imagine having severe migraines and there's no real medication at this time. So he is suffering with migraines. He also probably had something called pleurisy. Y'all know about that? Well, in case you don't, it's a condition in which you have this membrane, a layer of tissue that lines the inner part of your chest cavity and the lungs. It becomes inflamed. And I'm told it is indescribably painful. So he's got migraines. Yeah. You have this? I've had it. Oh, yeah. All right, so he had that. And in the mid-1550s, he's room bound for several months. Of course, you know, he's not only preaching, he's also teaching college students. And so what he did was, while he's in bed, he would have the college students come over to his bedroom and he continued teaching them.

10:52In 1559, he almost lost his voice. You know, I understand how serious this is as a teacher. That's my living. I guess, in a way, you know, pastor, if you can't preach, that's pretty, pretty bad. He could barely speak, and he was spitting up blood. He had hemorrhoids, he had gout, so your head hurts, and there's knives. It sounds like a thousand needles in your feet. Okay? He had all kinds of parasites. We know, of course, most Europeans did back then, but he especially had them. And probably tapeworms. And also suffered just from terribly from kidney stones. And there's no, you know, anesthesia to pass those back then. So, you know, he gave a rather graphic description of this to one of his doctors, which I didn't put up there. He says, at present, all these ailments, as it were, in troops assailed me. Okay? So Paul. Had his thorn in the flesh.

12:03John Calvin had many thorns. All right. Now, you know, I mentioned last time that in terms of his personal life, unlike Calvin, which we know quite a bit about him, he's a super private person. And he, you know, would not really share much about his personal life. There's one glimpse that we can get, though, and it's pretty much through this guy. Pierre, how would y'all say that? Veret? Very. Very? Very. Okay, got a Canadian here. He knows some French. All right, so anyway, Pierre Veret was a Swiss reformer from this little b-town orb. And he goes to France for his education.

12:52He, you know, starts out as a devout Roman Catholic, just like John Calvin did. And there in Paris, he converts to Protestantism, has to flee, much like Calvin did. Only for Calvin, it's a Frenchman going to a foreign city. For Veré, it was returning home, you know, to Switzerland. And turns out, as soon as he gets there, guess who calls on him? Pharrell. Apparently, Pharrell wasn't just targeting Calvin. He targeted quite a few people. This is where Calvin shows up. And remember, I told you that Calvin's cousin also helped Pharrell?

13:28Well, this guy goes. To Geneva, and he's one of the men that helped along Pharrell to get the city to convert to Protestantism. And then he leaves and goes up to Lucerne, Switzerland, and he brings the Reformation to Lucerne, and that's where he's going to stay for most of the rest of his life. But in the meantime, while he's at Geneva, he and John Calvin form a very strong friendship, which will remain for the duration of their lives. They remain good friends.

14:04And he would write letters to Pharrell and tell him stuff he would not tell anyone else. And so, and something else about this guy, too, he apparently was a very winsome preacher, and he had a nickname that just really struck me. They referred to Varay as the smile of the Reformation. The smile of the Reformation. So, you know, quite different personality from Calvin, but they make great friendships. You ever notice people that seem to be opposites and they yet seem to be good friends and they balance each other out? I think that's the case here. Are you sure that's the right picture of the guy?

14:51Oh, yeah. Well, it is a wood cut. Now, I mentioned also last time, you know, Calvin and his wife did have a baby, Jacques, who died in infancy. And we get a little picture of how this really, you know, publicly, he says, well, you know, that's basically okay. I have many children, you know, through coming to faith to Jesus. But here's what he told Pierre Veret. He says, The Lord has certainly inflicted a severe and bitter wound in the death of our innocent son, but he is himself a father and knows best what is good for his children.

15:42And, of course, later on, getting way ahead of myself, she, of course, would go back with him for the second time to Geneva. But the marriage will sadly only last nine years. She's going to become very, very ill. And when she dies, here's what he says: I have been bereaved of the best friend of my life, a one who, if it has been so ordained, would willingly have shared not only my poverty, but also my death. During her life, she was the faithful helper of my ministry. From her, I never experienced the slightest hindrance. So, Rebecca. Loved Italette. And I think I also mentioned last time that there was a lot of ridicule of Calvin when he lost this first child and subsequently two other children. And some would say this is the Lord judging him. Even some of the folks there in Geneva later on would make comments like this. So, and his public reply was, Well, I have many sons in the faith. Italette, for the short time that she was with him, nursed him, took care of him while he's in these constant illnesses. And she's very, very busy. Of course, Calvin, there's some similarities in Calvin and Luther in that Geneva was constantly receiving thousands, as it turns out, matter of fact, before it's over with 5,000 foreigners are going to become citizens of Geneva from outside the city. And by the way, that's one of the reasons Calvin had some problems there. But anyway, and now I'm not saying she took care of 5,000 at that time, but there are always people at the house. Some of them, they would put them up, they would have to feed them, and she, of course, would oversee that. Now, of course, she dies after nine years, so let's go on. And here's what he says to Vere about that. Oh, wait, this is what she says about her sickness as she's on her deathbed, actually. Who would read that for me?

18:01O God of Abraham and of all our fathers, in thee I have the faithful trusted during so many past ages, and none of them have trusted in vain. I also will hope. Okay. And then to Veret, he says, I have been bereaved of the best companion of my life. Okay. Of one who, had it been so ordered, would not only have been the willing share of my part of this book. Indigence is an old English word.

18:46Oh, sorry, indigence. But even of my death, during her life, she was the faithful helper of my ministry. From her, I never experienced the slightest hindrance. She was never troublesome to me throughout the entire course of her illness. She was more anxious about her children than about herself. And he, on her deathbed, promised he would take care of her two children. Okay. Now, so after three fairly happy years, now that happens after they're in Geneva. Back in Strasbourg, you know, that's the beginning of the marriage, and, you know, except, of course, for the miscarriages of the Of his wife is a very happy marriage. And meantime, what you got going on in Geneva is the Protestant ministers there are frankly just not doing a very good job. And the city council is becoming increasingly upset with the state of affairs, but they don't want to go back to Roman Catholicism, but they know they need a good pastor. And of course, after the letter, you know, Sotoletto, they realize, you know, that Calvin, that young man, he was really an outstanding character, and perhaps we should call him back again. And so that's what they're going to do. They ask Calvin to return. And in a letter to Pharrell, we find out what Calvin thought about that.

20:27Rather, would I submit to the death of a hundred, a debt death a hundred times than to that cross on which one had to perish daily a thousand times over? All right, so does he want to go back? No. You got to remember, he's pastoring a church there in Strasbourg, French refugees, about 500 congregants, and they love him, and he loves them. And he really didn't want to go back to Geneva. And we're not quite sure what convinced him to go back, but he ultimately. Decides to go back. And so he does, and he felt it was God's will, and he goes back knowing there's going to be major challenges. Now, when he arrives in Geneva and mounts that pulpit there, he goes, opens up his Bible, and he picks up the next verse after the last verse he had preached on at Geneva, what, five years previously? Oh, three years previously. I mean, he just plowed right on as if he had never left. Okay? And yes, ma'am. Is his wife back in Geneva with him? No, she's with him in Geneva. Yeah, she comes with him. Yeah, she's still alive at this point. And she will be for, I think, six years at this point. Okay, so we're going back and he was called back to Geneva before his wife died.

22:01Oh, yeah, yeah. She's with him in Geneva. She's, you know, I mentioned she's helping with these refugees and all that. I just went ahead and did the whole thing because it is kind of awkward to put in later. All right, so anyway, she's with him, and initially, you know, that part was a very good thing because he's about to have a very tough time in the early days. Now, let me just say this, and I'm getting off a little bit off the tracks here, but I need to.

22:31I started to put in here about the city government of Geneva, but it would confuse the living daylights I view. In fact, I'm still confused myself. But for people who want to say that John Calvin was the dictator of Geneva, they don't know what they're talking about. He did not have control over the city government in any fashion. He was an employee. That's pretty much how they looked at him of the city government, and they treated him like an employee. His salary was pitiful starting off. In fact, he never did have much of a salary. And the funny thing about it is, later on, the city council was somewhat embarrassed when it became known how little they're paying him, and they tried to raise his salary. And he never would allow them to raise his salary very much at all. He would only take what he thought was fair. And by the way, what he did get in salary, he gave most of that away. He died with very little money, you know, when he died.

23:36But he had, well, I will tell you this much. There were three layers of government he had to go through to get anything done. There's this basically small committee that ran the day-to-day affairs of the city, and then there's a larger council, and then there was another, third, larger council. And what one group might say is okay if he do the Other group might veto it. So, you know, he is constantly having problems. And remember, this is not like the US of A where churches are, you know, separation of church and state. The church is under the state in Geneva. Now, later on, we're going to see that he developed such an incredible reputation that towards the end of his life, the city council would indeed do just pretty much anything he asked them to do. But that was not the case for most of his stay in Geneva. That only comes much, much later. And part of the reason for that was after these over 5,000 refugees come to Geneva, guess what the attraction to Geneva for these 5,000 refugees was? Calvin. John Calvin. And some of these guys, Calvin himself would be horrified by this, but they almost worshipped him. And so when you have that many people, you come from the outside and they become part of the city, then the city council or politicians, politicians are going to do what?

25:04What the majority want them to do. You see how that worked? Okay, that's greatly simplistic, but that gives you a big overview of the government situation there. All right, so he comes back and he's just preaching. And by the way, he starts off preaching twice in the morning on Sundays and then again in the evening. Then he would also. They had these big discussion groups with the pastors they had to do every week, and then he also taught basically what we would say like college. And then there also be sermons during the week. He requested the city allow him to go just to one sermon in the morning, one sermon in the evening at one point, and they briefly agreed to allow him to do that. But then he becomes literally a tourist attraction. People from all over Europe came and they want to hear John Calvin preach. And, you know, they're stopping off at the pub and they're, you know, they're buying stuff while they're in Geneva. And so they see council comes back and tells Calvin, you got to go back to two sermons in the morning, one sermon in the evening, and every other week, as I understand it, you have to preach every day. Okay? All right. So it was quite a situation he found himself in. Now, so I'm going backwards again.

26:36So, the first, you know, you can divide into two periods. The first over half of his stay in Geneva, the second time, is just one of constant opposition against him. And basically, most of the opposition was upper-class, wealthy, influential families, some of which. were part of the same ones who called him to come back. But after he gets back, I guess you could say Calvin was very serious about his faith. And you ever heard this say that preachers look too serious?

27:16And so these guys, they were upset because he had these moral strictures about taking communion. If you were in flagrant, open sin, remember there's no separation of church and state, he would withhold communion from you. And that is going to be a constant irritant, which will continue. And some of these families, they get very angry because, see, they don't take communion in public, then people know that they're up to something and makes them look bad, embarrasses them. And so they become very angry at Calvin. Basically, he's practicing church discipline here, right? And so they turn on him. And along with this, you have another issue. As these numbers of refugees increasingly start coming to Geneva, shall we say, the old-timers there become resentful, all these foreigners coming into the city. And so some were upset with them because of that. Another group were the so-called Libertines.

28:28And the Libertines. were antinomians. So I'm curious. Any of you college guys over here know what antinomium is? You're reading it. I shouldn't have the answer up there. This terminology is going to pop up again and again if you ever get into church history. If you get into early American history with the Puritans, the Puritans use this terminology quite a bit. And I remember as a young college student, I said, what the heck is that? So I'll put the definition up here so you won't have to wonder about it for many years before you finally think to actually Google it. Webster's dictionary says, one who holds that under the gospel, dispensation, grace, the moral law is of no use or obligation because faith alone is necessary to salvation. And then the second definition, one who rejects a socially established morality. And some of you are sitting there and saying, practically speaking, I still don't know what that is. So let's go here. Ryan Reeves is a good old Presbyterian historian, and I actually like the way he sums it up. He says, Antinomianism then is conviction-less Christianity. Okay? It sees repentance as a single event, not to be repeated. In other words, and we know people like this, I think we do. They walk the aisle and And think, okay, I've got my fire insurance with Jesus Christ mutual life, and I don't have to worry about anything hereafter, right? And so, and sermons are no longer to expose sin, allowing us to admit our faults and confess them freely. The Christian life is more about ignoring sin and resting on a foggy conception of grace. Now, I can think of a few folks out there that are pretty much teaching that. Turn on TV right now, and you'll see quite a few of them teaching this, okay? And so, that's antinomiumism, okay? And these libertines were eaten up with this, okay? And, of course, Calvin, no, if you're sinning, you should confess it to the Lord, and you should stop it, you know. And by the way, if you flagrantly are in sin, you know, and you come to church, you're not going to participate, of course, with them as sacraments, and you need to straighten up before you start coming and partaking of the Lord's Supper. All right, so now by 1553, these forces arrayed against him that I mentioned are really seeming to be winning. You have elections in which a lot of the outstanding members of the church who were out to get Calvin win the elections. One of his main nemesis becomes one of the chief magistrates, and they start really cranking down on Calvin, trying to make his life difficulty. And one of the things they were saying is that you can no longer do this church discipline stuff. You know, basically, I'm greatly summarizing that. Okay, and now you've got to remember through all this, Calvin's not even a citizen of Geneva himself. He doesn't actually get citizenship until 1559.

32:12And so he had that, that's a little bit of a problem for him, too, as well, you see. Now, part of it is his own fault. He initially was offered citizenship, turned it down because he's afraid that people would think he's taking advantage. But anyway, now here's, of course, where he was preaching. And so you have elections 1553. His opponents win many of these offices, main antagonists, electorate, first magistrate. The winners would not allow the ministers access to the general counsel. In other words, this is one of those three governing bodies. One of the three governing bodies says, you know, you've got to go through the other bodies and they'll tell us what you want, but we're not going to talk to you directly.

32:57And also, they tried to tell him that you cannot. Excommunicate. Well, of course, excommunicate back then was the last resort in church discipline. You know, if someone's flagrantly doing something that's sinful and wrong, the last resort for Calvin was, you know, to put them out of the church. And he said, no, you can't do that. Now, by the way, they didn't do that very many people, but they did do it. Okay. I think in Geneva, it's something like 100 usually on average a year later on that that would happen with. All right. So this interior of the church where he is preaching. And it is at this point that probably the most controversial event in Calvin's life occurs. And it seems like everybody uses this to try to bash Calvin. And so I'm going to spend a little more time on it than most people do.

33:47One of the articles, well, I read last night, was talking with some major Protestant leaders today asked him to write the article because of this very issue. And in fact, I used some of his stuff in this. It's at this point that he shows up. Servitas was probably born around 1511 in Aragon, Spain, a large area there in northern Spain. He was gifted in language. We think he learned Latin and Greek with some Dominican friars that were there in the area where he was at the time. And he apparently was self-taught in Hebrew. He was. He was pretty much a linguistic genius, no doubt about that. And there he is.

34:37He, at age 15, in what I would, what we would say today, is interned with a Franciscan friar who was a very influential up-and-coming man in the church, Juan de Quintana, who later becomes the confessor to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. Now, he enters university planning to go and become a lawyer. That was what he was originally intending. And apparently, we think it's at this particular time in his life he came across some references, forbidden books. Some of these were Protestant books, which were forbidden by the Catholic Church. Some of them, we don't know, but he got some very interesting ideas from them.

35:25Now, sometime after that, he apparently did not stay there in university. Quintana offered him basically a job as a secretary or page, working for him as he's working for the Holy Roman Emperor. And so he goes and works for a while with Quintana, and he, of course, got to travel all over the place. The Holy Roman Emperor is all over the place. Apparently, Charles is re crowned. Coordination. He's already the whole Roman Emperor. I did not have time to figure out why they had this second coordination. And he was there for that in Bologna. And of course, as a result of this, he sees the Pope, he sees his entire, you know, the papal court or retinue, and he is really turned off by the over-the-top lavishness and wealth and also the corruption, which was very evident in that particular papacy. And so he decides to abandon Roman Catholicism. Of course, some of the more secular textbooks say he then becomes a reformer, but I don't think most reformers would agree that he was a reformer by any means.

36:46But he does meet many of the different reformers. He went to Strasbourg, he met Busser, he met some of the major Swiss reformers, he met some of the major German reformers. He met everybody. He had already met Calvin as a college student. He spent some time up in Paris, which I didn't have time to go into all that. So he got around, he had incredible connections, but he also had some very outrageous beliefs, at least outrageous for that day and time. He in 1531 publishes on Errors of the Trinity. And the next year, he publishes. Published, as if that wasn't enough, Dialogues on the Trinity. And this is why he's in France. And in both these works, he states more than a hundred times that the Trinity was a monstrous three-headed cerebral or a dog of hell.

37:46And of course, needless to say, back in those days, you may disagree about different points of religion, but everybody agreed on the Trinity. You know, only the atheists who would never admit to be an atheist because you could be executed back then. I mean, the Trinity was the bedrock of, you know, most of the Anabaptists, most, well, all the Calvinists, all the Lutherans, all the Roman Catholics, they would argue about tons of stuff, but they did not argue about the Trinity. And so to attack the Trinity was considered to be over the top by everyone. And so this, of course, gets him in a ton of trouble. And so he has to change his name and pretends he's somebody else. You want to help me with that?

38:38Michelle? De, how do you say, Villano? Villanueva. Villanueva? That'd be more Spanish, wouldn't it? Villano? Okay, well, anyway, y'all's French is much better than mine, obviously. Okay, so Severtas now switches, you know, his actual Money-making life vocation. He goes from the law to medicine and also astrology. Now, that might seem like a strange combination to you, but that's actually not uncommon that the doctors of this time would also combine astrology. And he was really into astrology as well. And he starts this medical practice in Vienne, France, and he had very influential customers. The archbishop of the city was there, was one of his customers, as well as a governor, one of the major French regions there. But they don't know about his other life, so to speak. You know, he has to keep that aside because he knows he'd be in trouble. And in the process of all this, he starts corresponding with Calvin. Now, it appears, to me at least, that Servetus had an obsession about Calvin. And it apparently started back in college. He was always after Calvin. We think initially he's trying to convert Calvin over to his already strange views at that point. And Calvin, you know, just wouldn't have anything to do with that. He starts writing to Calvin, and he in 1553 publishes yet another book attacking the Trinity entitled The Restoration of Christianity, which is a strange title considering what he's trying to do, which also sharply attacked. Calvin's views on predestination. And Calvin responds by sending him a copy of the Institutes. And so he takes the copy of the Institutes and he meticulously writes insults about every part of the passages of the document and then sends them back to Calvin.

40:51He just at every opportunity tries to tear down Calvin. And so Calvin finally gets fed up and he writes this back, who's my reader. I neither hate you or despise you, nor do I wish to persecute you, but I would be as hard as iron when I behold you insulting sound doctrine with so great audacity. So their correspondence gets even more heated, and Calvin decides, I'm just cutting this off. I don't want to write you any more letters. I don't want to correspond with you. Just please leave me alone, basically. All right, well, Servetus wouldn't stop. He continues to write letters to Calvin, and Calvin simply refuses to reply to them. And Calvin's frustration, of course, is mainly over doctrine and also the tone of Servetus. You know, he's just very arrogant, very just, you know, seems to always want to have a fight. And he expresses frustrations to a friend, you know, once again, William Farrell. And you have this letter in February of 1546. And this letter, we have Calvin read this.

42:09Servetus has just sent me a long volume of his ravings. If I consent, he will come here, but I will not give my word. For if he comes here, if my authority is worth anything, I will never permit him to depart alive. Okay. Now, you know what? I came across, was going over this, and I found this quote. But the person who obviously did not like Calvin, guess which part he took out of the quote? All right.

42:44If I consent, he will come here, but I will not give my word. In other words, he's trying to make it look like I want to kill him. I want to come to Geneva so I can kill him, which is definitely not the case. He flat out says this hypothetical statement here, right? And in fact, he basically told Servetas, do not come to Geneva, because if you do, the magistrates will kill you, and I can't stop them. Okay. And in fact, I think you'll be getting what you deserve if you do.

43:19So now he continues to try to harass Calvin from afar. Calvin Just ignores it. But at some point, it's discovered, and it's kind of controversial how it's discovered. Some think that Calvin, shall we say, ratted him out, that he is hiding out Vienne. Others say, no, it was another guy found out. And once the trial at Vienne gets going, they knew Calvin had some proof posited that he wrote these books, that this guy is really Servetas, not this villano. And so, and they got those documents from Calvin. And it says, the passage that I found on that said, with great difficulty, they got the material from Calvin. So at the very least, it doesn't sound like Calvin was very willingly giving over this stuff. But anyway, basically, the Roman Catholics, of course, they're going to arrest him. And they do arrest him. And Servetas knows that the Catholics are not going to mess around with him. They're going to burn him at the stake. And we've already seen they're quite good at doing that with the Anabaptists. And so Servetas escapes. Now, his escape from Vienne is kind of suspicious. I could not nail this down for sure. There are some who believe that the Libertines in Geneva were the ones that bribed the jailers to free him, and then they encouraged him to come to Geneva. That's at least one story. I cannot confirm that. However, guess where he does indeed show up at? He shows up at Geneva. And to make matters worse, guess where he shows up in Geneva? Calvin's church.

45:09Right in Calvin's church. Now, Calvin himself did not recognize it, which I'm sure was a big insult to him. But someone else in the church did, and they tell Calvin, and guess what Calvin does? He tells the magistrates. And the magistrates go and they arrest him. And now he's, you know, in deep trouble, right? Now, in the Servetus trial before the civil magistrates, Calvin was, as you know, Aleister McGrath, you know, has a great voice. He's something of a Christian apologist over there in England at Oxford. He's done quite a bit of study of this. And he says, Calvin, at best, was a technical advisor or expert witness rather than a prosecutor. Calvin, you know, a lot of people, when they talk about the Servetus trial, they say Calvin ordered his arrest. He did not. He simply told the magistrates, and the magistrates arrested him. By the way, he'd be arrested in any city, town, in all of Europe, whether it be Calvinist, Lutheran, or Catholic. Okay, so he would have been arrested. And of course, you know, obviously they're going to ask Calvin to testify because they knew Calvin had these letters that they had corresponded with. And he knew the inner teachings of Servetas. And so that's what McGrath says. Roland Bangton, in his work on Servetas, and by the way, Roland Bangton, notice down there below, he is pretty much one of the main experts on Servetas. He wrote a book, The Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetas, and he's sympathetic to Servetas, by the way. But here's what he said. Now, you think anybody's going to bash Calvin over Servetas? He'd be the guy to do it. Well, here's what he says: he says, The prosecutor was Claude Rigaud, who was actually an opponent of Calvin, a member of the Libertine Party, you know, this group that's really giving Calvin trouble. And in prosecuting Servetas, he acted in, you know, in his quotation, acted in entire independence of Calvin. Okay. In fact, what really convinced them of putting him to death is not so much anything Calvin said. In fact, it's almost as though they ignored Calvin. What really affected the decision is when they sent inquiries out to all the other Swiss cities. Okay? And guess what? Every city-state, well, Canton and Switzerland replies: Execute him. Okay, that's what they. They all said, Zurich, look at Zurich's reply. Go ahead and read that for us.

48:03Zurich replied that Geneva should work against him with great faith and diligence, especially as our churches have an ill repute abroad as heretics and patrons of heretics. God's holy providence has now indeed provided this occasion whereby you may at once purge yourselves and us from this fearful suspicion of evil. I see I misspelled blasphemy up there. Well, anyway, you got did y'all get that? Now, this is a very political statement here, basically. Zurich, you see, a lot of the Swiss cantons were getting a lot of grief from outside of Switzerland as being sort of a bastion of heresy. You're lying, all these religious refugees who are under condemnation in other parts of Europe, if they get in control, they flee to Switzerland. And they're basically saying, well, Shivitas is sort of like on the top of the list of heretics. And, you know, the Catholics are really giving us grief. And so since they had already condemned him to death, and by the way, you know, after he fled Vienna, they went ahead and had trial anyway, and they sentenced him to death. And the sentence was not just to burn him, but to slowly roast him to death. Okay, that's what they planned to do back at Vienna. And so Zurich's saying, well, basically, if you execute this guy, you know, you'll be set. An example that, hey, we're against heresy as well. All right, so, in other words, it's a very political decision. Now, during the trial, by the way, all these people are so sensitive towards Civitas that he is such a nice guy, and he's just horrible, terrible what was done to him. And by the way, I'm not saying it was good that they burned him at all, but this just lets you know he is not such a nice guy. He, in the trial, tried to turn it around and he accused Calvin of being the heretic. And now he said that Calvin was a heretic, he said he should be executed, and furthermore, his property should be given to him after they executed him. Okay, so now this thing about the Libertines, it's kind of a confused deal because, on one hand, the prosecutor is a Libertine. On the other hand, it is thought some of the Libertines were involved in bringing him to Geneva in the first place. One of the leading Libertines, you want to help me with that name?

50:33Bertha Lear, I think. Bertha Lear, he is one of the original opponents of Calvin, going back to the first time Calvin came to Geneva. That's how long he had been after Calvin. He's one of the original group that Calvin denied the elements because of his lifestyle. So, anyway, he was a major opponent of Calvin, and he actually got involved in the trial trying to. Help Servetus, you know, beat the wrap, so to speak. All right, so anyway, you know, he, you know, so the trial gets underway, and of course, the evidence was irrefutable in terms of the standards of the day. He's definitely said very heretical things, he's attacked the Trinity, and so he's going to be condemned to death, and they condemn him to being burned at the stake. Calvin, by the way, tried to get them to back off of this, and you know, for those that say that Calvin's the dictator of Geneva and everybody did what Calvin tells you to do, they ignore Calvin's suggestion, you know, at least just behead him or hang him, don't burn him. You know, that's what the Roman Catholics do. All right, so anyway, but they say they're going to burn him at the stake. Now, what's the after effects all this? You got E.M. Wilbur, who's another historian, looked up on this, a Unitarian historian. Of course, Unitarians tend to see Servetas in a very friendly light as well. But here's what he said. He said, the Libertines had no interest in Servetas save to embarrass Calvin. In other words, they thought they could use this to further embarrass Calvin, and that's what was behind them getting involved in this. Now, McGrath further observes this, which is the point that I often wonder about because I've often thought the same thing. He says, Servitas was the only individual put to death for his religious opinion in Geneva during Calvin's lifetime. Now, you ask that about any religious person throughout Europe, and you're going to find that record's actually pretty darn good. You have got executions all over the place for religious reasons in Europe. In Geneva, you have this one example.

52:58And in other words, this execution in Geneva is less attributable to Calvin than the fact of life in Europe in the 16th century. All right, so the Libertines, by the way, ultimately gain very little from this. In fact, it kind of backfires. And they're somewhat discredited because how can you support a guy that denies the Trinity back in those days? And so in the next elections, to probably the shock and joy of Calvin, they lose. Pretty much all the Libertines lose their offices and strong supporters of Calvin come into power. Now, the Libertines didn't like this, and so they tried to stage a little city riot, and that even more so backfired. Of course, the newly installed city officials are going to banish them from the city. And so it's at this point that the tide completely turns for Calvin, and the city council begins to start to support him in what he wants to do.

54:19Now, as I also mentioned, too, one reason that they won the election is not just the fact that the Libertines had discredited themselves, they also were outvoted because you now have so many new citizens who have come into Geneva. And so you're now about to have a host of reforms. One of the big areas, of course, is in education. I wish I had time to explain how our whole public education system really goes back to John Calvin, if I could explain that. But I'm out of time. And so we're going to have to stop it there. Perhaps next summer, if we want to continue on, I'll do a brief summation of the end here, and we can continue on. But let's stop it here. And Brother Scott, could you close us out in prayer?