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    the credit of the admirers of the mild , the gentle , the loving , and the zealous persecutor of M . Servetus . I have been led to these reflections by a late most unjustifiable attack upon Mr . Roscoe , the learned , the elegant , and the impartial biographer of Lorenzo de Medici , and of that great

    patron of learning and learned men , Leo X . This virulent attack you will find in that " official gazette" of modern orthodoxy , the Evangelical Magazine , for May of the present year . The paper to which I immediately allude is entitled The Reformation Vindicated , " iust as if Mr . Roscoe had professedly

    set his face against the Reformation , or had opposed its principles ; whereas not a passage in all Mr . Roscoe ' s book can . be found which ; fairly construed , can be made to imply any such thing . The very reverse of this is the case . In holding up to the detestation of all men of candour and humanity , the execrable

    conduct of Calvin in theaffair of the martyrdom of the learned and pious Spanish physician , Mr . Roscoe , doubtless , meant only to promote sentiments of charity and liberality amongst those who profess to have shaken off the Papal yoke that they might enjoy the unali enable right of private judgment ; and surely Calvin ought to be " singled out as possessing , in a peculiar degree , a

    persecuting spirit ; " because ^ as he insisted on the right of judging for himself in matters of religion , it was reasonable to expect that he should allow that right to others ; but indeed , if we may decide upon the motives of some of these zt * alou 3 reformers from their conduct , there will be nothing

    uncharitable in asserting that , whenever they came to possess any power over others , their great aim seems to have been to establish one system of religious despotism upon the ruins of another ; and it can be of little moment , Mr . Editor , whether a man be burnt for disbelieving the doctrine of the trinity , or that of trausubstantiation .

    The anonymous author of the paper in question angrily demands " Mr . Roscoe ' s meaning when he so unjustifiably asserts , < that the annals of persecution cannot afford a more atrocious instance than the burning of Servetus V " Let every circumstance connected with that most horrid transaction be

    considered ; let the low cunning , the detestable hypocrisy , the malignant spirit , and the cruel conduct of Calvin be contrasted with the liberal professions , the pretensions to divine love , and all the cant of Christian experience of that reformer , and I

    thmk Mr . Roscoe will be found to have asserted nothing concerning that lamentable affair but what the state of the case fully justifies . It is in vain to attempt to excuse the conduct of John Calvin by the spirit of t { ie times in which he lived . Calvin pretended to be a reformer ^ atjd if he erred in the very outset

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    Defence of Mr . Roscoe , 367

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1806, page 367, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1726/page/31/