When Calvin caused Servetus to be burnt at Geneva, it was obvious to every one that the spirit of persecution was unimpaired.
The offense of that philosopher lay in his belief.

This was, that the genuine doctrines of Christianity had been lost even before the time of the Council of Nicea; that the Holy Ghost animates the whole system of Nature, like a soul of the world, and that, with the Christ, it will be absorbed, at the end of all things, into the substance of the Deity, from which they had emanated.

For this he was roasted to death over a slow fire.

Was there any distinction between this Protestant auto-da-fe and the Catholic one of Vanini, who was burnt at Toulouse, by the Inquisition, in 1629, for his "Dialogues concerning Nature ?" The invention of printing, the dissemination of books, had introduced a class of dangers which the persecution of the Inquisition could not reach.

In 1559, Pope Paul IV.