Note 64 — Chapter XIX

It may be well to remark on the confusion in the notice of the volume or book which in Trie’s second letter, as we read it, is said to have been sent among other documents, twenty-four in number; whilst in his third epistle he regrets that the volume cannot be forwarded at the moment, because of its having been lent two years ago to a friend of Calvin, resident in Lausanne. The ‘great book’ first sent may have been the copy of Calvin’s ‘Institutes,’ annotated on the margins by Servetus; a conclusion that is borne out by the reference, by and by made in the impending trial, towards the end of the first day’s proceedings, to pages 421-424, where Baptism is the subject treated. The volume that cannot be forwarded at the time, because it had been lent to some one in Lausanne, is certainly the MS. copy of the ‘Restitutio Christianismi,’ sent by Servetus to Calvin some years before for his strictures, which he could never get returned, Calvin having lent it to Viret of Lausanne, and grown careless to take so much notice of the writer as would have been implied in recovering and returning him his work.