Servetus' death was the result of his breaking the law.
Here is the story:
"THE CASE OF SERVETUS.
IT had been a favourite design of the late celebrated Dr. McCrie, to publish the life of Calvin, and to set at rest the question of Servetus’s death, by instituting original researches in the archives and public library of Geneva.
This labor was entrusted to his able son, the Revelation John McCrie, who visited the above city for that purpose, and devoted more than a year to collecting valuable historical data for his father. But the venerable Doctor died when on the eve of undertaking the work which was to crown his literary career.
The Revelation John McCrie accepted as a sacred inheritance from his father, and a fruit of his laborious investigation, the now easy and distinguished task of rehabilitating the Reformer in public opinion, when a premature death disappointed the expectations of his friends and relatives.
The rehabilitation of Calvin, however, was delayed only to become the more sure by being entrusted to his enemies, and taking place in the very city where the scenes reproachfully ascribed to him were enacted. A Unitarian clergyman of considerable talent and learning, the Revelation A. Reilliet, stimulated by the example of Dr. McCrie, ransacked the archives of Geneva, investigated carefully all the manuscripts and correspondence of the times, preserved in the public libraries of Europe, which bore on this case; and although avowing bitter hostility to Calvinism, yet, as an impartial historian, he published, in 1844, the detailed result of his investigations, which is a complete verdict of acquittal of the mischievous and ungrounded charges brought against Calvin, in reference to Servetus' death.
The conclusion to which Mr. Reilliet arrives, upon evidence which can never be contested, may be summed up as follows: Servetus, although opposed to the Trinity, was anything but a modern Unitarian. While the latter denies the divinity of Christ, he denied his humanity, and considered
him the absolute God; thus he was one degree further removed from Unitarianism than the orthodox; otherwise, a thorough Pantheist, who asserted, even before his judges, that the bench on which he sat was God.
When Servetus came to Geneva, he had just escaped from the prison at Vienne, where the Romish bishops had him sentenced to be burned by a slow fire. He concealed himself in a tavern under an assumed name. But learning that the ministers had lost all influence upon a government which hated their rigid morals, that Calvin at the time was thwarted by them in everything, and that Geneva had become untenable for him, he emerged from secrecy, in the hope of placing himself at the head of a political party, and driving both Reformers and the Reformation from Geneva, and substituting his own rules and tenets. ...
The Court was partial to Servetus, and would fain have saved him, if his triumphant over-bearance had not ruined his cause; yet, they would not pass sentence upon him, but left the case to the decision of the four Protestant governments of Berne, Basle, Zurich, and Schaffhausen. These all urged that the sentence of the Romish Bishops be carried out against Servetus, and left no other alternative to the weak government of Geneva.
In the meantime the King of France claimed energetically the execution of the heretic who had escaped from his kingdom under sentence. Servetus entreated as a favor to be executed in Geneva, and not by the slow fire of the Romish Bishops.
A most important point established by Reilliet is, that the condemnation of, Servetus was purely political. He was sentenced by the magistrates of Geneva, not as a heretic, but as rebel, who attempted to subvert the constitution of Geneva. The purely theological quarrel disappeared before
this motive for condemning him. The judicial sentence in the list of charges brought against Servetus, does not mention at all, either the attacks against Calvin, or those against the ministers of Geneva. Servetus well understood that if he could free himself from the suspicion of being a man of bad repute, and dangerous to the public tranquillity, his doctrine by itself would not form a sufficient motive for condemning him, or, at least, would not draw down a very severe castigation.
When the sentence was irrevocably passed, Calvin and his colleagues used all their efforts to have the punishment mitigated, by at least substituting the sword for the fire, but the little council rejected the request of Calvin. It is to him, notwithstanding, that men have always imputed the guilt of that funeral pile, which he wished had never been reared!
