The Churches were to be appealed to, then, and Calvin applied himself immediately to make the best he could of the case as it stood. With the diligence that distinguished him, we need not doubt of his having been soon ready with the Articles upon which the trial of Servetus may be said to have entered on its third, if it were not its fourth and definite, phase.[92] But a notable interval elapsed before we find the Council giving any heed to the new Articles of Indictment, or taking steps to have them despatched to the Cantons. The Council had business of another kind to engage them, with Calvin and his friends as their opponents on grounds of policy, instead of their instigators and guides in a trial for heresy. It was at this precise time that the struggle to which we have alluded in our review of the political situation took place between Calvin and the Council on the right exercised by the Consistory to excommunicate or deprive of Church privileges those who were known to have infringed one or another of its arbitrary religious, moral, or sumptuary regulations. Philibert Berthelier, having offended in this direction, had fallen under the ban of the Consistory some time before; but, having now appealed to the Council for redress against what he held to be an unjust award, his party were powerful enough not only to obtain a decision in his favour, but to have the Consistory deprived of the right to excommunicate at all.
This was felt, of course, as a heavy blow by Calvin and his supporters. Berthelier, formally absolved of the Consistorial interdict, was declared at liberty to present himself at an approaching celebration of the Solemn Supper. And he would probably have shown himself there, and an unseemly scene would have ensued; for Calvin was as resolute to have his authority respected within the walls of St. Peter’s Church, as the Council could have been to have theirs upheld within the precincts of the City. Berthelier himself, however, being advised that though he was fully entitled to present himself at the Table, it would perhaps be as well did he abstain from doing so for the present, took the hint and stayed away. But several members of the Libertine party--each of whom we must presume, in Calvin’s estimation, might have subscribed himself as