An Eyewitness Account :
Michael Servetus Villanovanus burned at the
stake for rejecting "the trinity" doctrine
27th of October 1553
".Shortly after twelve o'clock,
a procession started from the town-hall of Geneva
-the chief magistrates of the city,
the clergy in their robes, the Lieutenant Criminel
and other officers on horseback... and in their midst,
with arms bound, in shabby, dirty clothes,
walked a man of middle age, whose intellectual face
bore the marks of long suffering...
Mounting the hill, the field of Champel was reached,
and here on sight eminence was the fateful stake,
with dangling chains and heaping bundles of faggots.
At this sight the poor victim prostrated himself
on the ground in prayer....
'Misericordia, misericordia!
Jesu, thou Son of the eternal God,
have compassion upon me!'
Bound to the stake by the iron chains,
with a chaplet of straw and green twigs covered
with sulphur on his head, with long dark face,
it is said that he looked like the Christ
in whose name he was bound.
Around his waist were tied a large bundle
of manuscript and a thick octavo printed book.
The torch was applied, and as the flames spread
to the straw and sulphur and flashed in his eyes,
there was a piercing cry that struck terror
into the hearts of the bystanders.
The faggots were green, the burning was slow,
and it was long before in a last agony
he cried again,
'Jesu, thou Son of the eternal God,
have mercy on me!'
Thus died in his forty-fourth year,
Michael Servetus Villanovanus,
physician, physiologist, and heretic.
...he remained faithful unto death
to what he believed was the Truth
as revealed in the Bible."
- The execution scene as described by Sir William Osler
"To enforce the decisions (about the trinity)
of the Council of Nicea, Constantine commanded,
with the death penalty for disobedience......."
- A History of Christianity
Volume 1 1997
Kenneth Scott Latourette
"The day was to come
when the Nicene party won out completely
and then the emperors,
who wished to prevent any more such quarrels,
decreed that one who denied the Trinity
should be put to death."
-The Church of our Fathers - 1950, pg. 46
"The doctrine
that Jesus Christ the Son of God
was God the son
was decreed by worldly
and ecclesiastical powers.
Men were forced to accept it
at the point of the sword or else,
Thus, the error of the trinity
was propounded to the end
that ultimately people believed it
to be the truth.
Thus Christianity became in essence
like Babylonian heathenism,
with only a veneer of Christian names."
--- Forgers of the Word -1983 Victor Paul Wierwille
"When we look back through the long ages
of the reign of the Trinity . . .
we shall perceive that few doctrines
have produced more unmixed evil."
- (A Statement of Reasons for Not Believing
the Doctrine of the Trinitarians Concerning
the Nature of God and the Person of Christ);
by Andrews Norton; 1833