Calling Calvin to Account

On this, the 500 year anniversary of John Calvin's birth, I note that Southern Baptist pastor Steve Lawson made this statement when asked this three word question, what about Servetus? Lawson was expecting this question, and was "loaded for bear." He fired this off like a 50cal:

"In 1553, the city fathers burned Servetus - Calvin did not. Calvin did not prosecute him, and had no powers of execution. Calvin wasn't even a citizen of Geneva at the time. Calvin was only an expert witness, and argued for a more humane death. The RCC had already condemned Servetus to death, and Servetus begged not to be sent back to their hands. Servetus was given the option to leave Geneva, and refused. Servetus was executed by civil authorities, not elders or pastors or teachers. The civil authorities were Calvin's enemies, not his supporters. They consulted other cities' leaders, and they agreed to put him to death. Servetus would have been executed, regardless. Servetus defiantly ignored a warning not to come to Geneva. He was the only heretic to be executed for blasphemy, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands martyred by Rome during the Inquisition."

It's interesting how the facts of history are made to bow to the insinuations and imaginations of a man's enemies - 500 years later, even. Servetus was an unwelcome, and uninvited, refugee from the Roman Catholic 'authorities', who were pursuing him. He was considered to be a heretic, by the reformers, and by the Roman church. Those were tremendously turbulent times. Servetus was a heretic. The times virtually mandated the results of his heresies. Doctrine mattered then, as it does now. The difference between then and now is that there was no space for a genuine 'safe haven'. He was a victim of his times, and of his heretical beliefs. It was a matter of, into whose hands he would fall, or commit himself. John Calvin advocated for what would have been the more merciful 'conclusion', in or out of Geneva.