The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

over against Luther and the entire body of our theologians, who maintain,
without an exception, that heresy is never to be punished with death. The
Reformed portion of Protestantism has put to death, at different times and
in different ways, not only Romanists and Anabaptists, but its terrible
energies have been turned into civil strife, and Episcopalians,
Presbyterians, and Independents put each other to death, especially in the
great civil wars of England, whose origin was largely religious. Strange as
it may sound, Socinians themselves have been persecutors, and yet more
strange is the ground on which they persecuted. The original Socinians not
only acknowledged that Jesus Christ was to be worshipped, and
characterized those who denied it as half Jews, but, when Francis David,
one of the greatest of their original co-workers, denied it, the old man was
cast into prison, and kept there till he died.
But by denial of Church recognition.
The Lutheran Church alone, of all the great Churches that have had
the power to persecute, has not upon her skirts one drop of blood shed for
opinion's sake. The glorious words of Luther were: "The pen, not the fire,
is to put down heretics. The hangmen are not doctors of theology. This is
not the place for force. Not the sword, but the word, fits for this battle. If
the word does not put down error, error would stand, though the world
were drenched with blood." By these just views, centuries in advance of
the prevalent views, the Lutheran Church has stood, and will stand forever.
But she is none the less earnest in just modes of shielding herself and her
children from the teachings of error, which takes cover under the pretence
of private judgment. She would not burn Servetus, nor, for opinion's sake,
touch a hair of his head; neither, however, would she permit him to bear
her name, to “preach another Jesus" in her pulpits, to teach error in her
Universities, or to approach with her children the table of their Lord, whom
he denied. Her name, her confessions, her history, her very being protest
against the supposition of such "fellowship with the works of darkness,"
such sympathy with heresy, such levity in regard to the faith. She never
practised thus. She never can do it. Those who imagine that the right of
private judgment is the