Untitled - Shattering Denial

J
224
THE INQUISITION
Theodore of Beza, who had seen several of his coreligion
ists burned in France for their faith, likewise wrote in
1554, in Calvanistic Geneva: "What crime can be greater
or more heinous than heresy, which sets at nought the
word of God and all ecclesiastical discipline? Christian
magistrates, do your duty to God, who has put the sword
into your hands for the honor of his majesty; strike
of men." Theodore
valiantly these monsters in the guise
of Beza considered the error of those who demanded
freedom of conscience "worse than the tyranny of the
Pope. It is better to have a tyrant, no matter how
cruel he may be, than to let everyone do as he pleases."
He maintained that the sword of the civil authority
should punish not only heretics, but also those who
wished heresy to go unpunished. 1
In brief, before the
Renaissance there were very few who taught with Huss 2
that a heretic ought not to be abandoned to the secular
arm to be put to death. 3
1 De hareticis a civili magistrate puniendis, Geneva, 1554; translated into
French by Colladon in 1559.
2 In his treatise De Ecclesia. This was the eighteenth article of the heresies
attributed to him.
3 In general, the Protestant leaders of the day were glad of the execution
of Servetus. Melancthon wrote to "I Bullinger: am astonished that some
persons denounce the severity that was so justly used in that case." Among
those who did denounce it was Nicolas Zurkinden of Berne. Cf. his letter
in the (Euvres completes of Calvin, vol. xv, p. 19. Sebastian Castellio published
in March, 1554, his Traite des heretiques, a savoir s il faut les persecuter, the
oldest and one of the most eloquent pamphlets against intolerance. Cf.
F. Buisson, op. cit., ch. xi. This is the pamphlet that Theodore of Beza
tried to refute. Castellio then attacked Calvin directly in a new work,