Schaff - History of the Christian Church Vol. 8 - Media Sabda Org

The Swiss Churches.
574
The Swiss Reformers ought to have been in advance of those of Germany
on this subject, but they were not. They advised or approved the exclusion
of Roman Catholics from the Reformed Cantons, and violent measures
against Anabaptists and Antitrinitarians. Six Anabaptists were, by a cruel
irony, drowned in the river Limmat at Zürich by order of the government
(between 1527 and 1532). f1029 Other cantons took the same severe
measures against the Anabaptists. Zwingli, the most liberal among the
Reformers, did not object to their punishment, and counselled the forcible
introduction of Protestantism into the neutral territories and the Forest
Cantons. Ochino was expelled from Zürich and Basel (1563).
As regards the case of Servetus, the churches and magistrates of Zürich,
Schaffhausen, Basel, and Bern, on being consulted during his trial,
unanimously condemned his errors, and advised his punishment, but
without committing themselves to the mode of punishment. f1030
Bullinger wrote to Calvin that God had given the Council of Geneva a
most favorable opportunity to vindicate the truth against the pollution of
heresy, and the honor of God against blasphemy. In his Second Helvetic
Confession (ch. XXX.) he teaches that it is the duty of the magistrate to
use the sword against blasphemers. Schaffhausen fully agreed with Zürich.
Even the authorities of Basel, which was the headquarters of the sceptical
Italians and enemies of Calvin, gave the advice that Servetus, whom their
own Oecolampadius had declared a most dangerous man, be deprived of
the power to harm the Church, if all efforts to convert him should fail. Six
years afterwards the Council of Basel, with the consent of the clergy and
the University, ordered the body of David Joris, a chiliastic Anabaptist who
had lived there under a false name (and died Aug. 25, 1556), to be dug
from the grave and burned, with his likeness and books, by the hangman
before a large multitude (1559). f1031
Bern, which had advised moderation in the affair of Bolsec two years
earlier, judged more severely in the case of Servetus, because he “had
reckoned himself free to call in question all the essential points of our
religion,” and expressed the wish that the Council of Geneva might have
prudence and strength to deliver the Churches from “this pest.” Thirteen
years after the death of Servetus, the Council of Bern executed Valentino
Gentile by the sword (Sept. 10, 1566) for an error similar to but less