70 , ORIENTATION.
The enemies of Calvin raised, in anonymous and pseudonymous pamphlets, a loud protest against the new tribunal of popery and inquisition in Geneva, which had boasted to be an asylum of all the persecuted. The execution of Servetus was condemned by his anti-trinitarian sympathizers, especially the Italian refugees in Switzerland, and also by some orthodox Christians in Basel and elsewhere, who feared that it would afford a powerful argument to the Romanists for their persecution of Protestants.
Calvin felt it necessary, therefore, to come out with a public defense of the death-penalty for heresy, in the spring of 1554.1 He appealed to the Mosaic law against idolatry and blasphemy, to the expulsion of the profane traffickers from the temple-court (Matt. 21: 12), and he tries to refute the arguments for toleration which were derived from the wise counsel of Gamaliel (Acts 5: 34), the parable of the tares among the wheat (Matt. 13: 29), and Christ’s rebuke of Peter for drawing the sword (Matt. 26: 52). The last argument he disposes of by making a distinction between private vengeance and public punishment.
Beza also defended, with his usual ability, in a special treatise, the punishment of heretics, chiefly as a measure of self-defense of the state which had a right to give laws and a duty to protect religion. He derived the doctrine of toleration from scepticism and infidelity and called it a diabolical dogma.?
The burning of the body of Servetus did not destroy his soul. His blood was the fruitful seed of the doctrine of toleration and the Unitarian heresy, which assumed an organized form in the Socinian sect, and afterward spread in many orthodox churches, including Geneva.
1 Defensio orthodoxe fidei de sacra trinitate contra prodigtosos errores Michaelis Serveti Hispani ubi ostenditur hereticos jure gladii coércendos esse. In Calvin’s Opera, ed. Reuss, etc., vol. VIII. 483-644. Bullinger urged him to the task in a letter of December 12th, 1553 (Opera, XIV. 698): “ Vide, me Calvine, ut diligenter et pie omnibus piis describas Servetum cum suo exitu, ut omnes abhorreant a bestia.”
? De haeriticis a civili magistratu puniendis, adversus Martini Bellii (an unknown person) farraginem et novorum academicorum sectam. Geneva (Oliva Rob. Ste-
phani), 1554; second ed.1592; French translation by Nic. Colladon, 1560. See Heppe’s Beza, p. 38 sq.
§ 12. RELIGIOUS INTOLERANCE AND LIBERTY. 71
Fortunately the tragedy of 1553 was the last spectacle of burning a heretic in Switzerland, though several years later the Antitrinitarian, Valentine Gentile, was beheaded in Berne (1566).
(c) In France the Reformed church, being in the minority, was violently and systematically persecuted by the civil rulers in league with the Roman church, and it is well for her that she never had a chance to retaliate. She is emphatically a church of martyrs.
(d) The Reformed church in Holland, after passing through terrible trials and persecutions under Spanish rule, showed its intolerance toward the Protestant Arminians who were defeated by the Synod of Dort (1619). Their pastors and teachers were deposed and banished. The Arminian controversy was, however, mixed up with politics ; the Calvinists were the national and popular party under the military lead of Prince Maurice; while the political leaders of Arminianism, John van Olden Barneveldt and Hugo Grotius, were suspected of disloyalty for concluding a truce with Spain (1609), and condemned, the one to death, the other to perpetual banishment. With a change of administration the Arminians were allowed to return (1625), and disseminated, with a liberal theology, principles of religious toleration.
§ 12. Religious Intolerance and Laberty in England and America.
Tue history of the Reformation in England and Scotland is even more disfigured by acts of intolerance and persecution than that of the Continent, but resulted at last in greater gain for religious freedom. The modern ideas of well regulated, constitutional liberty, both civil and religious, have grown chiefly on English soil.
At first it was a battle between persecution and mere toleration, but toleration once legally secured prepared the way for full religious liberty.
All parties when persecuted, advocated liberty of conscience, and all parties when in power, exercised intolerance, but in differ-