1, occasioned by
a powerful reaction against his rigid system of public morality, he was,
during the whole of this period, the recognized head of the Genevese
commonwealth. A complete mastery of the principles of law, acquired by
indefatigable study at Orleans and Bourges, before the loftier teachings
of theology engrossed his time and faculties, qualified him to draw up a
code to regulate the affairs of his adopted country. If its detailed
prohibitions and almost Draconian severity are repugnant to the spirit
of the present age, the general wisdom of the legislator is vindicated
by the circumstance that he transformed a city noted for the prevalence
of every form of turbulence and immorality into the most orderly
republic of Christendom. Few, it is true, will be found to defend the
theory respecting the duty of the state toward the church in which
Calvin acquiesced. But the cruel deaths of Gruet and Servetus were only
the legitimate fruits of the doctrine that the civil authority is both
empowered and bound to exercise vigilant supervision over the purity of
the church. In this doctrine the reformers of the sixteenth century were
firm believers. They held, as John Huss had held a hundred years
before, that _Truth_ could appropriately appeal for support to physical
force, under circumstances that would by no means have justified a
similar resort on the part of _Error_. The consistent language of their
lives was, "If we speak not the truth, we refuse not to die." "If the
Pope condemns the pious for heresy, and furious judges unjustly execute
on the innocent the penalty due to heretics, what madness is it thence
to infer that heretics ought not to be destroyed for the purpose of
aiding the pious! As for myself, since I read that Paul said that he did
not refuse death if he had done anything to deserve it, I openly offered
myself frequently prepared to undergo sentence of death, if I had taught
anything contrary to the doctrine of piety. And I added, that I was most
worthy of any punishment imaginable, if I seduced any one from the faith
and doctrine of Christ. _Assuredly I cannot have a different view with
regard to others from that which I entertain respecting myself._"[411]
So wrote Farel, and almost all his contemporaries agreed with him. And
thus it happened that the conscientious Calvin and the polished Beza
were at the pains of writing long treatises, to prove that "heretics are
justly to be constrained by the sword,"