uel, while I have always
judged heretics in all kindness and in the fear of God; I merely put
to death a confessed heretic."[2] Michael Servetus assuredly did not
gain much by the substitution of Calvin for the Inquisition.

[1] Servetus was condemned October 26, 1553, to be burned alive, and
was executed the next day. As early as 1545, Calvin had written: "If
he (Servetus) comes to Geneva, I will never allow him to depart
alive, as long as I have authority in this city: _Vivum exire numquam
patiar_. _OEuvres completes_, vol. xii, p. 283." Calvin, however,
wished the death penalty of fire to be commuted into some other kind
of death.

[2] To justify this execution, Calvin published his _Defensio
orthodoxae fidei de sacra Trinitate, contra prodigiosos errores
Michaelis Serveti Hispani, ubi ostenditur haereticos jure gladii
coercendos esse_, Geneva, 1554.

Bullinger of Zurich, speaking of the death of Servetus, thus wrote
Lelius Socinus: "If, Lelius, you cannot now admit the right of a
magistrate to punish heretics, you will undoubtedly admit it some
day. St. Augustine himself at first deemed it wicked to use violence
towards heretics, and tried to win them back by the mere word of God.
But finally, learning wisdom by experience, he began to use force
with good effect. In the beginning the Lutherans did not believe that
heretics ought to be punished; but after the excesses of the
Anabaptists, they declared that the magistrate ought not merely to
reprimand the unruly, but to punish them severely as an example to
thousands."

Theodore of Beza, who had seen several of his co-religionists burned
in France for their faith, likewise wrote in 1554, in Calvinistic
Geneva: "What crime can be greater or more heinous than heresy, which
sets at nought the word of God and all ecclesiastic discipline?
Christian magistrates, do your duty to God, Who has put the sword
into your hands for the honor of His majesty; strike valiantly these
monsters in the guise of men." Theodore 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
heretics ought not to be aband