accept the Lutheran doctrine of the real presence, and the poor fugitives were driven from port to
port in cold winter, till at last they found a temporary home at Emden (1553).^74
In Scandinavia every religion except the Lutheran was forbidden on pain of confiscation
and exile, and these laws were in force till the middle of the nineteenth century. Queen Christina
lost her Swedish crown by her apostasy from Lutheranism, which her father had so heroically
defended in the Thirty Years’ War.
(b) The Swiss Reformers, though republicans, were not behind the Germans in intolerance
against Romanists and heretics.
Zwingli extended the hand of brotherhood to Luther, and hoped to meet even the nobler
heathen in heaven, but had no mercy on the Anabaptists, who threatened to overthrow his work in
Zürich. After trying in vain to convince them by successive disputations, the magistrate under his
control resorted to the Cruel irony of drowning their leaders (six in all) in the Limmat near the lake
of Zürich (between 1527 and 1532).^75
Zwingli counselled, at the risk of his own life, the forcible introduction of the Reformed
religion into the territory of the Catholic Forest Cantons (1531); forgetting the warning of Christ
to Peter, that they who take the sword shall perish by the sword.^76
Calvin has the misfortune rather than the guilt of pre-eminence for intolerance among the
Reformers. He and Servetus are the best abused men of the sixteenth century; and the depreciation
of the good name of the one and the exculpation of the bad name of the other have been carried far
beyond the limits of historic truth and justice. Both must be judged from the standpoint of the
sixteenth, not of the nineteenth, century.
The fatal encounter of the champion of orthodoxy and the champion of heresy, men of equal
age, rare genius, and fervent zeal for the restoration of Christianity, but direct antipodes in doctrine,
spirit and aim, forms the most thrilling tragedy in the history of the Reformation. The contrast
between the two is almost as great as that between Simon Peter and Simon Magus.^77 Their contest
will never lose its interest. The fires of the funeral pile which were kindled at Champel on the 27th
of October, 1553, are still burning and cast their lurid sparks into the nineteenth century.
Leaving the historical details and the doctrinal aspect for another chapter,^78 we confine
ourselves here to the bearing of the case on the question of toleration.
Impartial history must condemn alike the intolerance of the victor and the error of the victim,
but honor in both the strength of conviction. Calvin should have contented himself with banishing
his fugitive rival from the territory of Geneva, or allowing him quietly to proceed on his contemplated
journey to Italy, where he might have resumed his practice of medicine in which he excelled. But
(^74) Hermann Dalton (of St. Petersburg), in his Johannes a Laasco (Gotha, 1881), pp. 427-438, gives a graphic description of what he
calls Laski’s "martyrdom in Denmark and North Germany." Calvin raised his indignant protest against this cruel treatment of his brethren,
but in the same year Servetus was made to suffer death for heresy and blasphemy under Calvin’s eye!
(^75) Bullinger, Reformationsgeschichte, I., 382. Comp. his Von der Wiedertäufer Ursprung, etc., 1560. Hagenbach, Kirchengesch., III.
350 sqq. Emil Egli, Die Züricher Wiedertäufer zur Reformatiosszeit, Zürich, 1884. Nitsche, Gesch. der Wiedertäufer in der Schweiz,
Einsiedeln, 1885.
(^76) The statue erected to his memory at Zürich, August 25th, 1885, represents him as holding the Bible in his right hand and the sword
with his left. Dr. Alex. Schweizer protested (as he informed me) against the sword, and took no part in the festivities of the dedication of
the monument.
(^77) Servetus probably imagined himself to represent the Apostle when he called Calvin "Simon Magus." He did identify himself with
the archangel Michael fighting against the dragon, i.e. the Pope of Rome, Apoc. 12:7.
(^78) Together with the extensive literature.