Page:History of Freedom.djvu/221

 PROTESTANT THEORY OF PERSECUTION 177

other hand, he rejoiced at the expulsion of the Catholics, he ingeniously justified the practice of the Catholic per- secutors. U In the early ages of the Church, when the divinity of Christ manifested itself to the world by miracles, God incited the Apostles to treat the ungodly with severity. When the miracles ceased, and the faith was universally adopted, He gained the hearts of princes and rulers, so that they undertook to protect with the sword the gentleness and patience of the Church. They rigorously resisted, in fulfilment of the duties of their office, the contemners of the Church." 1 U The clergy," he goes on to say, "became tyrannical because they usurped to themselves a power which they ought to have shared with others; and as the people dread the return of this tyranny of ecclesiastical authority, it is wiser for the Protestant clergy to make no use of the similar power of excommunication which is intrusted to them." Calvin, as the subject of an absolute monarch, and the ruling spirit in a republic, differed both from the German and the Swiss reformers in his idea of the State both in its object and in its duty towards the Church. An exile from his o\vn country, he had lost the associations and habits of monarchy, and his views of discipline as well as doctrine \vere matured before he took up his abode in Switzerland. 2 His system ,vas not founded on existing facts; it had no roots in history, but was purely ideal, speculative, and therefore more consistent and inflexible than any other. Luther's political ideas were bounded by the horizon of the monarchical absolutism under \vhich he lived. Zwingli's \vere influenced by the democratic forms of his native country, which gave to the \vhole community the right of appointing the governing body. Calvin, independent of all such considerations, studied only how his doctrine could best be realised, \vhether through the instrumentality of existing authorities, or at their expense. In his eyes its interests \vere paramount,

1 Herzog, Leben Oekolamþads, ii, 195, Herzog finds an excuse for the harsh treatment of the Lutherans at Basel in the still greater severity of the Lutheran Churches against the followers of the Swiss reformation (Ibid. 21 3). 2 Hundeshagen, Conflikte des Zwinglianismus und Ca17}inismus, 41. N