Over the next few reigns around 600 Catholic priests alone, and thousands of ordinary Catholics were disembowelled or otherwise murdered by Protestants because of their faith. Topcliffe, Elizabeth’s chief torturer, had a special house full of torture equipment to be used on Catholic priests. One elderly priest was tortured 12 separate times to gain information on other priests and believers.
CALVIN
Within a few years of Calvin coming to power in Geneva fifty-eight sentences of death and seventy-six of exile took place. Two examples:
- James Gruet, was alleged to have posted a note which implied that Calvin should leave the city: He was at once arrested and a house to house search made for his accomplices. This method failed to reveal anything except that Gruet had written on one of Calvin’s tracts the words ‘all rubbish.’ The judges put him to the rack twice a day, morning and evening, for a whole month . . . He was sentenced to death for blasphemy and beheaded on July 26, 1547.
- The Spanish Reformer Servetus had dared to criticize Calvin’s “Institutes of the Christian Religion” and began an angry correspondence with him. Calvin had his critic arrested. Calvin drew up forty articles of charges concerning the nature of God, infant baptism, and the attacks on his own teaching. On August 20, 1553, Calvin wrote: “I hope that Servetus will be condemned to death”
On October 26, the Council ordered that he be burned alive on the following day. Servetus took half an hour to die. Calvin noted: "'He showed the dumb stupidity of a beast . . . He went on bellowing . . . in the Spanish fashion: “Misericordias!” .
In 1554 Calvin wrote the treatise Against the Errors of Servetus, in which he tried to justify the execution: “Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty that (they allege) I would like to kill again the man I have destroyed. Not only am I indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face.”
The modern-day Congregational, Prebyterian, Reformed, Baptist and many of the Charismatic churches, all look to this same Calvin as their founding spiritual authority.
Most of the other Reformers. Luther, Knox, Zwingli, also burnt, hung, drowned or otherwise executed their opponents.
The simple fact is that at the time some accuse Catholics of religious cruelties,
Protestants, and non-denoms were doing the same or worse.
One would expect leaders of a new movement “reforming” the Church and supposedly correcting the “errors” of the historic Church to be beyond reproach in their behaviour and Christian lives. But what do we see? The opposite.
Luther was well known for his hot temper, pride and violent language, rather than for his saintliness and humility. He even heaped abuse on fellow-reformers like Zwingli and Bucer who disagreed with him. He encouraged the German Princes to seize church property in return for protection for the Reformation. Along with others, he issued a licence permitting the Landgrave of Hesse to keep 2 wives simultaneously. However worse was to come.
PEASANTS REVOLT
Inspired by the writings of Luther and others, which declared the Freedom of the Christian Man, and led by Thomas Muntzer, an ex-pupil of Luther’s, German peasants demanded to be freed from Serfdom, joining in the Great Peasants Revolt. They hoped for Luther’s support. But Luther owed his protection and high position to the German aristocrats. So instead, in a pamphlet entitled
Against the Murderous Peasants, Luther told the princes and the nobility that it was
right and lawful to slay at the first opportunity a rebellious person, “just as one must slay a mad dog.” Let all who are able, cut them down, slaughter and stab them, openly or in secret, and remember that there is nothing more poisonous, noxious and utterly devilish than a rebel… For we are come upon such strange times that a prince may more easily win heaven by the shedding of blood than others by prayers.
Urged on by their spiritual leader, the nobles and their armies suppressed the revolts with great savagery. In all more than 100,000 peasants were slain.
No excuse, but the fact is that the hands of the protestants was equally bloody if not more so.
each other…Try googling Calvin + Servetus for a prominent example…).
- for that, unbelievers, & opponents of Christianity, deserve a great deal of the credit.