PROTESTANT THEORY OF PERSECUTION I8I
the purpose. Where there was no such office-where, for instance, the estates of the realm had lost their inde- pendence-there was no protection. This is one of the most important and essential characteristics of the politics of the reformers. By making the protection of their religion the principal business of government, they put out of sight its more immediate and universal duties, and made the political objects of the State disappear behind its religious end. A government was to be judged, in their eyes, only by its fidelity to the Protestant Church. If it fulfilled those requirements, no other complaints against it could be entertained. A tyrannical prince could not be resisted if he \vas orthodox; a just prince could be dethroned if he failed in the more essential condition of faith. In this way Protestantism became favourable at once to despotism and to revolution, and was ever ready to sacrifice good government to its own interests. It subverted monarchies, and, at the same time, denounced those who, for political causes, sought their subversion; but though the monarchies it subverted were sOlnetimes tyrannical, and the seditions it prevented sometimes revolutionary, the order it defended or sought to establish was never legitimate and free, for it was always invested with the function of religious proselytism,l and with the obligation of removing every traditional, social, or political right or power which could oppose the discharge of that essential duty. The part Calvin had taken in the death of Servetus obliged him to develop more fully his views on the punishment of heresy. He wrote a short account of the trial,2 and argued that governments are bound to suppress
1 .. Quum ergo ita licentiose omnia sibi permittent (Donatistae), volebant tamen impune manere sua scelera: et in prirnis tenebant hoc principium: non esse I poenas surnendas, si quis ab aliis dissideret in religion is doctrina: quernadrnodum hodie vidernus quosdarn de hac re nirnis cupide contendere. Certurn est quid cupiant, Nam si quis ipsos respiciat, sunt irnpii Dei conternptores: saltern vellcnt nihil certum esse in religione; ideo labefactare, et quantum in se est etiam con- vellere nituntur omnia pietatis principia, Ut ergo liceat ipsis evornere virus suum, ideo tantopere litigant pro impunitate, et negant poenas de haereticis et blasphemis surnendas esse" (Pr, in Danielnn, v. 51). 2 .. Defensio Orthodoxae Fidei, . . ubi ostenditur Haereticos jure gladii coer, cendos esse," 1554,
