ground that he
was suppressing not heresy but blasphemy. As he interpreted blasphemy,
in a work published about 1530, it included the papal mass, the denial
of the divinity of Christ or of any other "manifest article of the
faith, clearly grounded in Scripture and believed throughout
Christendom." The government should also, in his opinion, put to death
those who preached sedition, anarchy or the abolition of private
property.

[Sidenote: Melanchthon]

Melanchthon was far more active in the pursuit of {645} heretics than
was his older friend. He reckoned the denial of infant baptism, or of
original sin, and the opinion that the eucharistic bread did not
contain the real body and blood of Christ, as blasphemy properly
punishable by death. He blamed Brenz for his tolerance, asking why we
should pity heretics more than does God, who sends them to eternal
torment? Brenz was convinced by this argument and became a persecutor
himself.

[Sidenote: Bucer and Capito]

The Strassburgers, who tried to take a position intermediate between
Lutherans and Zwinglians, were as intolerant as any one else. They put
to death a man for saying that Christ was a mere man and a false
prophet, and then defended this act in a long manifesto asking whether
all religious customs of antiquity, such as the violation of women, be
tolerated, and, if not, why they should draw the line at those who
aimed not at the physical dishonor, but at the eternal damnation, of
their wives and daughters?

[Sidenote: Zwingli]

The Swiss also punished for heresy. Felix Manz was put to death by
drowning, [Sidenote: January 5, 1527] the method of punishment chosen
as a practical satire on his doctrine of baptism of adults by
immersion. At the same time George Blaurock was cruelly beaten and
banished under threat of death. [Sidenote: September 9, 1527] Zurich,
Berne and St. Gall published a joint edict condemning Anabaptists to
death, and under this law two Anabaptists were sentenced in 1528 and
two more in 1532.

[Sidenote: Calvin]

In judicially murdering Servetus the Genevans were absolutely
consistent with Calvin's theory. In the preface to the _Institutes_ he
admitted the right of the government to put heretics to death and only
argued that Protestants were not heretics. Grounding himself on the
law of Moses, he said that the death decreed by God to idolatry in the
Old Testament was a universal law binding on Christians. He thought
that {