146
ESSAYS ON LIBERTY
\vas the opinion of their chief, Theodore Beza, himself. Six weeks before, he \vrote that they were gaining in numbers but losing in quality, and he feared lest, after destroying superstition, they should destroy religion: cc Valde metuo ne superstitioni successerit impietas." 1 And afterwards he declared that nobody who had known the state of the French Protestants could deny that it was a most just judgment upon them. 2 Beza held very stringent doctrines touching the duty of the civil magistrate to repress religious error. He thought that heresy is worse than murder, and that the good of society requires no crime to be more severely punished. s He declared toleration contrary to revealed religion and the constant tradition of the Church, and taught that lawful authority must be obeyed, even by those \vhom it persecutes. He expressly recognised this function in Catholic States, and urged Sigismund not to rest until he had got rid of the Socinians in Poland; 4 but he could not prevail against the vehement resistance of Cardinal Hosius. It was embarrassing to limit these principles when they were applied against his own CJ:1urch. For a moment Beza doubted whether it had not received its death-blow in France. But he did not qualify the propositions which were open to be interpreted so fatally,S or deny that his people, by their vices, if not by their errors, had deserved what they had suffered. The applause which greeted their fate came not from the Catholics generally, nor from the Catholics alone. While the Protestants were ready to palliate or excuse it, the majority of the Catholics who were not under the
petulantibus et fervidis ingeniis, quae eos in diros tumultus, et inextricabilia mala coniecerunt (Dinothus, De Bello Civili, 1582, p, 243)' 1 Beza to Tilius, July 5, 1572; Ill, vir, Eþþ, Sel, 607. 2 Quoties autem ego haec ipse praedixi! quoties praemonui! Sed sic Deo visum est, iustissimis de causis irato, et tamen servatori (Beza to Tilius, Sept, 10, 1572, 614). Nihil istorurn non iustissimo iudicio accidere necesse est fateri, qui Galliarum statum norunt (Beza to Crato, Aug, 26, 1573; Gillet, ii. 521). 3 Ut mihi quidem magis absurde facere videantur quam si sacrilegas parricidas puniendos negarent, quum sint istis omnibus haeretici infinitis partibus deteriores, . , , In nuIlos unquam homines severius quam in haereticos, blasphemos et impios debet animadvertere (De Haereticis þ'lmiendis, Tract, Theol. i. 143, 15 2 ). 4 Eþist. The%g. 1575, p. 338, Beza to \Vittgenstein, Pentecost, 1583; Friedländer, 143.
