Theodore Beza

Theodore Beza (Latin: Theodorus Beza; French: Théodore de Bèze or de Besze; 23 June 1519 – 13 October 1605) was a French Calvinist Protestant theologian, reformer and scholar who played an important role in the Protestant Reformation. He was a disciple of John Calvin and lived most of his life in Geneva. Beza succeeded Calvin as the spiritual leader of the Republic of Geneva.

Quotes

• If we must put up with what this impious man [Sebastian Castellio] has vomited forth in his preface, what remains to us intact of the Christian religion? ... We must wait for another revelation.
  • Letter to Heinrich Bullinger (29 March 1554), quoted in J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (1928), p. 95

• The main end of human society is that God be honoured as He should be. Now the Magistrate is set as guard and governor of this society... And though it be his duty, so far as in him lies, to take order that no discord arise among his subjects, yet, since the chief and ultimate end of human society is not that men should live together in peace, but that, living in peace, they should serve God, it is the function of the Magistrate to risk even this outward peace (if no otherwise may it be done) in order to secure and maintain in his land the true service of God in its purity... And it is impossible that he should so preserve and maintain religion unless he suppresses by the power of the sword those who obstinately contemn it and form sects. It remains then to say that those who would that the Magistrate should not concern himself with religion, either do not understand what is the true end of human society or else pretend that they do not.
  • De haereticis a civile magistratu puniendis libellus, adversus Martini Belli farraginem et novorum Academicorum sectam, Theodora Beza Vezelio auctore (1554), p. 186, quoted in J. W. Allen, A History of Political Thought in the Sixteenth Century (1928), p. 96

• Now you, the whole world's ornament, the Queen
  On whose behalf both winds and oceans fight,
  Rule on with God, far from ambition seen,
  And succour still the pious with your might,
  That England you, you England long hold dear,
  Whom good men love as much as wicked fear.
  • 'To the Most Serene Elizabeth, Queen of England' (1588), quoted in Bertrand T. Whitehead, Brags and Boasts: Propaganda in the Year of the Armada (1994), p. 194

• I have always impugned the Roman hierarchy, but I have never had the intention of opposing the ecclesiastical polity of your Anglican Church. I wish and hope that the sacred and holy society of your bishops may continue and maintain forever the right and title to the government of the Church with all Christian equity and moderation.
  • Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Whitgift (March 1591), quoted in John T. McNeill, The History and Character of Calvinism (1957), p. 315

Quotes about Theodore Beza

• It was in defence of Servetus' execution that Beza published his 1554 De Haereticis, the most important and influential sixteenth-century Protestant defence of hereticide... For Beza, as an "obstinate" heretic and blasphemer Servetus deserved to die with the most excruciating death that could be invented. In his Life and Death of Jean Calvin, Beza reflected on Servetus as "not a man, but rather, a horrible Monster, compounded of all the ancient and new heresies, and above all an execrable blasphemer against the Trinity" who had "by the just judgment of God and man" "ended by the punishment of fire". Calvin has, for Beza, done "the office of a faithful Pastor, putting the Magistrate in mind of his duty" that he might make sure that "such a pestilence should not infect his flock".
  • John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture (2006), pp. 254-255

• From him derives the terrible utterance which, in the history of thought, has given his name a sinister glory, "Libertas conscientiae diabolicum dogma"—freedom of conscience is a devilish doctrine. Away with freedom. Much better to destroy with fire and sword those who commit the abomination of independent thought; "better to have a tyrant, however cruel," exclaims de Bèze, "than permit everyone to do what he pleases... The contention that heretics should not be punished is as monstrous as the contention that parricides and matricides should not be put to death; for heretics are a thousandfold worse criminals than these."
  • Stefan Zweig, The Right to Heresy: Castellio Against Calvin (1936), p. 168