Are you aware that "sola scriptura" is a Latin phrase?
If any one still harbors the traditional prejudice that the early Protestants were more liberal, he must be undeceived. Save for a few splendid sayings of Luther, confined to the early years when he was powerless,
there is hardly anything to be found among the leading reformers in favor of freedom of conscience. As soon as they had the power to persecute they did.
(Preserved Smith. 177)
The Reformers themselves . . . e.g., Luther, Beza, and especially Calvin, were as intolerant to dissentients as the Roman Catholic Church. (Cross, Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church [P], 1383)
Protestants . . . read blood-curdling stories of the Inquisition and of atrocities committed by Catholics, but what does the average Protestant know of Protestant atrocities in the centuries succeeding the Reformation?
Nothing, unless he makes a special study of the subject . . . Yet they are perfectly well known to every scholar . . .
Now granting for the sake of argument, that all that is usually said of Catholic persecutions is true, the fact remains that Protestants, as such, have no right to denounce them, as if such deeds were characteristic of Catholics only. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones . . . It is unquestionable . . . that the champions of Protestantism – Luther, Calvin, Beza, Knox, Cranmer and Ridley —
advocated the right of the civil authorities to punish the ‘crime’ of heresy . . . Rousseau says truly:
“The Reformation was intolerant from its cradle, and its authors were universal persecutors . . .” Auguste Comte also writes:
“The intolerance of Protestantism was certainly not less tyrannical than that with which Catholicism is so much reproached.”
(Philosophie Positive, IV, 51)
What makes, however, Protestant persecutions specially revolting is the fact that they were absolutely inconsistent with the primary doctrine of Protestantism — the right of private judgment in matters of religious belief!
Nothing can be more illogical than at one moment to assert that one may interpret the Bible to suit himself, and at the next to torture and kill him for having done so! . . .
At all events, the argument that the persecutions for heresy, perpetrated by the Catholics, constitute a reason why one should not enter the Catholic Church, has not a particle more force than a similar argument would have against one’s entering the Protestant Church. In both there have been those deserving of blame in this respect, and
what applies to one applies also to the other.
(Stoddard, 204-205, 209-210)
Often the resistance to tyranny and the demand for religious freedom are combined, as in the Puritan revolution in England; and the victors, having achieved supremacy,
then set up a new tyranny and a fresh intolerance.
(Harkness [P], 222)
Lord Baltimore allowed several hundred Puritans, unwelcome in Episcopalian Virginia, to enter Maryland in 1648.
(Armstrong, see Ellis, below, p. 37)
For the first time in history . . . all churches would be tolerated, and . . . none would be the agent of the government . . . Catholics and Protestants side by side on terms of equality and toleration unknown in the mother country . . . The effort proved vain; for . . . the Puritan element . . . October, 1654, repealed the Act of Toleration and outlawed the Catholics . . . condemning ten of them to death, four of whom were executed . . . From . . . 1718 down to the outbreak of the Revolution, the Catholics of Maryland were cut off from all participation in public life, to say nothing of the enactments against their religious services and . . . schools for Catholic instruction . . .
During the half-century the Catholics had governed Maryland they had not been guilty of a single act of religious oppression.
(John Tracy Ellis, American Catholicism, Garden City, New York: Doubleday Image, 1956, 36, 38-39)
The principle which the Reformation had upheld in the youth of its rebellion — the right of private judgment — was as completely rejected by the Protestant leaders as by the Catholics . . .
Toleration was now definitely less after the Reformation than before it.
(Durant , 456; referring to the year 1555)
Melanchthon accepted the chairmanship of the secular inquisition that suppressed the Anabaptists in Germany
with imprisonment or death. . . . he was convinced that God had destined all Anabaptists to hell.
(Durant , 423)
A regular inquisition was set up in Saxony, with Melanchthon on the bench, and under it many persons were punished, some with death, some with life imprisonment, and some with exile.
(Smith , 177)
The persecution of the Anabaptists began in Zurich . . . The penalties enjoined by the Town Council of Zurich were ‘drowning, burning, or beheading,’ according as it seemed advisable . . .
‘It is our will,’ the Council proclaimed, ‘that wherever they be found, whether singly or in companies,
they shall be drowned to death, and that none of them shall be spared.’
(Janssen, V, 153-157)
In his Dialogues of 1535, Bucer called on governments to exterminate by fire and sword all professing a false religion, and even their wives, children and cattle.
(Armstrong; Janssen, V, 367-368, 290-291)
His [John Knox’s] conviction . . . harked back to the darkest practices of the Inquisition . . . Every heretic was to be put to death, and cities predominantly heretical were to be smitten with the sword and utterly destroyed: “To the carnal man this may appear a . . . severe judgment . . . Yet we find no exception, but all are appointed to the cruel death. But in such cases God wills that all . . . desist from reasoning when commandment is given to execute his judgments.”
(Durant , 614; citing Edwin Muir, John Knox, London: 1920, 142)
In the preface to the Institutes he [John Calvin] admitted the right of the government to put heretics to death . . . He thought that Christians should hate the enemies of God . . . Those who defended heretics . . . should be equally punished.
(Smith , 178)
[During Calvin’s reign in Geneva, between 1542 and 1546]
“58 persons were put to death for heresy.”
(Durant , 473)
Melanchthon, in a letter to Calvin and Bullinger, gave ‘thanks to the Son of God’ . . . and called the burning [of Michael Servetus] ‘a pious and memorable example to all posterity.’ Bucer declared from his pulpit in Strasbourg that Servetus had deserved to be disemboweled and torn to pieces.
Bullinger, generally humane, agreed that civil magistrates must punish blasphemy with death.
(Durant , 484)
Persecution, including death penalties for heresy, is not just a Catholic failing. It is clearly also a Protestant one, and a general “blind spot” of the Middle Ages, much like abortion is in our own supposedly “enlightened” age. Furthermore,
it is an outright lie to assert that Protestantism in its initial appearance, advocated tolerance. The evidence thus far presented refutes this notion beyond any reasonable doubt. (Armstrong)
Protestant Inquisitions: "Reformation" Intolerance & Persecution
Most of the citations are from Protestant and secular historians, so
think before you accuse me of doctrinal bias.