Regarding the great Jesuit plot to destroy the Reformation with Arminianism, why wouldn't they attempt to destroy a rival to their own tyrannical system?
Calvinism breeds Popes and they did not want a rival popery to contend with! After all, killing christians should be only the right of the Roman Church.
Calvin felt otherwise
Whoever shall now contend that it is unjust to put heretics and blahsphemers to death will knowingly and willingly incur their very guilt. This is not laid down in human authority, it is of God who speaks and prescribes a perpetual rule of the Church. It is not in vain that he banishes all those human affections which soften our hearts; that he commands paternal love and all the benevolent feelings between brothers, relations, and friends to cease; in a word, that he almost deprives men of their natures in order that nothing hinder their holy zeal. Why is so implacable a serverity exacted that we may know that God is defrauded of his honor, unless the piety that is due to him be preferred to all human duties, and that when his glory is to be asserted,humanity must be almost obliterated from our memories (Calvins defense of his execution of Servetus, cited in Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol.8,p.791Can we get some heel clicking? How about praise to Allah? Schaff goes on to note that the 'defense needed to be written because
Not only dissener and personal enemies, but also, as Beza admits, some orthodox and pious people and friends of Calvin were dissatisfied with the severity of the punishment. amd feared, not without reason, that it would justify and encourage the Romanists in their cruel persecution of Protestants in France and elsewhere (emphasis mine) (Ibid,p.790)
I wonder if Calvin ever read the verse,Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of.For the Son of man is not to come to destroy men's lives but to save them (Lk.9:55-56)
No, Calvin was to busy bringing in the Kingdom,
Calvin's plea for the right and duty of the Christian magistrate to punish heresy by death, stands or falls with his theoratic theory and the binding authority of the Mosaic code (Ibid,p.792)
His spirit lived on in Mass. and lives even today as noted in the rabid defense of his philosophical system on these threads!