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It kind of beats burning them before they're dead, like the cronies in the Catholic church did to heretics.

And the Calvinists didn't? Is that what you are trying to say?

It's that glass house thing.

Indeed. You should be careful.

Calvin came AFTER the RCC. Seems that they were burning people at the stake long before others were.

It doesn’t justify that he did it, but since it was pretty common practice at the time, he’s hardly the originator of the idea and certainly was not alone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calvin

The difficulty in using Servetus as a weapon against Calvin was that the heretical reputation of Servetus was widespread and most of the cities in Europe were observing and awaiting the outcome of the trial. This posed a dilemma for the libertines, so on 21 August the council decided to write to other Swiss churches for their opinions, thus mitigating their own responsibility for the final decision. While waiting for the responses, the council also asked Servetus if he preferred to be judged in Vienne or in Geneva. He begged to stay in Geneva. On 20 October the replies from Zürich, Basel, Bern, and Schaffhausen were read and the council condemned Servetus as a heretic. The following day he was sentenced to burning at the stake, the same sentence as in Vienne. Calvin and other ministers asked that he be beheaded instead of burnt. This plea was refused and on 27 October, Servetus was burnt alive—atop a pyre of his own books—at the Plateau of Champel at the edge of Geneva.