How Reformed Were The Reformers?: Bloody Line of Authority, Persecution, and Theological Power

What happens when men who preached grace claimed the power to punish dissent with prison, exile, water, sword, and fire? How Reformed Were the Reformers? puts celebrated Protestant leaders before the surviving record. John Calvin helped prosecute Michael Servetus and defended his execution. Martin Luther called rulers to crush rebellious peasants, approved death for obstinate Anabaptists, and urged authorities to burn synagogues, destroy Jewish homes, confiscate religious books and property, silence rabbis, impose forced labor, and expel Jews. Huldrych Zwingli's Zurich drowned Felix Manz for rejecting infant baptism. Thomas Cranmer participated in Protestant heresy prosecutions that ended at the stake. John Knox taught that idolatry could deserve death. Later Reformed confessions and teachers carried the same theory into law. This book separates prosecution, advocacy, approval, institutional power, and provable death counts. It refuses inflated accusations, but it also refuses the excuses that hide what the documents say. If these men were wrong when they placed the magistrate's sword behind their theology, what else must be examined? READ THE RECORD. EXAMINE THE DOCTRINE. DECIDE FOR YOURSELF