John Calvin's Treatise Against the Ana-Baptist

To show the true colors of the sheer spirit of hatred that existed in John Calvin one need look no further than the "John Calvin's Treatise Against Ana-Baptist" book. And here is how he begins....

TO write against all the false opinions & errours of the Anabaptists, should be a thing too long, & such a bottomless pit, as I could not well come out of. For this canker differeth in this thing from all other sects of hereticks: that she hath not erred only in certain points: but she hath engendered a whole sea, as it were, of foolish & false opinions. In such wise that scant shall a man find one Anabaptist which hath not some fantasy singular: which his fellows have not. So that if we would pluck out, or rehearse all their wicked doctrines, we should never make an end. But now at length they become unto two principal sects: whereof the one, though she be full of wicked & pernicious errours, yet doth she abide in much more simplicity. For she yet receiveth the holy scripture, as we do. And if men do dispute with those that be of that sect, it shall be perceived wherein they differ from us, & they will express their meaning, & in conclusion it may be perceived in what they accord, & wherein they dissent. The second sect is a mass of such foolish & beastly opinions, as the like cannot be found, insomuch that it is wonder how creatures which bear the figure of a man, can be so clean without sense & reason, as to suffer themselves so to be deceived, & fall into fantasies more than brutish. This sect call themselves libertines. And counterfeit so much the spiritual, that they set no more by the word of God, than they do by fables: except it be when it pleaseth them, and when as they may deprave it, and by force make it to serve for their devilish opinions. And besides this they have a charming or croaking as it were Cranes, so that a man cannot tell what it is, that they would say, and no more do they wot what it is themselves: but that by this craft they cover the filthiness of their doctrine. For their principles are to confound all differences between good & ill, & to mingle God so with the Devil that it should not be discerned between the one and the other, and so to make men not only without all feeling in their consciences before God: but also without shame before the world. Now see you wherefore they drive themselves into such caves of obscure and doubtful words, to the end that their villainy should not be perceived, lest we should have them in horror and execration. As indeed our nature repugneth against such monstrous things as they bring forth. So now to write in a sum against the errours of the Anabaptists, the shortest and most expedient way is to keep this division, and to gather apart in one treatise the errours of them which be not altogether so mad and desperate: and in another treatise to discover the venomous malice of those wicked, which under the colour of spirituality, would make men like unto brute beasts. - John Calvin

John Calvin then goes on to compare the Ana-Baptist toSadducees, mad bedlams, and of wicked opinions,

"For their principles are to confound all differences between good & ill, & to mingle God so with the Devil that it should not be discerned between the one and the other, and so to make men not only without all feeling in their consciences before God: but also without shame before the world."

And he goes on to say....

"And to die for a just cause, is that which doth decern the martyrs of God from the devil's martyrs."

I would imagine that while toasting Michael Servetus that John Calvin had the "devil's martyr" in mind. In which case, it became, that if any would not agree with him, that they would become what he thought a devil's martyr.

The statement asks for forgiveness "from God and from our Mennonite sisters and brothers" for past wrongdoings and the ways in which Lutherans subsequently forgot or ignored this persecution and have continued to describe Anabaptists in misleading and damaging ways. - Lutherans Seek Forgiveness for Persecution of Anabaptists

And John Calvin describing the Anabaptist in misleading and damaging ways. Here is a list of the name calling....

1. Called their doctrine a bottomless bit
2. Accused them as being a canker, differing from all other sects of heretics.
3. Accused them of foolish and false opinions
4. Called their doctrine "Wicked"
5. Accused them of being, "full of wicked & pernicious errours"
6. Accused them as a "sect is a mass of such foolish & beastly opinions, as the like cannot be found, insomuch that it is wonder how creatures which bear the figure of a man, can be so clean without sense & reason, as to suffer themselves so to be deceived, & fall into fantasies more than brutish."
7. Called their opinions, "Devilish"
8. Called their doctrine, "Filthy"
9. Accused them "to mingle God so with the Devil that it should not be discerned between the one and the other,"
10. And "to the end that their villainy should not be perceived, lest we should have them in horror and execration."
11. Accused them of making men, "Brute beasts"
12. Invited, "they which be good shall know the desperate impudency, and so withdraw themselves, & fly from them, as from poison."
13. Called them "poor fantasticals"
14. Called them, "children in malice, and not in age"
15. Recommended their excommunication from the church.
16. Recommended that "after he hath been twice secretly warned, ought to be openly chastised, or excommunicated"
17. Says. "For in saying that he which sinneth by ignorance, and not by his own will, ought to be cast out, they do declare, as they do openly teach and maintain, that if a man do sin willingly, he shall never obtain forgiveness of his sin, because that all voluntary sins, after their fantasy, are sins against the Holy Ghost, and irremissible. I say that this opinion is an execrable blasphemy against the grace of God, and a false doctrine very pernicious to drive all poor souls to despair. As I have seen the experience in some, which were for a time seduced to this wicked sect."
18. Indirectly accused them of, "Mocking God"
19. Recommends death, "We agree that the temporal sword is an ordinance of God, besides the perfection of Christ. So the princes & superiours of the world are ordained to punish the wicked, & to put them to death. But in the perfection of Christ, excommunication is the utmost pain, and not corporal death."
20. Says, "What Devil constraineth these frantic men to make this addition, that the Magistrates in serving God, are shut out from the company of Christian men? Which thing is not done to the hangman for dogs, by their own confession."

And I only made it half way through the discourse (TrueCovenanter.com: A Short Instruction for to arm all good Christian people against the pestiferous errours of the common sect of Anabaptists.).