Beza on the danger of Islamic Rule

[JM]

But perhaps there will not be wanting those who will furnish the [example of] the authority of the Turkish [Islamic] emperor over his subjects. I should wish these to have their answer in a single word: an empire of that description does not deserve to be called either kingly or human, but wholly barbarous, tyrannical, uncivilized and detestable, especially because whereas the other monarchies and empires, to however many faults they may have been subject, were still instruments suitable for the preservation of human society, it is obvious that on the contrary this Turkish tyranny is an awful scourge of God by means of which God in accordance with his just judgement threatens this world with its final ruin and overthrow.

Therefore, if there are men to be found today who are counsellors to kings so that these may fashion an example and an image of their rule from that source, I proclaim with a clear and loud voice that those Turks should be deemed the public enemies of humankind and should be cast out in banishment.

Theodore Beza, Concerning the Rights of Rulers over their Subjects and the Duty of Subjects Towards their Rulers: A Brief and Clear Treatise Particularly Indispensable to Either Class in these Troubled Times (1572), trans. Henry Louis Gonin, ed. Patrick S. Poole in Journal of Christian Reconstruction, 14.1 (1996), pp 147-48.

 

[JackRT]

Interesting that Beza was an end-times thinker.

 

[JM]

Interesting that Beza was an end-times thinker.

All Christians have an eschatology of some kind. The Reformers, first and second gen, often included Islam in their End Times views.