For Latin readers. Appeared in 1554 as a defense of Calvin's willingness, based on biblical law, to execute seditious heretics like Servetus (for Calvin saw this as the civil magistrate's God-given duty).

In this work, Whether the Civil Magistrate Ought to Punish Heretics, "Beza argued... [m]agistrates in Christian states are representatives of God and are bound by the Word of God in spiritual matters" (cited in Greaves, Theology and Revolution in the Scottish Reformation [Christian University Press, 1980, p. 153]).

Beza is completely in accord with Reformation thinking on this point. For "of all errors, toleration is the most dangerous and damnable, in so far as other errors do only overturn those particular truths of Scripture to which they are contrary; but by this one error (this monster of toleration) way is made to overturn all the truths contained in Scripture, and to the setting up [of] all errors contrary to every jot of truth; and in the mean time there shall be no power on earth to hinder it, or take order with it" (Fergusson, 1652, cited in DiLella, Ye That Love the Lord, Hate Evil).

Beza's book is also mentioned by George Gillespie in his defense of the Reformer's view, over against the persecuting view of the Papists (on the one hand) and the false and antichristian tolerationism of the Donatists, Arminians and Independents (on the other hand). George Gillespie writes, "The third opinion is, that the Magistrate may and ought to exercise his coercive power, in suppressing and punishing Hereticks and Sectaries, lesse or more, according as the nature and degree of the error, schisme, obstinacy, and danger of seducing others, doth require. This as it was the judgement of the orthodox Ancients, (vide Optati opera, edit, Al. baspin. pag. 204, 215.) so it is followed by our soundest Protestant Writers; most largely by Beza against Bellius and Monfortius, in a peculiar Treatise De Hareticus a Magistratu puniendis" (Wholesome Severity Reconciled With Christian Liberty, 1644, p. 3).