From pages 327-336 Turretin deals with heretics and especially the Servetus affair. It is a necessity to read the whole passage to guarantee all the nuances and qualifications are thought through but for the sake of time here is a sample:
XLIV. “Third proposition. “We think that incurable factious and blasphemous arch-heretics, not ceasing to scatter their poison, against interdicts often and repeated and a pledge given, disturbing both the state and church, can be punished with death.” Yet that this is not resorted to unless all other mild means have been tried without avail to cure them and restore them to a better mind. For when it is evident that such remedies not only do not cure the evil, but rather exasperate and increase it, then at length (although sorrowfully) the magistrate compelled by the necessity of his office will direct his attention to it.; like physicians, who are wont to employ extreme remedies for desperate and extreme maladies that what cannot be corrected and cured may be stopped by the knife and cautery so that the healthy parts may not be affected…
XLV. The reasons why we so determine are various, indicated already by us in Section 32 and the following, to which we add the atrociousness of the crime. for if punishment ought to increase with the greatness of the crime, no one can doubt that the blasphemy and impiety by which the majesty of God is directly assailed, is the greatest of all crimes and one which on that account ought to be visited with the greatest punishment; especially if an obstinate and pertinacious contempt of political and ecclesiastical order is joined with it as also perjury and an insane fury for corrupting others with the same poison. Such monsters of men ought to be regarded as public pests and cancers, as disturbers of the church and state whom it is of the highest importance to remove, whether to vindicate the glory of the offended supreme majesty or to conserve human society.”
Francis Turretin,
Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol.III 332-333
Note that Turretin views society or culture as a host that can be infected by parasites. Turretin understands that if the Host society is brought down by parasite theology in the larger culture that will lead to both church and society being brought down. This was the danger of Severtus. A little Severtus leaven would leaven the whole Geneva society loaf. You cannot cordon the Church from the culture or larger society. If the people of the church are operating in a Severtus created culture they will bring that Severtus created culture back into the Church and recreate the Church in the image of the culture.
