in his narrative of Beaton's assassination," and even his panegyrist admits that "the pleasantry Knox has mingled with the narrative of Beaton's death and burial is unseasonable and unbecoming," though he apologises for it from the natural jocularity of Knox's mind.

It is necessary to observe this when we form an estimate of Knox's character. The assassins of Beaton having possession of the Castle of St. Andrews, many persons professing an attachment to Protestantism, although one would hope they were rather political than religious Protestants, flocked to them, and among others, John Knox, who received from them a call to preach, which he seems to have regarded as a more valid call than his ordination. From this time he seems to have held the convenient doctrince that he, and only those who thought with him, knew the gospel, that every one opposed to him was therefore opposed to God, and that he, as God's servant, might resort to any means in his power to silence them.

He remained at St. Andrews until the castle was taken by the French, when he was carried to France and remained a prisoner on board the galleys, until the latter end of 1549. Although at that time, his sanguine temperament induced him to look forward to better days, and the hopes he expressed were afterwards regarded as predictions by his admirers, he seems for the most part, to have been in a desponding and unhappy state of mind.

When released from prison, in 1549, he passed over to England and became a preacher, first at Berwick, and then at Newcastle. In 1552, he was appointed chaplain to young King Edward, and by the royal youth was recommended to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Cranmer, who offered him the living of All Hallows, in London, but he refused to accept it from his dislike of the Liturgy. It is said that young Edward offered him a bishopric, but that Knox fell into a passion on receiving the offer, and rejected it as savouring of anti.

christ. He was generally consistent with his principles and naturally abhorred a Catholic Ritual and a Catholic Hierarchy, such as the Church of England possesses. But he still continued to preach, and in the words of Dr. M Crie, "regarding the worship of the Popish Church as grossly idolatrous, and its doctrine as damnable, he attacked them both with much fervour." At this time he formed the acquaintance of Marjory Bowes, who afterwards became his first wife.

When Queen Mary ascended the throne, he quitted England, for his doctrine appeared as damnable to her, as her doctrine did to him. According to his own words he "was not ripe or able to glorify God by his death." He escaped to Dieppe, in France, and went from thence to Geneva, in the year 1554. When he had escaped the danger, he began to regret that he had not remained to encounter it, and on reviewing his life, he says, “I was assaulted, yea infected, with more gross sins, that is, my wicked nature desired the favours, the estimation, and praise of men; against which, albeit that sometimes the Spirit of God did move me to fight, and earnestly did stir me (God knoweth I lie not) to sob and lament for these imperfections, yet never ceased they to trouble me, when any occasion was offered; and so privily and craftily did they enter into my breast, that I could not perceive myself to be wounded, till vain glory had almost got the upperhand. O Lord! be merciful to my great offence; and deal not with me according to my great iniquity, but according to the multitude of Thy mercies."

At Geneva, he found in John Calvin a kindred spirit, and was admitted to his friendship. His mind was at this time violently excited by the cruel persecutions of the Romanizing party in the Church of England; but he unfortunately has provided the Romanists with a palliation of their conduct, by exhibiting in himself a temper which has made them conclude that he would have been a Bonner if he could. The modern panegyrist

of Mr. Knox asks, "what terms can be too strong for stigmatizing the execrable system of persecution projected by the dissembling vindictive Gardiner, the brutal barbarity of the bloody Bonner, or the unrelenting insatiable cruelty of Mary." Terms of reprobation against the Marian persecution cannot be too strong, but it is not by returning railing for railing that Christians are to meet their opponents. Besides Gardiner and Bonner only acted on Knox's own principles. A standing text with him, and indeed with all the immediate disciples of Calvin, was that injunction mentioned in the 13th of Deuteronomy against participating in the idolatry of the Gentile nation. "If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly," &c. &c., "thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him, neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare him, neither shalt thou conceal him, but thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death. Thou shalt stone him with stones that he die," &c. "Such, therefore," concludes John Knox, as solicit only to idolatry (Popery,) ought to be punished with death, without favour or respect of persons. The punishment of such crimes. as are idolatry, blasphemy, and others, that touch the majesty of God, doth not pertain to kings or chief rulers only, but to the whole body of the people, and to every member of the same, according to the vocation of every man, and according to that possibility and occasion which God doth minister to revenge the injury done against His glory."—"To the same law, I say, and covenant, are the Gentiles no less bound than were the Jews; whensoever God doth illuminate the eyes of any multitude or people, and putteth the sword in their own hand to remove such enormities from amongst them as before God they know to be abominable."

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The following was the kind of language he used with

reference to the Queen of England. "First,-If Mary and her counsellors had been dead before these days, then should not her iniquity and cruelty so manifestly have appeared to the world. Secondly,-Jezabel never erected half so many gallows in all Israel, as mischievous Mary hath done in London alone. Thirdly,-Would any of you have confessed two years ago, that Mary your mirror had been false, dissembling, unconstant, proud, and a breaker of promises, except such promises as she has made to your God the pope, to the great shame and dishonour of her noble father. Fourthly,-The love of her native country could not move that wicked woman's heart to pity. Fifthly,-She declared herself an open traitoress to the realm of England, contrary to the just laws of the same, to bring in a stranger, and to make a proud stranger king, to the destruction of the nobility, and subversion of the realm. Sixthly,If God for our scourge, suffered her and her cruel council to come to authority. Seventhly,-Under an English name she hath a Spaniard's heart. Eighthly,Much trouble in England for establishing that unhappy and wicked woman's authority, I mean of her that now reigneth in God's wrath."

And after having railed against the queen, the ministry, and the bishops in the coarsest manner, he subjoins a prayer, where he points directly to them. This prayer he recommends to the English; where by misapplying the text, and teaching the subjects to curse the higher powers, he uses the Bible as ill as he had used the government before. We shall present the reader with some of the expressions :-" Repress the pride of those blood-thirsty tyrants, consume them in Thy wrath, pour forth Thy vengeance upon them. O let the vengeance of Thy servants' blood that is shed, be openly shewed upon them in our sight. Delay not Thy vengeance O Lord, but let death devour them in haste, and let the earth swallow them, and let them go down quick to the hells, for there

is no hope of their amendment; the fear and reverence of Thy Holy Name is quite banished from their hearts: and therefore yet again, O Lord, consume them, consume them in Thine anger, and let them never bring their wicked councils to effect, but according to the godly powers let them be taken in the snare which they have prepared for Thine elect."

These are the effects of blind and intemperate zeal. Thus Knox wrests the Scriptures to mislead subjects from their duty, and turns his prayer into sin. We are charged in the Scripture to honour the king, and not to curse him so much as in thought. And the higher powers, though then heathen, are called ministers of God. We are commanded to lay aside all evil speaking, to love our enemies, and pray for them, to bless and not to curse them. Notwithstanding all this, and a great deal more to the same purpose, Knox makes no scruple to speak evil of dignities, and prescribes a prayer for the English to treat their governors, in much harsher language, than St. Michael thought fit to use against the devil.

While Knox was at Geneva, he was invited by the English refugees who had established themselves at Frankfort on the Maine, to officiate as their minister, and reluctantly on the advice of Calvin he accepted the invitation. But John Knox could only tolerate Knoxians, and he laid at Frankfort the foundation of English dissent.

The congregation at Frankfort, in spite of remonstrances from the English refugees at Zurich and Strasburg, had determined to omit the use of the surplice, the litany, the audible responses, and the other ceremonies of the Church of England, both because some of them would seem strange to the Protestants among whom they were residing, and others were superstitious and superfluous. They spoke of the petition, "By Thy Holy Incarnation," &c., as a conjuring of God. They