In the published “Admonition,” however, of July 1554, we find Knox exclaiming:  “God, for His great mercy’s sake, stir up some Phineas, Helias, or Jehu, that the blood of abominable idolaters may pacify God’s wrath, that it consume not the whole multitude.  Amen.” {49a} This is a direct appeal to the assassin.  If anybody will play the part of Phinehas against “idolaters”—­that is the Queen of England and Philip of Spain—­God’s anger will be pacified.  “Delay not thy vengeance, O Lord, but let death devour them in haste . . .  For there is no hope of their amendment, . . .  He shall send Jehu to execute his just judgments against idolaters.  Jezebel herself shall not escape the vengeance and plagues that are prepared for her portion.” {49b} These passages are essential.  Professor Hume Brown expresses our own sentiments when he remarks:  “In casting such a pamphlet into England at the time he did, Knox indulged his indignation, in itself so natural under the circumstances, at no personal risk, while he seriously compromised those who had the strongest claims on his most generous consideration.”  This is plain truth, and when some of Knox’s English brethren later behaved to him in a manner which we must wholly condemn, their conduct, they said, had for a motive the mischief done to Protestants in England by his fiery “Admonition,” and their desire to separate themselves from the author of such a pamphlet.

Knox did not, it will be observed, here call all or any of the faithful to a general massacre of their Catholic fellow-subjects.  He went to that length later, as we shall show.  In an epistle of 1554 he only writes:  “Some shall demand, ‘What then, shall we go and slay all idolaters?’ That were the office, dear brethren, of every civil magistrate within his realm. . . .  The slaying of idolaters appertains not to every particular man.” {49c}

This means that every Protestant king should massacre all his inconvertible Catholic subjects!  This was indeed a counsel of perfection; but it could never be executed, owing to the carnal policy of worldly men.

In writing about “the office of the civil magistrate,” Knox, a Border Scot of the age of the blood feud, seems to have forgotten, first, that the Old Testament prophets of the period were not unanimous in their applause of Jehu’s massacre of the royal family; next, that between the sixteenth century A.D. and Jehu, had intervened the Christian revelation.  Our Lord had given no word of warrant to murder or massacre!  No persecuted apostle had dealt in appeals to the dagger.  As for Jehu, a prophet had condemned his conduct.  Hosea writes that the Lord said unto him, “Yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu,” but doubtless Knox would have argued that Hosea was temporarily uninspired, as he argued about St. Paul and St. James later.