“Offerings,” of course, is the term in our version for sacrifices, whether of animals or of “unleavened wafers anointed with oil.”  The argument from analogy was, I infer, that the Mass, with its wafer, was precisely such an “offering,” such a survival in Catholic ritual, as in Jewish ritual St. Paul consented to, by the advice of the Church of Jerusalem; consequently Protestants in a Catholic country, under the existing circumstances, might attend the Mass.  The Mass was not “idolatry.”  The analogy halts, like all analogies, but so, of course, and to fatal results, does Knox’s analogy between the foreign worships of Israel and the Mass.  “She thinks not that idolatry, but good religion,” said Lethington to Knox once, speaking of Queen Mary’s Mass.  “So thought they that offered their children unto Moloch,” retorted the reformer.  Manifestly the Mass is, of the two, much more on a level with the “offering” of St. Paul than with human sacrifices to Moloch! {66}

In his reply Knox, as he states his own argument, altogether overlooked the offering of St. Paul, which, as far as we understand, was the essence of his opponents’ contention.  He said that “to pay vows was never idolatry,” but “the Mass from the original was and remained odious idolatry, therefore the facts were most unlike.  Secondly, I greatly doubt whether either James’s commandment or Paul’s obedience proceeded from the Holy Ghost,” about which Knox was, apparently, better informed than these Apostles and the Church of Jerusalem.  Next, Paul was presently in danger from a mob, which had been falsely told that he took Greeks into the Temple.  Hence it was manifest “that God approved not that means of reconciliation.”  Obviously the danger of an Apostle from a misinformed mob is no sort of evidence to divine approval or disapproval of his behaviour. {67} We shall later find that when Knox was urging on some English nonconformists the beauty of conformity (1568), he employed the very precedent of St. Paul’s conduct at Jerusalem, which he rejected when it was urged at Erskine’s supper party!

We have dwelt on this example of Knox’s logic, because it is crucial.  The reform of the Church of Christ could not be achieved without cruel persecution on both parts, while Knox was informing Scotland that all members of the old Faith were as much idolaters as Israelites who sacrificed their children to a foreign God, while to extirpate idolaters was the duty of a Christian prince.  Lethington, as he soon showed, was as clear-sighted in regard to Knox’s logical methods as any man of to-day, but he “concluded, saying, I see perfectly that our shifts will serve nothing before God, seeing that they stand us in so small stead before man.”  But either Lethington conformed and went to Mass, or Mary of Guise expected nothing of the sort from him, for he remained high in her favour, till he betrayed her in 1559.