the whole world.” {84} As far as I am aware, no one approached Calvin with remonstrance about the monstrosities of the “Appellation,” nor are the passages which I have cited alluded to by more than one biographer of Knox, to my knowledge.  Professor Hume Brown, however, justly remarks that what the Kirk, immediately after Knox’s death, called “Erastianism” (in ordinary parlance the doctrine that the Civil power may interfere in religion) could hardly “be approved in more set terms” than by Knox.  He avers that “the ordering and reformation of religion . . . doth especially appertain to the Civil Magistrate . . . " “The King taketh upon him to command the Priests.” {85} The opposite doctrine, that it appertains to the Church, is an invention of Satan.  To that diabolical invention, Andrew Melville and the Kirk returned in the generation following, while James VI. held to Knox’s theory, as stated in the “Appellation.”

The truth is that Knox contemplates a State in which the civil power shall be entirely and absolutely of his own opinions; the King, as “Christ’s silly vassal,” to quote Andrew Melville, being obedient to such prophets as himself.  The theories of Knox regarding the duty to revenge God’s feud by the private citizen, and regarding religious massacre by the civil power, ideas which would justify the Bartholomew horrors, appear to be forgotten in modern times.  His address to the Commonalty, as citizens with a voice in the State, represents the progressive and permanent element in his politics.  We have shown, however, that, before Knox’s time, the individual Scot was a thoroughly independent character.  “The man hath more words than the master, and will not be content unless he knows the master’s counsel.”

By March 1558, Knox had returned from Dieppe to Geneva.  In Scotland, since the godly Band of December 1557, events were moving in two directions.  The Church was continuing in a belated and futile attempt at reformation of manners (and wonderfully bad manners they confessedly were), and of education from within.  The Congregation, the Protestants, on the other hand, were preparing openly to defend themselves and their adherents from persecution, an honest, manly, and laudable endeavour, so long as they did not persecute other Christians.  Their preachers—­such as Harlaw, Methuen, and Douglas—­were publicly active.  A moment of attempted suppression must arrive, greatly against the personal wishes of Archbishop Hamilton, who dreaded the conflict.

In March 1558, Hamilton courteously remonstrated with Argyll for harbouring Douglas.  He himself was “heavily murmured against” for his slackness in the case of Argyll, by churchmen and other “well given people,” and by Mary of Guise, whose daughter, by April 24, 1558, was married to the Dauphin of France.  Argyll replied that he knew how the Archbishop was urged on, but declined to abandon Douglas.