The Confession, with practically no criticism or opposition, was passed en bloc on August 17.  The Evangel is candidly stated to be “death to the sons of perdition,” but the Confession is offered hopefully to “weak and infirm brethren.”  Not to enter into the higher theology, we learn that the sacraments can only be administered “by lawful ministers.”  We learn that they are “such as are appointed to the preaching of the Word, or into whose mouth God has put some sermon of exhortation” and who are “lawfully chosen thereto by some Kirk.”  Later, we find that rather more than this, and rather more than some of the “trew ministeris” then had, is required.

As the document reaches us, it appears to have been “mitigated” by Lethington and Wynram, the Vicar of Bray of the Reformation.  They altered, according to the English resident, Randolph, “many words and sentences, which sounded to proceed rather of some evil conceived opinion than of any sound judgment.”  As Lethington certainly was not “a lawful minister,” it is surprising if Knox yielded to his criticism.

Lethington and Wynram also advised that the chapter on obedience to the sovereign power should be omitted, as “an unfit matter to be treated at this time,” when it was not very obvious who the “magistrate” or authority might be.  In this sense Randolph, Arran’s English friend, wrote to Cecil. {174a} The chapter, however, was left standing.  The sovereign, whether in empire, kingdom, duke, prince, or in free cities, was accepted as “of God’s holy ordinance.  To him chiefly pertains the reformation of the religion,” which includes “the suppression of idolatry and superstition”; and Catholicism, we know, is idolatry.  Superstition is less easily defined, but we cannot doubt that, in Knox’s mind, the English liturgy was superstitious. {174b} To resist the Supreme Power, “doing that which pertains to his charge” (that is, suppressing Catholicism and superstition, among other things), is to resist God.  It thus appears that the sovereign is not so supreme but that he must be disobeyed when his mandates clash with the doctrine of the Kirk.  Thus the “magistrate” or “authority”—­the State, in fact—­is limited by the conscience of the Kirk, which may, if it pleases, detect idolatry or superstition in some act of secular policy.  From this theory of the Kirk arose more than a century of unrest.

On August 24, the practical consequences of the Confession were set forth in an Act, by which all hearers or celebrants of the Mass are doomed, for the first offence, to mere confiscation of all their goods and to corporal punishment:  exile rewards a repetition of the offence:  the third is punished by death.  “Freedom from a persecuting spirit is one of the noblest features of Knox’s character,” says Laing; “neither led away by enthusiasm nor party feelings nor success, to retaliate the oppressions and atrocities that disgraced the adherents of popery.” {174c} This is an amazing remark!  Though we do not know that Knox was ever “accessory to the death of a single individual for his religious opinions,” we do know that he had not the chance; the Government, at most, and years later, put one priest to death.  But Knox always insisted, vainly, that idolaters “must die the death.”