The Reformation to the Union (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ...a preacher of persecution, and a justifier of assassination; and they could prove each point. It would be waste of time to discuss the question of tolerance. Knox did not know the meaning of the word; no more did anyone else in that age who was deeply engaged in the religious dispute on either side. A few laymen like Lethington may have grasped the idea; but it was because they were connected with the controversy only by accident. A more pregnant question, and one by no means so simple as it seems, is how far this intolerance can be justified. Knox's position is clearly laid down in the treatise on Predestination: --"We say, the man is not persecuted for his conscience, that, declining from God, blaspheming his Majestie, and contemning his religion, obstinately defendeth erroneous and fals doctrine. This man, I say, lawfully convicted, if he suffer the death pronounced by a lawful Magistrate, is not persecuted (as in the name of Servetus ye furiously complein), but he suffereth punishment according to God's commandment, pronounced in Deuteronomie, the 13 chapter."1 But it must be added that, although this theory would have justified atrocities like the worst of Calvin's acts, Knox's hands were never stained with blood shed on account of religious opinion. Not that he shrank from blood when, I 1 Works, V. 231. as he thought, occasion called for it. He rejoiced over the death of Beaton. He was equally satisfied with the fate of "that pultron and vyle knave Davie" (Rizzio), who was "justlie punished"; and Morton, Lindsay, and Ruthven, his slayers, are described as "unworthely left of thare brethrein." And yet on other occasions, when men of more moderate opinions would...