e.... And methought they spake as if joy did make
them speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture
language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said,
that they were to me as if they had found a new world, as if
they were people that dwelt alone, and were not to be reckoned
among their neighbours.'--Bunyan's _Grace Abounding_.

[43] 'Works,' iii. 350.

[44] 'Works,' iii. 360.

[45] 'Works,' iii. 366.

[46] 'Works,' iii. 368.

[47] 'Works,' iii. 357. Browning makes his good old Pope feel, in the
later Renaissance, as if Christian heroism had been

'so possible
When in the way stood Nero's cross and stake,
So hard now'--

and, looking back almost regretfully to Nero's time, to ask--

'How could saints and martyrs _fail_ see truth
Streak the night's blackness?'

'The Ring and the Book. The Pope,' line 1827.

[48] 'Works,' vi. 514.

[49] 'The examples of God's children always complaining of their own
wretchedness serve for the penitent that _they_ slide not into
desperation.'--'Works,' vi. 85.

[50] 'Works,' iii. 386.

[51] 'Works,' vi. 513.

[52] It is of the letter from which the above is taken that Knox in
publishing it long after says apologetically, 'If it serve not for this
estate of Scotland, yet it will serve a troubled conscience, so long as
the Kirk of God remaineth in either realm.'--'Works,' vi. 617.

[53] 'Works,' iii. 362.

[54] 'Works,' iv. 252.

[55] 'Honest' in that age meant something nearly equivalent to
'honourable,' and that they were 'poor women' may refer to troubles
which they brought to him, other than want of money.

[56] 'Works,' vi. 104.

[57] 'Works,' iii. 370.

[58] 'Conditions' refers to inward nature, not outward circumstances. It
may be explained by a letter written nine years later, also to a friend
in England, in which Knox apologises for not having written him for
years, during which the Reformer had been 'tossed with many storms,' yet
might have sent a letter, 'if that this my churlish nature, _for the
most part oppressed with melancholy_, had not staid tongue and pen from
doing of their duty.'--'Works,' vi. 566. Knox in 1553 was suffering
severely from gravel and dyspepsia; one of these was already an 'old
malady'; and both seem to have clung to him during the rest of his life.

[59] 'Works,' vi. 11.

CHAPTER IV

THE PUBLIC LIFE: TO THE PARLIAMENT OF 1560

Knox had pr