, I say, my Lords here present speak nothing in the
contrary of the doctrine proposed, I cannot but hold it to be
the very truth of God, and the contrary to be deceivable
doctrine.'

The rest of the Lords, says Randolph, with common consent, and 'as glad
a will as ever I heard men speak,' allowed the same.

'Divers, with protestation of their conscience and faith,
desired rather presently to end their lives than ever to think
contrary unto that allowed there. Many also offered to shed
their blood in defence of the same. The old Lord of Lindsay, as
grave and goodly a man as ever I saw, said: "I have lived many
years; I am the oldest in this company of my sort; now that it
hath pleased God to let me see this day, where so many nobles
and others have allowed so worthy a work, I will say, with
Simeon, _Nunc dimittis_."'

It was the birthday of a people. For not in that assembly alone, and
within the dim walls of the old Parliament House of Edinburgh, was that
faith confessed and those vows made. Everywhere the Scottish burgess and
the Scottish peasant felt himself called to deal, individually and
immediately, with Christianity and the divine; and everywhere the
contact was ennobling. 'Common man' as he was, 'the vague, shoreless
universe had become for him a firm city, and a dwelling-place which he
knew. Such virtue was in belief: in these words well spoken, _I
believe_.'[83] But being a common man in Scotland, his religion could
not be isolated, or his faith for himself alone. Wherever he dwelt, 'in
our towns and places reformed,' he was already a member of a
self-governing republic, a republic within the Scottish State but not of
it, and subject to an invisible King. 'The good old cause' was already
born. It kindled itself, as that son of the Burgher mason in Annandale
says again, 'like a beacon set on high; high as heaven, yet attainable
from earth, whereby the meanest man becomes not a citizen only, but a
member of Christ's visible Church; a veritable hero, if he prove a true
man.'

* * * * *

Day by day at this critical epoch Knox preached in St Giles from the
'prophet Haggeus,' on what he called The Building of the House. In one
sense the foundation was laid already. In another, Parliament might be
called upon to supply one. What foundation was Parliament to lay, and
what structure was promised for the days to come?

[60] 'Works,' i