whereof cannot the world deny (be it never so blind) to be
fulfilled, and the rest, alas! I fear shall follow with greater
expedition, and in more full perfection, than my sorrowful heart
desireth. Those revelations and assurances notwithstanding, I
did ever abstain to commit anything to writ, contented only to
have obeyed the charge of Him who commanded me to cry.'[23]

And when he did 'cry,' from the pulpit or elsewhere, he was careful to
found his claim to be heard, not on private intimations, but on God's
open word. As early as 1554 he denounces judgment to come upon England
(which, by the way, was not fulfilled in the sense which he expected),
but he adds immediately--

'This my affirmation proceedeth, not from any conjecture of
man's fantasy, but from the ordinary course of God's judgments
against manifest contemners of his precepts from the
beginning;'[24]

and more fully in another contemporary document--

'But ye would know the grounds of my certitude: God grant that
hearing them ye may understand and steadfastly believe the same.
My assurances are not the marvels of Merlin, nor yet the dark
sentences of profane prophesies; but, 1. the plain truth of
God's word, 2. the invincible justice of the everlasting God,
and 3. the ordinary course of his punishments and plagues from
the beginning, are my assurance and grounds.'[25]

This was early in his career. At its close Knox, now very frail, was
deeply aggrieved by the troubles caused by Lethington and Kirkaldy, who
held the castle of Edinburgh. His verbal predictions of their coming
end, as reported (after the event however) by those around his
death-bed, and his assurance at the same time of 'mercy to the soul' of
the chivalrous Kirkaldy, are among the most striking incidents of this
kind in his life. But in his Will, written contemporaneously on 13th May
1572, he says,

'I am not ignorant that many would that I should enter into
particular determination of these present troubles; to whom I
plainly and simply answer, that, as I never exceeded the bounds
of God's Scriptures, so will I not do, in this part, by God's
grace.'[26]

This did not prevent him from freely describing his old friends in the
Castle as murderers, and predicting their destruction, especially as
they seemed now to be planning a counter-revolution in the interest of
the exiled Queen of Scots. They r