as well as men, and they had a special
claim on the sympathy of their teachers when central doubts attacked
them. Whether these doubts in the case of Mrs Bowes, _or in that of
Knox_, arose in the line of any particular enquiries does not appear. He
treats them as if they were rather moral than intellectual, and born of
the feebleness of the soul under temptation. And in this relation it
says not a little for his estimate of Mrs Bowes, whom he was leaving
behind under the Marian persecution, and with her husband and most of
her family hostile to her, that, instead of attenuating, he rather
magnifies the external difficulties she had to meet.

'Your adversary, sister, doth labour that ye should doubt
whether this be the Word of God or not. If there had never been
testimonial of the undoubted truth thereof before these our
ages, may not such things as we see daily come to pass prove the
verity thereof? Doth it not affirm that it shall be preached,
and yet contemned and lightly regarded by many; that the true
professors thereof shall be hated with [by] father, mother, and
others of the contrary religion; that the most faithful shall
cruelly be persecuted? And come not all these things to pass in
ourselves?'[47]

But sceptical or speculative doubts were not Mrs Bowes' chief trouble.
She writes Knox complaining of her temptations--even temptations of
sense. And chiefly and continually she complained of past guilt and
present sin, by reason of which she felt as if 'remission of sins in
Christ Jesus pertained nothing to her.'[48] This was not a case for the
'sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort' which the Church of England
ascribes to the doctrine of Predestination rightly used. Nor does Knox
deal with it--at least in his letters--by the simple and peremptory
preaching of the Evangel. He recognised it as a case calling for
sympathy, and he does not find the sympathy hard. Knox, indeed, like the
other Reformers, had parted for ever with the mediaeval idea of salvation
by self-torture--even by self-torture for sin. Like all the wisest of
the human race, too--even before Christianity came to sanction their
surmise--he held that religion must be an objective thing, and that
salvation lies in dealing, not with ourselves, but with One outside of
us and above. Yet it is a salvation from sin, and the new life now
springing up throughout Europe was intensely a moral life. The faith,
too, on