time, a perfectly manly and moderate one, granting
their dulness of conscience in respect to the real outrage. "If the
Queen's grace would suffer the religion then begun to proceed, and not
trouble their brethren and sisters that had professed Christ Jesus with
them," they declared themselves ready to submit in any way to the
Queen's commandment; but without this promise they would not stir. Knox
himself, however, who was the soul of the party, was, according to his
wont, less self-controlled. He considered it his duty to make a special
statement to Argyle and the Lord James, the future Earl of Murray, who
were the Queen's first envoys, and to send a message to the Regent in
his own name, with a curious assumption of the prophet's office, which
is exceedingly remarkable so near the beginning of his career, and is at
once an evidence of the enormous influence which he had acquired, and of
the astonishing confidence in his own mission and powers which must have
helped him to acquire it. "Say to the Queen's Grace Regent," he required
them, "in my name, that we whom she in her blind rage doth persecute are
God's servants, faithful and obedient subjects to the authority of this
realm: that that religion which she pretendeth to maintain by fire and
sword is not the religion of Christ Jesus, but is express contrarie to
the same, ane superstition devised by the brain of man: which I offer
myself to prove against all that within Scotland will maintain the
contrarie--liberty of tongue being granted to me, and God's written word
being admitted for judge."

Thus the preacher flung down his glove like a knight of the old
chivalry, with a fiery and eager hardihood which we could the better
admire had he done more justice to his adversaries, especially the
Queen, whose good intentions it seems so difficult to misconstrue. He
warns her also, in the same high tone, that her enterprise will not
succeed, and that the end shall be her confusion, "onless betimes she
repent and desist," with all the stern certainty of an inspired prophet.
Whether the serious emissaries, who, though they were Protestants, "had
begun to muse," and perhaps could not keep their eyes from remarking the
smoke and dust of the ruins behind the energetic figure of the Reformer,
conveyed this message in full we may be permitted to doubt. They were
both young men, and it is unlikely they would prejudice their own career
by repeating to the Queen's Grace anything about h