teur of Greek. Why did
he kill a priest in a bell tower!

In the winter or autumn of 1555, Erskine gave a supper, where Knox was to
argue against crypto-protestantism. When once the Truth, whether
Anglican or Presbyterian, was firmly established, Catholics were
compelled, under very heavy fines, to attend services and sermons which
they believed to be at least erroneous, if not blasphemous. I am not
aware that, in 1555, the Catholic Church, in Scotland, thus vigorously
forced people of Protestant opinions to present themselves at Mass,
punishing nonconformity with ruin. I have not found any complaints to
this effect, at that time. But no doubt an appearance of conformity
might save much trouble, even in the lenient conditions produced by the
character of the Regent and by the political situation. Knox, then,
discovered that "divers who had a zeal to godliness made small scruple to
go to the Mass, or to communicate with the abused sacraments in the
Papistical manner." He himself, therefore, "began to show the impiety of
the Mass, and how dangerous a thing it was to communicate in any sort
with idolatry."

Now to many of his hearers this essential article of his faith--that the
Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist and form of celebration were
"idolatry"--may have been quite a new idea. It was already, however, a
commonplace with Anglican Protestants. Nothing of the sort was to be
found in the _first_ Prayer Book of Edward VI.; broken lights of various
ways of regarding the Sacrament probably played, at this moment, over the
ideas of Knox's Scottish disciples. Indeed, their consciences appear to
have been at rest, for it was _after_ Knox's declaration about the
"idolatrous" character of the Mass that "the matter began to be agitated
from man to man, the conscience of some being afraid."

To us it may seem that the sudden denunciation of a Christian ceremony,
even what may be deemed a perverted Christian ceremony, as sheer
"idolatry," equivalent to the worship of serpents, bulls, or of a foreign
Baal in ancient Israel--was a step calculated to confuse the real issues
and to provoke a religious war of massacre. Knox, we know, regarded
extermination of idolaters as a counsel of perfection, though in the
Christian scriptures not one word could be found to justify his position.
He relied on texts about massacring Amalekites and about Elijah's
slaughter of the prophets of Baal. The Mass was idolatry, was Baal
worshi