et may blamelessly preach what men call "treason,"
as we shall see. As to his actual predictions of events, he occasionally
writes as if they were mere deductions from Scripture. God will punish
the idolater; A or B is an idolater; therefore it is safe to predict that
God will punish him or her. "What man then can cease to prophesy?" he
asks; and there is, if we thus consider the matter, no reason why anybody
should ever leave off prophesying. {18a}

But if the art of prophecy is common to all Bible-reading mankind, all
mankind, being prophets, may promulgate treason, which Knox perhaps would
not have admitted. He thought himself more specially a seer, and in his
prayer after the failure of his friends, the murderers of Riccio, he
congratulates himself on being favoured above the common sort of his
brethren, and privileged to "forespeak" things, in an unique degree.

"I dare not deny . . . but that God hath revealed unto me secrets unknown
to the world," he writes {18b}; and these claims soar high above mere
deductions from Scripture. His biographer, Dr. M'Crie, doubts whether we
can dismiss, as necessarily baseless, all stories of "extraordinary
premonitions since the completion of the canon of inspiration." {19}
Indeed, there appears to be no reason why we should draw the line at a
given date, and "limit the operations of divine Providence." I would be
the last to do so, but then Knox's premonitions are sometimes, or
usually, without documentary and contemporary corroboration; once he
certainly prophesied after the event (as we shall see), and he never
troubles himself about his predictions which were unfulfilled, as against
Queen Elizabeth.

He supplied the Kirk with the tradition of supernormal premonitions in
preachers--second-sight and clairvoyance--as in the case of Mr. Peden and
other saints of the Covenant. But just as good cases of clairvoyance as
any of Mr. Peden's are attributed to Catherine de Medici, who was not a
saint, by her daughter, La Reine Margot, and others. In Knox, at all
events, there is no trace of visual or auditory hallucinations, so common
in religious experiences, whatever the creed of the percipient. He was
not a visionary. More than this we cannot safely say about his prophetic
vein.

The enthusiasm which induced a priest, notary, and teacher like Knox to
carry a claymore in defence of a beloved teacher, Wishart, seems more
appropriate to a man of about thirty than a man of f