le, yea, _or ane pairt of the people_,
may execute God's jugementis against their King, being ane offender,"
{242b} he would have exhibited them. I do not believe that he had any
such letters from such men as Bullinger and Calvin. Indeed, we may ask
whether the question of the Queen's Mass had arisen in any realm of
Europe except Scotland. Where was there a Catholic prince ruling over a
Calvinistic state? If nowhere, then the question would not be raised,
except by Knox in his letter to Calvin of October 24, 1561. And where
was Calvin's answer, and to what effect?

Knox may have forgotten, and Lethington did not know, that, about 1558-
59, in a tract, already noticed (pp. 101-103 supra), of 450 pages against
the Anabaptists, Knox had expressed the reverse of his present opinion
about religious Regicide. He is addressing the persecuting Catholic
princes of Europe: " . . . Ye shall perish, both temporally and for ever.
And by whom doth it most appear that temporally ye shall be punished? By
_us_, whom ye banish, whom ye spoil and rob, whom cruelly ye persecute,
and whose blood ye daily shed? {243a} There is no doubt, but as the
victory which overcometh the world is our faith, so it behoveth us to
possess our souls in our patience. We neither privily nor openly deny
the power of the Civil Magistrate. . . . "

The chosen saints and people of God, even when under oppression, lift not
the hand, but possess their souls in patience, says Knox, in 1558-59. But
the idolatrous shall be temporally punished--by other hands. "And what
instruments can God find in this life more apt to punish you than those"
(the Anabaptists), "that hate and detest all lawful powers? . . . God
will not use his saints and chosen people to punish you. _For with them
there is always mercy_, yea, even although God have pronounced a curse
and malediction, as in the history of Joshua is plain." {243b}

In this passage Knox is speaking for the English exiles in Geneva. He
asserts that we "neither publicly nor privately deny the power of the
Civil Magistrate," in face of his own published tracts of appeal to a
Jehu or a Phinehas, and of his own claim that the Prophet may preach
treason, and that his instruments may commit treason. To be sure all the
English in Geneva were not necessarily of Knox's mind.

It is altogether a curious passage. God's people are more merciful than
God! Israel was bidden to exterminate all idolaters in the Promised