sting such a pamphlet into England at the time he did, Knox indulged
his indignation, in itself so natural under the circumstances, at no
personal risk, while he seriously compromised those who had the strongest
claims on his most generous consideration." This is plain truth, and
when some of Knox's English brethren later behaved to him in a manner
which we must wholly condemn, their conduct, they said, had for a motive
the mischief done to Protestants in England by his fiery "Admonition,"
and their desire to separate themselves from the author of such a
pamphlet.

Knox did not, it will be observed, here call all or any of the faithful
to a general massacre of their Catholic fellow-subjects. He went to that
length later, as we shall show. In an epistle of 1554 he only writes:
"Some shall demand, 'What then, shall we go and slay all idolaters?'
_That_ were the office, dear brethren, of every civil magistrate within
his realm. . . . The slaying of idolaters appertains not to every
particular man." {49c}

This means that every Protestant king should massacre all his
inconvertible Catholic subjects! This was indeed a counsel of
perfection; but it could never be executed, owing to the carnal policy of
worldly men.

In writing about "the office of the civil magistrate," Knox, a Border
Scot of the age of the blood feud, seems to have forgotten, first, that
the Old Testament prophets of the period were not unanimous in their
applause of Jehu's massacre of the royal family; next, that between the
sixteenth century A.D. and Jehu, had intervened the Christian revelation.
Our Lord had given no word of warrant to murder or massacre! No
persecuted apostle had dealt in appeals to the dagger. As for Jehu, a
prophet had condemned _his_ conduct. Hosea writes that the Lord said
unto him, "Yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel
upon the house of Jehu," but doubtless Knox would have argued that Hosea
was temporarily uninspired, as he argued about St. Paul and St. James
later.

However this delicate point may be settled, the appeal for a Phinehas is
certainly unchristian. The idolaters, the unreformed, might rejoice,
with the Nuncio of 1583, that the Duc de Guise had a plan for murdering
Elizabeth, though it was not to be communicated to the Vicar of God, who
should have no such dealings against "that wicked woman." To some
Catholics, Elizabeth: to Knox, Mary was as Jezebel, and might laudably be
assassinat