consist in holding particular opinions on the
functions and nature of his Master, and only the second in obeying his
Master's commands, then always, with a uniformity more remarkable than is
obtained in any other historical phenomena, there have followed dissension,
animosity, and in later ages bloodshed. Christianity, as a principle of
life, has been the most powerful check upon the passions of mankind.
Christianity as a speculative system of opinion has converted them into
monsters of cruelty."

Holding such decided views on doctrinalism, it might have been thought that
Froude would have visited all the warring sects of the sixteenth century
with equal judgment. No Church was more doctrinal than that of Geneva; no
Calvinist ever was more dogmatic than John Knox. But the men who fought the
battle of the Reformation in England and Scotland were, in the main, the
Calvinists; and to Froude the Reformation was the beginning of a new and
better era, when the yoke of the priest had been finally cast away.
"Calvinism," he said in one of his addresses at St. Andrews, "was the
spirit which rises in revolt against untruth." John Knox was too heroic a
figure not to rouse the artistic sense in Froude. "There lies one," said
the Regent Morton over his coffin, "who never feared the face of mortal
man." Froude has made this epitaph the text of the noblest eulogy ever
delivered on Knox. "No grander figure can be found, in the entire history
of the Reformation in this island, than that of Knox." He surpassed
Cromwell and Burghley in integrity of purpose and in purity of methods. He
towered above the Regent Murray in intellect, and he worked on a larger
scale than Latimer. "His was the voice that taught the peasant of the
Lothians that he was a free man, the equal in the sight of God with the
proudest peer or prelate that had trampled on his forefathers. He was the
one antagonist whom Mary Stuart could not soften nor Maitland deceive. He
it was who had raised the poor commons of his country into a stern and
rugged people, who might be hard, narrow, superstitious, and fanatical, but
who nevertheless were men whom neither king, noble, nor priest could force
again to submit to tyranny." Yet even here, Froude could not refrain from
quoting the sardonic comment of the English ambassador at Edinburgh: Knox
behaved, said Randolph, "as though he were of God's privy council."

It is certain, at least, that other reformers, who were not greatly