Diary which contained the secret
memoirs of his life, with all its inconsistencies and escapades, had
been religiously preserved; nor, when he came to die, does he appear to
have provided for its destruction. So we may conceive him faithful to
the end to all his dear and early memories; still mindful of Mrs. Hely
in the woods at Epsom; still lighting at Islington for a cup of kindness
to the dead; still, if he heard again that air that once so much
disturbed him, thrilling at the recollection of the love that bound him
to his wife.

FOOTNOTE:

[59] H. R. Wheatley, "Samuel Pepys and the World he Lived in." 1880.

IX

JOHN KNOX AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN

THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT FEMALE RULE

When first the idea became widely spread among men that the Word of God,
instead of being truly the foundation of all existing institutions, was
rather a stone which the builders had rejected, it was but natural that
the consequent havoc among received opinions should be accompanied by
the generation of many new and lively hopes for the future. Somewhat as
in the early days of the French Revolution, men must have looked for an
immediate and universal improvement in their condition. Christianity, up
to that time, had been somewhat of a failure politically. The reason was
now obvious, the capital flaw was detected, the sickness of the body
politic traced at last to its efficient cause. It was only necessary to
put the Bible thoroughly into practice, to set themselves strenuously to
realise in life the Holy Commonwealth, and all abuses and iniquities
would surely pass away. Thus, in a pageant played at Geneva in the year
1523, the world was represented as a sick man at the end of his wits for
help, to whom his doctor recommends Lutheran specifics.[60]

The Reformers themselves had set their affections in a different world,
and professed to look for the finished result of their endeavours on the
other side of death. They took no interest in politics as such; they
even condemned political action as Antichristian: notably, Luther in the
case of the Peasants' War. And yet, as the purely religious question
was inseparably complicated with political difficulties, and they had to
make opposition, from day to day, against principalities and powers,
they were led, one after another, and again and again, to leave the
sphere which was more strictly their own, and meddle, for good and evil,
with the affairs of State. Not much was