a deviation from the original
and proper order of nature, to be ranked, no less than slavery, among
the punishments consequent upon the fall of man." But, in practice,
their two roads separated. For the Man of Geneva saw difficulties in the
way of the Scripture proof in the cases of Deborah and Huldah, and in
the prophecy of Isaiah that queens should be the nursing mothers of the
Church. And as the Bible was not decisive, he thought the subject should
be let alone, because, "by custom and public consent and long practice,
it has been established that realms and principalities may descend to
females by hereditary right, and it would not be lawful to unsettle
governments which are ordained by the peculiar providence of God." I
imagine Knox's ears must have burned during this interview. Think of him
listening dutifully to all this--how it would not do to meddle with
anointed kings--how there was a peculiar providence in these great
affairs; and then think of his own peroration, and the "noble heart"
whom he looks for "to vindicate the liberty of his country"; or his
answer to Queen Mary, when she asked him who he was, to interfere in the
affairs of Scotland: "Madame, a subject born within the same!" Indeed,
the two doctors who differed at this private conversation represented,
at the moment, two principles of enormous import in the subsequent
history of Europe. In Calvin we have represented that passive obedience,
that toleration of injustice and absurdity, that holding back of the
hand from political affairs as from something unclean, which lost
France, if we are to believe M. Michelet, for the Reformation; a spirit
necessarily fatal in the long-run to the existence of any sect that may
profess it; a suicidal doctrine that survives among us to this day in
narrow views of personal duty, and the low political morality of many
virtuous men. In Knox, on the other hand, we see foreshadowed the whole
Puritan Revolution and the scaffold of Charles I.

There is little doubt in my mind that this interview was what caused
Knox to print his book without a name.[68] It was a dangerous thing to
contradict the Man of Geneva, and doubly so, surely, when one had had
the advantage of correction from him in a private conversation; and Knox
had his little flock of English refugees to consider. If they had fallen
into bad odour at Geneva, where else was there left to flee to? It was
printed, as I said, in 1558; and, by a singular _mal-a-propo