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CHAPTER XI: KNOX'S INTRIGUES, AND HIS ACCOUNT OF THEM, 1559


The Reformers, and Knox as their secretary and historian, had now reached
a very difficult and delicate point in their labours. Their purpose was,
not by any means to secure toleration and freedom of conscience, but to
extirpate the religion to which they were opposed. It was the religion
by law existing, the creed of "Authority," of the Regent and of the King
and Queen whom she represented. The position of the Congregation was
therefore essentially that of rebels, and, in the state of opinion at the
period, to be rebels was to be self-condemned. In the eyes of Calvin and
the learned of the Genevan Church, kings were the Lord's appointed, and
the Gospel must not be supported by the sword. "Better that we all
perish a hundred times," Calvin wrote to Coligny in 1561. Protestants,
therefore, if they would resist in arms, had to put themselves in order,
and though Knox had no doubt that to exterminate idolaters was thoroughly
in order, the leaders of his party were obliged to pay deference to
European opinion.

By a singular coincidence they adopted precisely the same device as the
more militant French Protestants laid before Calvin in August 1559-March
1560. The Scots and the Protestant French represented that they were
illegally repressed by foreigners: in Scotland by Mary of Guise with her
French troops; in France by the Cardinal and Duc de Guise, foreigners,
who had possession of the persons and authority of the "native prince" of