sermon declaring a doctrine accepted by Knox, namely, that any
congregation could call on any man in whom they "espied the gifts of God"
to be their preacher; he offered Knox the post, and all present agreed.
Knox wept, and for days his gloom declared his sense of his
responsibility: such was "his holy vocation." The garrison was,
confessedly, brutal, licentious, and rapacious, but they "all" partook of
the holy Communion. {28}

In controversy, Knox declared the Church to be "the synagogue of Satan,"
and in the Pope he detected and denounced "the Man of Sin." On the
following Sunday he proved, from Daniel, that the Roman Church is "that
last Beast." The Church is also anti-Christ, and "the Hoore of Babylon,"
and Knox dilated on the personal misconduct of Popes and "all shavelings
for the most part." He contrasted Justification by Faith with the
customs of pardons and pilgrimages.

After these remarks, a controversy was held between Knox and the
sub-prior, Wynram, the Scottish Vicar of Bray, Knox being understood to
maintain that no bishop who did not preach was really a bishop; that the
Mass is "abominable idolatry"; that Purgatory does not exist; and that
the tithes are not necessarily the property of churchmen--a doctrine very
welcome to the hungry nobles of Scotland. Knox, of course, easily
overcame an ignorant opponent, a friar, who joined in the fray. His own
arguments he later found time to write out fully in the French galleys,
in which he was a prisoner, after the fall of the castle. If he "wrate
in the galleys," as he says, they cannot have been always such floating
hells as they are usually reckoned.

That Knox, and other captives from the castle, were placed in the galleys
after their surrender, was an abominable stretch of French power. They