Scot of the age of the blood feud, seems to have forgotten, first, that
the Old Testament prophets of the period were not unanimous in their
applause of Jehu's massacre of the royal family; next, that between the
sixteenth century A.D. and Jehu, had intervened the Christian revelation.
Our Lord had given no word of warrant to murder or massacre! No
persecuted apostle had dealt in appeals to the dagger. As for Jehu, a
prophet had condemned _his_ conduct. Hosea writes that the Lord said
unto him, "Yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel
upon the house of Jehu," but doubtless Knox would have argued that Hosea
was temporarily uninspired, as he argued about St. Paul and St. James
later.

However this delicate point may be settled, the appeal for a Phinehas is
certainly unchristian. The idolaters, the unreformed, might rejoice,
with the Nuncio of 1583, that the Duc de Guise had a plan for murdering
Elizabeth, though it was not to be communicated to the Vicar of God, who
should have no such dealings against "that wicked woman." To some
Catholics, Elizabeth: to Knox, Mary was as Jezebel, and might laudably be
assassinated. In idolaters nothing can surprise us; when persecuted
they, in their unchristian fashion, may retort with the dagger or the
bowl. But that Knox should have frequently maintained the doctrine of
death to religious opponents is a strange and deplorable circumstance. In
reforming the Church of Christ he omitted some elements of Christianity.

Suppose, for a moment, that in deference to the teaching of the Gospel,
Knox had never called for a Jehu, but had ever denounced, by voice and
pen, those murderous deeds of his own party which he celebrates as "godly
facts," he would have raised Protestantism to a moral pre-eminence. Dark
pages of Scottish history might never have been written: the consciences
of men might have been touched, and the cruelties of the religious