conflict might have been abated. Many of them sprang from the fear of
assassination.

But Knox in some of his writings identified his cause with the palace
revolutions of an ancient Oriental people. Not that he was a man of
blood; when in France he dissuaded Kirkcaldy of Grange and others from
stabbing the gaolers in making their escape from prison. Where idolaters
in official position were concerned, and with a pen in his hand, he had
no such scruples. He was a child of the old pre-Christian scriptures; of
the earlier, not of the later prophets.




CHAPTER VI: KNOX IN THE ENGLISH PURITAN TROUBLES AT FRANKFORT: 1554-1555


The consequences of the "Admonition" came home to Knox when English
refugees in Frankfort, impeded by him and others in the use of their
Liturgy, accused him of high treason against Philip and Mary, and the
Emperor, whom he had compared to Nero as an enemy of Christ.

The affair of "The Troubles at Frankfort" brought into view the great
gulf for ever fixed between Puritanism and the Church of England. It was
made plain that Knox and the Anglican community were of incompatible
temperaments, ideas, and, we may almost say, instincts. To Anglicans
like Cranmer, Knox, from the first, was as antipathetic as they were to
him. "We can assure you," wrote some English exiles for religion's sake
to Calvin, "that that outrageous pamphlet of Knox's" (his "Admonition")
"added much oil to the flame of persecution in England. For before the