religion) could hardly "be approved in more set terms" than by Knox. He
avers that "the ordering and reformation of religion . . . doth
especially appertain to the Civil Magistrate . . . " "The King taketh
upon him to command the Priests." {85} The opposite doctrine, that it
appertains to the Church, is an invention of Satan. To that diabolical
invention, Andrew Melville and the Kirk returned in the generation
following, while James VI. held to Knox's theory, as stated in the
"Appellation."

The truth is that Knox contemplates a State in which the civil power
shall be entirely and absolutely of his own opinions; the King, as
"Christ's silly vassal," to quote Andrew Melville, being obedient to such
prophets as himself. The theories of Knox regarding the duty to revenge
God's feud by the private citizen, and regarding religious massacre by
the civil power, ideas which would justify the Bartholomew horrors,
appear to be forgotten in modern times. His address to the Commonalty,
as citizens with a voice in the State, represents the progressive and
permanent element in his politics. We have shown, however, that, before
Knox's time, the individual Scot was a thoroughly independent character.
"The man hath more words than the master, and will not be content unless
he knows the master's counsel."

By March 1558, Knox had returned from Dieppe to Geneva. In Scotland,
since the godly Band of December 1557, events were moving in two
directions. The Church was continuing in a belated and futile attempt at
reformation of manners (and wonderfully bad manners they confessedly
were), and of education from within. The Congregation, the Protestants,
on the other hand, were preparing openly to defend themselves and their
adherents from persecution, an honest, manly, and laudable endeavour, so
long as they did not persecute other Christians. Their preachers--such