did agree to remove all monuments of idolatry," whether this would or
would not have satisfied Calvin.

Opponents of my view urge that Knox, though he knew that the brethren had
nothing to do with the ruin at Perth, yet, in the enthusiasm of six weeks
later, claimed this honour for them, when writing to Mrs. Locke. Still
later, when cool, he told, in his "History," "the frozen truth," the mob
alone was guilty, despite his exhortations and the commandment of the
magistrate. Neither alternative is very creditable to the prophet.

In the "Historie of the Estate of Scotland," it is "the brethren" who
break, burn, and destroy. {113b} In Knox's "History" no mention is made
of the threat of death against the priests. In the letter to Mrs. Locke
he says, apparently of the threat, perhaps of the whole affair, "which
thing did so enrage the venom of the serpent's seed," that she decreed
death against man, woman, and child in Perth, after the fashion of Knox's
favourite texts in Deuteronomy and Chronicles. This was "beastlie
crueltie." The "History" gives the same account of the Regent's
threatening "words which might escape her in choler" (of course we have
no authority for her speaking them at all), but, in the "History," Knox
omits the threat by the brethren of death against the priests--a threat
which none of his biographers mentions!

If the menace against the priests and the ruin of monasteries were not
seditious, what is sedition? But Knox's business, in Book II. of his
"History" (much of it written in September-October 1559), is to prove
that the movement was _not_ rebellious, was purely religious, and all for
"liberty of conscience"--for Protestants. Therefore, in the "History,"
he disclaims the destruction by the brethren of the monasteries--the mob
did that; and he burkes the threat of death to priests: though he told