theological doctrinalism of all kinds; he revolted against the idea that
the clergy should form a separate order. The pretensions of Whitgift and
Laud, the High Anglican school of Keble and Pusey, the whole conception of
the Church and the priesthood which underlay the Oxford Movement, were
things obnoxious to him. In a characteristic passage in the chapter on the
Massacre of St. Bartholomew he reveals his hatred and distrust of
dogmatism. "Whenever the doctrinal aspect of Christianity has been
prominent above the practical," he wrote, "whenever the first duty of the
believer has been held to consist in holding particular opinions on the
functions and nature of his Master, and only the second in obeying his
Master's commands, then always, with a uniformity more remarkable than is
obtained in any other historical phenomena, there have followed dissension,
animosity, and in later ages bloodshed. Christianity, as a principle of
life, has been the most powerful check upon the passions of mankind.
Christianity as a speculative system of opinion has converted them into
monsters of cruelty."

Holding such decided views on doctrinalism, it might have been thought that
Froude would have visited all the warring sects of the sixteenth century
with equal judgment. No Church was more doctrinal than that of Geneva; no
Calvinist ever was more dogmatic than John Knox. But the men who fought the
battle of the Reformation in England and Scotland were, in the main, the
Calvinists; and to Froude the Reformation was the beginning of a new and
better era, when the yoke of the priest had been finally cast away.
"Calvinism," he said in one of his addresses at St. Andrews, "was the
spirit which rises in revolt against untruth." John Knox was too heroic a
figure not to rouse the artistic sense in Froude. "There lies one," said
the Regent Morton over his coffin, "who never feared the face of mortal
man." Froude has made this epitaph the text of the noblest eulogy ever
delivered on Knox. "No grander figure can be found, in the entire history