on the accession of Mary Tudor. From Dieppe he had sent a tract to
England, praying God to stir up some Phineas or Jehu to shed the blood of
"abominable idolaters,"--obviously of Mary of England and Philip of
Spain. On earlier occasions he had followed Calvin in deprecating such
sanguinary measures. The Scot, after a stormy period of quarrels with
Anglican refugees in Frankfort, moved to Geneva, where the city was under
a despotism of preachers and of Calvin. Here Knox found the model of
Church government which, in a form if possible more extreme, he later
planted in Scotland.

There, in 1549-52, the Church, under Archbishop Hamilton, Beaton's
successor, had been confessing her iniquities in Provincial Councils, and
attempting to purify herself on the lines of the tolerant and charitable
Catechism issued by the Archbishop in 1552. Apparently a _modus vivendi_
was being sought, and Protestants were inclined to think that they might
be "occasional conformists" and attend Mass without being false to their
convictions. But in this brief lull Knox came over to Scotland at the
end of harvest, in 1555. On this point of occasional conformity he was
fixed. The Mass was idolatry, and idolatry, by the law of God, was a
capital offence. Idolaters must be converted or exterminated; they were
no better than Amalekites.

This was the central rock of Knox's position: tolerance was impossible.
He remained in Scotland, preaching and administering the Sacrament in the
Genevan way, till June 1556. He associated with the future leaders of
the religious revolution: Erskine of Dun, Lord Lorne (in 1558, fifth Earl
of Argyll), James Stewart, bastard of James V., and lay Prior of St
Andrews, and of Macon in France; and the Earl of Glencairn. William
Maitland of Lethington, "the flower of the wits of Scotland," was to Knox
a less congenial acquaintance. Not till May 1556 was Knox summoned to