We se our countrie set furthe for a pray to foreine nations, we
heare the blood of our brethren, the membres of Christ Iesus most
cruellie to be shed, and the monstruous empire of a cruell women
(the secrete counsel of God excepted) we knowe to be the onlie
occasion of all the miseries: and yet with silence we passe the
time as thogh the mater did nothinge appertein to vs. _p_. 3.


The vigour of the persecution had struck all heart out of the Protestants.
Was this to go on for ever? Heart-wrung at the ruthless slaughter--as we,
in our day, have been by the horrors of the Indian mutiny or of the
Bulgarian atrocities---the Reformer sought to know the occasion of all
these calamities. At that moment, he found it in the Empire of Woman.
Afterwards he referred much of this book to the time in which it was
written [_pp_. 58 and 61]. Shall we say that his heart compelled his head
to this argument, that his indignation entangled his understanding on this
subject? Just as MILTON was led to the discussion of the conditions of
divorce, through his desertion by his wife MARY POWELL; so the fiery
martyrdoms of England led KNOX to denounce the female sex in the person of
her whom we still call "Bloody MARY" that was the occasion of them all.

If in the happiest moment of his happiest dream, JOHN KNOX could have
foreseen our good and revered Queen VICTORIA reigning in the hearts of the
millions of her subjects, and ruling an Empire wider by far than those of
Spain and Portugal in his day; if he could have seen England and Scotland
ONE COUNTRY, bearing the name which, as almost of prophecy, he has
foreshadowed for them in this tract, "the Ile of greate Britanny;" if he
could have beheld that one country as it now abides in its strength and