moned him. He was condemned in his absence, and burned in effigy the next day at the market cross. But the people were no longer in the old mood of submission, and to this bonfire they replied with another. "The great idol" of Edinburgh, St. Giles, vanished off his perch in the rood-loft of the High Church, and, after a plunge in the North Loch, the next day was a heap of ashes. The offenders were not forthcoming, and not to be found; and the regent, in high anger, summoned the preachers to answer for them. To secure herself against being a second time baffled as she had been before, by the interference of the people, she put out a proclamation that all persons who had come to Edinburgh without authority should forthwith depart from it. It so happened that "certain faithful of the west," some of Lord Argyle's men, probably, were in the town. They had come in at the news that the preachers were to be tried, and the meaning of this proclamation was perfectly clear to them; so, by way of reply to it, they assembled together, forced their way into presencechamber, where the queen was in council with the bishops, to complain of such strange entertainment; and not getting such an answer as they desired, one of them said to her, "Madam, we know this is the malice and device of those jefwellis and of that bastard (the Archbishop of St. Andrews) that stands by you; we avow to God we shall make a day of it. They oppress us and our tenants for feeding of their idle bellies. They trouble us and our preachers, and would murder them, and us. Shall we suffer this any more? Nay, madam, it shall not be." "And therewith every man put on

his steel bonnet."

When ruling powers have listened to language like this, and answer steel bonnets with smooth speeches and concessions, the one thing left for such rulers is to take them selves away with as much rapidity as they can, for rule they neither do nor can. At this time almost the whole of the nobility, for honest or dishonest reasons, were on the reforming side. The Church, unluckily for itself, was rich they were poor; and if some of them had no sympathy with Protestantism, they had also ceased to believe that any service which Catholicism could do for them entitled it to half the land in Scotland. It was, consequently, with little or no effect, that the bishops now appealed for protection to the nobles. The Archbishop of St. Andrews sent a long remonstrance to Lord Argyle for maintaining a reforming preacher.

"He preaches against idolatry," Lord Argyle answered coldly. I remit it to your lordship's conscience if that be heresy. He preaches against adultery and fornication. I remit that to your lordship's conscience." And the archbishop's connection with Lady Gilton being somewhat notorious, it was difficult for him to meet such an answer.

If the question had been left for Scotland to settle for itself, the solution of it would have been rapid and simple. But the regent knew that sooner or later she might count on the support of France; and she believed, with good reason, that if the real power of France was once brought to bear, such resistance as the Scotch could offer to it would be crushed with little difficulty. The marriage of the young queen with the Dauphin, and the subsequent death of Henry, removed the causes which had hitherto prevented her from being supported. The Guises were again omnipotent in Paris, and their ambition, not contented with France and Scotland, extended itself on the death of Mary Tudor to England as well. With the most extravagant notions of England's weakness, and with a belief, which was rather better grounded, that the majority of the people were ill affected to a Protestant sovereign, they conceived that a French army had only to appear over the border with the flag of Mary Stuart displayed, for the same scenes to be enacted over again as had been witnessed six years before; and that Elizabeth would as easily be shaken from the throne as Jane Grey had been. But the success of the blow might depend upon the speed with which it could be struck; and no time was, therefore, to be lost in bringing Scotland to obedience. Accordingly, under one pretence and another, large bodies of troops were carried over, and the queen regent was instructed to temporize and flatter the Protestants into security, till a sufficient number had been assembled to crush them. It is no slight evidence of their good meaning that they should have allowed themselves to be deceived by her, but deceived they certainly were; and except for Knox's letters, with which he incessantly urged them to watchfulness, they might have been deceived fatally. But the clear strong understanding of Knox, far away as he was, saw through the real position of things. There was no one living whose political judgment was more sound than his, and again and again he laid before them their danger and their duty. He saw that the intention was to make Scotland a French province, and how it would

"God speaketh to your conscience, therefore," he wrote to the lords, "unless ye be dead with the blind world, that you ought to hazard your lives, be it against kings and emperors, for the deliverence of your brethren. For that cause are ye called princes of the people, and receive of your brethren honor, tribute, and homage-not by reason of your birth and progeny, as most part of men falsely do suppose, but by reason of your office and duty, which is to vindicate and deliver your subjects and brethren from all violence and oppression to the uttermost of your power."

In the meantime time the Church, as a prelude to the energetic measures which were in contemplation, thought it decent to attempt some sort of a reformation within itself. We smile as we look through the articles which were resolved upon by the episcopal conclave. They proposed, we presume, to proceed with moderation, and content themselves with doing a little at a time. No

person in future was to hold an ecclesiastical benefice except a priest, such benefices having hitherto furnished a convenient maintenance for illegitimate children. No kirkman was to nourish his bairn in his own

company, but every one was to hold the children of others. And such bairn was in no case to succeed his father in his benefice. The naïveté of these resolutions disarms our indignation, but we shall scarcely wonder any more at the rise or the speed of Protestantism. On the strength of them, however, or rather on the strength of the French troops, they were now determined to go on with the persecution; Walter Milne, an old man of eighty, was seized and burnt; and although the queen regent affected to deplore the bishops' severity, no one doubted that either she herself or the queen in Paris had directed them to proceed. Now, therefore, or never, the struggle was to be. Knox left Geneva, with Calvin's blessing, for a country where he was under sentence of death, and where his appearance would be the signal either for the execution of it or for war. Civil war it could scarcely be called, it would be a war of the Scottish nation against their sovereign supported by a foreign army; but even so, no one knew better than he that armed resistance to a sovereign was the last remedy to which subjects ought to have recourse-a remedy which they are only justified in seeking when to obey man is to disobey God; or to use more human language, when it is no longer possible for them to submit to their sovereign

come.

After the specimen which the Catholies had given of their notion of a reformation, to leave the religious teaching of an earnest people in their hands was scarcely better than leaving it to the devil; and if it was impossible to wrest it from them except by rebellion, the crime would lie at the door of those who had made rebellion necessary. Crime, indeed, there always is at such times; and treason is not against person, but against the law of right and justice. If it be trea. son to resist the authority except in the last extremity, yet when such extremity has arisen, it has arisen through the treason of the authority itself; and, therefore, bad princes, who have obliged their subjects to depose them, are justly punished with the extremest penalties of human justice. That is the naked statement of the law, however widely it may be necessary to qualify it, in its application to life.

On the 2nd of May, 1559, Knox landed in Scotland; crossing over, by a curious coincidence, in the same ship which brought in the new great seal of the kingdom, with the arms of England quartered upon it. The moment was a critical one; for the preachers were all assembled at Perth preparatory to appearing at Stirling on the 10th of the same month, where they were to answer for their lives. Lord Glencairn had reminded the regent of her many promises of toleration; and throwing away the mask at last, she had haughtily answered, that "it became not subjects to burden their princes with promises further than as it pleased them to keep the same." The moment was come she believed when she could crush them altogether, and crush them she would. As soon as the arrival of Knox was known, a price was set upon his head; but he determined to join his brother ministers on the spot and share their fortune. He hurried to Perth, where Lord Glencairn and a few other gentlemen had by that time collected to protect them with some thousand armed followers. The other noblemen were distracted, hesitating, uncertain. Lord James Stuart, and young Lord Argyle, were still with the queen regent, so even was Lord Ruthven, remaining loyal to the last possible moment, and still hoping that the storm might blow over. And the regent still trifled with their credulity as long as they would allow her to impose upon it. Pretending to be afraid of a tumult, she used their influence to prevail upon the preachers to remain where they were, and not to appear on the day fixed for

its

doubt that he was responsible to the full, whatever the responsibility may be which attaches to it, but the destruction of the religious houses was the spontaneous work of the people, which in the outset he looked upon with mere sorrow and indignation. Like Latimer in England, he had hoped to preserve them for purposes of education and charity; and it was only after a warning which sounded in his ears as if it came from heaven, that he stood aloof, and let the popular anger have its way; they had been nests of profligacy for ages; the earth was weary of their presence upon it; and when the retribution fell, it was not for him to arrest or interfere with it. Scone Abbey, the residence of the Bishop of Murray, was infamous, even in that infamous time, for the vices of occupants; and the bishop himself having been active in the burning of Walter Milne, had thus provoked and deserved the general hatred. After the French garrison was driven out of Perth, he was invited to appear at the conference of the lords, but, unwilling or afraid to come forward, he blockaded himself in the abbey. A slight thing is enough to give the first impulse to a stone which is ready to fall; the townpeople of Perth and Dundee, having long scores to settle with him and with the brotherhood, caught at the opportunity, and poured out and surrounded him. John Knox, with the provost of Perth and what force they could muster, hurried to the scene to prevent violence, and for a time succeeded; Knox himself we find keeping guard all one night at the granary door: but the mob did not disperse; and prowling ominously round the walls, in default of other weapons, made free use of their tongues. From sharp words to sharp strokes is an almost inevitable transition on such occasions. In the gray of the morning, a son of the bishop ran an artisan of Dundee through the body, and in an instant the entire mass of the people dashed upon the gates. The hour of Scone was come. Knox was lifted gently on one side, and in a few minutes the abbey was in a blaze. As he stood watching the destruction, "a poor aged matron," he tells us, "who was near him, seeing the flame of fire pass up so mightily, and perceiving that many were thereat offended, in plain and sober manner of speaking said, Now I perceive that God's judgments are just, and that no man is able to save when he will punish. Since my remembrance, this place has been nothing but a den of whoremongers. It is incredible to believe how many wives have been adulterated, and

virgins deflowered by the filthy beasts which have been fostered in this den, but especially by that wicked man who is called the bishop. If all men knew as much as I, they would praise God, and no man would be offend ed.""

Such was the first burst of the Reformation in Scotland; we need not follow the course of it. It was the rising up of a nation, as we have said, against the wickedness which had taken possession of the holiest things and holiest places, to declare in the name of God that such a spectacle should no longer be endured. Of the doctrines of Scotch Protestantism, meaning by that the speculative scheme of Christianity which was held and taught by Knox and the other ministers, we say but little, regarding it as by no means the thing of chiefest importance. Formal theology at its best is no more than a language,—an expression in words of mysteries which the mind of man can never adequately comprehend, and is, therefore, like all other human creations, liable to continual change. In Knox's own words, "All worldly strength, yea, even in things spiritual, doth decay;" and all languages become in time dead languages, and the meaning of them is only artificially preserved among us. Religion, as these Reformers understood it, (and as all religious men understand it, whatever be their language,) meant this, that the business of man upon earth was to serve Almighty God, not with forms and words, but with an obedient life, to hate all sin, impurity, hypocrisy, and falsehood; and whatever Protestantism may have become after three centuries of establishment, Protestantism at its outset meant a return to this, from formalism, the mother of all wickedness. It were a poor conception, indeed, that so great a quarrel was for the truth or falsehood of a speculative system of theology. Then, indeed, the world gained little by the change; for, if Calvinism was once a motive power to holiness, so, too, was once the mass itself; and if the mass became an idol and a cause of confu

sion and siu, by a process exactly analogous the theory of vicarious righteousness may now be found in the Welsh valleys producing an identical result. So it is, and so it always will be, as long as any special virtue is supposed to reside in formal outward act, or formal inward theory, irrespective of purity of heart and manliness of life.

The details of the war which followed need not concern us here. The French were reinforced; the Protestants, as had been fore