Cecil, John Knox, he was however almost an
idolater. He considered that Knox surpassed in worldly wisdom even
Maitland of Lethington, who was certainly not hampered by
theological prejudice. With Puritanism itself he had much natural
affinity, and as a determinist the philosophical side of Calvinism
attracted him as strongly as it attracted Jonathan Edwards. Froude
combined, perhaps illogically, a belief in predestination with a
deep sense of moral duty and the responsibility of man. Every reader
of his History must have been struck by his respect for all the
manly virtues, even in those with whom he has otherwise no sympathy,
and his corresponding contempt for weakness and self-indulgence. In
his second and final Address to the students of St. Andrews he took
Calvinism as his theme.* By this time Froude had acquired a great
name, and was known all over the world as the most brilliant of
living English historians. Although his uncompromising treatment of
Mary Stuart had provoked remonstrance, his eulogy of Knox and Murray
was congenial to the Scottish temperament, with which he had much in
common. It was indeed from St. Andrews alone that he had hitherto
received any public recognition. He was grateful to the students,
and gave them of his best, so that this lecture may be taken as an
epitome of his moral and religious belief.

--
* Short Studies, vol. ii. pp. 1-60.
--

"Calvinism," he told these lads, "was the spirit which rises in
revolt against untruth; the spirit which, as I have shown you, has
appeared and reappeared, and in due time will appear again, unless
God be a delusion and man be as the beasts that perish. For it is but
the inflashing upon the conscience with overwhelming force of the
nature and origin of the laws by which mankind are governed--laws
which exist, whether we acknowledge them or whether we deny them, and
will have their way, to our weal or woe, according to the attitude in
which we please to place ourselves towards them--inherent, like
electricity, in the nature of things, not made by us, not to be
altered by us, but to be discerned and obeyed by us at our
everlasting peril." The essence of Froude's belief, not otherwise
dogmatic, was a constant sense of God's presence and overruling
power. Sceptical his mind in many ways was. The two things he never
doubted, and would not doubt, were theism and the moral law. Without
God there would be no religion. Without morality there would be no
diff