I know the
anger, wrath, and indignation which it conceiveth against God,
calling all his promises in doubt, and being ready every hour
utterly to fall from God. Against which rests [remains] only
faith.'

Knox's faith sprang readily to whatever active duty was set before it.
On his escape from France he spent, as we have seen, five years in
England, and at the close of that period we have his own assurance that
he had become almost an Englishman.

'Sometime I have thought that impossible it had been, so to have
removed my affection from the realm of Scotland, that any realm
or nation could have been equally dear to me. But God I take to
record in my conscience that the troubles present (and appearing
to be) in the realm of England are doubly more dolorous unto my
heart than ever were the troubles of Scotland.'[61]

He had laboured incessantly in many parts of England, first as licensed
preacher and then as King's chaplain, and this of course brought him in
contact with church politics as well as the Evangel. It was owing to
Knox's remonstrances that, when King Edward's Council put kneeling at
the Sacrament into the Prayer-Book, they accompanied it with the Rubric,
which is still retained, and which testifies 'that thereby no adoration
is intended or ought to be done.' So far his position was reasonable,
and even conciliatory. But as early as 1550, when requested, perhaps by
the Council of the North, to 'give his confession' in Newcastle as to
the Mass, he repeated the Puritan view of his first St Andrews sermon,
but now in his favourite form of a syllogism, and with its major clause
dangerously enlarged.

'All worshipping, honouring, or service invented by the brain of
man in the religion of God, without his own express commandment,
is _Idolatry_.[62] The Mass is invented by the brain of man
without any commandment of God, therefore it is idolatry.'

To Knox's five years in England now succeeded five years which may be
said to have been spent on the Continent. He first drifted to Frankfort,
and was put in charge of the English congregation there. Very soon the
two parties, which have ever since divided the Church of England, made
their appearance in this representative fragment of it. Knox, of course,
took the Puritan side as to the form of worship; but a large part of his
congregation insisted on the full service of King Edward's book. The
matter was broug