d fully contented with her
answer;'[70] and it is impossible not to speculate on what the result
might have been had the order finally established by Parliament been
that both parties should permanently 'use themselves godly according to
their desires,' with a publicly acknowledged right of proselytism or
persuasion.

But from both sides there still came some things hostile to the advent
in Scotland of that toleration which the modern conscience has approved.
In April 1558 Walter Myln, a priest eighty-two years of age, was seized
by order of the Archbishop of St Andrews, condemned for heresy, and
burned there amid the general but ineffectual resentment of the people.
The sentence was quite legal under the laws which still enforced
membership of the Catholic Church upon all Scotchmen. But the last man
who had been so condemned was Knox; and he no longer delayed to publish
in Geneva an Appellation or appeal against his sentence, directed to the
nobles, the estates and the commonalty of Scotland. His demand for a
return to the primitive Gospel under the Divine authority is powerful
and eloquent. His reasons, on the other hand, for 'appeal from the
sentence and judgment of the visible Church to the knowledge of the
temporal magistrate' are difficult to reconcile with the position which
Knox afterwards took up when that Church was on his own side; and they
are indeed chiefly drawn from the Old Testament. It is not until we
observe from his re-statement of the case farther on, that his was an
appeal 'against a sentence of death,' that the argument once more
straightens itself out so as to suit the lips even of Paul. But Knox
declines now to remain on the defensive. He accuses his accusers of
heresy and idolatry, and calls upon the nobles of Scotland to decide
against them according to God's Word. Here, again, the appeal, so long
as it is made to the conscience of all men and of nobles alike, is very
cogent. Nor is it less so as addressed specially to the most
representative and intelligent Scotchmen of the time, for such the Lords
of the Congregation undoubtedly were. It becomes doubtful only when it
insists on the right of these temporal 'Princes of the people' to reform
the Church--apparently even without the consent of its majority; and it
becomes worse than doubtful when he urges their duty as magistrates to
repress false religion and to punish idolatry with death. Along with
this, however, was published a shorter letter