the most important of the dialogues.[104] Mary and
her brother received Knox in Holyrood, two ladies standing in the other
end of the room. She commenced by taxing him with his book against her
'regimen.' He explained that, if Scotland was satisfied with a female
ruler, he would not object.

'But yet,' said she, 'ye have taught the people to receive
another religion than their Princes can allow: And how can that
doctrine be of God, seeing that God commands subjects to obey
their Princes?'

Knox, in answer, ignored the article of his Confession which
bears closely on this point,[105] and fell back on the more
fundamental truth.

'Madam, as right religion took neither original nor authority
from worldly princes, but from the Eternal God alone, so are not
subjects bound to frame their religion according to the
appetites of their Princes.'

He easily illustrated this by instances of men in Scripture, who
resisted such commands of Princes, and suffered.

'But yet,' said she, 'they resisted not with the sword.'

'God,' said he, 'Madam, had not given unto them the power and
the means.'

'Think ye,' quoth she, 'that subjects, having power, may resist
their Princes?'

'If their Princes exceed their bounds,' quoth he, 'Madam, and do
against that wherefore they should be obeyed, it is no doubt but
they may be resisted, even by power.'

That Princes should regulate the religion of subjects Knox held
to be within their 'bounds,' but only apparently if they
regulated it aright, and according to the Word. Otherwise, he
now explained, the prince might be restrained, like a father
'stricken with a frenzy.' At this remarkable argument the Queen
'stood, as it were, amazed more than the quarter of an hour.'
Recovering herself, she said--

'Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you and not
me.'...

'God forbid,' answered he, in words which really express his
fundamental view, 'that ever I take upon me to command any to
obey me, or yet to set subjects at liberty to do what pleaseth
them. But my travel is that both princes and subjects obey God,
who,' he added, 'commands queens to be nurses unto His people.'

'Yea,' quoth she, 'but ye are not the Church that I will
nourish. I will defend the Kirk of Rome, for, I think, it is the
true Kirk of God.'

'Your wil