rs Bowes, and adds--

'After the writing of these preceding, your brother and mine,
Harry Wycliffe, did advertise me by writing that your adversary
took occasion to trouble you, because that _I did start back
from you_ rehearsing your infirmities. I remember myself to have
so done, and _that is my common consuetude when anything
pierceth or toucheth my heart_. Call to your mind what I did
standing at the cupboard at Alnwick: in very deed I thought that
no creature had been tempted as I was. And when that I heard
proceed from your mouth the very words that he troubles me with,
I did wonder and from my heart lament your sore trouble, knowing
in myself the dolour thereof.'[43]

What was the temptation which Knox thought no creature shared with him,
but which he found, as he stood at the cupboard at Alnwick, had come to
Mrs Bowes in the same form, and even in the same words? As it happens,
we can answer with great certainty. It was a temptation to infidelity or
'incredulity': the adversary 'would cause you abhor that, and hate it,
wherein stands only salvation and life,' viz., the name, as well as the
whole message, of Jesus Christ. So it is put in this letter; and in
others, apparently later, we read--

'That ye are of that foolish sort of men that say in their
heart, "There is no God," I wonder that the Devil shames not to
allege that contrary [to] you; but he is a liar, and father of
the same. For if in your heart ye said there is no God, why then
should ye suffer anguish and care by reason that the enemy
troubles you with that thought? Who can be afraid, day and
night, for that which is not?'[44]

Again--

'He would persuade you that God's Word is of no effect, but that
it is a vain tale invented by man, and so all that is spoken of
Jesus, the Son of God, is but a vain fable.... He says the
Scriptures of God are but a tale, and no credit is to be given
to them....[45] Before he troubled you that there is not a
Saviour, and now he affirms that ye shall be like to Francis
Spira, who denied Christ's doctrine.'[46]

In that age, which broke through the crust of mere authority to seek
some 'foundation of belief, 'there must have been many of both sexes in
this state of mind; though each doubter might think that 'no creature'
shared it. The new doctrine of individual faith and individual
responsibility was one for women