which the age laid so much stress as a 'coming' to God, involved
repentance as a 'turning' to God. And while repentance no longer meant
penance, whether of body or mind, it meant--and as Knox puts it
repeatedly--'it _contains within itself_ a dolour for sin, a hatred of
sin, and yet hope of mercy'; and it is renewed as often as the occasion
arises for renewed deliverance from the evil. Accordingly, Knox now acts
on the principle which he announced years afterwards in a letter to
another friend,[49] and again and again tears open his own heart to
comfort others by shewing that he, with hope or assurance in Christ,
still felt the burden and assault of sin.

'I can write to you by my own experience. I have sometimes been
in that security that I felt not dolour for sin, neither yet
displeasure against myself for any iniquity in that I did
offend. But rather my vain heart did thus flatter myself, (I
write the truth to my own confusion, and to the glory of my
heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ), 'Thou hast suffered
great trouble for professing of Christ's truth; God has done
great things for thee.'... O Mother! this was a subtle serpent
who thus could pour in venom, I not perceiving it; but blessed
be my God who permitted me not to sleep long in that estate. I
drank, shortly after this flattery of myself, a cup of
contra-poison, the bitterness whereof doth yet so remain in my
breast, that whatever I have suffered, or presently do, I repute
as dung, yea, and myself worthy of damnation for my ingratitude
towards my God. The like Mother, might have come to you,'
&c.[50]

Mrs Bowes lived in her famous son-in-law's house till close upon her
death. By that time he had come to recognise that her experience was an
exceptional[51] and, perhaps, a morbid one; and at a very early date he
manifestly felt the pressure of her constant applications to him for
help. Yet throughout the correspondence his unfailing attitude to her is
that of admirably tender solicitude; and when he has to go into exile in
the beginning of 1554 he first sits down and writes--still partly in the
form of letters to her--a treatise on Affliction. It is of great and
permanent value, the subject not being one which our race can as yet
claim to have outgrown: but I shall make no reference to its contents.
Even in his previous and ordinary letters, however, Knox had reached the
conclusion that her c