d than a 'call' to a preacher from a
local set of Calvinistic Protestants. But, when once the 'call' was
given and accepted, that 'lawful minister' was, by the theory, as
superior to the laws of the State as the celebrated emperor was
superior to grammar. A few 'lawful ministers' of this kind possessed
'the power of the Keys;' they could hand anybody over to Satan by
excommunicating the man, and (apparently) they could present 'the
power of the Sword' to any town council, which could then decree
capital punishment against any Catholic priest who celebrated Mass,
as, by the law of the State, he was in duty bound to do. Such were the
moderate and reasonable claims of Knox's Kirk in May 1559, even before
it was accepted by the Convention of Estates in August 1560. It was
because, not the Church, but the wilder spirits among the ministers,
persevered in these claims, that the State, when it got the chance,
drove them into moors and mosses and hanged not a few of them.

I have never found these facts fully stated by any historian or by any
biographer of Knox, except by the Reformer himself, partly in his
_History_, partly in his letters to a lady of his acquaintance. The
mystery of the Kirks turns on the Knoxian conception of the 'lawful
minister,' and his claim to absolutism.

To give examples, Knox himself, about 1540-43, was 'a priest of the
altar,' 'one of Baal's shaven sort.' On that score he later claimed
nothing. After the murder of Cardinal Beaton, the murderers and their
associates, forming a congregation in the Castle of St. Andrews, gave
Knox a call to be their preacher. He was now 'a lawful minister.' In
May 1559 he, with about four or five equally lawful ministers, two of
them converted friars, one of them a baker, and one, Harlow, a tailor,
were in company with their Protestant backers, who destroyed the
monasteries in Perth, and the altars and ornaments of the church
there. They at once claimed 'the power of the Keys,' and threatened to
excommunicate such of their allies as did not join them in arms. They,
'the brethren,' also denounced capital punishment against any priest
who celebrated Mass at Perth. Now the lawful ministers could not think
of hanging the priests themselves. They must therefore have somehow
bestowed 'the power of the Sword' on the baillies and town council of
Perth, I presume, for the Regent, Mary of Guise, when she entered the
town, dismissed these men from office, which was regarded as a