address to the regent, where they plainly
insinuated, that if they were pursued to extremities by the "cruel
beasts" the churchmen, they would have recourse to foreign powers for
assistance; and they subscribed themselves her faithful subjects in all
things not repugnant to God, assuming, at the same time, the name of the
faithful congregation of Christ Jesus.[*] They applied to the nobility
attending her, and maintained, that their own past violences were
justified by the word of God, which commands the godly to destroy
idolatry, and all the monuments of it; and though all civil authority
was sacred, yet was there a great difference between the authority and
the persons who exercised it;[**] and that it ought to be considered,
whether or not those abominations, called by the pestilent Papists
religion, and which they defend by fire and sword, be the true religion
of Christ Jesus. They remonstrated with such of the queen's army as had
formerly embraced their party, and told them, "that as they were already
reputed traitors by God, they should likewise be excommunicated from
their society, and from the participation of the sacraments of the
church which God by his mighty power had erected among them; whose
ministers have the same authority which Christ granted to his apostles
in these words, 'Whose sins ye shall forgive shall be forgiven, and
whose sins ye shall retain shall be retained.'"[***]

* Knox, p. 129.

** Knox, p. 131.

*** Knox, p. 133.

We may here see, that these new saints were no less lofty in their
pretensions than the ancient hierarchy: no wonder they were enraged
against the latter as their rivals in dominion. They joined to all these
declarations an address to the established church; and they affixed this
title to it: "To the generation of Antichrist, the pestilent prelates
and their 'shavelings'[*] in Scotland, the congregation of Christ Jesus
within the same sayeth." The tenor of the manifesto was suitable to the
title. They told the ecclesiastics, "As ye by tyranny intend not only to
destroy our bodies, but also by the same to hold our souls in bondage
of the devil, subject to idolatry, so shall we, with all the force
and power which God shall grant unto us, execute just vengeance and
punishment upon you: yea, we shall begin that same war which God
commanded Israel to execute against the Canaanites; that is, contract of
peace shall never be made till you desist from your open ido