so
entirely occupied with the most important matters of statesmanship, not
to say so determined a Catholic, as the daughter of the Guises, the
sister of the Cardinal.

The attempt, as was natural, failed completely. "Which letter," resumes
Knox, "when she had read within a day or two she delivered it to the
proud prelate, Beatoun, Bishop of Glasgow, and said in mockage, 'Please
you, my lord, to read a pasquill?'" It is against the perfection of the
prophet, but not the character of the man, that this scorn stung him as
no persecution could have done. He made certain additions to the letter,
and published it in Geneva on his return there. We are not told which
part of the letter these additions are, but what he tells us seems to
indicate that the threatening prophesies, of which he says in his
_Historie_, "lett those very flatterers see what hath failed," had been
added to the original text. We forgive him his ready wrath, and even the
"threatenings" which he always considered himself at liberty to launch
at those who, in his own language, "withstood the truth": but we could
have wished that Knox had been more magnanimous, and could have
forgotten the offence after the passage of years. Mary's careless speech
would have been but "ane merry boord" had it been directed against one
of his enemies.

When Knox went back to Geneva after this winter's work to resume his
pastorate there, he left the growing cause of Reform in Scotland with a
constitution and organisation sanctified by the most sacred rites of
religion, an advantage quite inestimable in the circumstances, and
placing the cause as in an ark of safety. And when he returned to
Edinburgh two years later, the scattered groups to whom in country
houses and castles he had administered the Lord's Supper had become the
Congregation, an army existing in all quarters of Scotland, ready to
rally to the aid of any portion of the body, or eminent individual, who
might be attacked: and headed by a phalanx of Scots nobility, Lords of
the Congregation, the heads of a new party in the State, as well as of a
new Church, an altogether novel development of national life. It would
have been difficult to have spoken more boldly than Knox had done in his
letter to the Queen Regent three years before, but the Congregation in
its established position as a national party took stronger ground, and
pressed their claims to a hearing with a force of petitioners too strong
to be gainsaid. Kno