hand, Knox in the pulpit
denounced the division. "I see twa parts partly given to the Devil, and
the third maun be divided between God and the Devil," he cried. "Bear
witness to me that this day I say it: ere it be long the Devil shall
have three parts of the third; and judge you then what God's portion
shall be."--"The Queen will not have enough for a pair of shoes at the
year's end after the ministers are sustained," said Lethington; and Knox
records the "dicton or proverb" which arose, as such sayings do, out of
the crowd, in respect to the official, the Comptroller, who had charge
of this hated partition--"The Laird of Pitarrow," cried the popular
voice, "was ane earnest professor of Christ; but the meikle Deil receive
the Controller."

About this time Knox had the opportunity he had long coveted of a public
disputation upon the mass; but it was held far from the centre of
affairs, at the little town of Maybole in Ayrshire, where Quentin
Kennedy of the house of Cassilis, Abbot of Crossraguel (upon whose death
George Buchanan secured his appointment as pensioner), announced himself
as ready to meet all comers on this subject. Knox would seem to have
attached little importance to it, as he does no more than mention it in
his History; but a full report exists of the controversy, which has much
more the air of a personal wrangle than of a grave and solemn
discussion. "Ye said," cries the abbot, "ye did abhor all chiding and
railing, but nature passes nurture with you."--"I will neither change
nature nor nurture with you for all the profits of Crossraguel," says
the preacher. These amenities belonged to the period. But the arguments
seem singularly feeble on both sides. The plea of the abbot rested upon
the statement in the Old Testament that Melchizedec offered bread and
wine to God. On the other side a simple denial of this, and reassertion
that the mass is an idolatrous rite, seems to have sufficed for Knox. It
is almost impossible to believe that they did not say something better
worth remembering on both sides. What they seem to have done is to have
completely wearied out their auditors, who sat for three days to listen
to the altercation, and then broke up in disgust. It is curious that
Knox, so unanswerable in personal controversy, should have been so
little effectual (so far as we can judge) in this. There is a discussion
in another part of the History upon baptism, in which he denounces the
Romish ceremonies att