lane, approved and ratified by an overwhelming majority of the
estates.

The way being thus cleared, the next step was the logical conclusion of
all the past action of the Protestant leaders. In three successive acts,
all passed in one day, it was decreed that the national Church should
cease to exist. The first act abolished the jurisdiction of the Pope;
the second condemned all practices and doctrines contrary to the new
creed; and the third forbade the celebration of mass within the bounds
of Scotland. The penalties attached to the breach of these enactments
were those approved and sanctioned by the example of every country in
Christendom. Confiscation for the first offence, exile for the second,
and death for the third--such were to be the successive punishments for
the saying or hearing of mass.

Thus apparently had Knox and his fellow-workers attained the end of all
their labors; and it is instructive to compare the history of their
struggle with the experiences of other countries where the same
religious conflicts had successively arisen. In Germany the terrible
Peasants' War had been the direct result of Luther's revolt from Rome;
and in England the ecclesiastical revolution had been followed by the
religious atrocities of Henry VIII, by the anarchy under Edward VI, and
by the remorseless fanaticism of Mary Tudor. While the Congregation was
in the midst of its struggles with Mary of Lorraine, Philip II was
dealing with heresy in Spain. How effectually he dealt with it is one of
the notable chapters in the histories of nations. Here it is sufficient
to recall a single fact in illustration of the relative experiences of
Scotland and Spain. In 1559 Philip and his court, amid the applause of a
crowd of above two hundred thousand from all parts of Castile,
sanctioned with their presence the burning at Valladolid of a band of
persons, mostly women, accused of the crime of heresy. In France the
appearance of a new religion had evoked passions, alike among the people
and their rulers, which were to give that country an evil preeminence in
the ferocity of national and individual action. The _chambre ardente_,
the Edict of Chateaubriand (1551), the massacre of Amboise (1560), the
thirty years of intermittent civil war (1562-1592)--these were the events
of frightful significance that mark the development of religious conflict
in France. Compared with the tale of blood and confusion that has to be
told of Germany, France,