hing of the Gospel, and Mrs. Mackgil has written seeking
the Reformer's prayers in his behalf. "Your husband," he answers, "is
dear to me for that he is a man indued with some good gifts, but more
dear for that he is your husband. Charity moveth me to thirst his
illumination, both for his comfort and for the trouble which you sustain
by his coldness, which justly may be called infidelity." He wishes her,
however, not to hope too much; he can promise that his prayers will be
earnest, but not that they will be effectual; it is possible that this
is to be her "cross" in life; that "her head, appointed by God for her
comfort, should be her enemy." And if this be so--well, there is nothing
for it; "with patience she must abide God's merciful deliverance,"
taking heed only that she does not "obey manifest iniquity for the
pleasure of any mortal man."[85] I conceive this epistle would have
given a very modified sort of pleasure to the Clerk-Register, had it
chanced to fall into his hands. Compare its tenor--the dry resignation
not without a hope of merciful deliverance therein recommended--with
these words from another letter, written but the year before to two
married women of London: "Call first for grace by Jesus, and thereafter
communicate with your faithful husbands, and then shall God, I doubt
not, conduct your footsteps, and direct your counsels to His glory."[86]
Here the husbands are put in a very high place; we can recognise here
the same hand that has written for our instruction how the man is set
above the woman, even as God above the angels. But the point of the
distinction is plain. For Clerk-Register Mackgil was not a faithful
husband; displayed, indeed, towards religion, a "coldness which justly
might be called infidelity." We shall see in more notable instances how
much Knox's conception of the duty of wives varies according to the zeal
and orthodoxy of the husband.

As I have said, he may possibly have made the acquaintance of Mrs.
Mackgil, Mrs. Guthrie, or some other, or all, of these Edinburgh friends
while he was still Douglas of Longniddry's private tutor. But our
certain knowledge begins in 1549. He was then but newly escaped from his
captivity in France, after pulling an oar for nineteen months on the
benches of the galley _Nostre Dame_; now up the rivers, holding stealthy
intercourse with other Scottish prisoners in the castle of Rouen; now
out in the North Sea, raising his sick head to catch a glimpse