She was violent,
threatening him with the tongs; she was careless of his honour, driving
him to insult the mistress whom she had driven him to betray and to
discard; worst of all, she was hopelessly inconsequent in word and
thought and deed, now lulling him with reconciliations, and anon flaming
forth again with the original anger. Pepys had not used his wife well;
he had wearied her with jealousies, even while himself unfaithful; he
had grudged her clothes and pleasures, while lavishing both upon
himself; he had abused her in words; he had bent his fist at her in
anger; he had once blacked her eye; and it is one of the oddest
particulars in that odd Diary of his, that, while the injury is referred
to once in passing, there is no hint as to the occasion or the manner of
the blow. But now, when he is in the wrong, nothing can exceed the
long-suffering affection of this impatient husband. While he was still
sinning and still undiscovered, he seems not to have known a touch of
penitence stronger than what might lead him to take his wife to the
theatre, or for an airing, or to give her a new dress by way of
compensation. Once found out, however, and he seems to himself to have
lost all claim to decent usage. It is perhaps the strongest instance of
his externality. His wife may do what she pleases, and though he may
groan, it will never occur to him to blame her; he has no weapon left
but tears and the most abject submission. We should perhaps have
respected him more had he not given way so utterly--above all, had he
refused to write, under his wife's dictation, an insulting letter to his
unhappy fellow-culprit, Miss Willet; but somehow I believe we like him
better as he was. The death of his wife, following so shortly after, must have stamped the
impression of this episode upon his mind. For the remaining years of his
long life we have no Diary to help us, and we have seen already how
little stress is to be laid upon the tenor of his correspondence; but
what with the recollection of the catastrophe of his married life, what
with the natural influence of his advancing years and reputation, it
seems not unlikely that the period of gallantry was at an end for Pepys;
and it is beyond a doubt that he sat down at last to an honoured and
agreeable old age among his books and music, the correspondent of Sir
Isaac Newton, and, in one instance at least, the poetical counsellor of
Dryden. Through all this period, that Diary which contained the secret
memoirs of his life, with all its inconsistencies and escapades, had
been religiously preserved; nor, when he came to die, does he appear to
have provided for its destruction. So we may conceive him faithful to
the end to all his dear and early memories; still mindful of Mrs. Hely
in the woods at Epsom; still lighting at Islington for a cup of kindness
to the dead; still, if he heard again that air that once so much
disturbed him, thrilling at the recollection of the love that bound him
to his wife. FOOTNOTE:

  [59] H. R. Wheatley, "Samuel Pepys and the World he Lived in." 1880. IX

JOHN KNOX AND HIS RELATIONS TO WOMEN


  THE CONTROVERSY ABOUT FEMALE RULE

When first the idea became widely spread among men that the Word of God,
instead of being truly the foundation of all existing institutions, was
rather a stone which the builders had rejected, it was but natural that
the consequent havoc among received opinions should be accompanied by
the generation of many new and lively hopes for the future. Somewhat as
in the early days of the French Revolution, men must have looked for an
immediate and universal improvement in their condition. Christianity, up
to that time, had been somewhat of a failure politically. The reason was
now obvious, the capital flaw was detected, the sickness of the body
politic traced at last to its efficient cause. It was only necessary to
put the Bible thoroughly into practice, to set themselves strenuously to
realise in life the Holy Commonwealth, and all abuses and iniquities
would surely pass away. Thus, in a pageant played at Geneva in the year
1523, the world was represented as a sick man at the end of his wits for
help, to whom his doctor recommends Lutheran specifics. [60]

The Reformers themselves had set their affections in a different world,
and professed to look for the finished result of their endeavours on the
other side of death. They took no interest in politics as such; they
even condemned political action as Antichristian: notably, Luther in the
case of the Peasants' War. And yet, as the purely religious question
was inseparably complicated with political difficulties, and they had to
make opposition, from day to day, against principalities and powers,
they were led, one after another, and again and again, to leave the
sphere which was more strictly their own, and meddle, for good and evil,
with the affairs of State. Not much was to be expected from interference
in such a spirit. Whenever a minister found himself galled or hindered,
he would be inclined to suppose some contravention of the Bible. Whenever Christian liberty was restrained (and Christian liberty for
each individual would be about co-extensive with what he wished to do),
it was obvious that the State was Antichristian. The great thing, and
the one thing, was to push the Gospel and the Reformer's own
interpretation of it. Whatever helped was good; whatever hindered was
evil; and if this simple classification proved inapplicable over the
whole field, it was no business of his to stop and reconcile
incongruities. He had more pressing concerns on hand; he had to save
souls; he had to be about his Father's business. This short-sighted view
resulted in a doctrine that was actually Jesuitical in application. They
had no serious ideas upon politics, and they were ready, nay, they
seemed almost bound, to adopt and support whichever ensured for the
moment the greatest benefit to the souls of their fellow-men. They were
dishonest in all sincerity. Thus Labitte, in the introduction to a
book[61] in which he exposes the hypocritical democracy of the Catholics
under the League, steps aside for a moment to stigmatise the
hypocritical democracy of the Protestants. And nowhere was this
expediency in political questions more apparent than about the question
of female sovereignty. So much was this the case that one James
Thomasius, of Leipsic, wrote a little paper[62] about the religious
partialities of those who took part in the controversy, in which some
of these learned disputants cut a very sorry figure. Now Knox has been from the first a man well hated; and it is somewhat
characteristic of his luck that he figures here in the very forefront of
the list of partial scribes who trimmed their doctrine with the wind in
all good conscience, and were political weathercocks out of conviction.