Either his doctrine is false, in which case he is a "false
doctor" and seditious; or, if it be true, why does he "avow and approve
the contrare, I mean that regiment in the Queen of England's person;
which he avoweth and approveth, not only praying for the maintenance of
her estate, but also procuring her aid and support against his own
native country?" Knox answered the libel, as his wont was, next Sunday,
from the pulpit. He justified the "First Blast" with all the old
arrogance; there is no drawing back there. The regiment of women is
repugnant to nature, contumely to God, and a subversion of good order,
as before. When he prays for the maintenance of Elizabeth's estate, he
is only following the example of those prophets of God who warned and
comforted the wicked kings of Israel; or of Jeremiah, who bade the Jews
pray for the prosperity of Nebuchadnezzar. As for the Queen's aid, there
is no harm in that: _quia_ (these are his own words) _quia omnia munda
mundis_: because to the pure all things are pure. One thing, in
conclusion, he "may not pretermit"; to give the lie in the throat to his
accuser, where he charges him with seeking support against his native
country. "What I have been to my country," said the old Reformer, "What
I have been to my country, albeit this unthankful age will not know, yet
the ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the truth. And
thus I cease, requiring of all men that have anything to oppone against
me, that he may (they may) do it so plainly, as that I may make myself
and all my doings manifest to the world. For to me it seemeth a thing
unreasonable, that, in this my decrepit age, I shall be compelled to
fight against shadows, and howlets that dare not abide the light. "[80]

Now, in this, which may be called his "Last Blast," there is as sharp
speaking as any in the "First Blast" itself. He is of the same opinion
to the end, you see, although he has been obliged to cloak and garble
that opinion for political ends. He has been tacking indeed, and he has
indeed been seeking the favour of a queen; but what man ever sought a
queen's favour with a more virtuous purpose, or with as little courtly
policy? The question of consistency is delicate, and must be made plain. Knox never changed his opinion about female rule, but lived to regret
that he had published that opinion. Doubtless he had many thoughts so
far out of the range of public sympathy, that he could only keep them to
himself, and, in his own words, bear patiently with the errors and
imperfections that he could not amend. For example, I make no doubt
myself that, in his own heart, he did hold the shocking dogma attributed
to him by more than one calumniator; and that, had the time been ripe,
had there been aught to gain by it, instead of all to lose, he would
have been the first to assert that Scotland was elective instead of
hereditary--"elective as in the days of paganism," as one Thevet says in
holy horror. [81] And yet, because the time was not ripe, I find no hint
of such an idea in his collected works. Now, the regiment of women was
another matter that he should have kept to himself; right or wrong, his
opinion did not fit the moment; right or wrong, as Aylmer puts it, "the
'Blast' was blown out of season." And this it was that he began to
perceive after the accession of Elizabeth: not that he had been wrong,
and that female rule was a good thing, for he had said from the first
that "the felicity of some women in their empires" could not change the
law of God and the nature of created things; not this, but that the
regiment of women was one of those imperfections of society which must
be borne with because yet they cannot be remedied. The thing had seemed
so obvious to him, in his sense of unspeakable masculine superiority,
and in his fine contempt for what is only sanctioned by antiquity and
common consent, he had imagined that, at the first hint, men would arise
and shake off the debasing tyranny. He found himself wrong, and he
showed that he could be moderate in his own fashion, and understood the
spirit of true compromise. He came round to Calvin's position, in fact,
but by a different way. And it derogates nothing from the merit of this
wise attitude that it was the consequence of a change of interest. We
are all taught by interest; and if the interest be not merely selfish,
there is no wiser preceptor under heaven, and perhaps no sterner. Such is the history of John Knox's connection with the controversy about
female rule. In itself, this is obviously an incomplete study; not fully
to be understood, without a knowledge of his private relations with the
other sex, and what he thought of their position in domestic life. This
shall be dealt with in another paper. PRIVATE LIFE

To those who know Knox by hearsay only, I believe the matter of this
paper will be somewhat astonishing. For the hard energy of the man in
all public matters has possessed the imagination of the world; he
remains for posterity in certain traditional phrases, browbeating Queen
Mary, or breaking beautiful carved work in abbeys and cathedrals, that
had long smoked themselves out and were no more than sorry ruins, while
he was still quietly teaching children in a country gentleman's family. It does not consist with the common acceptation of his character to
fancy him much moved, except with anger. And yet the language of passion
came to his pen as readily, whether it was a passion of denunciation
against some of the abuses that vexed his righteous spirit, or of
yearning for the society of an absent friend. He was vehement in
affection, as in doctrine. I will not deny that there may have been,
along with his vehemence, something shifty, and for the moment only;
that, like many men, and many Scotsmen, he saw the world and his own
heart, not so much under any very steady, equable light, as by extreme
flashes of passion, true for the moment, but not true in the long-run. There does seem to me to be something of this traceable in the
Reformer's utterances: precipitation and repentance, hardy speech and
action somewhat circumspect, a strong tendency to see himself in a
heroic light and to place a ready belief in the disposition of the
moment. Withal he had considerable confidence in himself, and in the
uprightness of his own disciplined emotions, underlying much sincere
aspiration after spiritual humility. And it is this confidence that
makes his intercourse with women so interesting to a modern. It would be
easy, of course, to make fun of the whole affair, to picture him
strutting vaingloriously among these inferior creatures, or compare a
religious friendship in the sixteenth century with what was called, I
think, a literary friendship in the eighteenth. But it is more just and
profitable to recognise what there is sterling and human underneath all
his theoretical affectations of superiority.