This stumbling-block lay at the very
threshold of the matter; and Knox, in the text of the "First Blast," had
set everybody the wrong example and gone to the ground himself. He
finds occasion to regret "the blood of innocent Lady Jane Dudley." But
Lady Jane Dudley, or Lady Jane Grey, as we call her, was a would-be
traitoress and rebel against God, to use his own expressions. If,
therefore, political and religious sympathy led Knox himself into so
grave a partiality, what was he to expect from his disciples? If the
trumpet gave so ambiguous a sound, who could heartily prepare himself
for the battle? The question whether Lady Jane Dudley was an innocent
martyr, or a traitoress against God, whose inordinate pride and tyranny
had been effectually repressed, was thus left altogether in the wind;
and it was not, perhaps, wonderful if many of Knox's readers concluded
that all right and wrong in the matter turned upon the degree of the
sovereign's orthodoxy and possible helpfulness to the Reformation. He
should have been the more careful of such an ambiguity of meaning, as he
must have known well the lukewarm indifference and dishonesty of his
fellow-reformers in political matters. He had already, in 1556 or 1557,
talked the matter over with his great master, Calvin, in "a private
conversation"; and the interview[67] must have been truly distasteful to
both parties. Calvin, indeed, went a far way with him in theory, and
owned that the "government of women was a deviation from the original
and proper order of nature, to be ranked, no less than slavery, among
the punishments consequent upon the fall of man." But, in practice,
their two roads separated. For the Man of Geneva saw difficulties in the
way of the Scripture proof in the cases of Deborah and Huldah, and in
the prophecy of Isaiah that queens should be the nursing mothers of the
Church. And as the Bible was not decisive, he thought the subject should
be let alone, because, "by custom and public consent and long practice,
it has been established that realms and principalities may descend to
females by hereditary right, and it would not be lawful to unsettle
governments which are ordained by the peculiar providence of God." I
imagine Knox's ears must have burned during this interview. Think of him
listening dutifully to all this--how it would not do to meddle with
anointed kings--how there was a peculiar providence in these great
affairs; and then think of his own peroration, and the "noble heart"
whom he looks for "to vindicate the liberty of his country"; or his
answer to Queen Mary, when she asked him who he was, to interfere in the
affairs of Scotland: "Madame, a subject born within the same!" Indeed,
the two doctors who differed at this private conversation represented,
at the moment, two principles of enormous import in the subsequent
history of Europe. In Calvin we have represented that passive obedience,
that toleration of injustice and absurdity, that holding back of the
hand from political affairs as from something unclean, which lost
France, if we are to believe M. Michelet, for the Reformation; a spirit
necessarily fatal in the long-run to the existence of any sect that may
profess it; a suicidal doctrine that survives among us to this day in
narrow views of personal duty, and the low political morality of many
virtuous men. In Knox, on the other hand, we see foreshadowed the whole
Puritan Revolution and the scaffold of Charles I. There is little doubt in my mind that this interview was what caused
Knox to print his book without a name. [68] It was a dangerous thing to
contradict the Man of Geneva, and doubly so, surely, when one had had
the advantage of correction from him in a private conversation; and Knox
had his little flock of English refugees to consider. If they had fallen
into bad odour at Geneva, where else was there left to flee to? It was
printed, as I said, in 1558; and, by a singular _mal-à-propos_, in that
same year Mary died, and Elizabeth succeeded to the throne of England. And just as the accession of Catholic Queen Mary had condemned female
rule in the eyes of Knox, the accession of Protestant Queen Elizabeth
justified it in the eyes of his colleagues. Female rule ceases to be an
anomaly, not because Elizabeth can "reply to eight ambassadors in one
day in their different languages," but because she represents for the
moment the political future of the Reformation. The exiles troop back to
England with songs of praise in their mouths. The bright occidental
star, of which we have all read in the Preface to the Bible, has risen
over the darkness of Europe. There is a thrill of hope through the
persecuted Churches of the Continent. Calvin writes to Cecil, washing
his hands of Knox and his political heresies. The sale of the "First
Blast" is prohibited in Geneva; and along with it the bold book of
Knox's colleague, Goodman--a book dear to Milton--where female rule was
briefly characterised as a "monster in nature and disorder among
men. "[69] Any who may ever have doubted, or been for a moment led away
by Knox or Goodman, or their own wicked imaginations, are now more than
convinced. They have seen the occidental star. Aylmer, with his eye set
greedily on a possible bishopric, and "the better to obtain the favour
of the new Queen,"[70] sharpens his pen to confound Knox by logic. What
need? He has been confounded by facts. "Thus what had been to the
refugees of Geneva as the very word of God, no sooner were they back in
England than, behold! it was the word of the devil. "[71]

Now, what of the real sentiments of these loyal subjects of Elizabeth? They professed a holy horror for Knox's position: let us see if their
own would please a modern audience any better, or was, in substance,
greatly different. John Aylmer, afterwards Bishop of London, published an answer to Knox,
under the title of "An Harbour for Faithful and true Subjects against
the late Blown Blast concerning the government of Women. "[72] And
certainly he was a thought more acute, a thought less precipitate and
simple, than his adversary. He is not to be led away by such captious
terms as _natural_ and _unnatural_. It is obvious to him that a woman's
disability to rule is not natural in the same sense in which it is
natural for a stone to fall or fire to burn. He is doubtful, on the
whole, whether this disability be natural at all; nay, when he is laying
it down that a woman should not be a priest, he shows some elementary
conception of what many of us now hold to be the truth of the matter. "The bringing-up of women," he says, "is commonly such" that they cannot
have the necessary qualifications, "for they are not brought up in
learning in schools, nor trained in disputation." And even so, he can
ask, "Are there not in England women, think you, that for learning and
wisdom could tell their household and neighbours as good a tale as any
Sir John there?" For all that, his advocacy is weak.