The Fortnightly Review: No. CCCCLXIII, New Series [‎622v] (135/239)

104
SCOTLAND AND JOHN KNOX.
English; but how much more reasonable is his treatment of this
very subject of assassination than Sheriff Guthrie’s rhetorical ques
tions, to which most of his innocent readers will give the wrong
reply. “Knox knew the difference,” says Mr. Lang, “ between
the ideal and the practical. ... It was the ideal that any of the
biethren, conscious of a vocation, and seeing a good opportunity,
should treat an impenitent Catholic ruler as Jehu treated Jezebel.
But if any brother had consulted Knox as to the propriety of
assassinating Queen Mary, in 1561—67, he would have found out
his mistake, and probably have descended the Reformer’s stairs
much more rapidly than he mounted them.”
There is, of course, no possible reason for concealing the fact
that Knox frequently advocated the duty of putting Catholics to
death. We have long ago reached the position that to burn our
opponents is often an error of judgment and always a crime, and
if Knox were alive to-day, and held his original views, we should
certainly cease to admire him. But in the sixteenth century it was
so much the shame of all good Catholics and of all good Protestants
to hold an opposite theory, that it was no shame to any; and to
attempt to hide the fact that Knox was a sixteenth-century Pro
testant of the normal type is to pander to modern sentimentalism
of the kind that declines to hang murderers and perform other
necessary but disagreeable duties. Modern sentiment (even of a
more reputable type than this) would like to think that Knox held
different views on this subject, but modern sentiment of any kind
ought to be told the truth. Sheriff Guthrie holds that the absence
of any fires of Smithfield is “ the glory of the Scottish Reforma
tion. The real nature of glory is a matter of opinion, and on
this subject w’e differ from that distinguished lawyer, inclining to
ascribe the absence of the persecuting flames to a number of causes
not in themselves glorious—among them, the lack of earnestness
in the Roman Church, which burned very few heretics before
the Reformation, and so gave little cause for reprisals, and, above
all, the cause which Knox himself assigned—the carnal policy of
worldly men. Be this as it may, when Sheriff Guthrie goes on to
claim that the lack of stake and faggots is the glory of the leader
of the Scottish Reformation, we meet an error in point of fact. Had
Knox really held this view, he could never have been the leader;
that he accomplished so much of his aims is partially due to the
fact that he preached the opposite. That the heretic should die the
death was obvious to a good man like Sir Thomas More, and to a
good man like John Calvin; that the idolater should die the death
was equally clear to Knox. More fortunate than More and Calvin,
Knox never had the opportunity of carrying his theories into
practice, and the blood of the martyr never stained his hands.