[100] 'Book of the Universall Kirk of Scotland,' p. 46. The significance of this utterance was long ago pointed out by the Rev. J.C. Macphail, D.D., of Pilrig Church, Edinburgh.
[101] 1567, c. 10.
CHAPTER VI
THE PUBLIC LIFE: THE CONFLICT WITH QUEEN MARY
Parliament had made a great and revolutionary change. It had acted as if the government had been already granted to it, or, in Cecil's phrase, to 'the nation of the land.' And the change was on one side a breaking off of the old alliance with Catholic France. But the sovereigns of Scotland, now and for the last twelvemonth, were no other than the King and Queen of France. They, rather than Parliament, were the 'Authority,' which, according to the consistent theory of that age, had the right to make and enforce changes of religion; and which, according to the more puzzling theory of Knox, had the right to do so—provided the religion so to be enforced was the true one. Accordingly the new Confession of Faith and the statutes passed by the late Parliament, were sent to Paris by the Lord St John. He waited there long, but, of course, brought back no ratification. But that, says Knox, 'we little regarded, nor yet do regard'; for, he adds, falling back rather too late upon one of those great principles his utterance of which has sunk into the hearts of his countrymen,
'all that we did was rather to shew our dutiful obedience than to beg of them any strength to our religion, which from God has full power, and needeth not the suffrage of man, but in so far as man hath need to believe it, if that ever he shall have participation of the life everlasting.'[102]
It was no wonder that the royal pair did not ratify a Protestant Confession, for during their brief reign over France they were the centre of a keen crusade against Protestantism, conducted far more by Mary's counsellors and uncles, the Guises, than by her feeble-minded husband. Towards the end of 1560 this had gone so far that secret preparations seem to have been made for immediately anticipating the St Bartholomew of twelve years later. But the sudden death of Francis and the widowhood of Mary changed the whole situation. The new King was in the power, not of the Guises, but of his mother, Catherine de Medici; and Mary of Scots would now have to accept a second or a third place in Paris. But in Europe, and in the politics of Europe, the beautiful young widow sprang at once into the foremost rank, and became the star of all eyes. Ex-Queen of France, Queen-presumptive of England, and actual Queen of Scotland, which had always been the link between the other two, and to which she was now to return, the marriage destiny of this girl of eighteen would probably decide the wavering balance of Christendom.[103]