He easily illustrated this by instances of men in Scripture, who resisted such commands of Princes, and suffered.
'But yet,' said she, 'they resisted not with the sword.'
'God,' said he, 'Madam, had not given unto them the power and the means.'
'Think ye,' quoth she, 'that subjects, having power, may resist their Princes?'
'If their Princes exceed their bounds,' quoth he, 'Madam, and do against that wherefore they should be obeyed, it is no doubt but they may be resisted, even by power.'
That Princes should regulate the religion of subjects Knox held to be within their 'bounds,' but only apparently if they regulated it aright, and according to the Word. Otherwise, he now explained, the prince might be restrained, like a father 'stricken with a frenzy.' At this remarkable argument the Queen 'stood, as it were, amazed more than the quarter of an hour.' Recovering herself, she said—
'Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you and not me.'...
'God forbid,' answered he, in words which really express his fundamental view, 'that ever I take upon me to command any to obey me, or yet to set subjects at liberty to do what pleaseth them. But my travel is that both princes and subjects obey God, who,' he added, 'commands queens to be nurses unto His people.'
'Yea,' quoth she, 'but ye are not the Church that I will nourish. I will defend the Kirk of Rome, for, I think, it is the true Kirk of God.'
'Your will,' quoth he, 'Madam, is no reason; neither doth your thought make that Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ.' ...