It is remarkable that in his _History_ he associates the Reformers less with _Evangelium_ than with _Libertas_. They are the _vindices libertatis_--‘the champions of liberty’--quite as much or oftener than the _Evangelii professores_--‘the professors of the Evangel,’--from which it might seem that for Buchanan, not the least valuable aspect of Protestantism lay in its being a struggle for liberty--a view in which a good many other people will be ready to concur. Queen Mary, in her later years, protesting against Buchanan’s appointment as her son’s tutor, described him, in writing, as an ‘Atheist’; but that was in the sense in which Athanasius described Arius as an atheist, and is said to have seized an opportunity of striking him in the jaw in that capacity, to show what he thought of it and him. Arius, however, constantly professed himself a believer in ‘God, the Father Almighty,’ under, of course, ‘heretical’ modifications; but Athanasius thought that a wrong God--that is, a God that was not God, according to Athanasius--was no God, and spoke and acted accordingly. Buchanan was certainly no atheist in his own sense and intention, which, it must always be remembered, was essentially of a deep-sea seriousness, although the wavelets of wit might often dance and gleam on its surface. He manifestly held by some Almighty Power called by him God, _Deus_, _Numen_, _Providentia_; but whether this was the God of Mary Stuart, or the anthropomorphic God of Calvin, or the accommodation to the popular sense of reverence ascribed by many people, and not without reason, to Carlyle, might form a subject of discussion.