'In one of the streets of that town, I came where there were three or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun, and talking about the things of God.... But they were far above, out of my reach; for their talk was about a new birth, the work of God on their hearts, also how they were convinced of their miserable state.... And methought they spake as if joy did make them speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said, that they were to me as if they had found a new world, as if they were people that dwelt alone, and were not to be reckoned among their neighbours.'--Bunyan's _Grace Abounding_. [43] 'Works,' iii. 350. [44] 'Works,' iii. 360. [45] 'Works,' iii. 366. [46] 'Works,' iii. 368. [47] 'Works,' iii. 357. Browning makes his good old Pope feel, in the later Renaissance, as if Christian heroism had been 'so possible When in the way stood Nero's cross and stake, So hard now'-- and, looking back almost regretfully to Nero's time, to ask-- 'How could saints and martyrs _fail_ see truth Streak the night's blackness?' 'The Ring and the Book. The Pope,' line 1827. [48] 'Works,' vi. 514. [49] 'The examples of God's children always complaining of their own wretchedness serve for the penitent that _they_ slide not into desperation.'--'Works,' vi. 85. [50] 'Works,' iii. 386. [51] 'Works,' vi. 513. [52] It is of the letter from which the above is taken that Knox in publishing it long after says apologetically, 'If it serve not for this estate of Scotland, yet it will serve a troubled conscience, so long as the Kirk of God remaineth in either realm.'--'Works,' vi. 617. [53] 'Works,' iii. 362. [54] 'Works,' iv. 252. [55] 'Honest' in that age meant something nearly equivalent to 'honourable,' and that they were 'poor women' may refer to troubles which they brought to him, other than want of money. [56] 'Works,' vi. 104. [57] 'Works,' iii. 370. [58] 'Conditions' refers to inward nature, not outward circumstances. It may be explained by a letter written nine years later, also to a friend in England, in which Knox apologises for not having written him for years, during which the Reformer had been 'tossed with many storms,' yet might have sent a letter, 'if that this my churlish nature, _for the most part oppressed with melancholy_, had not staid tongue and pen from doing of their duty.'--'Works,' vi. 566. Knox in 1553 was suffering severely from gravel and dyspepsia; one of these was already an 'old malady'; and both seem to have clung to him during the rest of his life. [59] 'Works,' vi. 11. CHAPTER IV THE PUBLIC LIFE: TO THE PARLIAMENT OF 1560