intolerance which is unintelligible, until we remember that the 'one mass' which he was thinking of was that of the ruler who might soon have the power, and perhaps had already the intention, of suppressing religion. Mary had come to Scotland with the deliberate plan of conciliating and capturing her native kingdom, and she was not the woman to shrink from whatever seemed to be necessary in the process. It may have been her brother who suggested a meeting between two people whom, in different ways, he certainly liked as well as admired. In any case, Knox was now at once sent for to the Court, and there followed the first of the famous interviews between Knox and the Queen, recorded in the Fourth Book of his History. The detailed truth of these Dialogues is not to be inferred merely from their vigour and verisimilitude. It results equally from the fact that, throughout, Knox represents the young Queen as meeting him with perfect intelligence, while on most points she actually has the better of the argument. The vindication of Knox has come, not so much from what he has himself so faithfully recorded, as from the judgment of history on the whole situation, and on the relation to it of speakers who were also actors. The first is probably the most important of the dialogues.[104] Mary and her brother received Knox in Holyrood, two ladies standing in the other end of the room. She commenced by taxing him with his book against her 'regimen.' He explained that, if Scotland was satisfied with a female ruler, he would not object. 'But yet,' said she, 'ye have taught the people to receive another religion than their Princes can allow: And how can that doctrine be of God, seeing that God commands subjects to obey their Princes?' Knox, in answer, ignored the article of his Confession which bears closely on this point,[105] and fell back on the more fundamental truth. 'Madam, as right religion took neither original nor authority from worldly princes, but from the Eternal God alone, so are not subjects bound to frame their religion according to the appetites of their Princes.' 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.'