all natural understanding in me, judged my cause to be irremediable; and yet in my greatest calamity, and when my pains were most cruel, would His eternal wisdom that I should write far contrary to the judgment of carnal wisdom, which His mercy has proved true. Blessed be His holy name! And therefore I dare be bold, in the verity of God's word to promise that notwithstanding the vehemence of trouble, the long continuance thereof, the {24} dispersion of all men, the fearfulness, danger, dolor, and anguish of our hearts; yet if we call constantly to God, that beyond expectation of all men, He shall deliver." There can be little doubt, as Dr. Laing remarks in a foot-note to this passage, that Knox here refers to his bodily and mental sufferings during his confinement on board the French galley, and so we see that his faith was not a mere sentimental thing, that, as he has himself elsewhere expressed it, he was no mere "speculative theologue," but indeed a steadfast believer, who had proved God's faithfulness to His promise even in the sorest tribulation. Again in the epistle to the congregation of the Castle of St. Andrews prefixed by him to the tract on Justification by Faith, which his friend Henry Balnaves had written during his imprisonment at Rouen, we find among other allusions to his support under his sufferings the following words: "I exhort that ye read diligently this treatise, not only with earnest prayer that ye may understand the same aright, but also with humble and due thanksgiving unto our most merciful Father, who of His infinite power hath so strengthened the hearts of His prisoners, that in despite of Satan they desist not yet to work, but in the most vehemency of tribulation seek the utility and salvation of others." And in a letter written in December, 1559, he speaks of "all the torments of the galleys" in such a way as to lead us to conclude that he was subjected to the greatest hardships. Once more, and perhaps most pathetically of {25} all, in that letter to the congregation of Berwick which Dr. Lorimer first printed in his "John Knox and the Church of England," and to which we shall have to make fuller reference by-and-by, he thus writes: "This day I am more vile and of low reputation in my own eyes than I was either that day that _my feet were chained in the prison of dolor_ (the galleys I mean), or yet that day that I was delivered by His only providence from the same."