The argument of his discourse on this occasion was an amplification of the following syllogism: "all worshipping, honouring, or service, invented by the brain of man, in the religion of God, without His express commandment is idolatry: the mass is invented by the brain of man without any commandment of God; therefore, the mass is idolatry." The ground here taken was identical with that which he had defended against Arbuckle, and is distinctively different from the position which, in the very same year, was taken by Cranmer in his "Defence of the true Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament." The Anglican primate meant by idolatry the substitution of a false God for the true, as in the adoration of the host, for the real body, blood, soul and divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. But by the same term, as his major premise makes abundantly evident, Knox designated that which we should call now constructive idolatry, namely, "the invention of strange worshippings of God, introduced without any warrant from His word;" or what the Westminster divines meant, when in their Shorter Catechism in answer to the {44} question, "What is forbidden in the second commandment?" they reply, "The worshipping of God by images, _or any other way not appointed in His word_." With Cranmer the word meant the worshipping as God of that which is no God; with Knox it denoted the worshipping of God in a manner invented by men and unauthorized by God. Cranmer was the father of the Anglican churchmen; Knox was the earliest, and by no means the least noteworthy, of the Puritans, for the principle which he advocated was one which he was as ready to apply to ceremonies in the reformed churches as to the idolatries of the Romish worship. The utterance of these sentiments by him at this time marks the beginning of that movement which has continued even until now, and which in its progress, among other less conspicuous results, called into existence the various nonconforming churches of England; inspired the covenanters of Scotland to begin and carry through their long and painful struggle with the second Charles; widened the civil liberties of Great Britain; and planted the seed from which the American Republic has grown into stateliness and strength.