In April he preached in the Chapel Royal before the young king, and inveighed in the strongest terms against Northumberland and Paulet, finishing one of his scathing passages in this way: "Was David and Hezekiah, princes of great and godly gifts and experience, abused by crafty counsellors and dissembling hypocrites? What wonder is it, then, that a young and innocent king be deceived by crafty, covetous, wicked, and ungodly counsellors? I am greatly afraid that Ahithophel be councillor, that Judas bear the purse, and that Shebna be scribe, comptroller and treasurer." The pulpit in those days had to discharge the duties of public criticism on politics and morals, which are now much more appropriately performed by the press; and so, as Froude {62} remarks, "since discipline could not be restored, Knox, and those who felt with him the enormities of the times, established, by their own authority, this second form of excommunication." It was then perhaps a necessity, but it is always, more or less, a dangerous thing for a minister to do; and it must be admitted that Knox was not always just in such philippics. But he was always conscientious, and he was always brave; and he well knew at the moment the risk which he was running. In the present case, if little good came out of it to the country, no harm resulted from it to himself; for, as we have seen, he was shortly afterwards engaged to preach in Buckinghamshire. And there he laboured on, like another Jeremiah, forecasting evils which none of his hearers would believe could happen, until at the death of Edward the Sixth, on the 6th of July, 1553, they were rudely awakened from their sleep of security.