But the publication brought such a storm about his head, that though he had purposed to follow his first blast with a second and a third, the two latter were never blown. His friend and colleague, Christopher Goodman, put himself by his side in a work entitled "How Superior Powers ought to be Obeyed of their Subjects;" and at a later day John Milton, in quoting from Goodman, and referring to him and others, in his "Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" says, "These were the pastors of those saints and confessors, who, flying from the bloody persecution of Queen Mary, gathered up at length their scattered members into {110} many congregations ... _These were the true Protestant divines of England_, our fathers in the faith we hold."[2] But such laudations were exceptional. Foxe, the martyrologist, wrote a long and friendly letter to Knox, in which he expostulated with him on the impropriety of its publication; and even his friend John Calvin, in a letter to Cecil, felt compelled to deny all complicity with its production. Mary Tudor did not live long to resent it; but her sister Elizabeth never either forgot or forgave it; and it prejudiced the mind of Mary Stuart against him long before she looked upon his face. Not many months after its publication he was constrained to say "My first Blast hath blown from me all my friends in England," and could he have foreseen what the alliance of Elizabeth was ultimately to do for Scotland in the very climax of her Reformation agony, we may safely say that the work would neither have been written nor published. But his excuse (_valeat quantum_) is not far to seek, and we cannot do better than give it in the words of Carlyle.[3] "It is written with very great vehemency; the excuse for which, so far as it may really need excuse, is to be found in the fact that it was written while the fires of Smithfield were still blazing, on best of bloody Mary, and not long after Mary of Guise had been raised to the Regency of Scotland--maleficent crowned women these two--covering poor England and poor Scotland {111} with mere ruin and horror, in Knox's judgment, and may we not still say to a considerable extent, in that of all candid persons? The book is by no means without merit; has in it various little traits unconsciously autobiographic, and others which are illuminative and interesting. One ought to add withal, that Knox was no despiser of women, far the reverse in fact; his behaviour to good and pious women is full of respect; and his tenderness, his filial helpfulness in their suffering and infirmities (see the letters to his mother-in-law and others) are beautifully conspicuous. For the rest his poor book testifies to many high intellectual qualities in Knox, and especially to far more of learning than has ever been ascribed to him, or is anywhere traceable in his other writings."