But even in this matter, advanced as he was, Knox was not entirely above the narrowness of his age. In common with all the Reformers, and the most of the Puritans, he held that the theocracy of the Jews was the ideal state, and as a consequence, that it was the duty of the civil government to punish idolatry with death, to set up and maintain the true religion by all the means at its disposal, and to put down heresy as rebellion. {134} Neither the statesmen nor the divines of that age seem to have perceived that the true analogue to the Jewish theocracy is the spiritual Church of Christ, and so we account for the fact that they continually referred to the Old Testament as their warrant for seeking to advance what they believed to be the truth, and to put down what they considered to be error by force. They did not remember that in the Jewish state God was in no mere figurative sense, but really and absolutely the King, so that in it to fear God and to honour the king was virtually the same thing, and sin in every form was also _ipso facto_ crime, was indeed treason, as committed against the head of the government, and so was punishable by civil pains and penalties. Forgetting or not perceiving _that_, the Reformers took the Jewish for the model constitution. In all the states which they sought to remodel, they lost sight of the distinction between a theocracy and an ordinary government, and confounded crime with sin, and sin with crime. More especially they made the crime of crimes to be, the resisting or not conforming to what they themselves believed to be the true religion as revealed by God, and as such they punished that with all severity. There is no instance indeed on record of Knox himself being in any way mixed up with persecution, understanding by that word merely the putting of one to death for religious practices or opinions. No such controversy can be raised over him as that which has been held regarding Calvin and the prosecution of Servetus. But they all alike held {135} that it was the duty of the government to establish and maintain, as a government, and that means by enactments enforced by penalties, the true religion; and from that persecution follows; rather let us say, in that persecution is involved. To this error, which, however, was the common opinion of their times, may be traced most of the difficulties in which they were involved in the prosecution of their work. The world has been slow to come to it, but no perfect liberty either in Church or in state is possible save through the separation of the one from the other, and the restriction of each to its own proper domain. When this shall be attained in Scotland and England, then shall be the beginning of another era, as strongly marked as that which began in the overthrow of the Papal Church three hundred years ago. The course of our narrative takes us now into parliamentary debates, and royal closets, fully as often as into assemblies of the