To these heavy charges Knox replied, that, if to teach the truth of God in sincerity, to rebuke idolatry, and exhort a people to worship God according to his word, were to excite subjects to rise against their princes, then he stood convicted of that crime; for it had pleased God to employ him, among many others, to disclose unto that realm the vanity of the papistical religion, with the deceit, pride, and tyranny of the Roman antichrist. But if the true knowledge of God and his right worship were the most powerful inducements to subjects cordially to obey their princes, (as they certainly were,) then was he innocent. Her grace, he was persuaded, had at present as unfeigned obedience from the protestants of Scotland, as ever her father, or any of her ancestors, had from those called bishops. With respect to what had been reported to her majesty concerning the fruits of his preaching in England, he was glad that his enemies laid nothing to his charge but what the world knew to be false. If they could prove, that in any of the places where he had resided there was either sedition or mutiny, he would confess himself to be a malefactor. But so far from this being the case, he was not {33} ashamed to say, that in Berwick, where bloodshed had formerly been common among the military, God so blessed his weak labours, that there was as great quietness, during the time he resided in that town, as there was at present in Edinburgh. The slander of practising magic, (an art which he had always condemned,) he could more easily bear, when he recollected that his master, Jesus Christ, had been defamed as one in league with Beelzebub. As to the book which seemed to have offended her majesty so highly, he owned that he wrote it, and he was willing that all the learned should judge of it. He understood that an Englishman had written against it, but he had not read his work. If that author had sufficiently confuted his arguments, and established the contrary opinion, he would confess his error; but to that hour he continued to think himself able to maintain the propositions affirmed in that book against any ten in Europe.