in the discharge of his duty, and in a public cause, can withstand the tide of tenderness as well as the storm of passion. There have been times when such conduct was regarded as the proof of a superior mind; and the man who, from such motives, “hearkened not to the wife of his bosom, nor knew his own children,” has been the object not of censure, but of admiration, in pagan as well as sacred story. Fertur pudicæ conjugis osculum, Parvosque natos, ut capitis minor, Ab se removisse, et virilem Torvus humi posuisse vultum. While Knox lay under the displeasure of the court, and had lost the confidence of his principal friends, his enemies judged it a favourable opportunity for attacking him in (what had been universally allowed to be irreproachable) his moral conduct. At the very time that he was engaged in scrutinizing the scandal against Methven, and inflicting upon him the highest censure of the church, it was alleged that he was himself guilty of the same crime. Euphemia Dundas, an inhabitant of Edinburgh, inveighing one day, in the presence of a circle of her acquaintance, against the protestant doctrine and ministers, said, among other things, that John Knox had been a common whoremonger all his life, and that, within a few {94} days past, he “was apprehendit and tane furth of ane killogie with ane common hure.” This might have been passed over by Knox and the church, as an effusion of popish spleen or female scandal; but the recent occurrence at Jedburgh, the situation in which the Reformer at present stood with the court, the public manner in which the charge bad been brought, and the specification of a particular instance, seemed to them to justify and call for a legal investigation. Accordingly, the clerk of the General Assembly, on the 18th of June, gave in a formal representation and petition to the town council, praying, that the woman might be brought before them, and the matter examined; that, if the accusation was found true, the accused might be punished with every degree of merited rigour; and that, if false, the accuser might be dealt with according to the demerit of her offence. She was called, and, appearing before the council, flatly denied that she had ever used any such words; although Knox’s procurator afterwards produced respectable witnesses to prove that she had spoken them.[114]