The secretary, finding himself hard pushed, said that they had wandered from the argument; and he professed that if the queen should become a persecutor, he would be as ready as any within the realm to adopt the doctrine of the Reformer. “But our question,” said he, “is, whether that we may, and ought, suppress the queen’s mass. Or, whether that her idolatry should be laid to our charge.”――“Idolatry ought not only to be suppressed,” said Knox, “but the idolater ought to die the death.”――“I know,” answered Maitland, “that the idolater ought to die the death; but by whom?”――“By the people,” rejoined the Reformer; “for the commandment was made to Israel, as ye may read, ‘Hear, O Israel, {121} saith the Lord, the statutes and commandments of the Lord thy God.’”――“But there is no commandment given to the people to punish their king, if he be an idolater.”――“I find no privilege granted unto kings,” said Knox, “more than unto the people, to offend God’s majesty.”――“I grant,” said the secretary; “but yet the people may not be judge unto their king, to punish him, albeit he be an idolater. The people may not execute God’s judgment, but must leave it unto himself, who will either punish it by death, by war, by imprisonment, or by some other kind of plagues.”――“I know,” replied Knox, “the last part of your reason to be true; but for the first I am assured ye have no other warrant except your own imagination, and the opinion of such as more fear to offend princes than God.” “Why say you so?” said Maitland. “I have the judgments of the most famous men within Europe, and of such as ye yourself will confess both godly and learned.” Upon which he produced a bundle of papers, and read extracts from the writings of the principal reformed divines against resistance to rulers; adding, that he had bestowed more labour on the collection of these authorities than on the reading of commentaries for seven years. Knox replied, that it was a pity he had given himself so much labour, for none of the extracts which he had read bore upon the question under discussion; some of them being directed against the anabaptists, who denied that Christians should be subject to magistrates, or that it was lawful for them to hold the {122} office of magistracy; and the rest referring to the case of a small number of Christians scattered through heathen and infidel countries, which was the situation of the primitive church. In this last case, he said, he perfectly agreed with the writers whom Maitland had quoted; but when the majority of a nation were professors of the true religion, the case was very different. While the posterity of Abraham were few in number, and while they sojourned in different countries, they were merely required to avoid all participation in the idolatrous rites of the heathen; but as soon as they “prospered into a kingdom,” and obtained possession of Canaan, they were strictly charged to suppress idolatry, and to destroy all its monuments and incentives.