[2] Knox seems not only to justify the assassination of Cardinal Beaton, but to hint that it would have been proper to have disposed of his successor in the same way. "These," says he, "_are the works of our God_, whereby he would admonish the tyrants of this earth, that, in the end, he will be revenged of their cruelty, what strength soever they make in the contrary. But such is the blindness of man, as David speaks, that the posterity does ever follow the footsteps of their wicked fathers, and principally in their impiety: For how little differs the cruelty of that bastard, that yet is called Bishop of St Andrews, from the cruelty of the former, we will after hear."--Knox's Hist. of the Reformation, p. 65. [3] Dalyell's "Fragments of Scottish History." [4] Keith, p. 68.--Knox's History, p. 94-6. [5] M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. i. p. 222. [6] M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. ii. p. 206. [7] The Biographer of Knox goes perhaps a little too far, when he proposes to alleviate the sorrow felt for the loss of these architectural monuments of superstition, by reminding the antiquarian that _Ruins_ inspire more lively sentiments of the sublime and beautiful than more perfect remains. This is a piece of ingenuity, but not of sound reasoning. It is rather a curious doctrine, that a Cathedral or Monastery does not look best with all its walls standing.--M'Crie's Life of Knox, vol. I. p. 271. [8] It is worth while observing with what a total want of all Christian charity Knox speaks of the death of Mary of Guise. Alluding to her burial, he says:--"The question was moved of her burial: the preachers boldly gainstood that any superstitious rites should be used within that realm, which God of his mercy had begun to purge; and so was she clapped in a coffin of lead, and kept in the Castle from the 9th of June until the 19th of October, when she, by Pinyours, was carried to a ship, and so carried to France. What pomp was used there, we neither hear nor yet regard; but in it we see that she, that delighted that others lay without burial, got it neither so soon as she herself (if she had been of the counsel in her life) would have required it, neither yet so honourable in this realm as sometimes she looked for. It may perchance be a pronosticon, that the Guisean blood cannot have any rest within this realm." Elsewhere he says--"Within few days after, began her belly and loathsome legs to swell, and so continued till that God did execute his judgment upon her." And again--"God, for his mercy's sake, rid us of the rest of the Guisean blood. Amen." As Keith remarks, it was not by this spirit that the Apostles converted the world.--Keith, p. 129. [9] M'Crie's Life of Knox, Vol. 1. p. 323.