Knox could not have done that, for the author "earnestly required of me closeness and fidelity," which, probably, Knox promised.

Indeed, one fancies that his opinions and character would have been in conflict if a chance of handing an idolater over to death had been offered to him.
{102c} The death of Mary Tudor on November 17, 1558, does not appear to have been anticipated by him.

The tidings reached him before January 12, 1559, when he wrote from Geneva a singular "Brief Exhortation to England for the Spedie Embrasing of Christ's Gospel heretofore by the Tyrannie of Marie Suppressed and Banished." The gospel to be embraced by England is, of course, not nearly so much Christ's as John Knox's, in its most acute form and with its most absolute, intolerant, and intolerable pretensions.

He begins by vehemently rebuking England for her "shameful defection" and by threatening God's "horrible vengeances which thy monstrous unthankfulness hath long deserved," if the country does not become much more puritan than it had ever been, or is ever likely to be.

Knox "wraps you all in idolatry, all in murder, all in one and the same iniquity," except the actual Marian martyrs; those who "abstained from idolatry;" and those who "avoided the realm" or ran away.