In fact, however, the Court highly approved of his sermon.

He was presently again in what he believed to be imminent danger of life: "I fear that I be not yet ripe, nor able to glorify Christ by my faith," he wrote to Mrs.Bowes, "but what lacketh now, God shall perform in His own time." {37b} We do not know what peril threatened the Reformer now (probably in March 1553), but he frequently, later, seems to have doubted his own "ripeness" for martyrdom.

His reluctance to suffer did not prevent him from constant attendance to the tedious self-tormentings of Mrs.Bowes, and of "three honest poor women" in London.
Knox, at all events, was not so "perplexed" that he feared to speak his mind in the pulpit.

In Lent, 1553, preaching before the boy king, he denounced his ministers in trenchant historical parallels between them and Achitophel, Shebna, and Judas.

Later, young Mr.Mackail, applying the same method to the ministers of Charles II., was hanged.