[John Knox and the Reformation by Andrew Lang]@TWC D-Link book
John Knox and the Reformation

CHAPTER VI: KNOX IN THE ENGLISH PURITAN TROUBLES AT FRANKFORT: 1554-1555
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He was forbidden to preach by Cox and his majority; and a later conference with Cox led to no compromise.

It seems probable that Cox and the anti- puritans already cherished a grudge against Knox for his tract, the "Admonition." He had a warning that they would use the pamphlet against him, and he avers that "some devised how to have me cast into prison." The anti-puritans, admitting in a letter to Calvin that they brought the "Admonition" before the magistrates of Frankfort as "a book which would supply their enemies with just ground for overturning the whole Church, and one which had added much oil to the flame of persecution in England," deny that they desired more than that Knox might be ordered to quit the place.

The passages selected as treasonable in the "Admonition" do not include the prayer for a Jehu.

They were enough, however, to secure the dismissal of Knox from Frankfort.
Cox had accepted the Order used by the French Protestant congregation, probably because it committed him and his party to nothing in England; however, Knox had no sooner departed than the anti-puritans obtained leave to use, without surplice, cross, and some other matters, the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI.

In September the Puritans seceded, the anti- puritans remained, squabbling with the Lutherans and among themselves.
In the whole affair Knox acted the most open and manly part; in his "History" he declines to name the opponents who avenged themselves, in a manner so dubious, on his "Admonition." If they believed their own account of the mischief that it wrought in England, their denunciation of him to magistrates, who were not likely to do more than dismiss him, is the less inexcusable.


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