But it is quite certain that of an armed rising Calvin absolutely disapproved.

On April 16, 1561, writing to Coligny, Calvin says that he was consulted several months before the tumult of Amboise (March 1560) and absolutely discouraged the appeal to arms.

"Better that we all perish a hundred times than that the name of Christianity and the Gospel should come under such disgrace." {76b} If Calvin bade Knox go to Scotland, he must have supposed that no rebellion was intended.

Knox tells his correspondents that they have betrayed themselves and their posterity ("in conscience I can except none that bear the name of nobility"), they have made him and their own enterprise ridiculous, and they have put him to great trouble.
What is he to say when he returns to Geneva, and is asked why he did not carry out his purpose?
He then encourages them to be resolute.
Knox "certainly made the most," says Professor Hume Brown, "of the two letters from correspondents unknown to us." He at once represented them as the cause of his failure to keep tryst; but, in April 1558, writing from Geneva to "the sisters," he said, "the cause of my stop to this day I do not clearly understand." He did not know why he left England before the Marian persecutions; and he did not know why he had not crossed over to Scotland in 1557.

"It may be that God justly permitted Sathan to put in my mind such cogitations as these: I heard such troubles as appeared in that realm;"-- troubles presently to be described.
Hearing, at Dieppe, then, in October 1557, of the troubles, and of the faint war with England, and moved, perhaps, he suggests, by Satan, {77a} Knox "began to dispute with himself, as followeth, 'Shall Christ, the author of peace, concord, and quietness, be preached where war is proclaimed, and tumults appear to rise?
What comfort canst thou have to see the one part of the people rise up against the other,'" and so forth.
These truly Christian reflections, as we may think them, "yet do trouble and move my wicked heart," says Knox.