When first employed as a 'licensed preacher,' and agent of
the State in England, Knox accepted just as much of the State's
liturgy as he pleased; the liturgy ordered the people to kneel, Knox
and his Berwick congregation disobeyed. With equal freedom, he and the
other royal chaplains, at Easter, preaching before the King, denounced
his ministers, Northumberland and the rest. Knox spoke of them in his
sermon as Judas, Shebna, and some other scriptural malignants. Later
he said that he repented having put things so mildly; he ought to have
called the ministers by their names, not veiled things in a hint. Now
we cannot easily conceive a chaplain of her late Majesty, in a sermon
preached before her, denouncing the Chancellor of the Exchequer, say
Mr. Gladstone, as 'Judas.' Yet Knox, a licensed preacher of a State
Church, indulged his 'spiritual independence' to that extent, and took
shame to himself that he had not gone further.
Obviously, if this is 'Erastianism,' it is of an unusual kind. The
idea of Knox is that in a Catholic State the ruler is not to be obeyed
in religious matters by the true believers; sometimes Knox wrote that
the Catholic ruler ought to be met by 'passive resistance;' sometimes
that he ought to be shot at sight.
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