Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/303

 THE PORTRAITS OF JOHN KNOX. 293 proved of no avail ; his sympatliy with his subject being almost nully and his aim mainly to be what is called impartial, that is, to give no pain to any prejudice, and to be intelligible on a first perusal. Scottish Puritanism, well considered, seems to me distinctly the noblest and completest form that the grand Sixteenth Century Reformation any- where assumed. We may say also that it has been by far the most widely fruitful form ; for in the next century it had produced English Cromwellian Puri- tanism, with open Bible in one hand, drawn Sword in the other, and victorious foot trampling on Romish Babylon, that is to say irrevocably refusing to believe what is not a Fact in God's Universe, but a mingled mass of self-delusions and mendacities in the region of Chimera. So that now we look for the effects of it not in Scotland only, or in our small British Islands only, but over wide seas, huge American conti- nents and growing British Nations in every zone of the earth. And, in brief, shall have to admit that John Knox, the authentic Prometheus of all that, has been a most distinguished Son of Adam, and had probably a physiognomy worth looking at. We ha^e