But that Knox should have frequently maintained the doctrine of death to religious opponents is a strange and deplorable circumstance.

In reforming the Church of Christ he omitted some elements of Christianity.
Suppose, for a moment, that in deference to the teaching of the Gospel, Knox had never called for a Jehu, but had ever denounced, by voice and pen, those murderous deeds of his own party which he celebrates as "godly facts," he would have raised Protestantism to a moral pre-eminence.

Dark pages of Scottish history might never have been written: the consciences of men might have been touched, and the cruelties of the religious conflict might have been abated.

Many of them sprang from the fear of assassination.
But Knox in some of his writings identified his cause with the palace revolutions of an ancient Oriental people.

Not that he was a man of blood; when in France he dissuaded Kirkcaldy of Grange and others from stabbing the gaolers in making their escape from prison.