Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/106

86 REIGN OF ELIZABETH'. [CH. 57. special Providence of God had placed the Queen of Scots in her Majesty's hands to be punished; and if her Majesty was found wanting, the bishops said they could but pray that her own fate might not be like that of the Eegent's. Those who seduced the people of God into idolatry were to be slain ; there was an express order that no pity should be shown them. The Queen of Scots had sought to seduce God's people in England : she was the only hope of God's adversaries in Europe, and the instrument by which they trusted to overthrow the Gospel. She had heaped together all the sins of the licentious sons of David adulteries, murders, con- spiracies, treasons, blasphemies. If she was allowed to escape, God's wrath would surely light on the prince who spared her. The safety of England required the death of the devilish woman who had sought to bring it to confusion : conscience, prudence, duty pointed to the same conclusion. Her Majesty feared for her honour : the shadow of honour had deceived Saul, and Ahab thought it dishonour that one king should slay another. But God's judgment was not as man's. Joshua, in the spirit of true honour, slew five kings at once, and slew them rudely. The wicked Jezebel and the wicked Athaliah, both inferior in mischief to the Queen of Scots, had been executed with God's approval. To show pity to an enemy, a stranger, a professed member of Antichrist, convicted of so many heinous crimes, with the evident peril of so many thousands of bodies and souls, of good and faithful subjects, might justly be termed crudelis misericordia,'