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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, John Knox, by A. Taylor Innes
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: John Knox
+
+
+Author: A. Taylor Innes
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 19, 2007  [eBook #22106]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN KNOX***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jordan, Thomas Strong, and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+JOHN: KNOX
+
+by
+
+A: TAYLOR INNES
+
+Famous Scots: Series
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Published by
+Oliphant Anderson
+Ferrier Edinbvrgh
+and London
+
+The designs and ornaments of this
+volume are by Mr Joseph Brown,
+and the printing from the press of
+Messrs Turabull & Spears, Edinburgh.
+
+   _May_ 1896.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                PAGE
+
+CHAPTER I
+THE SCHOLAR AND PRIEST: HIS ENVIRONMENT            9
+
+CHAPTER II
+THE CRISIS: SINGLE OR TWO-FOLD?                   25
+
+CHAPTER III
+THE INNER LIFE: HIS WOMEN FRIENDS                 48
+
+CHAPTER IV
+THE PUBLIC LIFE: TO THE PARLIAMENT OF 1560        65
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE PUBLIC LIFE: LEGISLATION AND CHURCH PLANS     95
+
+CHAPTER VI
+THE PUBLIC LIFE: THE CONFLICT WITH QUEEN MARY    117
+
+CHAPTER VII
+CLOSING YEARS AND DEATH                          144
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE SCHOLAR AND PRIEST: HIS ENVIRONMENT
+
+
+The century now closing has redeemed Knox from neglect, and has gathered
+around his name a mass of biographical material. That material, too,
+includes much that is of the nature of self-revelation, to be gleaned
+from familiar letters, as well as from his own history of his time. Yet,
+after all that has been brought together, Knox remains to many observers
+a mere hard outline, while to others he is almost an enigma--a blur,
+bright or black, upon the historic page.
+
+There is one real and great difficulty. For the first forty years of his
+life we know absolutely nothing of the inner man. Yet at forty most men
+are already made. And in the case of this man, from about that date
+onwards we find the character settled and fixed. Henceforward, during
+the whole later life with its continually changing drama, Knox remains
+intensely and unchangeably the same. It is the contrast, perhaps the
+crisis, which is worth studying. The contrast, indeed, is not
+unprecedented. More than one Knox-like prophet, in the solemn days of
+early faith, 'was in the desert until the time of his shewing unto
+Israel'; and not the polished shaft only, but the rough spear-head too,
+has remained hid in the shadow of a mighty hand until the very day when
+it was launched. But each such case impels us the more to inquire, What
+was it after all which really made the man who in his turn made the age?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Knox was born in or near Haddington in 1505. Of his father, William
+Knox, and his mother, whose maiden name was Sinclair, nothing is known,
+except that the parents of both belonged to that district of country,
+and had fought under the standard of the House of Bothwell. We shall
+never know which of the two contributed the insight or the audacity, the
+tenacity or the tenderness, the common-sense or the humour, which must
+all have been part of Knox's natural character before it was moulded
+from without. His father was of the 'simple,' not of the gentle, sort;
+possibly a peasant, or frugal cultivator of the soil. But he saved
+enough to send one of his two sons, John, now in the eighteenth year of
+his age, and having, no doubt, received his earlier education in the
+excellent grammar school of Haddington, to the University of Glasgow.
+Haddington was in the diocese of St Andrews, but a native of Haddington,
+John Major, was at this time Regent in Glasgow. He had brought from
+Paris, four years before, a vast academical reputation, and Knox now
+'sat as at his feet' during his last year of teaching in Glasgow. In
+1523, however, Major was transferred to St Andrews, and there he taught
+theology for more than a quarter of a century, during the latter half of
+which time he was Provost or Head of St Salvator's College. Whether Knox
+at any time followed him there does not appear. Beza, Knox's earliest
+biographer, thought he did. But Beza's information as to this portion of
+the life, though apparently derived from Knox's colleague and
+successor,[1] is so extremely confused as to suggest that the Reformer
+was equally reticent about it to those nearest him as he has chosen to
+be to posterity. For nearly twenty years of manhood, indeed, Knox
+disappears from our view. And when, in 1540, he emerges again in his
+native district, it is as a notary and a priest. 'Sir John Knox' he was
+called by others, that being the style by which secular priests were
+known, unless they had taken not only the bachelor's but also the
+master's degree at the University.[2] Knox in after years never alluded
+to his priesthood, though his adversaries did; but so late as 27th March
+1543 he describes himself in a notarial deed in his own handwriting as
+'John Knox, minister of the sacred altar, of the Diocese of St Andrews,
+notary by Apostolical authority.' Apostolical means Papal, the notarial
+authority being transmitted through the St Andrews Archbishop; and Knox
+at this time does not shrink from dating his notarial act as in such a
+year 'of the pontificate of our most holy Father and Lord in Christ, the
+Lord Paul, Pope by the Providence of God.' Only three years later, in
+1546, he was carrying a two-handed sword before Wishart, then in danger
+of arrest and condemnation to the stake at the hands of the same
+Archbishop Beaton under whom Knox held his orders. And in the following
+year, 1547, Knox is standing in the Church of St Andrews, and denouncing
+the Pope (not as an individual, though the Pope of that day was a
+Borgia, but) as the official head of an Anti-Christian system.
+
+This early blank in the biography raises questions, some of which will
+never be answered. We do not know at all when Knox took priest's orders.
+It was almost certainly not before 1530, for it was only in that year
+that he became eligible as being twenty-five years old. It may possibly
+have been as late as 1540, when his name is first found in a deed. In
+that and the two following years he seems to have resided at Samuelston
+near Haddington, and may have officiated in the little chapel there. But
+he was also at this time acting as 'Maister' or tutor to the sons of
+several gentlemen of East Lothian, and he continued this down to 1547,
+the time of his own 'call' to preach the Evangel. Nor do we know whether
+the change in his views, which in 1547 was so complete, had been sudden
+on the one hand or gradual and long prepared on the other. Knox's own
+silence on this is very remarkable. A man of his fearless egoism and
+honesty might have been expected to leave, if not an autobiography like
+those of Augustine and Bunyan, at least a narrative of change like the
+_Force of Truth_ of Thomas Scott, or the _Apologia_ of John Henry
+Newman. He has not done so; indeed, the author who preserved for us so
+much of that age, and of his own later history in it, seems for some
+reason to have judged his whole earlier period unworthy of record--or
+even of recal. For we find no evidence of his having been more
+confidential on this subject with any of his contemporaries than he has
+been with us. This certainly suggests that the change may have been very
+recent--determined, perhaps, wholly through the personal influence of
+Wishart, whom Knox so affectionately commemorates. Or, if it was not
+recent, it is extremely unlikely that it can have been detailed, vivid,
+and striking, as well as prolonged. Knox was not the man to suppress a
+narrative, however painful to himself, which he could have held to be in
+a marked degree to the glory of God or for the good of men. But whatever
+the reason was, the time past of his life sufficed this man for silence
+and self-accusation. We may be sure that it would have done so (and
+perhaps done so equally), no matter whether those twenty years had been
+spent in the complacent routine of a rustic in holy orders; in the
+dogmatism, defensive or aggressive, of scholastic youth; in fruitless
+efforts to understand the new views of which he was one day to be the
+chief representative; or in half-hearted hesitation whether, after
+having so far understood them, he could part with all things for their
+sake. Which of these positions he held, or how far he may have passed
+from one to another, we may never be able to ascertain. But there is one
+too clear indication that Knox disliked, not only to record, but even to
+recal, his life in the Catholic communion. His greatest defect in after
+years, as a man and a writer, is his inability to sympathise with those
+still found entangled in that old life. He absolutely refuses to put
+himself in their place, or to imagine how a position which was for so
+many years his own could be honestly chosen, or even honestly retained
+for a day, by another. This would have been a misfortune, and a moral
+defect, even in a man not naturally of a sympathetic temper. But Knox,
+as we shall see, was a man of quick and tender nature, and had rather a
+passion for sympathising with those who were not on the other side of
+the gulf he thus fixed. And this one-sided incapacity for sympathy must
+certainly be connected with his one-sided reticence as to the earlier
+half of his own autobiography.
+
+Incapacity to sympathise with persons entangled in a system is one
+thing, and disapproval of that system, or even violent rejection of it,
+is another. Knox, as is well known, broke absolutely with the church
+system in which he was brought up. What was that system, and what was
+Knox's individual outlook upon the Church--first, of Western Europe, and
+secondly of Scotland?
+
+We know at least that Knox, before breaking with the church system of
+mediaeval Europe, was for twenty years in close contact with it. And his
+was no mere external contact such as Haddington, with its magnificent
+churches and monasteries, supplied. It commenced with study, and with
+study under the chief theological teacher of the land and the time.
+Major was the last of the scholastics in our country. But the energy of
+thought of scholasticism, marvellous as it often was, was built upon the
+lines and contained within the limits of an already existing church
+system. And that system was an authoritative one in every sense. The
+hierarchy which governed the Church, and all but constituted it, was
+sacerdotal; that is, it interposed its own mediation at the point where
+the individual meets and deals with God. But it interposed
+correspondingly at every other point of the belief and practice of the
+private man, enforcing its doctrine upon the conscience, and its
+direction upon the will, of every member of the church. Nor was the
+system authoritative only over those who received or accepted it.
+Originally, indeed, and even in the age when the faith was digested into
+a creed by the first Council, the emperor, himself an ardent member of
+the Church, left it free to all his subjects throughout the world to be
+its members or not as they chose. But that great experiment of
+toleration lasted less than a century. For much more than a thousand
+years the same faith, slowly transformed into a church system under the
+central administration of the Popes, had been made binding by imperial
+and municipal law upon every human being in Europe.
+
+Major, not only by his own earlier writings, but as the representative
+in Scotland of the University of Paris, recalled to his countrymen the
+great struggle of the Middle Age in favour of freedom--and especially of
+church freedom against the Popes. That struggle indeed had Germany
+rather than France for its original centre, and it was under the flag of
+the Empire that the progressive despotism of Hildebrand and his
+successors over the feudal world was chiefly resisted. The Empire,
+however, was now a decaying force. Europe was being split into
+nationalities; and national churches--a novelty in Christendom--were,
+under various pretexts, coming into existence. For the last two
+centuries France had thus been the chief national opponent of the
+centralising influence of Rome, and the University of Paris was, during
+that time, the greatest theological school in the world. As such it had
+maintained the doctrine that the church universal could have no absolute
+monarch, but was bound to maintain its own self-government, and that its
+proper organ for this was a general council. And in the early part of
+the fifteenth century, when the schism caused by rival Popes had thrown
+back the Church upon its native powers, the University of Paris was the
+great influence which led the Councils of Constance and of Basle, not
+only to assert this doctrine, but to carry it into effect.
+
+But Major, when Knox met him, represented in this matter a cause already
+lost. Even in the previous century the decrees of the reforming Councils
+were at once frustrated by the successors of the Popes whom they
+deposed, and in this sixteenth century a Lateran Council had already
+anticipated the Vatican of the nineteenth by declaring the Pope to be
+supreme over Council and Church alike. Even the anti-Papal Councils
+themselves, too, were exclusively hierarchical, and accordingly they
+opposed any independent right on the part of the laity, as well as all
+serious enquiries into the earlier practice and faith of the Church. So
+at Constance the Chancellor of Paris, _Doctor Christianissimus_ as well
+as statesman and mystic, compensated for his successful pressure upon
+Rome by helping to send to the stake, notwithstanding the Emperor's
+safe-conduct, the pure-hearted Huss. The result was that, even before
+the time of Major, the expectation, so long cherished by Europe, of a
+great reform through a great Council had died out. And the University of
+Paris, instead of continuing to act in place of that coming Council as
+'a sort of standing committee of the French, or even of the universal,
+Church,'[3] had become a reactionary and retarding power. It opposed
+Humanism, and was the stronghold of the method of teaching which the new
+generation knew as 'Sophistry.' It opposed Reuchlin, and was preparing
+to oppose Luther, and to urge against its own most distinguished pupils
+the law of penal fire. It continued to oppose the despotism of the Pope,
+but it did so rather from the standpoint of a narrow and nationalist
+Gallicanism, based largely upon the counter-despotism of the King. This
+selfish policy attained in Major's own time its fitting result and
+reward. The despotic King and despotic Pope found it convenient for
+their interests to partition between them the 'liberties' of the
+Gallican Church; and by the Concordat of Bologna in 1516, Leo gained a
+huge revenue from the ecclesiastical endowments of France, while Francis
+usurped the right of nominating all its bishops. The University, as well
+as the Parliaments, resisted, and Major, who now lectured in the
+Sorbonne as Doctor in Theology, and had become famous as a
+representative of the anti-Papal school of Occam, took his share in the
+work. He was preparing for publication a Commentary on the Gospel of
+Matthew, and he now added to it four Disputations against the arbitrary
+powers of Popes and Bishops, and especially against the authority of
+Popes in temporal matters over Kings, and in spiritual matters over
+Councils. It was all in vain. In 1517 the University was forced by the
+Crown to submit, after a protest of the broadest kind;[4] and in 1518
+Major returned to his native country a famous teacher, but a defeated
+churchman. Yet the grave fact for Scotland was that Major and his old
+University, and the Western hierarchy everywhere, henceforward
+practically acquiesced in their own defeat. A greater question had
+arisen, and one which they were unwilling to face. On the other side of
+the Rhine, Luther and his friends now claimed for the individual
+Christian the same kind of freedom against Councils and Bishops which
+the previous century had claimed for Councils and Bishops against Popes.
+Paris took the lead in opposition to the new Evangel by its Academic
+decrees of 1521. And when Major, in 1530, republished his Commentary, he
+not only omitted from it his Disputations against Papal absolutism, but
+dedicated it to Archbishop James Beaton as the 'supplanter' and
+'exterminator' of Lutheranism, and, above all, as the judge who, amid
+the murmurings of many, had recently[5] and righteously condemned the
+nobly-born Patrick Hamilton.
+
+It may be well thus to represent to ourselves what must have been the
+outlook into the Western Church of Major, or of any one who looked
+through Major's eyes, in that year 1523. But I think it very unlikely
+that Knox could have derived from such an outlook, or from Major in any
+aspect, a serious impulse to his career as Reformer. Knox no doubt
+learned from him scholastic logic, and turned it in later days with much
+vigour to his own purposes. Major, too, may have unconsciously revealed
+to his pupils with how much hope the former generation had looked
+forward to a council. We find afterwards that Knox and his friends, like
+Luther in his earlier stages, when appealing against the hierarchy,
+sometimes appealed to a General Council. But neither side regarded this
+as serious. It would have been more important if we could have shown
+that Major transmitted to his pupil the opposition maintained for
+centuries by his university to an ultramontane Pontiff as the hereditary
+opponent of all Church freedom and all Church reform. But Luther and the
+German Reformers had already exaggerated this view, so far as to suggest
+that the usurping chief of the Church must be the scriptural Antichrist.
+And their views, brought direct to Scotland by men like Hamilton, had,
+as we have seen, immensely increased the reaction in the mind of Major,
+which was begun abroad before 1518. It is, indeed, curious to notice
+how in his later writings the old university feeling against tyranny in
+the Church almost disappears, while the equally old and honourable
+feeling of the learned Middle Age, and especially of its universities,
+against the tyranny of kings and nobles, finds expression alike in his
+history and his commentaries. Buchanan, who proclaimed to all Europe the
+constitutional rights, even against their sovereign, of the people of
+Scotland, and Knox, the 'subject born within the same,' who was destined
+to translate that Radical theory so largely into fact, were both taught
+by Major. And they may well have been much influenced on this side by a
+man who had long before written that 'the original and supreme power
+resides in the whole of a free people, and is incapable of being
+surrendered,' insomuch that an incorrigible tyrant may always be
+'deposed by that people as by a superior authority.'[6] For even Fergus
+the First, he narrates, 'had no right' other than the nation's choice,
+and when Sir William Wallace was yet a boy, he was taught by his
+Scottish tutor to repeat continually the rude inspiring rhyme, '_Dico
+tibi verum Libertas optima rerum_.'[7] These views as to the rights of
+man, and of Scottish men, may well have fanned, or even kindled, the
+strong feeling of independence in secular matters and as a citizen,
+which burned in the breast of Knox. But as to spiritual matters and the
+Church universal, the only feelings which we can imagine Major, on his
+return from abroad, to have impressed upon the younger man from
+Haddington are a despair of reform, and a disbelief in revolution.
+
+Let us turn, therefore, from abroad to the Church at home. It is
+admitted on all hands that the clergy of this age in Scotland were
+extraordinarily corrupt in life, a reproach which applied eminently to
+the higher ranks and the representative men. But corruption of churchmen
+is always a symptom of deeper things. It does not appear that Scotland
+was much influenced by the spirit of the Renaissance, whether you apply
+that term to the intellectual passion for both knowledge and beauty
+which spread over most parts of Europe during the three previous
+centuries, or to the more specific and half-Pagan culture which in some
+parts of Europe was the result. It may be more important to observe that
+the Church in Scotland had not enjoyed any period of inward religious
+revival--any which could be described as native to it or original. On
+the contrary its great epoch had been its transformation, through royal
+and foreign influence, into the likeness of English and continental
+civilisation, as civilisation was understood in the Middle Age. And that
+transformation in the days of Queen Margaret and her sons was
+accompanied, and to a large extent compensated, by a less desirable
+incorporation into the western ecclesiastical system. The later 'coming
+of the Friars' had not the same powerful effect in the remote north
+which it had in some other realms. And in any case that impulse too had
+long since yielded to a strong reaction, and the preachers were now
+regarded with the disgust with which mankind usually resent the attempt
+to manipulate them by external means without a real message. But there
+were two great sources of ruin to the Scottish church, both connected
+with its relation to a powerful aristocracy. One was the extraordinary
+extent to which its high offices were used as sinecures for the
+favourites, and the sons of favourites, of nobles and of kings. This did
+not tend to impoverish the church; on the contrary, it made it an object
+to all the great families to keep up the wealth on which they proposed
+that their unworthy scions should feed. 'In proportion to the resources
+of the country the Scottish clergy were probably the richest in
+Europe.'[8] But the wealth, accumulated in idle and unworthy hands, was
+now a scandal to religion, and a constant fountain of immorality. Still
+worse was the extent to which that wealth was in Scotland diverted from
+its best uses to the less desirable side--the monastic side--of the
+mediaeval church. In the revival which came from England before the
+twelfth century, a great impulse had been given to the parochialising of
+the country, and to keeping up religious life in every district and
+estate. But a prejudice running back to very early centuries branded the
+parish priests as seculars, and gradually drew away again the devotion
+and the means of the faithful from the parishes where they were needed,
+and to which they properly belonged. It drew them away, in Scotland, not
+only to rich centres like cathedrals, with their too wasteful retinue,
+but far more to the great monasteries scattered over the land. Kings and
+barons, who proposed to spend life so as to need after its close a good
+deal of intercession, naturally turned their eyes, even before
+death-bed, to these wealthy strongholds of poverty and prayer; and of a
+hundred other places besides Melrose, we know 'That lands and livings,
+many a rood, had gifted the shrine for their soul's repose.' But the
+transfer, to such centres, of lands (which were supposed, by the feudal
+law, to belong to chiefs rather than to the community), was not so
+direct an injury to the people of Scotland, as the alienation to the
+same institutions of parochial tithes--sometimes under the form of
+alienating the churches to which the tithes were paid. These parochial
+tithes all possessors of land in the parish were bound by law to pay,
+whether they desired it or not. And, strictly, they should have been
+paid to the pastor of the parish and for its benefit. But by a
+scandalous corruption, often protested against by both Parliament and
+the Church, the Lords of lands were allowed to divert the tithes, which
+they were already bound to pay, to congested ecclesiastical centres,
+sometimes to cathedrals, more often to religious houses of 'regulars.'
+After this was done the monastery or religious House enjoyed the whole
+sheaves or tithes of the land in question; the local vicar, if the House
+appointed one, being entitled only to the 'lesser tithes' of domestic
+animals, eggs, grass, etc. This robbery of the parishes of
+Scotland--parishes which were already far too large and too scattered,
+as John Major points out--was carried on to an extraordinary extent.
+Each of the religious houses of Holyrood and Kelso had the tithes of
+twenty-seven parishes diverted or 'appropriated' to it. In some
+districts two-thirds of the whole parish churches were in the hands of
+the monks, and no fewer than thirty-four were bestowed on Arbroath Abbey
+in the course of a single reign. When we remember that the Lords of
+these great houses were generally members--often unworthy members--of
+the families which were thus enriching them to the detriment of the
+country, we can imagine the complicated corruption which went on from
+reign to reign. Unfortunately the nepotism and simony which resulted had
+direct example and sanction in the relation to Scotland of the Head of
+the Church at Rome.[9] The most ardent Catholics admit this as true in
+relation to Europe generally in the time with which we deal;[10] and the
+Holy See had been allowed some centuries before to claim Scotland as a
+country which belonged to it in a peculiar sense, and the Church of
+Scotland as subject to it specially and immediately. The jealousy of an
+Italian potentate which was always powerful in England, and which had
+now, under Henry the Eighth, made it possible to reject the Romish
+supremacy while retaining the whole of Roman Catholic doctrine, had
+little influence farther north. Scotland followed the Pope, even when he
+went to Avignon, and when England had accepted his rival or Anti-Pope.
+And while in this it sympathised with France, it had little of that
+traditional dislike to high Ultramontane claims which we saw to have
+been so strong in Paris. The Pope remained the centre of our church
+system, and there were in Scotland no projects of serious reform except
+those which went so deep as (in the case of the Lollards and other
+precursors of the Reformation) to break with the existing ecclesiastical
+machine as a whole, and so to challenge the deadliest penalties of the
+law.
+
+For it is a mistake to suppose that heresy, in the modern misuse of the
+word (as equivalent to false doctrine), was greatly dreaded in the Roman
+Catholic Church, or savagely punished by our ancient code. In Scotland,
+as elsewhere, the fundamental law was that of Theodosius and the empire,
+that every man must be a member of the Catholic Church, and submit to
+it. That law was indeed the original establishment of the Church, and
+for many centuries there had been in Scotland no penalty for breaking it
+except death. But the Church, when its authority was thus once for all
+sufficiently secured, was, in the early Middle Age, rather tolerant of
+theological opinion. And not until error had been published and
+persisted in, in face of the injunctions of authority--not until the
+heresy thus threatened to be internal schism, or repudiation of that
+authority--was the secular power usually invoked. Unfortunately Western
+Europe as a whole, ever since its intellectual awakening three or more
+centuries ago, was moving on to precisely this crisis; and the very
+existence of the Church, in the sense of a body of which all citizens
+were compulsorily members, was now felt to be at stake. The Scottish
+sovereign had long since been taken bound, by his coronation oath, to
+interpose his authority; and the present King, delivered in 1528 from
+the tutory of the Douglases by the Beatons, had thrown himself into the
+side of those powerful ecclesiastics. A statute, the first against
+heresy for nearly a century, was passed two years after Knox went to
+college. When he was twenty-three years old, England was preparing to
+reject the Pope's supremacy; but Scotland was so far from it that this
+year Patrick Hamilton was burned at St Andrews. When he was thirty-four
+years old, the English revolution had been accomplished by the despotic
+Henry; but his Scottish nephew had refused to follow the lead, and in
+that year five other heretics were burned on the Castle-hill of
+Edinburgh, the popular 'Commons King' looking on. On James V.'s death
+there was a slight reaction under the Regent, and Parliament even
+sanctioned the publication of the Scriptures. But Arran made his peace
+with the Church in 1543, and Beaton, the able but worldly Archbishop of
+St Andrews, and as such Knox's diocesan, became once more the leader of
+Scotland. He had already instituted the Inquisition throughout his see;
+he was now advanced to be Papal Legate; and he was fully prepared to
+press into execution the Acts which a few years before he and the King
+had persuaded the Parliament to pass. Not to be a member of the Church
+had always meant death. But now it was death by statute to argue against
+the Pope's authority; it was made unlawful even to enter into discussion
+on matters of religion; and those in Scotland who were merely
+_suspected_ of heresy were pronounced incapable of any office there.
+And, lastly, those who left the country to avoid the fatal censure of
+its Church on such crimes as these, were held by law to be already
+condemned. The illustrious Buchanan was one of those who thus fled. Knox
+remained, and suddenly becomes visible.
+
+[1] Knox's later biographer, Dr Hume Brown, has given to the world a
+letter from Sir Peter Young to Beza, transmitting a posthumous portrait
+of Knox, which is thus no doubt the original of the likeness in Beza's
+Icones, and makes the latter our only trustworthy representation of him.
+The letter adds, 'You may look for (expectabis) his full history from
+Master Lawson'; and this raises the hope that Beza's biography, founded
+upon the memoir of Knox's colleague, James Lawson, as the _icon_
+probably was upon the Edinburgh portrait, would be of great value. In
+point of fact Beza's biography does give great prominence to Knox's
+closing pastorate and last days, as his newly-appointed colleague might
+be expected to do. But about his early years it is hopelessly
+inaccurate, to say the least.
+
+[2] So, in Shakespeare, Sir Hugh, who is 'of the Church'; Sir Topas the
+curate, whose beard and gown the clown borrows; Sir Oliver Martext, who
+will not be 'flouted out of his calling;' and Sir Nathaniel, who claims
+to have 'taste and feeling,' and whose female parishioners call him
+indifferently the 'Person' or the 'Parson.'
+
+[3] Rashdall's 'Universities of Europe,' i. 525.
+
+[4] The Act of Appeal of the University lays down principles which apply
+far beyond the bounds of Gallicanism; that 'the Pope, although he holds
+his power immediately from God, is not prevented, by his possession of
+this power, from going wrong'; that 'if he commands that which is
+unjust, he may righteously be resisted'; and 'if, by the action of the
+powers that be, we are deprived of the means of resisting the Pope,
+there remains one remedy, founded on natural law, which no Prince can
+take away--the remedy of appeal, which is competent to every individual,
+by divine right, and natural right, and human right.' And, accordingly,
+the University, protesting that the Basle Council's decrees of the past
+have been set aside, Appeals to a Council in the future.--Bulaeus'
+'Hist. of the University of Paris,' vol. viii. p. 92.
+
+[5] This uncompromising preface took the place of one in which Major, on
+his arrival in Scotland in 1518, praised the same Archbishop, then in
+Glasgow, for his many-sided and 'chamaelon-like mildness.' It is
+generally recognised that the stern policy latterly carried on under the
+nominal authority of James Beaton was really inspired by his nephew and
+coadjutor, David Beaton, the future cardinal.
+
+[6] 'Expositio Matt.' fol. 71. (Paris.)
+
+[7] 'I tell the truth to thee, there's nought like Liberty!'--Major's
+'History of Greater Britain.'
+
+[8] Hume Brown's 'Knox,' i. 44.
+
+[9] See Scots Acts, A.D. 1471, c. 43.
+
+[10]
+
+  An Petrus Romae fuerit, sub judice lis est:
+  Simonem Romae nemo fuisse negat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE CRISIS: SINGLE OR TWO-FOLD?
+
+
+On this dark background Knox for the first time appears in history. But
+we catch sight of him merely as an attendant on the attractive figure of
+George Wishart. At Cambridge Wishart had been 'courteous, lowly, lovely,
+glad to teach, and desirous to learn'; when he returned to Scotland,
+Knox and others found him 'a man of such graces as before him were never
+heard within this realm.' He had preached in several parts of Scotland,
+and was brought in the spring of 1546 by certain gentlemen of East
+Lothian, 'who then were earnest professors of Christ Jesus,' to the
+neighbourhood of Haddington. On the morning of his last sermon in that
+town he had received (in the mansion-house of Lethington, 'the laird
+whereof,' father of the famous William Maitland, 'was ever civil, albeit
+not persuaded in religion') a letter, 'which received and read, he
+called for John Knox, who had waited upon him carefully from the time he
+came to Lothian.' And the same evening, with a presentiment of his
+coming arrest, he 'took his good-night, as it were for ever,' of all his
+acquaintance, and
+
+    'John Knox pressing to have gone with the said Master George, he
+    said, "Nay, return to your bairns, and God bless you! One is
+    sufficient for one sacrifice." And so he caused a two-handed
+    sword (which commonly was carried with the said Master George)
+    be taken from the said John Knox, who, although unwillingly,
+    obeyed, and returned with Hugh Douglas of Longniddrie.'[11]
+
+The same night Wishart was arrested by the Earl of Bothwell, and
+afterwards handed over to the Cardinal Archbishop, tried by him as a
+heretic, and on 1st March 1546 burned in front of his castle of St
+Andrews. Ere long this stronghold was stormed, and the Cardinal murdered
+in his own chamber by a number of the gentlemen of Fife, whose raid was
+partly in revenge for Wishart's death. They shut themselves up in the
+castle for protection, and we hear no more of John Knox till the
+following year. Then we are told that, 'wearied of removing from place
+to place, by reason of the persecution that came upon him by the Bishop
+of St Andrews,' he joined Leslie's band in their hold in St Andrews, in
+consequence of the desire of his pupils' parents 'that himself might
+have the benefit of the castle, and their children the benefit of his
+doctrine [teaching].' It is plain that by this time what Knox taught was
+the doctrine of Wishart. Indeed he had not been long in St Andrews when,
+urged by the congregation there, he consented to become its preacher.
+And his very first sermon in this capacity rang out the full note of the
+coming reform or rather revolution in the religion of Scotland.
+
+Now, this is a startlingly sudden transition. The change from the
+position of a nameless notary under Papal authority, who is in addition
+a minister of the altar of the Catholic Church, to that of a preacher in
+the whole armour of the Puritan Reformation, is great. Was the
+transition a public and official one only? Was it a change merely
+ecclesiastical or political? Or was it preceded by a more private change
+and a personal crisis? And was that private and personal crisis merely
+intellectual? Was it, that is, the adoption of a new dogma only, or
+perhaps the acceptance of a new system? Or if there was something
+besides these, was it nothing more than the resolve of a very powerful
+will--such a will as we must all ascribe to Knox? Was this all? Or was
+there here rather, perhaps, the sort of change which determines the will
+instead of being determined by it--a personal change, in the sense of
+being emotional and inward as well as deep and permanent--a new _set_ of
+the whole man, and so the beginning of an inner as well as of an outer
+and public life?
+
+The question is of the highest interest, but as we have said, there is
+no direct answer. It would be easy for each reader to supply the void by
+reasoning out, according to his own prepossessions, what must have been,
+or what ought to have been, the experience of such a man at such a time.
+It would be easy--but unprofitable. Far better would it be could we
+adduce from his own utterances evidence--indirect evidence even--that
+the crisis which he declines to record really took place; and that the
+great outward career was founded on a new personal life within. Now
+there is such an utterance, which has been hitherto by no means
+sufficiently recognised. It is 'a meditation or prayer, thrown forth of
+my sorrowful heart and pronounced by my half-dead tongue,' on 12th
+March, 1566, at a moment when Knox's cause was in extremity of danger.
+Mary had joined the Catholic League and driven the Protestant Lords into
+England, and their attempted counter-plot had failed by the defection of
+Darnley. Knox had now before him certain exile and possible death, and
+on the eve of leaving Edinburgh he sat down and wrote privately the
+following personal confession. Five years later, when publishing his
+last book, after the national victory but amid great public troubles, he
+prefixed a preface explaining that he had already 'taken good-night at
+the world and at all the fasherie of the same,' and henceforward wished
+his brethren only to pray that God would 'put an end to my long and
+painful battle.' And with this preface he now printed the old meditation
+or confession of 1566. It is therefore autobiographical by a double
+title. And it is made even more interesting by the striking rubric with
+which the writer heads it.
+
+    JOHN KNOX, WITH DELIBERATE MIND, TO HIS GOD.
+
+
+    'Be merciful unto me, O Lord, and call not into judgment my
+    manifold sins; and chiefly those whereof the world is not able
+    to accuse me. In youth, mid age, and now after many battles, I
+    find nothing in me but vanity and corruption. For, in quietness
+    I am negligent; in trouble impatient, tending to desperation;
+    and in the mean [middle] state I am so carried away with vain
+    fantasies, that alas! O Lord, they withdraw me from the presence
+    of thy Majesty. Pride and ambition assault me on the one part,
+    covetousness and malice trouble me on the other; briefly, O
+    Lord, the affections of the flesh do almost suppress the
+    operation of Thy Spirit. I take Thee, O Lord, who only knowest
+    the secrets of hearts, to record, that in none of the foresaid
+    do I delight; but that with them I am troubled, and that sore
+    against the desire of my inward man, which sobs for my
+    corruption, and would repose in Thy mercy alone. To the which I
+    clame [cry] in the promise that Thou hast made to all penitent
+    sinners (of whose number I profess myself to be one), in the
+    obedience and death of my only Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ.
+    In whom, by Thy mere grace, I doubt not myself to be elected to
+    eternal salvation, whereof Thou hast given unto me (unto me, O
+    Lord, most wretched and unthankful creature) most assured signs.
+    For being drowned in ignorance Thou hast given to me knowledge
+    above the common sort of my brethren; my tongue hast Thou used
+    to set forth Thy glory, to oppugne idolatry, errors, and false
+    doctrine. Thou hast compelled me to forespeak, as well
+    deliverance to the afflicted, as destruction to certain
+    inobedient, the performance whereof, not I alone, but the very
+    blind world has already seen. But above all, O Lord, Thou, by
+    the power of Thy Holy Spirit, hast sealed unto my heart
+    remission of my sins, which I acknowledge and confess myself to
+    have received by the precious blood of Jesus Christ once shed;
+    in whose perfect obedience I am assured my manifold rebellions
+    are defaced, my grievous sins purged, and my soul made the
+    tabernacle of Thy Godly Majesty--Thou, O Father of mercies, Thy
+    Son our Lord Jesus, my only Saviour, Mediator, and Advocate, and
+    Thy Holy Spirit, remaining in the same by true faith, which is
+    the only victory that overcometh the world.'[12]
+
+This window into the heart of a great man is not less transparent
+because it opens upwards. Its revelation of an inner life, with the
+alternations proper to it of struggle and victory, will receive
+confirmation as we go on. As we go on too we shall be arrested by the
+intense personal sympathy which Knox showed in helping those around him
+who were still weaker and more tempted than himself--a sympathy in which
+many will find a surer proof of the existence of a life within, than
+even in this record of his deliberate and devotional mind. What this
+record now suggests to us is that the personal life which it reveals had
+a foundation in some personal and moral crisis. The truth and light came
+to him when he was 'drowned in ignorance,' and the change cannot have
+_originated_ in any fancy as to his own predestination, or in any
+foresight by himself of his own public services. The foundation, as it
+is put by Knox, was deeper, and was, in his view, common to him with all
+Christian men. It is a transaction of the individual with the Divine, in
+which the man comes to God by 'true faith.' And this faith is, or ought
+to be, absolute and assured, simply because it is faith in the offer
+and promise of God himself in his Evangel. This was the teaching of
+Wishart, as it had been of Patrick Hamilton before him. It was the
+teaching which Hamilton had derived from Luther, and Wishart from both
+Luther and the Reformers of Switzerland. Later on, when the minor
+differences between the two schools of Protestantism had declared
+themselves, it might fairly be said that Knox, and with him Scotland,
+founded their religion not so much (with Luther) on the central doctrine
+of immediate access to God through his promise, as (with Calvin) on the
+more general doctrine of the immediate authority of God through his
+word. But the former--the Evangel--was the original life and light of
+the Reformation everywhere, and its glow as of 'glad confident morning'
+now flushed the whole sky of Western Europe.[13] Knox himself always
+preached it, and on the day before his death he let fall an expression
+which indicates that his acceptance of it had rescued him at this very
+date from the tossings of an inward sea. 'Go, read where I cast my first
+anchor!' he said to his wife. 'And so she read the seventeenth of John's
+Gospel.' Now the 'Evangel of John' was what Knox tells us he taught
+from day to day in the chapel, within the Castle of St Andrews, at a
+certain hour; and when on entering the city he took up this book of the
+New Testament, he took it up at the point 'where he left at his
+departure from Longniddry where before his residence was,' and whither
+Wishart had sent him back to his pupils a year before. And of all parts
+of this Evangel the rock-built anchorage of the seventeenth chapter may
+surely best claim to be that commemorated in Knox's stately and
+deliberate words.
+
+But these conjectures must not make us forget the fact that Knox himself
+places an undoubted and great crisis at the threshold of his public
+life. His teaching in 1547 of John's Gospel, and of a certain
+'catechism,' though carried on within the walls, sometimes of the
+chapel, and sometimes of the parish kirk, of St Andrews, was supposed to
+be private or tutorial. Soon, however, the more influential men there
+urged him 'that he would take the preaching place upon him. But he
+utterly refused, alleging that he would not run where God had not called
+him.... Whereupon, they privily among themselves advising, having with
+them in council Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, they concluded that they
+would give a charge to the said John, and that publicly by the mouth of
+their preacher.' And so, after a sermon turning on the power of the
+church or congregation to call men to the ministry,
+
+    'The said John Rough, preacher, directed his words to the said
+    John Knox, saying, "Brother, ye shall not be offended, albeit
+    that I speak unto you that which I have in charge, even from all
+    those that are here present, which is this: In the name of God,
+    and of His Son Jesus Christ, and in the name of these that
+    presently call you by my mouth, I charge you that you refuse not
+    this holy vocation, but ... that you take upon you the public
+    office and charge of preaching, even as you look to avoid God's
+    heavy displeasure, and desire that He shall multiply His graces
+    with you." And in the end, he said to those that were present,
+    "Was not this your charge to me? And do ye not approve this
+    vocation?" They answered, "It was: and we approve it." Whereat
+    the said John, abashed, burst forth in most abundant tears, and
+    withdrew himself to his chamber. His countenance and behaviour,
+    from that day till the day that he was compelled to present
+    himself to the public place of preaching, did sufficiently
+    declare the grief and trouble of his heart; for no man saw any
+    sign of mirth in him, neither yet had he pleasure to accompany
+    any man, many days together.'[14]
+
+There is no reason to think that Knox exaggerates the importance of this
+scene in his own history. A man has but one life, and the choosing even
+of his secular work in it is sometimes so difficult as to make him
+welcome any external compulsion. But the necessity of an external and
+even a divine vocation, in order to justify a man's devoting his life to
+handling things divine, has long been a tradition of the Christian
+Church--and especially of the Scottish church, which in its parts, and
+as a whole, has been repeatedly convulsed by this question of 'The
+Call.' And in Knox's time, as in the earliest age of Christianity, what
+is now a tradition was a very stern fact. The men who were thus calling
+him knew well, and Knox himself, more clear of vision than any of them,
+knew better, that what they were inviting him to was in all probability
+a violent death. Rough himself perished in the flames at Smithfield; and
+four months after this vocation Knox was sitting chained and half-naked
+in the galleys at Rouen, under the lash of a French slave-driver. He did
+not perhaps himself always remember how the future then appeared to him.
+Old men looking back upon their past are apt 'to see in their life the
+story of their life,' and the Reformer, after his later amazing
+victories, sometimes speaks as if these had been his in hope, or even in
+promise, from the outset of his career. But it is plain to us now, as we
+study his letters in those early years, that he was repeatedly brought
+to accept what we know to have been the real probability--viz., that,
+while the ultimate triumph of the Evangel would be secure, it might be
+brought about only after his own failure and ruin. Such were the
+alternatives which Knox--a man of undoubted sensitiveness and
+tenderness, and who describes himself as naturally 'fearful'[15]--had to
+ponder during those days of seclusion at St Andrews. Of one thing he had
+no doubt. The call, if once he accepted it, was irrevocable;[16] and he
+must thenceforward go straight on, abandoning the many resources of
+silence and of flight which might still be open to a private man.
+
+But this was not all. It would be doing injustice to Knox, and to our
+materials, to suppose that personal considerations were the only ones
+which pressed upon him in this crisis. He never, in any circumstances,
+could have been a man of 'a private spirit,' and his present call was
+expressly to bear the public burden. But the burden so proposed was
+overwhelming. Was it by his mouth that his countrymen were to be urged
+to expose themselves, individually, to certain danger and possible ruin?
+Was it upon his initiative that his country was to be divided,
+distracted, and probably destroyed--deprived of its old faith, severed
+from its old alliances, and hurled into revolt from its five hundred
+years of Christian peace?[17] The risk to his country was extreme. And
+if, by some marvellous conspiration of providences, Scotland passed
+through all this without ruin, was Knox prepared to face the more
+tremendous responsibilities of success? Did he hear in that hour the
+voice by which leaders of Movements in later days have been chilled,
+'Thou couldst a people raise, but couldst not rule?' For if we assume
+that he felt entitled to back this weight of leadership upon God and
+Evangel, the question still remained, Was even the Evangel strong enough
+to bear this burden of a nation's future? That it was able to guide and
+save the individual man, through all changes and chances of this life
+and the life beyond, Knox may have been assured. But the questions which
+rose behind were those of Church organisation and social reconstruction.
+Was it possible, and was it lawful, to accept the existing Church
+system, in whole or in part, and to build upon that? And if this was
+impossible, if Christ's Church must go back to the Divine foundation in
+His new-discovered Word, was that Word sufficient, not for foundation
+merely, but for all superstructure--for doctrine, discipline, and
+worship alike? Or would the Church be entitled to impose its own wise
+and reasonable additions to the recovered statute-book of Scripture?
+Lastly, if such a new Church shone already in 'devout imagination'
+before Knox, he must have also had some forecast of its new relations to
+feudal and royal Scotland. Was he to plead merely for freedom, under a
+neutral civil authority? Or in the event of the chiefs of the nation, or
+some of them, individually adopting the new faith, were they to adopt it
+for themselves alone; or for subjects and vassals too, as under the
+former regime? And were they to enforce it, by feudal or royal or even
+legislative authority, on unwilling subjects and unwilling vassals too?
+
+I think it clear that all these questions must have passed before the
+mind of Knox during that week of agitated seclusion within the castle
+walls. Not only so. There is evidence in his own writings that when at
+the close of that time he came forth to take up the public work, he
+had already formed his conclusions as to all the main principles on
+which it was to proceed. And from these he never afterwards varied.
+Thirteen years were still to elapse before they resulted in Scotland
+in a religious revolution; and during those years of wandering and
+exile Knox learned much from the wisest and best of the new
+leaders--much from them; and much, too, from his own experience, which
+he was in the future to reduce to details of practice. But his
+principles were the same from the first. He believed fundamentally in
+the gracious Word of God revealed to man, as overriding and
+over-ruling all other authorities. His first sermon denounced the
+whole existing church system as an Anti-Christian substitute,
+interposed between man and that original message. But, strange to say,
+the part of the discourse which at once aroused controversy was his
+sweeping denial of the Church's right to institute ceremonies, the
+ground of denial being that 'man may neither make nor devise a
+religion that is acceptable to God.' He was thus Protestant and
+Puritan[18] from the first, as his master Wishart was before him, and
+his choice had now to be made according to his convictions. We,
+looking back upon the past at our ease, may recognise that on some of
+these matters he was too hasty in his conclusions--especially in his
+conclusions as to his opponents, and the duty towards them which the
+party now oppressed would have, in the unlikely event of its coming
+into power. But we are bound to remember--Knox himself insists upon
+it--that he did not take up the function of guide to his people at his
+own hand, or accept it at his own leisure. He was suddenly called upon
+in God's name to accept or refuse an almost hopeless task, but one in
+which success and failure involved the greatest alternatives to him.
+That preaching the Gospel to which he was called, if it meant on the
+one hand, in the event of failure, exile or death, meant on the other,
+in case of success, the salvation of a whole people now sitting in
+darkness. But he had to accept the task as a whole or to refuse it;
+and his conclusions as to what that task involved were fused into
+unity--in some respects into premature unity--in the glow of a supreme
+moral trial. For the week of deliberation before he emerged as the
+teacher of the Congregation was certainly not spent upon detailed
+difficulties either of future legislation or present consistency. It
+prolonged itself rather in poise and struggle against the more obvious
+and tremendous obstacles, reinforced no doubt by a thousand more
+remote behind them. But the ultimate question was whether the gigantic
+strain of all of these combined would be too much for an anchor
+dropped by one strong hand into the depths of the Evangel.
+
+And so that week saved a nation--perhaps a man.
+
+For I think it quite a possible thing that this crisis in St Andrews,
+the only one recorded or even suggested by Knox himself, may have been
+the one personal crisis of his life. I cannot indeed say with Carlyle,
+that before this Knox 'seemed well content to guide his own steps by the
+light of the Reformation, nowise unduly intruding it on others ...
+resolute he to walk by the truth, and speak the truth when called to do
+it; not ambitious of more, not fancying himself capable of more.'[19]
+Of all men living or dead, this is the one whom it is most impossible to
+think of as acquiescing in such an easy relation to those around him, or
+even as attempting so to acquiesce--at least without inward
+self-question and torture. We must remember that Knox had undoubtedly
+before this time embraced the doctrinal system of the Reformation, no
+doubt in the form taught by Wishart. And a catechism of that doctrine,
+perhaps founded upon or identical with that which Wishart brought from
+Basel, he gave to his East Lothian pupils. Long before his external
+'call' at St Andrews, the inward impulse to preach the message to his
+fellow-men, and to champion their right to receive it, must have pressed
+upon his conscience. Was this pearl worth the price of selling all to
+buy it? And was such a price demanded of him individually? If these
+questions were still unanswered--for that they had been put, and put
+incessantly, I have no doubt--then the Knox whom we know was still
+waiting to be born, and the representative of Scotland was like Scotland
+itself, 'as yet without a soul.'[20] He had carried a sword before
+Wishart, and he and the gentlemen of East Lothian would have defended
+their saintly guest at the peril of their lives. He had been followed
+thereafter by the persecution of his bishop, until he made up his mind
+for exile in Germany (rather than in England, where he heard that the
+Romish doctrine flourished under Royal Supremacy). And after the
+'slaughter of the Cardinal,' he took refuge within the strong walls of
+the vacant castle, like other men whose sympathies made them, in the
+quaint words of the chronicler[21], 'suspect themselves guilty of the
+death' of Beaton, though they might not have known of it before the
+fact. But all this Knox might conceivably have done, and still have
+borne about with him a troubled and divided mind, until the address of
+Rough flashed out upon his conscience his true vocation, and sent him in
+tears and solitude to make proof of the Evangel--and of the Evangel in
+that form which takes hold of both eternities. This final crisis may
+thus have been the only one. And if it were so, Knox would not be the
+first man who has found in self-consecration a new birth; nor the first
+prophet whose 'Here am I' has been answered by fire from the altar and
+the assurance that iniquity is purged.
+
+But even if we assume, what is more probable, that the crisis in St
+Andrews was not the first, but the second, in Knox's religious life, the
+result for the purposes of critical biography is the same. For the later
+crisis resumed and gathered up into itself, on a higher plane, and with
+more intensity, the elements of the change which went before. It was, on
+this assumption, a new call; and a call to higher and public work. But
+it was a call in the same name, and to the same man, to do new work on
+the strength of principles and motives to which he had already committed
+himself. It was, in short, a greater strain, but upon the first anchor.
+
+This point has acquired more importance since Carlyle, and so many of us
+who follow him as admirers of Knox, have adopted the modern trick of
+speech of calling him a Prophet to his time. It is assumed that Knox
+took the same view,[22] and that he held himself to have had, if not a
+prophet's supernatural endowment and vocation, at least a special
+mission and an extraordinary call. The question is complicated by other
+things than the special and extraordinary work which he, in point of
+fact, achieved. We find that, in the course of that work, Knox, a man of
+piercing intuitions in personal and public matters, repeatedly committed
+himself to judgments, and even predictions, which were unexpectedly
+verified. And some of these he himself regarded, as we have seen already
+in his deliberate Meditation, as not intuitions merely, but private
+intimations given by God to his own heart and mind. Naturally, too, a
+man of Knox's devout and yet passionate temper was disposed to lay as
+much stress upon these incidents as they would bear; while the
+marvel-mongers around him, and in the next generation, went farther
+still. But the main fact to remember is, that Knox all his life insisted
+that such incidents, whatever their occasional value, were no part of
+his original mission, and were outside the bounds of his life-long
+vocation. The passage in which he is disposed to make most of them is
+the following; and it is worth quoting also, because of the striking
+terms in which he incidentally describes his real work and permanent
+call. He is explaining why, after twenty years' preaching, he has never
+published even a sermon, and now publishes one with nothing but
+wholesome admonitions for the time. (This wholesome sermon was the one
+which so much offended Darnley.)
+
+    'Considering myself rather called of my God to instruct the
+    ignorant, comfort the sorrowful, confirm the weak, and rebuke
+    the proud, by tongue and lively voice in these most corrupt
+    days, than to compose books for the age to come: seeing that so
+    much is written (and that by men of most singular condition),
+    and yet so little well observed; I decreed to contain myself
+    within the bonds [bounds?] of that vocation, whereunto I found
+    myself specially called. I dare not deny (lest that in so doing
+    I should be injurious to the giver), but that God hath revealed
+    to me secrets unknown to the world; and also that he hath made
+    my tongue a trumpet, to forewarn realms and nations, yea,
+    certain great personages, of translations and changes, when no
+    such things were feared, nor yet were appearing; a portion
+    whereof cannot the world deny (be it never so blind) to be
+    fulfilled, and the rest, alas! I fear shall follow with greater
+    expedition, and in more full perfection, than my sorrowful heart
+    desireth. Those revelations and assurances notwithstanding, I
+    did ever abstain to commit anything to writ, contented only to
+    have obeyed the charge of Him who commanded me to cry.'[23]
+
+And when he did 'cry,' from the pulpit or elsewhere, he was careful to
+found his claim to be heard, not on private intimations, but on God's
+open word. As early as 1554 he denounces judgment to come upon England
+(which, by the way, was not fulfilled in the sense which he expected),
+but he adds immediately--
+
+    'This my affirmation proceedeth, not from any conjecture of
+    man's fantasy, but from the ordinary course of God's judgments
+    against manifest contemners of his precepts from the
+    beginning;'[24]
+
+and more fully in another contemporary document--
+
+    'But ye would know the grounds of my certitude: God grant that
+    hearing them ye may understand and steadfastly believe the same.
+    My assurances are not the marvels of Merlin, nor yet the dark
+    sentences of profane prophesies; but, 1. the plain truth of
+    God's word, 2. the invincible justice of the everlasting God,
+    and 3. the ordinary course of his punishments and plagues from
+    the beginning, are my assurance and grounds.'[25]
+
+This was early in his career. At its close Knox, now very frail, was
+deeply aggrieved by the troubles caused by Lethington and Kirkaldy, who
+held the castle of Edinburgh. His verbal predictions of their coming
+end, as reported (after the event however) by those around his
+death-bed, and his assurance at the same time of 'mercy to the soul' of
+the chivalrous Kirkaldy, are among the most striking incidents of this
+kind in his life. But in his Will, written contemporaneously on 13th May
+1572, he says,
+
+    'I am not ignorant that many would that I should enter into
+    particular determination of these present troubles; to whom I
+    plainly and simply answer, that, as I never exceeded the bounds
+    of God's Scriptures, so will I not do, in this part, by God's
+    grace.'[26]
+
+
+This did not prevent him from freely describing his old friends in the
+Castle as murderers, and predicting their destruction, especially as
+they seemed now to be planning a counter-revolution in the interest of
+the exiled Queen of Scots. They retorted by accusing him, among other
+things, of prejudging her and 'entering into God's secret counsel.' Knox
+roused himself to answer the charges in detail. But there remained, he
+adds,
+
+    'One thing that is most bitter to me, and most fearful, if that
+    my accusers were able to prove their accusation, to wit, that I
+    proudly and arrogantly entered into God's secret counsel, as if
+    I were called thereto. God be merciful to my accusators, of
+    their rash and ungodly judgment! If they understood how fearful
+    my conscience is, and ever has been, to exceed the bounds of my
+    vocation, they would not so boldly have accused me. I am not
+    ignorant that the secrets of God appertain to Himself alone: but
+    things revealed in His law appertain to us and our children for
+    ever. What I have spoken against the adultery, against the
+    murder, against the pride, and against the idolatry of that
+    wicked woman, I spake not as one that entered into God's secret
+    counsel, but being one (of God's great mercy) called to preach
+    according to His blessed will, revealed in His most holy
+    word.'[27]
+
+The old man's irritation was most natural. For, on the one hand, his
+accusers had hit a blot. He was sometimes extremely dogmatic, imperious,
+and rash in his application of 'God's revealed will' both to persons and
+things. But the form in which they put it--that he posed as a prophet,
+as one having a special message from God's secret counsel, instead of a
+general commission to proclaim that revealed will--was not only false,
+but struck at the roots of his whole life and work. It is demonstrable
+that from Knox's first teaching in East Lothian and first preaching in
+St Andrews onwards, the meaning of both teaching and preaching was a
+call to the common Scottish man, and to every man, to go to God direct
+without any intermediation except God's open word.[28] And I think it
+plain that this direct and divine call _to all_ was not only the meaning
+but the strength of the message in Scotland as elsewhere. It seems to us
+now as if the burden which it laid on the individual--on frail and
+feeble women, for example, in that time of persecution--was
+overwhelming. It is most pathetic to find Knox, when sitting down to
+write tender and consoling messages to those in such circumstances,
+pre-occupied with urging the obligation of each one of them individually
+to hold fast, against possible torture or death, that which each one had
+individually received. But he never shrank from it, or from pointing out
+that such relation to God himself was the noblest privilege. And the
+evidence is plain that all over the Europe of that age this reception of
+a Divine message direct to the individual, in the newly opened
+Scriptures, was, not a burden, but a source of incomparable energy and
+exhilaration--alike to men and women, to the simple and the learned, to
+the young and--stranger still--to the old. Knox knew it; and he knew
+that his claiming a special message or ambassadorship would be, not so
+much 'exceeding the bounds' of his vocation, as denying it altogether.
+He was imperious and dogmatic by nature; and he took these natural
+qualities with him into his new work. But he would have shuddered at the
+idea of formally interposing his own personality between the hearers of
+that time and the message which they received. And he would have
+regarded the office of a mere prophet--the bearer, that is, of a special
+message, even though that message be divine--as a degradation, if, in
+order to attain it, he had to lay down the preaching of 'that doctrine
+and that heavenly religion, whereof it hath pleased His merciful
+providence to make _me, among others, a simple soldier and
+witness-bearer unto men_.'[29]
+
+Does it follow that Knox--who thus rejected strongly the idea of being a
+prophet to his time, and insisted instead upon his merely receiving and
+transmitting the one message which was common to all--that this man was
+therefore little more to his age than any other might be? By no means.
+The same message comes to all men in an age, and is received by many,
+but it is received by each in a different way.[30] And the way in which
+this message was then received by one man in East Lothian made all the
+difference to Scotland, and perhaps to Europe. It must not be forgotten,
+indeed, that the result of it upon Knox himself was to transform him. So
+certain is this that some have felt as if this were the case of one
+who, up to about his fortieth year, was an ordinary, commonplace, and
+representative Scotsman, and was thereafter changed utterly, but only by
+being filled with the sacred fire of conviction. This is only about half
+the truth, though it is an important half--to Knox himself by far the
+more important. But it is not the whole, and it is far from the whole
+_for us_. The author who has enabled us to see his own confused and
+changing age under 'the broad clear light of that wonderful book'[31]
+the 'History of the Reformation in Scotland,' and who outside that book
+was the utterer of many an armed and winged word which pursues and
+smites us to this day, must have been born with nothing less than
+genius--genius to observe, to narrate, and to judge. Even had he written
+as a mere recluse and critic, looking out upon his world from a monk's
+cell or from the corner of a housetop, the vividness, the tenderness,
+the sarcasm and the humour would still have been there. But Knox's
+genius was predominantly practical; and the difference between the
+transformation which befell him, and that which changed so many other
+men in his time, was that in Knox's case it changed one who was born to
+be a statesman. He probably never would have become one, but for the
+light which for him as for the others made all things new. But in the
+others it resulted in a self-consecration whose outlook was chiefly upon
+the next world, and in the present was doubtfully bounded by possible
+martyrdom and possible evasion or escape. In the case of Knox the
+instinctive outlook was not for himself only, but for others and for his
+country. And while he saw from the first, far more clearly than they,
+the embattled strength of the forces with which they all had to
+contend, the unbending will of this man rejected all idea of concession
+or compromise, evasion or escape. And his native sagacity (made keener
+as well as more comprehensive now that it looked down from that remote
+and stormless anchorage), revealed to him that there was at least the
+possibility of the mightiest earthly fabric breaking up before him in
+unexpected collapse.
+
+Our conclusion then must be that the call which Knox received was one
+common to him with every man and woman of that time--to accept the
+Evangel--and common to him with every preacher of that time--to preach
+the Evangel; but that this man's large conception of what such a call
+practically meant, not for himself alone, but for all around him and for
+his country, made it from the first for him a public call, and compelled
+him to hear in the invitation of the St Andrews congregation the divine
+commission for his life-long work. From the first, and in conception as
+well as execution, that work was great and revolutionary. And from the
+first, and in its very plan, it involved serious errors. But Knox
+himself, in this and every stage of his career, claimed to be judged by
+no lower tribunal than that Authority whose dread and strait command he
+at the first accepted. And if there are some things in that career which
+his country has simply to forgive, we shall not reckon among these the
+original resolve of that day in St Andrews--a resolve which has made
+Knox more to Scotland 'than any million of unblameable Scotchmen who
+need no forgiveness.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But there are few who will doubt the sincerity, or the strength, of the
+impulse which launched Knox upon his public career. There are many
+however who, recognising that he was a great public man, doubt
+persistently whether he was anything more. They are not satisfied with
+the evidence of trumpet-tones from the pulpit, or of solemn and
+passionate prayer at some crisis of a career. These are part of the
+furniture of the orator, the statesman, and the prophet. Was there a
+private life at all, as distinguished from the inner side of that which
+was public? And was that private life genuine and tender and strong?
+Have we another window into this man's breast--opening in this case, not
+upwards and Godwards, but towards the men--or women--around him? We
+have: and it is fortunate that the evidence on this subject is found,
+not at a late date in Knox's life, as is the Meditation of 1563, but
+close to the threshold of his career.
+
+[11] The quotations are from Knox himself--in the first book of his
+'History of the Reformation in Scotland.'
+
+When quoting from any part of Knox's 'Works' (David Laing's edition in
+six volumes), I propose to modernise the spelling, but in other respects
+to retain Knox's English. It will be found surprisingly modern.
+
+[12] 'Works,' vi. 483
+
+[13] 'The end and intent of the Scripture,' according to the translation
+by George Wishart, Knox's earliest master, of the First Helvetic or
+Swiss Confession, is, 'to declare that God is benevolent and
+friendly-minded to mankind; and that he hath declared that kindness in
+and through Jesu Christ, his only Son; the which kindness is received by
+faith; but this faith is effectuous through charity, and expressed in an
+innocent life.' And even more strikingly, the very first question of the
+famous Palatinate Catechism for Churches and Schools, though that
+catechism is Calvinistic in its conception rather than Lutheran, and
+came out so late as 1563, bursts out as follows:--
+
+'What is thy only comfort in life and death?
+
+'_Ans._ That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my
+own, but belong to my faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ, who with his
+precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from
+all the power of the Devil.'
+
+[14] 'Works,' i. 187.
+
+[15] On his death-bed. The Regent Morton's famous epitaph spoken by
+Knox's grave, is an imperfect echo of what the Reformer ten days before,
+in bidding farewell to the Kirk (Session) of Edinburgh, had said of his
+own past career:--'In respect that he bore God's message, to whom he
+must make account for the same, he (albeit he was weak and an unworthy
+creature, _and a fearful man_) feared not the faces of men.'--'Works,'
+vi. 637.
+
+[16] One of the most eloquent documents of the time is the address in
+1565 to the half-starved ministers of the Kirk (inspired and perhaps
+written by Knox), urging that having put their hands to the plough, they
+could not look back:--
+
+'God hath honoured us so, that men have judged us the messengers of the
+Everlasting. By us hath He disclosed idolatry, by us are the Wicked of
+the world rebuked, and by us hath our God comforted the consciences of
+many.... And shall we for poverty leave the flock of Jesus Christ before
+that it utterly refuse us?... The price of Jesus Christ, his death and
+passion, is committed to our charge, the eyes of men are bent upon us,
+and we must answer before that Judge.... He preserved us in the darkness
+of our mothers' bosom, He provided our food in their breasts, and
+instructed us to use the same, when we knew Him not, He hath nourished
+us in the time of blindness and of impiety; and will He now despise us,
+when we call upon Him, and preach the glorious Gospel of His dear Son
+our Lord Jesus?'--'Works,' vi. 425.
+
+[17] Seven years after this time, Knox, writing from abroad to 'his
+sisters in Edinburgh,' tells of the 'cogitations' which God permitted
+Satan even at that late date to put into his mind--
+
+'Shall Christ, the author of peace, concord, and quietness, be preached
+where war is proclaimed, sedition engendered, and tumults appear to
+rise? Shall not His Evangel be accused as the cause of all calamity
+which is like to follow? What comfort canst thou have to see the
+one-half of the people rise up against the other; yea, to jeopard the
+one to murder and destroy the other? But above all, what joy shall it be
+to thy heart to behold with thine eyes thy native country betrayed into
+the hands of strangers, which to no man's judgment can be avoided,
+because they who ought to defend it and the liberties thereof are so
+blind, dull, and obstinate that they will not see their own
+destruction?'--'Works,' iv. 251.
+
+[18] The two sources which, next to his own report of this sermon, best
+indicate his earliest standpoint, are (1) the (second) _Basel
+Confession_--better known as the First Confession of Helvetia--which
+Wishart had brought with him from the Continent, and before his death
+had translated into English, and which Knox, therefore, must have known
+and may have used; and (2) the treatise of his friend, the layman and
+lawyer, Balnaves, written two years later, and which Knox then sent from
+Rouen to St Andrews with his own approval and abridgement. The former is
+distinctly 'Reformed' and Puritan, and lays down that all ceremonies,
+other than the two instituted sacraments and preaching, 'as vessels,
+garments, wax-lights, altars,' are unprofitable, and 'serve to subvert
+the true religion'; while Balnaves repeats the more fundamental
+principle of Knox's sermon (that all religion which is 'not commanded,'
+or which is 'invented' with the best motives, is wrong). And both
+treatises shew that Knox must have had also before him from the first
+the thorny question of the relation of the Church and the private
+Christian to the civil magistrate--for both solve it, like Knox himself
+(but unlike Luther in his original Confession of Augsburg), by giving
+the Magistrate sweeping and intolerant powers of reforming alike the
+religion and the Church.
+
+[19] 'Lectures on Heroes: The Hero as Priest.
+
+[20] Carlyle, as above.
+
+[21] Lindsay of Pitscottie.
+
+[22] Thus, Mrs M'Cunn, in her charming volume on Knox as a 'Leader of
+Religion,' says that he 'constantly claimed the position accorded to the
+Hebrew prophets, and claimed it on the same grounds as they.' And even
+Dr Hume Brown, when narrating Knox's refusal in the Galleys to kiss the
+'Idol' presented to him, adds: 'It is in such passages as these that we
+see how completely Knox identified his action with that of the Hebrew
+prophets' (vol. i. 84), the passage founded upon being one in which Knox
+points out that 'the same obedience that God required of his people
+Israel,' even in idolatrous Babylon, was required by Him of the
+'Scottish men' in France, and was actually given by 'that whole number
+during the time of their bondage,' not merely by the one unnamed
+prisoner who flung the painted 'board' into the Loire. One reason why
+the prisoner is unnamed is no doubt that here, as in a hundred other
+places more explicitly, Knox would impress us with the feeling that no
+other or higher obedience in such matters is required of minister or
+prophet or apostle, than is required of the humblest man or the youngest
+child in God's people.
+
+[23] 'Works,' vi. 230.
+
+[24] 'Works,' iii. 245.
+
+[25] 'Works,' iii. 169.
+
+[26] 'Works,' vi. p. lvi.
+
+[27] 'Works,' vi. 592.
+
+[28] The right of every man to do so, and his duty to do so, were both
+there: the only question might be whether, of the two, the right to do
+it (as with Luther), or the duty to do it (as with Calvin) was first and
+fundamental.
+
+[29] 'Works,' iii. 155.
+
+[30] Recipitur in modum recipientis.
+
+[31] John Hill Burton's 'History of Scotland,' iii. 339. He adds, 'There
+certainly is in the English language no other parallel to it in the
+clearness, vigour, and picturesqueness with which it renders the history
+of a stirring period.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE INNER LIFE: HIS WOMEN FRIENDS
+
+
+Before the age with which we are dealing there was, throughout Europe, a
+certain barrier between the religious life on the one hand and the
+domestic and private life--the ordinary _vie intime_--on the other.
+Among the men and women of the new era that barrier was broken down. The
+religious was no longer a recognised class: religion was no longer a
+luxury for the few, or to be partaken of in sacred places and at fixed
+days and hours. The common man, if a Christian man at all, was to be so
+now in his common and daily life, living it out from day to day on the
+deepest principles and from the highest motives. And the Christian
+woman, having a similar and an equal vocation, undertook the like
+responsibilities. But her responsibilities were in that age of
+transition very perplexing, and more than ever invited friendly counsel
+and pastoral care. Now what was John Knox's private life? He was twice
+married, and we know from his correspondence that even before his first
+marriage there were women of high position and character to whom he
+sustained what may be called personal and pastoral relations. Have we
+any documents from that time by which to illustrate, and perhaps to
+test, the principles of his inward and personal life, before we go on to
+find these written large in the scroll of his country's history?
+
+Norham Castle, near Berwick, is still a very striking pile, especially
+to those who come upon it, as the writer did, after four days leisurely
+walking down the banks of the great border river. Every curve of the
+stream had its natural beauty intertwined with some association of
+history or the poets, from the first morning on Neidpath Fell, to the
+fourth evening when
+
+  'Day set on Norham's castled steep,
+   And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep,
+        And Cheviot's mountains lone.
+   The battled towers, the donjon keep,
+   The loophole grates where captives weep,
+   The flanking walls that round it sweep'--
+
+are all still there, though the inmates are no longer captives. Norham
+is, indeed, best known as the scene of the whole of the first canto of
+'Marmion.' In that poem Sir Hugh the Heron is supposed to have been Lord
+of it, while his wife is away in Scotland, prepared to sing ballads of
+Lochinvar to the ill-fated King on his last evening in Holyrood. But
+when Knox, delivered from the galleys, preached in Berwick in 1549, the
+Captain of the Hold of Norham, only six miles off, was Richard Bowes.
+And his lady, born Elizabeth Aske, and co-heiress of Aske in Yorkshire
+(already an elderly woman and mother of _fifteen children_), became
+Knox's chief friend, and after he left Berwick for Newcastle his
+correspondent, chiefly as to her religious troubles. Most of the letters
+of Knox to her which are preserved are in the year 1553, and one of the
+earliest of these acknowledges a communication 'from you and my dearest
+spouse.' This means that Marjory Bowes, the fifth daughter in that large
+household, had already been _sponsa_ or betrothed, with her mother's
+consent, to the Scottish preacher. Knox, now forty-eight years old, had
+recently declined an English bishopric, offered him through the Duke of
+Northumberland, but was still chaplain to the King. A letter to
+Marjory, undated, follows, in which he explains to his 'dearly beloved
+sister' some passages of Scripture, and adds--'The Spirit of God shall
+instruct your heart what is most comfortable to the troubled conscience
+of your mother.' This communication ends with the subdued or sly
+postscript, 'I think this be the first letter that ever I wrote to
+you.'[32] In July, while Knox was in London, Mary Tudor ascended the
+throne, and everything began to look threatening. In September Knox
+acknowledges the 'boldness and constancy' of Mrs Bowes in pushing his
+cause with her husband, who was as yet 'unconvinced in religion,' but he
+urges her not to trouble herself too much in the matter. He would
+himself press for the betrothal being changed into marriage, or at least
+acknowledged. 'It becomes me now to jeopard my life for the comfort and
+deliverance of my own flesh, as that I will do by God's grace; both fear
+and friendship of all earthly creature laid aside.'[33] Mrs Bowes
+suggested that, in addition to writing her husband, he should lay his
+case before an elder brother, Sir Robert Bowes, Warden of the Marches,
+who seems to have acted as head of the family. Sir Robert turned out to
+be more hostile to the perilous alliance proposed for his niece than
+even her father; and Knox wrote that 'his disdainful, yea, despiteful
+words have so pierced my heart that my life is bitter unto me.' When
+Knox was about to have 'declared his heart' in the whole matter, Sir
+Robert interrupted him with, 'Away with your rhetorical reasons! for I
+will not be persuaded with them.' Knox, indignant, predicted to the
+mother of his betrothed that 'the days should be few that England should
+give me bread,'[34] but adds again, 'Be sure I will not forget you and
+your company so long as mortal man may remember any earthly
+creature.'[35] He escaped from England very soon, and not till September
+1555 did he return, and that on Mrs Bowes' invitation; and with the
+result that he brought off to Geneva, where he was now pastor of a
+distinguished English colony, not only his wife Marjory, but his wife's
+mother too. Here his two sons, Nathaniel and Eleazar, afterwards
+students at Cambridge and ministers of the Church of England, were born.
+But in 1559 wife and mother-in-law accompanied or followed him from the
+Continent to Edinburgh. During the anxious and critical winter which
+followed, Mrs Knox seems to have acted as her husband's amanuensis, but
+'the rest of my wife hath been so unrestful since her arriving here,
+that scarcely could she tell upon the morrow what she wrote at
+night.'[36] Next year brought victory and peace, but too late for her;
+for in December 1560, about the time when the first General Assembly was
+sitting in Edinburgh, Knox's wife died. We learn this from the 'History
+of the Reformation,' in which Knox records a meeting of that date
+between himself and the two foremost nobles of Scotland, Chatelherault
+and Moray, upon public affairs, 'he upon the one part comforting them,
+and they upon the other part comforting him, for he was in no small
+heaviness by reason of the late death of his dear bedfellow, Marjorie
+Bowes.'[37] And of her we have no further record, except Calvin's
+epithet of _suavissima_,[38] and her husband's repetition years after,
+in his Last Will, of the 'benediction that their dearest mother left' to
+her two sons, 'whereto, now as then, I from my troubled heart say,
+Amen.'[39]
+
+Four years passed, and Knox, still minister of Edinburgh, and now in his
+fifty-ninth year, was seen riding home with a second wife, 'not like a
+prophet or old decrepit priest as he was,' said his Catholic
+adversaries, 'but with his bands of taffetie fastened with golden
+rings.' The lady for whom he put on this state was Margaret Stewart, the
+daughter of his friend Lord Ochiltree, and the same critics assure us
+that 'by sorcery and witchcraft he did so allure that poor gentlewoman,
+that she could not live without him.' Queen Mary was angry when she
+heard of it, because the bride 'was of the blood,' _i.e._ related to the
+Royal house; and even Knox's friends did not like his union at that age
+with a girl of seventeen. Young Mrs Knox seems, however, to have played
+her part well, especially as mother of three daughters; she tended their
+father carefully in his last illness; and no one will regret that two
+years after his death she made a more suitable marriage as to years with
+Andrew Ker of Faudonside, one of the fierce band whose daggers had
+clashed ten years before in the body of David Rizzio.
+
+Knox's liking for feminine society, and his suspicion that he had more
+qualifications for it than the world has believed, come out sometimes in
+a casual way. After one of his famous interviews with Queen Mary, he was
+ordered to wait her pleasure in the ante-room.
+
+    'The said John stood in the chamber, as one whom men had never
+    seen (so were all afraid), except that the Lord Ochiltree bare
+    him company; and therefore began he to _forge_ talking of the
+    ladies who were there sitting in all their gorgeous apparel;
+    which espied, he merrily said, "O fair ladies, how pleasing were
+    this life of yours if it should ever abide, and then in the end
+    that we might pass to heaven with all this gay gear. But fye
+    upon that knave Death, that will come whether we will or not!
+    And when he has laid on his arrest, the foul worms will be busy
+    with this flesh, be it never so fair and so tender; and the
+    silly soul, I fear, shall be so feeble, that it can neither
+    carry with it gold, garnassing, targetting, pearl, nor precious
+    stones." And by such means _procured he the company of women_.'
+
+These moralities, however merrily intended and at the time successful,
+would have perhaps been more appropriate in the Forest of Arden or the
+graveyard of Hamlet, than among the four Maries in Holyrood; and for
+anything that is to be of autobiographical value we must go elsewhere
+and go deeper. His wives contribute nothing; we may hope that they were
+as happy as the countries which have no history. And if that is too much
+to believe--or too little to hope--we shall find enough in the next few
+pages to satisfy us that they had near them in all their trials a strong
+and tender heart. But of their inward troubles, and of the sympathy
+these may have drawn forth, Knox is not the historian--he refuses to be
+the historian even of his own inner life. He unfolds himself in writing
+only to the women who are in trouble, and at a distance. And the only
+concession to domesticity is in the fact that his chief correspondent
+is, if not a wife, a prospective mother-in-law.
+
+The letters to her are the most important of all, and the following
+extract is from one published among the letters of 1553 as 'The First to
+Mrs Bowes.' It was by no means the first, even in that year; but it is
+the one which Knox himself long afterwards selected as the first for
+republication and as best illustrating the original relation between
+himself and the lady recently deceased. In it he had said, writing from
+London to Norham:--
+
+    'Since the first day that it pleased the providence of God to
+    bring you and me into familiarity, I have always delighted in
+    your company; and when labour would permit, you know that I have
+    not spared hours to talk and commune with you, the fruit whereof
+    I did not then fully understand nor perceive. But now absent,
+    and so absent that by corporal presence neither of us can
+    receive comfort of other, I call to mind how that ofttimes when,
+    with dolorous hearts, we have begun our talking, God hath sent
+    great comfort unto both, _which for my own part I commonly
+    want_. The exposition of your troubles, and acknowledging of
+    your infirmity, were first unto me a very mirror and glass
+    wherein I beheld myself so rightly painted forth, that nothing
+    could be more evident to my own eyes. And then the searching of
+    the Scriptures for God's sweet promises, and for his mercies
+    freely given unto miserable offenders--(for his nature
+    delighteth to shew mercy where most misery reigneth)--the
+    collection and applying of God's mercies, I say, were unto me as
+    the breaking and handling with my own hands of the most sweet
+    and delectable unguents, whereof I could not but receive some
+    comfort by their natural sweet odours.'[40]
+
+The sympathy that flows through this beautiful passage comes out very
+strongly in another written in bodily illness. His importunate
+correspondent had proposed to call for him in Newcastle that very day.
+Knox suggests to-morrow instead.
+
+    'This day ye know to be the day of my study and prayer unto God;
+    yet if your trouble be intolerable, or if ye think my presence
+    may release your pain, do as the Spirit shall move you, for you
+    know that I will be offended with nothing that you do in God's
+    name. And O, how glad would I be to feed the hungry and give
+    medicine to the sick! Your messenger found me in bed, after a
+    sore trouble and most dolorous night, and so dolour may complain
+    to dolour when we two meet.'[41]
+
+Another letter, also to Mrs Bowes, is from London, and reveals a very
+remarkable scene. He acknowledges receiving one letter from Marjory, and
+one from her mother, the latter, as usual, full of complaint.
+
+    'The very instant hour that your letter was presented unto me,
+    was I talking of you, by reason that three honest poor women
+    were come to me, and were complaining their great infirmity, and
+    were showing unto me the great assaults of the enemy, and I was
+    opening the cause and commodities thereof, whereby all our eyes
+    wept at once; and I was praying unto God that ye and some others
+    had been there with me for the space of two hours. And even at
+    that instant came your letters to my hands; whereof one part I
+    read unto them, and one of them said, "O would to God I might
+    speak with that person, for I perceive that there be more
+    tempted than I."'[42]
+
+The persuasive ingenuity which would suggest to the Lady of Norham that
+she was a source not only of comfort but of strength to those troubled
+like herself, turns out much to our advantage. For Knox puts _himself_,
+first of all, in the place of those whom he would either advise or
+console. And in the earliest dated letter of his which we possess there
+is a vivid picture of what took place between two people who were much
+in earnest, three and a half centuries ago, about this life and the
+next. Knox has written fully to Mrs Bowes, and adds--
+
+    'After the writing of these preceding, your brother and mine,
+    Harry Wycliffe, did advertise me by writing that your adversary
+    took occasion to trouble you, because that _I did start back
+    from you_ rehearsing your infirmities. I remember myself to have
+    so done, and _that is my common consuetude when anything
+    pierceth or toucheth my heart_. Call to your mind what I did
+    standing at the cupboard at Alnwick: in very deed I thought that
+    no creature had been tempted as I was. And when that I heard
+    proceed from your mouth the very words that he troubles me with,
+    I did wonder and from my heart lament your sore trouble, knowing
+    in myself the dolour thereof.'[43]
+
+What was the temptation which Knox thought no creature shared with him,
+but which he found, as he stood at the cupboard at Alnwick, had come to
+Mrs Bowes in the same form, and even in the same words? As it happens,
+we can answer with great certainty. It was a temptation to infidelity or
+'incredulity': the adversary 'would cause you abhor that, and hate it,
+wherein stands only salvation and life,' viz., the name, as well as the
+whole message, of Jesus Christ. So it is put in this letter; and in
+others, apparently later, we read--
+
+    'That ye are of that foolish sort of men that say in their
+    heart, "There is no God," I wonder that the Devil shames not to
+    allege that contrary [to] you; but he is a liar, and father of
+    the same. For if in your heart ye said there is no God, why then
+    should ye suffer anguish and care by reason that the enemy
+    troubles you with that thought? Who can be afraid, day and
+    night, for that which is not?'[44]
+
+Again--
+
+    'He would persuade you that God's Word is of no effect, but that
+    it is a vain tale invented by man, and so all that is spoken of
+    Jesus, the Son of God, is but a vain fable.... He says the
+    Scriptures of God are but a tale, and no credit is to be given
+    to them....[45] Before he troubled you that there is not a
+    Saviour, and now he affirms that ye shall be like to Francis
+    Spira, who denied Christ's doctrine.'[46]
+
+In that age, which broke through the crust of mere authority to seek
+some 'foundation of belief, 'there must have been many of both sexes in
+this state of mind; though each doubter might think that 'no creature'
+shared it. The new doctrine of individual faith and individual
+responsibility was one for women as well as men, and they had a special
+claim on the sympathy of their teachers when central doubts attacked
+them. Whether these doubts in the case of Mrs Bowes, _or in that of
+Knox_, arose in the line of any particular enquiries does not appear. He
+treats them as if they were rather moral than intellectual, and born of
+the feebleness of the soul under temptation. And in this relation it
+says not a little for his estimate of Mrs Bowes, whom he was leaving
+behind under the Marian persecution, and with her husband and most of
+her family hostile to her, that, instead of attenuating, he rather
+magnifies the external difficulties she had to meet.
+
+    'Your adversary, sister, doth labour that ye should doubt
+    whether this be the Word of God or not. If there had never been
+    testimonial of the undoubted truth thereof before these our
+    ages, may not such things as we see daily come to pass prove the
+    verity thereof? Doth it not affirm that it shall be preached,
+    and yet contemned and lightly regarded by many; that the true
+    professors thereof shall be hated with [by] father, mother, and
+    others of the contrary religion; that the most faithful shall
+    cruelly be persecuted? And come not all these things to pass in
+    ourselves?'[47]
+
+But sceptical or speculative doubts were not Mrs Bowes' chief trouble.
+She writes Knox complaining of her temptations--even temptations of
+sense. And chiefly and continually she complained of past guilt and
+present sin, by reason of which she felt as if 'remission of sins in
+Christ Jesus pertained nothing to her.'[48] This was not a case for the
+'sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort' which the Church of England
+ascribes to the doctrine of Predestination rightly used. Nor does Knox
+deal with it--at least in his letters--by the simple and peremptory
+preaching of the Evangel. He recognised it as a case calling for
+sympathy, and he does not find the sympathy hard. Knox, indeed, like the
+other Reformers, had parted for ever with the mediaeval idea of salvation
+by self-torture--even by self-torture for sin. Like all the wisest of
+the human race, too--even before Christianity came to sanction their
+surmise--he held that religion must be an objective thing, and that
+salvation lies in dealing, not with ourselves, but with One outside of
+us and above. Yet it is a salvation from sin, and the new life now
+springing up throughout Europe was intensely a moral life. The faith,
+too, on which the age laid so much stress as a 'coming' to God, involved
+repentance as a 'turning' to God. And while repentance no longer meant
+penance, whether of body or mind, it meant--and as Knox puts it
+repeatedly--'it _contains within itself_ a dolour for sin, a hatred of
+sin, and yet hope of mercy'; and it is renewed as often as the occasion
+arises for renewed deliverance from the evil. Accordingly, Knox now acts
+on the principle which he announced years afterwards in a letter to
+another friend,[49] and again and again tears open his own heart to
+comfort others by shewing that he, with hope or assurance in Christ,
+still felt the burden and assault of sin.
+
+    'I can write to you by my own experience. I have sometimes been
+    in that security that I felt not dolour for sin, neither yet
+    displeasure against myself for any iniquity in that I did
+    offend. But rather my vain heart did thus flatter myself, (I
+    write the truth to my own confusion, and to the glory of my
+    heavenly Father, through Jesus Christ), 'Thou hast suffered
+    great trouble for professing of Christ's truth; God has done
+    great things for thee.'... O Mother! this was a subtle serpent
+    who thus could pour in venom, I not perceiving it; but blessed
+    be my God who permitted me not to sleep long in that estate. I
+    drank, shortly after this flattery of myself, a cup of
+    contra-poison, the bitterness whereof doth yet so remain in my
+    breast, that whatever I have suffered, or presently do, I repute
+    as dung, yea, and myself worthy of damnation for my ingratitude
+    towards my God. The like Mother, might have come to you,'
+    &c.[50]
+
+Mrs Bowes lived in her famous son-in-law's house till close upon her
+death. By that time he had come to recognise that her experience was an
+exceptional[51] and, perhaps, a morbid one; and at a very early date he
+manifestly felt the pressure of her constant applications to him for
+help. Yet throughout the correspondence his unfailing attitude to her is
+that of admirably tender solicitude; and when he has to go into exile in
+the beginning of 1554 he first sits down and writes--still partly in the
+form of letters to her--a treatise on Affliction. It is of great and
+permanent value, the subject not being one which our race can as yet
+claim to have outgrown: but I shall make no reference to its contents.
+Even in his previous and ordinary letters, however, Knox had reached the
+conclusion that her case was one of inward Affliction, rather than, as
+she would have it, of sin. And the treatment of this great subject of
+'desertion,' by one who was a standard-bearer of the new doctrine of
+faith and assurance, is remarkably beautiful. 'It is dolorous to the
+faithful,' he writes another friend, 'to lack the sensible feeling of
+God's mercy and goodness (and the sensible feeling thereof he lacketh
+what time he fully cannot rest and repose upon the same). And yet as
+nothing more commonly cometh to God's children, so is there no exercise
+more profitable for his soldiers than is the same.' But to Mrs Bowes he
+points out, what she certainly would not have observed, that 'it doth
+no more offend God's Majesty that the spirit sometimes lie as it were
+asleep, neither having sense of great dolour nor great comfort, more
+than it doth offend him that the body use the natural rest, ceasing from
+all external exercise.' And again, varying the figure, 'no more is God
+displeased, although that sometimes the body be sick, and subject to
+diseases, and so unable to do the calling; no more is he offended,
+although the soul in that case be diseased and sick. And as the natural
+father will not kill the body of the child, albeit through sickness it
+faint, and abhor comfortable meats, no more (and much less) will our
+heavenly Father kill our souls, albeit, through spiritual infirmity and
+weakness of our faith, sometimes we refuse the lively food of his
+comfortable promises....[52] 'You are sick, dear sister,' he had said
+elsewhere, 'and therefore,' alluding even to her confidences of
+scepticism as to Christian doctrine, 'you abhor the succour of most
+wholesome food.' 'Fear not,' he sums up in a subsequent letter, 'the
+infirmity that you find either in flesh or spirit. Only abstain from
+external iniquity'--which he supplements elsewhere with the more
+positive advice, 'Be fervent in reading, fervent in prayer, and merciful
+to the poor, according to your power, and God shall put an end to all
+dolours, when least is thought [according] to the judgment of man.' And
+in the meantime, 'Dear mother, he that is sorry for absence of virtue is
+not altogether destitute of the same ... our hunger cries unto God.'
+Knox himself, he assured his troubled friend, never ceased to pray for
+her; but 'although I would cease, and yourself would cease, and all
+other creature, yet your dolour continually cryeth and returneth not
+void from the presence of our God.'[53]
+
+Mrs Bowes was not the only 'mirror and glass' in whom Knox allows us to
+see his inner self 'painted,' though the woman-hearted warrior is limned
+in the letters to her more nearly at full length. Two ladies in
+Edinburgh, one the wife of the Lord Clerk Register, and the other of the
+City Clerk, were his friends and correspondents, at a later date, but
+while he was still in exile. And in a letter 'to his sisters' in that
+town, he unbosoms himself as usual as to the principles of his inner
+life, but adds--
+
+    Alas! as the wounded man, be he never so expert in physic or
+    surgery, cannot suddenly mitigate his own pain and dolour, no
+    more can I the fear and grief of my heart, although I am not
+    altogether ignorant what is to be done.'[54]
+
+The same sentiment is expanded in one of a number of letters sent to a
+group of 'merchants' wives in London,' which probably included the
+'three honest poor women'[55] of whom we have already heard. Of this
+group the most remarkable was Mrs Anna Locke, of the family which
+afterwards yielded the famous John Locke. She, like Mrs Bowes, followed
+Knox to Geneva amid the stream of exiles from London; and his letters to
+her give the impression that she was not only wealthy and energetic, but
+possessed of higher character and more accomplishments than the
+well-born Elizabeth Bowes. The letters to the latter were written
+chiefly in 1553. The following, to Mrs Locke, is sent from Scotland
+after Knox's return there, and is dated on last day of 1559:--
+
+    'God make yourself participant of the same comfort which you
+    write unto me. And in very deed, dear sister, I have no less
+    need of comfort (notwithstanding that I am not altogether
+    ignorant) than hath the living man to be fed, although in store
+    he hath great substance. I have read the cares and temptations
+    of Moses, and sometimes I supposed myself to be well practised
+    in such dangerous battles. But, alas! I now perceive that all my
+    practice before was but mere speculation; for one day of
+    troubles since my last arrival in Scotland, hath more pierced my
+    heart than all the torments of the galleys did the space of
+    nineteen months; for that torment, for the most part, did touch
+    the body, but this pierces the soul and inward affections. Then
+    I was assuredly persuaded that I should not die till I had
+    preached Jesus Christ, even where I now am. And yet having now
+    my hearty desire, I am nothing satisfied, neither yet rejoice.
+    My God, remove my unthankfulness!'[56]
+
+Men of this expansive and confiding temperament are attractive, and will
+occasionally get into trouble, even in later life. We find Mrs Bowes ere
+long complaining that she 'had not been equally made privy to Knox's
+coming into the country with others,' and needing to be assured that
+'none is this day within the realm of England, with whom I would more
+gladly speak (only she whom God hath offered unto me, and commanded me
+to love as my own flesh, excepted) than with you.'[57] Mrs Locke, later
+on, points out that she has not had a letter for a whole year. And this
+elicits not only the assurance that it is not the absence of one year or
+two 'that can quench in my heart that familiar acquaintance in Christ
+Jesus, which half a year did engender, and almost two years did nourish
+and confirm,' but also the following striking general statement, which,
+like many things from Knox, impresses us by a certain straightforward
+and noble egotism:
+
+    'Of nature I am churlish, and in conditions[58] different from
+    many: yet one thing I ashame not to affirm, that familiarity
+    once thoroughly contracted was never yet broken on my default.
+    The cause may be that I have rather need of all, than that any
+    have need of me.'[59]
+
+It may be true that Knox never broke a friendship with either sex. But
+his friendships with men were masculine and very reserved in tone; and
+we may be quite sure that the memorable concluding sentence of the above
+paragraph would never have been written except to a woman. Most people
+will be delighted to see already fallen under the 'regimen of women' the
+very man who was to set the trumpet to his lips against it. But those
+who study Knox's life are indebted to his familiar correspondence, and
+especially to the earlier part of it, for far more than the
+gratification of this not unkindly malice. For these letters, I think,
+prove to all--what the finer ear might have gathered with certainty from
+many things even in his public writings--that the main source of that
+outward and active career was an inner life.
+
+We must part for ever with the idea of Knox as a human cannon-ball,
+endowed simply with force of will, and tearing and shattering as it
+goes. The views which at a definite period gave this tremendous impulse
+to a nature previously passive, are not obscure, and are perfectly
+traceable. They are views upon which Knox continually insists as common
+to himself with all Christian men, and which _were_ common to him with
+the mass of Christian men--and women--who were the strength of that time
+and the hope of the age to follow. They were views which, when received
+with full conviction by any individual, led outwardly to suffering on
+the one hand, or, on the other, to shattering the whole compacted system
+of opposing intolerance. But they were views which, when thus translated
+into convictions, not only pressed outward with explosive force, but
+also, and necessarily, spread inwards in reflux and expansion to refresh
+and animate the man. They might have done so--in the case of some men of
+that time they did--without overflowing into the private life and into
+sympathetic converse and confidence with others. But Knox was so
+constituted as to need this also and to supply it. And the fragments of
+his correspondence which are all that remain to us, and which probably
+were all that an extraordinarily busy public work permitted, are
+conclusive on some things and instructive on others. They are conclusive
+as to the existence, under that breastplate of hammered iron with which
+Knox confronted all outward opposition, of a private and personal
+life--a life inward, secret, and deep, and a life also rich, tender, and
+eminently sympathetic. They are conclusive also, I think, of this inner
+life being the source and spring of the life without, instead of being
+merely derived from it. And they will thus be found instructive as to
+the influence of that hidden life, in its strength and its limitations
+alike, on the external career which we have now to trace.
+
+[32] 'Works,' iii. 395.
+
+[33] 'Works,' iii. 376.
+
+[34] 'Works,' iii. 378.
+
+[35] 'Works,' iii. 358.
+
+[36] 'Works,' vi. 104.
+
+[37] 'Works,' ii. 138.
+
+[38] 'Calvini Epistolae,' Ep. 306.
+
+[39] 'Works,' vi. p. lvii.
+
+[40] 'Works,' iii. 337.
+
+[41] 'Works,' iii. 352.
+
+[42] 'Works,' iii. 379. Compare, or contrast, this scene of the three
+poor women with another recorded by a still greater master of English.
+The tinker had gone on business one day to Bedford:
+
+    'In one of the streets of that town, I came where there were
+    three or four poor women sitting at a door in the sun, and
+    talking about the things of God.... But they were far above, out
+    of my reach; for their talk was about a new birth, the work of
+    God on their hearts, also how they were convinced of their
+    miserable state.... And methought they spake as if joy did make
+    them speak; they spake with such pleasantness of Scripture
+    language, and with such appearance of grace in all they said,
+    that they were to me as if they had found a new world, as if
+    they were people that dwelt alone, and were not to be reckoned
+    among their neighbours.'--Bunyan's _Grace Abounding_.
+
+
+[43] 'Works,' iii. 350.
+
+[44] 'Works,' iii. 360.
+
+[45] 'Works,' iii. 366.
+
+[46] 'Works,' iii. 368.
+
+[47] 'Works,' iii. 357. Browning makes his good old Pope feel, in the
+later Renaissance, as if Christian heroism had been
+
+                           'so possible
+  When in the way stood Nero's cross and stake,
+  So hard now'--
+
+and, looking back almost regretfully to Nero's time, to ask--
+
+  'How could saints and martyrs _fail_ see truth
+   Streak the night's blackness?'
+
+'The Ring and the Book. The Pope,' line 1827.
+
+[48] 'Works,' vi. 514.
+
+[49] 'The examples of God's children always complaining of their own
+wretchedness serve for the penitent that _they_ slide not into
+desperation.'--'Works,' vi. 85.
+
+[50] 'Works,' iii. 386.
+
+[51] 'Works,' vi. 513.
+
+[52] It is of the letter from which the above is taken that Knox in
+publishing it long after says apologetically, 'If it serve not for this
+estate of Scotland, yet it will serve a troubled conscience, so long as
+the Kirk of God remaineth in either realm.'--'Works,' vi. 617.
+
+[53] 'Works,' iii. 362.
+
+[54] 'Works,' iv. 252.
+
+[55] 'Honest' in that age meant something nearly equivalent to
+'honourable,' and that they were 'poor women' may refer to troubles
+which they brought to him, other than want of money.
+
+[56] 'Works,' vi. 104.
+
+[57] 'Works,' iii. 370.
+
+[58] 'Conditions' refers to inward nature, not outward circumstances. It
+may be explained by a letter written nine years later, also to a friend
+in England, in which Knox apologises for not having written him for
+years, during which the Reformer had been 'tossed with many storms,' yet
+might have sent a letter, 'if that this my churlish nature, _for the
+most part oppressed with melancholy_, had not staid tongue and pen from
+doing of their duty.'--'Works,' vi. 566. Knox in 1553 was suffering
+severely from gravel and dyspepsia; one of these was already an 'old
+malady'; and both seem to have clung to him during the rest of his life.
+
+[59] 'Works,' vi. 11.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE PUBLIC LIFE: TO THE PARLIAMENT OF 1560
+
+
+Knox had preached only for a few months in St Andrews in 1547, when the
+castle capitulated to the foreign fleet, and he and his companions were
+flung into the French galleys. There for nineteen months he toiled at
+the oar under the lash, and through the cold of two winters, and the
+heat of the intervening summer, had leisure to count the cost of the
+choice so recently made. It is a tribute to his constancy that men
+chiefly remember this dark time by its spots of colour--as when, at
+Nantes, he flung Our Lady's image into the Loire--'She is light enough:
+let her learn to swim!' And when off St Andrews they pointed out to him
+the steeple of the kirk, the emaciated prisoner replied, 'Yes, I know it
+well: and I am fully persuaded, how weak that ever I now appear, that I
+shall not depart this life till that my tongue shall glorify His godly
+name in the same place.' But this first apprenticeship to sorrow went
+deep into the man. It was when he was 'in Rouen, lying in irons, and
+sore troubled by corporal infirmity, in a galley named _Notre Dame_,'
+that he sent a letter to his St Andrews friends. And in it he asks them
+to 'Consider'--his countrymen have scarcely as yet considered it
+sufficiently--'Consider, brethren, it is no speculative theologue which
+desireth to give you courage, but even your brother in affliction, which
+partly hath experience what Satan's wrath may do against the chosen of
+God.'[60] His spirit indeed was in no wise broken: on his escape from
+France he became again a garrison preacher, and gained over King
+Edward's rude soldiers in Berwick an ascendancy, even greater than he
+had held in St Andrews over the young lairds of Fife. But, though not
+broken, it was chastened. It was during the following years, and
+especially in 1553, that he wrote the deeply sympathetic letters from
+which we have already quoted. And in 1554, when he left England to
+escape Mary Tudor, he introduces into a short but admirable treatise on
+Prayer some autobiographical references, which seem to date back to the
+extreme suffering of his captivity, 'when not only the ungodly, but even
+my faithful brethren, yea, and my own self, that is, all natural
+understanding, judged my cause (case) to be irremediable.'
+
+    'The frail flesh, oppressed with fear and pain, desireth
+    deliverance, ever abhorring and drawing back from obedience
+    giving. O Christian brethren, I write by experience ... I know
+    the grudging and murmuring complaints of the flesh; I know the
+    anger, wrath, and indignation which it conceiveth against God,
+    calling all his promises in doubt, and being ready every hour
+    utterly to fall from God. Against which rests [remains] only
+    faith.'
+
+Knox's faith sprang readily to whatever active duty was set before it.
+On his escape from France he spent, as we have seen, five years in
+England, and at the close of that period we have his own assurance that
+he had become almost an Englishman.
+
+    'Sometime I have thought that impossible it had been, so to have
+    removed my affection from the realm of Scotland, that any realm
+    or nation could have been equally dear to me. But God I take to
+    record in my conscience that the troubles present (and appearing
+    to be) in the realm of England are doubly more dolorous unto my
+    heart than ever were the troubles of Scotland.'[61]
+
+He had laboured incessantly in many parts of England, first as licensed
+preacher and then as King's chaplain, and this of course brought him in
+contact with church politics as well as the Evangel. It was owing to
+Knox's remonstrances that, when King Edward's Council put kneeling at
+the Sacrament into the Prayer-Book, they accompanied it with the Rubric,
+which is still retained, and which testifies 'that thereby no adoration
+is intended or ought to be done.' So far his position was reasonable,
+and even conciliatory. But as early as 1550, when requested, perhaps by
+the Council of the North, to 'give his confession' in Newcastle as to
+the Mass, he repeated the Puritan view of his first St Andrews sermon,
+but now in his favourite form of a syllogism, and with its major clause
+dangerously enlarged.
+
+    'All worshipping, honouring, or service invented by the brain of
+    man in the religion of God, without his own express commandment,
+    is _Idolatry_.[62] The Mass is invented by the brain of man
+    without any commandment of God, therefore it is idolatry.'
+
+To Knox's five years in England now succeeded five years which may be
+said to have been spent on the Continent. He first drifted to Frankfort,
+and was put in charge of the English congregation there. Very soon the
+two parties, which have ever since divided the Church of England, made
+their appearance in this representative fragment of it. Knox, of course,
+took the Puritan side as to the form of worship; but a large part of his
+congregation insisted on the full service of King Edward's book. The
+matter was brought to a close in rather an unfortunate way by two of
+Knox's opponents lodging an accusation against him before the
+Magistrates, of treason against the Emperor, the English Queen, and her
+Spanish husband. Frankfort was an imperial city, and Knox was thus no
+longer safe there. He went to Geneva, which was then, under Calvin's
+influence, an illustrious centre of the reformed faith; and was at once
+called to be co-pastor there (along with Goodman) of the
+English-speaking congregation. Knox's later biographer points out the
+historic importance of this 'the first Puritan congregation.' It was the
+source of Elizabethan Non-conformity, and 'it is in the writings of Knox
+and Goodman that those doctrines were first unflinchingly expounded
+which eventually became the tradition of Puritanism.'[63] The Church
+Order, too, which they adopted became afterwards that of worship in
+Scotland; their Psalms were the model for the English and Scotch
+versions; and, above all, the Genevan Bible, prepared by the members of
+Knox's congregation at the very time he was their minister, continued
+for three-quarters of a century thereafter to be 'the household book of
+the English-speaking nations.' It is called the happiest and most
+peaceful time of Knox's life. But it was a time of incessant preparation
+for still greater things, and in this short biography we must confine
+ourselves to what bears either on the man himself or on his supreme work
+for his native country.
+
+For during all Knox's life on the Continent he seems to have kept in
+view the problem of how the Evangel could be set free in Scotland. He
+never had any doubt as to the duty of the individual to confess it in
+the teeth of the Magistrate and of the law. But how could men combine
+together to do so, against authority otherwise lawful? On this and
+similar points he proposed questions on his first arrival in Switzerland
+to the leading theologians. Bullinger, with the approval of Calvin, gave
+an answer which may have suggested to Knox the idea that a people (the
+Armenians are specially instanced) may revolt against 'their legitimate
+magistrate' who persecutes the truth, provided they have an inferior
+magistrate to lead them.[64] And next year, 1555, Knox made a memorable
+visit to Scotland. There James the Fifth's widow, Mary of Lorraine, was
+now Regent, and so chief 'Magistrate.' She was during all those years
+not disposed to be intolerant, and the prospect was everywhere
+encouraging. From Edinburgh Knox writes to Mrs Bowes (still in
+Northumberland), thanking her for being
+
+    'the instrument to draw me from the den of my own ease (you
+    alone did draw me from the rest of quiet study) to contemplate
+    and behold the fervent thirst of our brethren, night and day
+    sobbing and groaning for the bread of life. If I had not seen it
+    with my eyes in my own country, I could not have believed it.
+    Depart I cannot, unto such time as God quench their thirst a
+    little.' And accordingly later on he adds, 'The trumpet blew the
+    old sound three days together, till private houses of
+    indifferent largeness could not contain the voice of it. God for
+    Christ his Son's sake grant me to be mindful that the sobs of my
+    heart have not been in vain, nor neglected in the presence of
+    his Majesty. O sweet were the death that should follow such
+    forty days in Edinburgh as here I have had three!'[65]
+
+It was in the midst of this glowing enthusiasm that Knox attended an
+Edinburgh supper party in the house of Erskine, the Laird of Dun, where
+the question was formally discussed whether those who believed the
+Evangel could countenance by their presence the celebration of the Mass?
+Knox maintained the negative, and as young Maitland of Lethington and
+other acute doubters were there, all views were well represented. But in
+the end the Reformer's zeal prevailed, and another step was taken to
+making Protestantism a public if not a permitted thing in Scotland. From
+Edinburgh he took journeys to Forfarshire, to West Lothian, to Ayrshire,
+and to Renfrewshire; and after half a year spent in incessant preaching,
+followed occasionally by administering the Sacraments, he was at last
+cited to appear before the bishops in the Blackfriars Church, Edinburgh.
+He went, but attended by so many friends that nothing was attempted
+against him for the time. And now, at the suggestion of Glencairn and
+Marischal, two of the lords who were favourable to the new doctrine,
+Knox sat down to write a letter to the Queen Dowager, as Regent of
+Scotland. It had hitherto been Mary of Lorraine's policy to play off the
+Protestant party, which had leanings to England, against the Catholic
+side, which was faithful to France. Knox accordingly blesses 'God, who
+by the dew of his heavenly grace, hath so quenched the fire of
+displeasure in your Grace's heart,' and with unprecedented courtesy
+apologises 'that a man of base estate and condition dare enterprise to
+admonish a Princess so honourable, endued with wisdom and graces
+singular.' Those whom Knox represented were a small minority of
+Scotchmen; but that did not prevent him demanding of the Regent far more
+than mere neutrality or 'indifferency' between the contending parties.
+He demands of her the reform of both religion and the church. He admits
+that 'your Grace's _power_ is not so free as a public Reformation
+perchance would require'; you 'cannot hastily abolish superstition, ...
+which to a public Reformation is requisite and necessary. But if the
+zeal of God's glory be fervent in your Grace's heart, you will not by
+wicked laws maintain idolatry, neither will you suffer the fury of
+Bishops to murder and devour.' The Queen Regent was not disposed to go
+very far with the bishops, but still less was she fervent for God's
+glory and public Reformation. Accordingly, on the first Court day she
+handed Knox's letter, perhaps unread, to the Bishop of Glasgow, with the
+words, 'Please you, my Lord, to read a Pasquil.' The unwise jest came to
+Knox's ears, and some years after he published his letter with resentful
+additions and interpolations. In these he assumed--much too soon--that
+there was no longer hope of the Regent becoming personally convinced of
+the Evangel. But he at the same time modified his 'Petition' on behalf
+of his party to this, 'that our doctrine may be tried by the plain word
+of God, and that liberty be granted to us to utter and declare our minds
+at large in every article and point which are now in controversy'; and
+on his own behalf and 'in the name of the Lord Jesus, that with
+_indifferency_ I may be heard to preach, to reason, and to dispute in
+that cause.'
+
+But now, in July 1556, letters came to Knox in Edinburgh from his
+congregation in Geneva, 'commanding him in God's name, as he was their
+chosen pastor, to repair unto them for their comfort.' He at once
+complied, sending before him from Norham to Dieppe his wife and her
+mother. Scotland was not yet ripe. The lay professors of the Evangel
+indeed were not seriously molested after his departure. But on the other
+hand Knox himself was at once cited to appear in Edinburgh, condemned in
+absence as a contumacious heretic, and burned at the Cross in the High
+Street--in effigy. Neither this, nor his daily work in Geneva, had the
+effect of withdrawing him for a day from his solicitude for his native
+country. On leaving it he wrote an admirable 'Letter of Wholesome
+Counsel'[66] urging the continual study of the word of God in families
+and in congregations.
+
+    'Within your own houses, I say, in some cases, ye are bishops
+    and kings; your wife, children, servants, and family are your
+    bishopric and charge; of you it shall be required how carefully
+    and diligently ye have always instructed them in God's true
+    knowledge, how that ye have studied in them to plant virtue and
+    repress vice. And therefore, I say, ye must make them partakers
+    in reading, exhorting, and in making common prayers, which, I
+    would, in every house were used once a day at least.'
+
+And for each congregation he urged an order of procedure much nearer
+that of apostolic times than that which the Reformed Church, at his own
+instance, afterwards instituted in Scotland.
+
+    'I think it necessary that for the conference [comparing] of
+    Scriptures, assemblies of brethren be had. The order therein to
+    be observed is expressed by St Paul,' ... after 'confession' and
+    'invocation,' 'let some place of Scripture be plainly and
+    distinctly read, so much as shall be thought sufficient for one
+    day or time, which ended, if any brother have exhortation,
+    question, or doubt, let him not fear to speak or move the same,
+    so that he do it with moderation, either to edify or to be
+    edified. And hereof I doubt not but great profit shall shortly
+    ensue; for, first, by hearing reading and conferring the
+    Scriptures in the Assembly, the whole body of the Scriptures of
+    God shall become familiar, the judgments and spirits of men
+    shall be tried, their patience and modesty shall be known, and
+    finally their gifts and utterance shall appear.'
+
+If any difficulty of interpretation occurs, it should be 'put in writing
+before ye dismiss the congregation,' with the view of consulting some
+wise adviser. Many, he hopes, would be glad to help them.
+
+    'Of myself I will speak as I think; I will more gladly spend
+    fifteen hours in communicating my judgment with you, in
+    explaining as God pleases to open to me any place of Scripture,
+    than half an hour in any matter beside.'
+
+Before six months had passed, however, Knox, who was again abroad, had
+become troubled by the too great freedom of opinion and the dangers of
+consequent freedom of life even in the Protestant community, and his
+letter 'To the Brethren'[67] in Scotland from Dieppe, against
+Anabaptists and Sectarians, foreshadows the more rigid form which was to
+be one day impressed upon Church doctrine and life in his native land.
+
+During the ensuing year, 1557, everything was peaceful and hopeful. The
+Protestants kept their worship private, but it spread from town to
+town, and from the land of one friendly baron to his neighbours'
+territory. Knox had been formally condemned, but those he left behind
+were not molested, and in March four of the Lords wrote him to Geneva
+asking him to return to Scotland. They accompanied this with assurances
+that though 'the Magistrates in this country' were in the same state as
+before, the Churchmen there were daily in less estimation. After
+consulting Calvin, Knox said farewell to his congregation, and had got
+as far homewards as Dieppe, where he was much disappointed to receive
+'contrary letters.' His reply, indignantly acquiescing, indicates the
+plan which by this time he had formed in order to solve the combined
+difficulties in theory and practice which beset Scotland. He reminded
+his correspondents--Glencairn, Lorne, Erskine, and James Stewart--in
+very memorable words, that they were themselves magistrates, or at least
+representatives of the people, and had duties accordingly.
+
+    'Your subjects, yea, your brethren, are oppressed, their bodies
+    and souls holden in bondage; and God speaketh to your
+    consciences (unless ye be dead with the blind world) that you
+    ought to hazard your own lives (be it against kings and
+    emperors) for their deliverance. For only for that cause are ye
+    called Princes of the people, and ye receive of your brethren
+    honour, tribute and homage at God's commandment; not by reason
+    of your birth and progeny (as the most part of men falsely do
+    suppose), but by reason of your office and duty, which is to
+    vindicate and deliver your subjects and brethren from all
+    violence and oppression, to the utmost of your power.'[68]
+
+The effect of this and other encouragements was to bring matters to a
+point in Scotland. The Protestant party, which had now been joined by
+Argyll and Morton, entered into the kind of engagement which was then
+called a 'Band,' and afterwards became widely known in Scotland as a
+'Covenant.' This document, dated 3rd December 1557, bound the
+signatories to 'apply our whole power, substance, and our very lives, to
+maintain, set forward, and establish the most blessed Word of God and
+his congregation ... unto which holy word and congregation we do join
+us, and also do forsake and renounce the congregation of Satan.' This
+important step, which seems to have been represented by rumour in Dieppe
+as something like rebellion in Scotland, apparently startled Knox. A
+fortnight after it took place he writes the 'Lords of the Congregation,'
+as they were henceforth called, a letter of caution, urging them to
+
+    'seek the favour of the Authority, that by it, if possible be,
+    the cause in which ye labour may be promoted, _or at the least
+    not persecuted_, which thing after all humble request if ye can
+    not attain, then, with open and solemn protestation of your
+    obedience to be given to the Authority in all things not plainly
+    repugning to God, ye lawfully may attempt the extremity, which
+    is to provide, whether the Authority will consent or no, that
+    Christ's Evangel may be duly preached, and his holy Sacraments
+    rightly ministered unto you, and to your brethren the subjects
+    of that realm.'
+
+The Lords of the Congregation were disposed to be at least as cautious
+as Knox, and during the following year, 1558, there was a remarkable
+approximation to a possible settlement in Scotland on the basis of
+toleration. The 'Band' of the congregation does not at all suggest that
+the Barons who joined in it, and thereby bound themselves to defend
+their religion against the pressure and tyranny of outsiders, would
+think it right themselves to exercise a counter pressure and tyranny
+upon their own vassals within their own lands. And Knox's intimation
+that the Authority--_i.e._, the Regent and Parliament--though refusing
+to promote the Evangel, ought to be asked at least _not to persecute
+it_, was most timely. He held, indeed, at this time, that such a
+concession, if granted, ought to bar not only insurrection, but even a
+partial and divided establishment of religion. The state of matters was
+reflected in two resolutions which the Congregation came to immediately
+after the Band. By the first, common prayers were to be read on Sundays
+in the churches--which must mean in the churches where the innovators
+had influence--by the curates, 'if qualified,' and, if not, by those of
+the parishioners who were. But the second provided that preaching be, in
+the meantime, 'had and used privately in quiet houses,' great
+conventions being avoided 'till God move the Prince to grant public
+preaching.' And another influence now entered into the history. Knox had
+initiated an aristocratic revolution. But the Burghs of Scotland had
+been there, as in every other country of Europe, fortresses of freedom
+and the advance-guard of constitutional civilisation. And it was now
+resolved, that the brethren in every _town_ 'should assemble together.
+And this our weak beginning did God so bless, that within few months the
+hearts of many were so strengthened, that we sought to have the _face of
+a church_ among us.'... And the town of Dundee in particular 'began to
+erect the face of a public church reformed.'[69] Henceforward the great
+towns became more and more prepared to be the centres of the future
+struggle. Meantime, however, early in 1558, the 'First Petition of the
+Protestants of Scotland' was presented to the Regent. It protested
+against the existing tyranny, and craved, in general and cautious terms,
+a 'public Reformation,' laying stress on church services in the vulgar
+tongue, and offering to submit differences to be publicly decided, not
+only by the New Testament, but by the writings of the Fathers and the
+laws of Justinian. The offer seems to have been at once accepted. But,
+according to the account of Knox, who, of course, was still abroad, the
+proposed public discussion came to nothing, because both parties fell
+back upon other conditions of arbitration; the Protestants now demanding
+that the Scriptures alone should decide all controversy, the Catholics
+insisting on Councils and Canon Law. The next step was a proposal by the
+Bishops of 'Articles of Reconciliation,' according to which the Old
+Church was to remain publicly established, while the Protestants might
+privately pray and baptise in the vulgar tongue. This the innovating
+party declined, and pressed for 'reformation.' And now the Regent, whom
+Knox afterwards came to regard as 'crafty and dissimulate,' and who, no
+doubt, even now desired to please and 'make her profit of both parties,'
+announced to the Congregation her decision. 'She gave to us permission
+_to use ourselves_ godly, according to our desires, provided that we
+should not make public assemblies in Edinburgh or Leith'--_i.e._, in the
+capital. The Queen went so far as to promise positive 'assistance to our
+preachers,' the assistance no doubt being rather private and personal,
+and the whole arrangement being an interim one, 'until some uniform
+order might be established by a Parliament.' It was a great step in
+advance; indeed, Knox says, 'we departed fully contented with her
+answer;'[70] and it is impossible not to speculate on what the result
+might have been had the order finally established by Parliament been
+that both parties should permanently 'use themselves godly according to
+their desires,' with a publicly acknowledged right of proselytism or
+persuasion.
+
+But from both sides there still came some things hostile to the advent
+in Scotland of that toleration which the modern conscience has approved.
+In April 1558 Walter Myln, a priest eighty-two years of age, was seized
+by order of the Archbishop of St Andrews, condemned for heresy, and
+burned there amid the general but ineffectual resentment of the people.
+The sentence was quite legal under the laws which still enforced
+membership of the Catholic Church upon all Scotchmen. But the last man
+who had been so condemned was Knox; and he no longer delayed to publish
+in Geneva an Appellation or appeal against his sentence, directed to the
+nobles, the estates and the commonalty of Scotland. His demand for a
+return to the primitive Gospel under the Divine authority is powerful
+and eloquent. His reasons, on the other hand, for 'appeal from the
+sentence and judgment of the visible Church to the knowledge of the
+temporal magistrate' are difficult to reconcile with the position which
+Knox afterwards took up when that Church was on his own side; and they
+are indeed chiefly drawn from the Old Testament. It is not until we
+observe from his re-statement of the case farther on, that his was an
+appeal 'against a sentence of death,' that the argument once more
+straightens itself out so as to suit the lips even of Paul. But Knox
+declines now to remain on the defensive. He accuses his accusers of
+heresy and idolatry, and calls upon the nobles of Scotland to decide
+against them according to God's Word. Here, again, the appeal, so long
+as it is made to the conscience of all men and of nobles alike, is very
+cogent. Nor is it less so as addressed specially to the most
+representative and intelligent Scotchmen of the time, for such the Lords
+of the Congregation undoubtedly were. It becomes doubtful only when it
+insists on the right of these temporal 'Princes of the people' to reform
+the Church--apparently even without the consent of its majority; and it
+becomes worse than doubtful when he urges their duty as magistrates to
+repress false religion and to punish idolatry with death. Along with
+this, however, was published a shorter letter 'To his Beloved Brethren
+the Commonalty of Scotland.' To these subjects born within the same,
+their brother John Knox wishes in it 'the spirit of righteous judgment;'
+and that in a tone of independence which must have sounded to Scottish
+peasants and burghers like a call to a new life. For in this treatise,
+unlike the last, each private Scottish man is urged to judge of what
+claimed to be the original truth, even against an admittedly ancient
+system. And 'If that system was an error in the beginning, so it is in
+the end, and the longer that it be followed, and the more that do
+receive it, it is the more pestilent, and more to be avoided.'
+
+    'Neither would I that ye should esteem the Reformation and care
+    of religion less to appertain to you, because ye are no kings,
+    rulers, judges, nobles, nor in authority. Beloved brethren, ye
+    are God's creatures, created and formed to His own image and
+    similitude, for whose redemption was shed the most precious
+    blood of the only beloved Son of God.... For albeit God hath put
+    and ordained distinction and difference between the king and
+    subjects, between the rulers and the common people, in the
+    regimen and administration of civil policies, yet in the hope of
+    the life to come He hath made all equal.... And this is the
+    equality which is between the king and subjects, the most rich
+    or noble, and between the poorest and men of lowest estate; to
+    wit, that as the one is obliged to believe in heart, and with
+    mouth to confess, the Lord Jesus to be the only Saviour of the
+    world, so also is the other.'
+
+And by this time Knox has reasoned out for himself the right of the
+people to maintain the true Church, and to band in defence of it--though
+that right he even now recognises only when they cannot do better.
+
+    'And if in this point your superiors be negligent, or yet
+    pretend to maintain tyrants in their tyranny, most justly ye may
+    provide true teachers for yourselves, be it in your cities,
+    towns, or villages: them ye may maintain and defend against all
+    that shall persecute them, and by that means shall labour to
+    defraud you of that most comfortable food of your souls,
+    Christ's evangel truly preached. Ye may, moreover, withhold the
+    fruits and profits which your false Bishops and clergy most
+    unjustly receive of you, unto such time as they be compelled
+    faithfully to do their charge and duties.'
+
+These appeals by Knox can only have made their way in Scotland gradually
+and privately. But as the year 1558 went on, the prospect of union
+became more hopeful. The Queen Regent acted as if 'the duty of the
+Magistrate' were to prevent majorities and minorities from laying hands
+on each other. And, then at least, this was not an easy work. The
+Bishops tyrannised in details in localities where the barons were still
+on their side; but Myln was the last Protestant martyr in Scotland. On
+the other hand, the adherents of the congregation became so bold,
+especially in the towns, that (as Knox tells us) 'the images were stolen
+away in all parts of the country, and in Edinburgh was that great idol
+called St Gile first _drowned_ in the North Loch, and after burned.'[71]
+This was too much, and the Regent allowed the Bishops to summon the
+iconoclast preachers for the 19th of July. But a party of Western lairds
+heard of it on their way from the army of the Border, and insisted on
+interviewing the Queen. Knox's vivid account of what followed must be
+quoted. It includes a delicious phonograph of the Scots speech of Mary
+of Lorraine, who, to the desire to please all men which was common to
+her with her more famous daughter, seems to have added real good nature
+and kindliness of heart. James Chalmers of Gadgirth, a rough
+Ayrshireman, burst out against the Bishops--
+
+    '"Madam, we vow to God we shall make one day of it. They oppress
+    us and our tenants for feeding of their idle bellies; they
+    trouble our preachers, and would murder them and us: shall we
+    suffer this any longer? No, madam, it shall not be." And
+    therewith every man put on his steel bonnet. There was heard
+    nothing of the Queen's part but "My joys, my hearts, what ails
+    you? Me means no evil to you nor to your preachers. The Bishops
+    shall do you no wrong. Ye are all my loving subjects. Me knew
+    nothing of this proclamation. The day of your preachers shall be
+    discharged, and me will hear the controversy that is betwixt the
+    Bishops and you. They shall do you no wrong. My Lords," said she
+    to the Bishops, "I forbid you either to trouble them or their
+    preachers." And unto the gentlemen, who were wondrously
+    commoved, she turned again and said, "O, my hearts, should ye
+    not love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your
+    mind? and should ye not love your neighbours as yourselves?"
+    With these and the like fair words she kept the Bishops from
+    buffets at that time.'[72]
+
+Her daughter Mary, the celebrated Queen of Scots, had been married in
+April to Francis, the Dauphin of France, and the Regent, rejoicing in
+this long hoped-for alliance, had one thing more at heart. The Scots
+Parliament was to meet in November, and she hoped that it would confer
+the crown 'Matrimonial' of Scotland upon her son-in-law, thus
+consolidating the two kingdoms. In view of this meeting the Lords of the
+Congregation prepared a petition, the leading prayer of which would have
+practically freed Scotland from the intolerance of existing legislation
+in the matter of religion--
+
+    'We most humbly desire that _all such Acts of Parliament_, as in
+    the time of darkness gave power to the churchmen to execute
+    their tyranny against us, by reason that we to them were delated
+    as heretics, may be _suspended and abrogated_.'[73]
+
+Here again was a proposal which, if taken by itself, would have
+satisfied the modern view of liberty of conscience. But the petitioners
+went on to say that they did not object to a _temporal_ judge of heresy,
+provided he judged according to the Word of God; and they looked forward
+to a decision of 'all controversies in religion,' not however by
+Parliament, but by a General Council. This proposal was first handed to
+the Queen Regent, who 'spared not amiable looks and good words in
+abundance, but always she kept our Bill close in her pocket.' Both
+parties in Parliament being thus pleased, the Crown Matrimonial was
+consented to, and before the Session closed, the Protestant Lords read
+an important protest, repeating the positions which they had already
+taken up.
+
+    1. 'We protest, that seeing we cannot obtain a just reformation,
+    according to God's word, that it be lawful to us _to use
+    ourselves_ in matters of religion and conscience, as we must
+    answer unto God.
+
+    2. 'That we shall incur no danger in life or lands, or other
+    political pains, for not observing such Acts as heretofore have
+    passed in favour of our adversaries.'
+
+They added a protest that if any tumult should arise 'for the diversity
+of religion,' and if any abuses should be 'violently reformed,' it
+should not be imputed to them, who desired a reformation in matters of
+religion by the Authority. From that Authority, however, they, in
+closing--somewhat inconsistently but most rightfully--demanded once more
+the 'indifferency' which becometh God's Lieutenant.
+
+Parliament declined to record the Protest, but the Queen Regent said in
+her confidential way to the Lords, 'Me will remember what is protested;
+and me shall put good order after this to all things.' Knox was
+delighted, and in writing to Calvin commended her 'for excellent
+knowledge in God's word, and good will towards the advancement of his
+glory.' There is no reason to suppose that Mary of Lorraine had attained
+to much more than a kindly appreciation of all parties around her, and
+to that general sense of justice which is strong in rulers and other men
+so long as they have no personal interest to the contrary. Yet under
+this feminine 'regimen' Scotland was now within measurable distance of
+being, alone among the commonwealths of Europe, the home of liberty of
+worship and freedom of conscience. But that great time was not come; and
+the small northern land was now caught up again into the whirl of
+European politics. On the 17th November 1558 Mary of England, the
+unhappy wife of Philip, died; and her Protestant sister Elizabeth, the
+daughter of Anne Boleyn, succeeded. It became at once the chief point in
+the policy of Catholic Europe that France and Scotland should be fast
+bound together in religion and turned, along with Spain, as one force
+for the restoration or re-conquest of England. For if the English queen
+was an illegitimate heretic, then Mary Stuart, already Queen of Scotland
+and Dauphiness of France, was now Queen of England too; and without
+delay the French king quartered the arms of England with those of Mary's
+own country and that of her adoption. The magnificent bribe of a third
+crown for that fair 'daughter of debate' was too much for her mother in
+Scotland, who in any case would have found a continued toleration there
+irreconcileable with the traditions of their House of Guise. The Regent
+now, in her mild way, joined the cruel Catholic crusade of the French
+Court, and from the beginning of 1559 the conciliatory policy which had
+distinguished the previous year in Scotland was at an end.
+
+But its results were not ended. They had spread through all ranks, and
+had gone down to the foundations of society. On New Year's Day of 1559
+there was found affixed to the door of every religious house in Scotland
+the following document--the most extraordinary imitation of a legal writ
+that Scotland has seen. It is probably not written by Knox, but by some
+other strong pen. It bears to be a notice or 'summons' of ejectment for
+the ensuing Whitsunday, and is called
+
+    THE BEGGARS' WARNING.
+
+    The Blind, Crooked, Bedrels [bedfast], Widows, Orphans, and all
+    other Poor, so visited by the hand of God as they may not work,
+
+
+    TO
+
+    The Flocks of all Friars within this realm, we wish restitution
+    of wrongs bypast, and reformation in time coming, for
+    salutation.
+
+                *       *       *       *       *
+
+    Ye yourselves are not ignorant, and though ye would be it is
+    now, thanks to God, known to the whole world, by His infallible
+    word, that the benignity or alms of all Christian people
+    pertains to us allanerly [exclusively]; which ye, being hale of
+    body, stark, sturdy, and able to work, what [partly] under
+    pretence of poverty (and nevertheless possessing most easily all
+    abundance) what [partly] through cloaked and hooded simplicity,
+    though your proudness is known, and what [partly] by feigned
+    holiness, which now is declared superstition and idolatry, have
+    these many years, express against God's word and the practice of
+    His Holy Apostles, to our great torment alas! most falsely
+    stolen from us. And as ye have, by your false doctrine and
+    wresting of God's word (learned of your father Satan), induced
+    the whole people high and low, into sure hope and belief, that
+    to clothe, feed, and nourish you is the only acceptable alms
+    allowed before God, and to give one penny or one piece of bread
+    once in the week, is enough for us; Even so ye have persuaded
+    them to build to you great hospitals, and maintain you therein
+    by their purse, which only pertains now to us by all law, as
+    builded and doted [given] to the poor--of whose number ye are
+    not, nor can be repute, neither by the law of God, nor yet by no
+    other law proceeding of nature, reason, or civil policy.... We
+    have thought good, therefore, before we enter with you in
+    conflict, to warn you, in the name of the great God, by this
+    public writing, affixed on your gates, where ye now dwell, that
+    ye remove forth of our said hospitals betwixt this and the feast
+    of Whitsunday next, so that we the only lawful proprietors
+    thereof may enter thereto, and afterward enjoy these
+    _commodities of the Kirk_, which ye have hereunto wrongously
+    holden from us: Certifying you, if ye fail, we will at the said
+    term, in whole number (with the help of God and the assistance
+    of His saints in earth, of whose readie support we doubt not),
+    enter and take possession of _our said patrimony_, and eject you
+    utterly forth of the same.
+
+    _Let him therefore that before has stolen, steal no more; but
+    rather let him work with his hands that he may be helpful to the
+    poor._
+
+    FROM THE WHOLE CITIES, TOWNS, AND VILLAGES OF SCOTLAND, THE
+    FIRST DAY OF JANUARY, 1558 {1559}.[74]
+
+As it turned out, this summons was in some cases literally fulfilled,
+and a revolutionary ejectment carried out by Whitsunday 1559. But now
+from another side came another warning to put the house of the Church in
+order. The Catholic barons presented a petition for its reform, and the
+Regent called a Provincial Council on 1st March. It dealt, however,
+almost exclusively with the lives and duties of the clergy, and leaving
+untouched the central grievance--the legal authority of the Church and
+of the Pope over all subjects--had no effect whatever on the public.
+Immediately after, all 'unauthorised' preaching was forbidden. The
+Protestants, astonished, waited on the Regent and reminded her of her
+promises. She replied, in words which were often recalled during the
+reigns of her Stewart descendants, that 'it became not subjects to
+burden their Princes with promises, farther than it pleaseth them to
+keep the same,' and the preachers were ordered to appear before her at
+Stirling. But now Knox, who had kept up constant communication from
+Geneva with his friends, suddenly appears on the scene. On 2d May he
+writes from Edinburgh to Mrs Locke:
+
+    'I am come, I praise my God, even in the brunt of the battle:
+    for my fellow-preachers have a day appointed to answer before
+    the Queen Regent, the 10th of this instant, where I intend, if
+    God impede not, also to be present: by life, by death, or else
+    by both, to glorify His godly name, who thus mercifully hath
+    heard my long cries.'[75]
+
+The day after this letter was written, Knox was 'blown loud to the
+horn,' _i.e._, declared an excommunicated outlaw: but he had meantime
+left for Dundee, where he was received with acclamation, and from thence
+departed to Perth, now the centre of Protestantism. There, day by day,
+he preached to excited multitudes in the Parish Church; and it was
+after a sermon there, 'vehement against idolatry,' that a foolish
+priest, attempting to perform mass in the same building, was set upon by
+the mob of Perth, who had an old feud with the clergy. From the church
+the multitude streamed away to the magnificent Religious Houses which
+had adorned the town, and sacked and burned them so thoroughly that only
+the walls were left standing. It wanted yet four days to that
+Whitsunday, for ejection on which the 'rascal multitude' had last New
+Year's Day warned the Friars! The Queen Regent resented this outrageous
+violence, but was forced to come to an interim agreement with the Lords
+of the Congregation. On her entry into Perth they moved into Fife, and
+Knox having preached in Crail and Anstruther, resolved to do so also in
+the Parish Church of St Andrews on Sunday. But the St Andrews populace
+had not yet declared themselves; the Regent's hostile army was only
+twelve miles off; and the Archbishop--who had occupied the town with a
+hundred spears and a dozen of culverins--now threatened his life if he
+attempted it. It was a moment for a bold man. At the hour fixed Knox
+made his appearance. No one ventured to attack him. He preached with his
+usual impetuous eloquence on 'casting the buyers and sellers out of the
+temple,' and at its close the magistrates and council permitted the
+majority of the people to destroy most of the monasteries, and strip the
+churches and cathedral of their apparatus of 'idolatry.' Knox was always
+more comfortable where he could say that such proceedings were
+countenanced by the local authority, or by the majority of a civic
+community. In Edinburgh, to which the Congregation next moved, the
+majority had hitherto been hostile to them; and now, on the Queen
+Regent's departure, the pulpits were for the first time opened to what
+was the legitimate glory of the new movement--free and unfettered
+preaching. Knox, church-statesman though he was, threw himself into this
+work with a delight that lifted him above calculation of consequences.
+
+    'The long thirst of my wretched heart is satisfied, in abundance
+    that is above my expectation; for now, forty days and more hath
+    God used my tongue in my native country to the manifestation of
+    His glory. Whatever now shall follow, as touching my own
+    carcase, His Holy Name be praised.'[76]
+
+The castle, however, still remained faithful to the Regent, and on her
+forces approaching Edinburgh, both parties agreed to a truce till
+January, which, as respects the town and its religion, provided that--
+
+    'The town of Edinburgh shall, without compulsion, use and choose
+    what religion and manner thereof they please, to the said day;
+    _so that every man may have freedom to use his own conscience_
+    to the day foresaid.'[77]
+
+The truce was to be for six months, to January 1560, and it was employed
+by both parties in preparing for a renewed struggle, and, on the side of
+the Congregation, in negotiations with Elizabeth and her ministers.
+Politically, this last step was of the highest importance. For the first
+time for centuries, it healed the breach with 'our auld enemies of
+England,' as the Scots statutes had so often described them, and
+founded an alliance between the two kingdoms, which has since that date
+been only changed in order to become a union. And in this negotiation
+the agent and secretary was Knox.[78] He corresponded with the Queen's
+great minister Cecil (Elizabeth herself would not hear Knox's name). And
+it says not a little for the self-command and honesty of the English
+statesman, that he trusted so fully a man whose first letter, written
+several years before--a letter, too, asking a favour--commenced by
+Knox's 'discharging his conscience' in this way:--
+
+    'In time past, being overcome with common iniquity, you have
+    followed the world in the way of perdition: for ... to the
+    shedding of the blood of God's dear children have you, by
+    silence, consented and subscribed. Of necessity it is, that
+    carnal wisdom and worldly policy, (to both which, you are
+    bruited to be much inclined) give place to God's simple and
+    naked truth.'
+
+Cecil had made no answer to this or to similar subsequent remarks, but
+he now wrote asking the Congregation,
+
+    'if support should be sent hence, what manner of amity might
+    ensue betwixt these two realms, and how the same might be hoped
+    to be perpetual, and not to be so slender as heretofore hath
+    been, without other assurance of continuance than from time to
+    time hath pleased France.'
+
+And the answer, in Knox's handwriting, is signed by the Protestant
+lords, and assures England
+
+    'of our constancy (as men may promise) till our lives end; yea,
+    farther, we will divulgate and set abroad a charge and
+    commandment to our posterity, that the amity and league between
+    you and us contracted and begun in Christ Jesus may by them be
+    kept inviolated for ever.'
+
+There was to be in the future a still more Solemn League and Covenant
+between the two nations, it too having for its object the deliverance
+(and, alas! also the uniformity) of religion in both kingdoms. But that
+public, and this private, league were alike disavowed by the Sovereign,
+and both became the badge of rebellion. The Queen Regent, indeed, had
+now fortified Leith, and was filling it with French soldiers. The Lords
+of the Congregation, founding on this as a breach of faith, resolved to
+suspend her from the regency, and did so by a proclamation, strangely
+signed: 'By us, the nobility and commons of the Protestants of the
+Church of Scotland.' The preachers approved, Knox, however, demanding
+that a door be still kept open for her restoration. War, of course, at
+once followed, and it turned out to be very much a fight between
+Edinburgh and Leith, then not unequally matched.[79] Soon the
+Protestants got the worst of it. On the last day of October the French,
+pouring up Leith Walk, drove them back into the Canongate, attacked
+Leith Wynd, and sent their horsemen in headlong flight through the
+Netherbow Port and up the High Street. Five days after, the forces of
+the Congregation having advanced to Restalrig, were enclosed by two
+advancing bodies of the enemy, and so jammed in near Holyrood, between
+the crags of the Calton on the one side and the crags of Arthur Seat on
+the other, as to be extricated only with most serious loss. Confusion
+and dismay seized upon all, and at midnight they marched out of
+Edinburgh, pursued by voices of reproach and execration from the
+overhanging roofs. Next night they gathered helplessly at Stirling. But
+on the following day Knox entered the pulpit there, and preached a
+memorable sermon. It recalled the despairing Congregation to a mood of
+resolute trust and hope. And yet his text was the Psalm which tells of
+the vine brought from Egypt to be planted in the land, but now wasted
+and broken down; and the preacher throughout refused even to suggest to
+the shrinking multitude any lower hope than the vouchsafed shining again
+of the Divine countenance. There remains only, he concluded,
+
+    'that we turn to the Eternal our God, who beats down to death,
+    to the intent that he may raise up again, to leave the
+    remembrance of his wondrous deliverance, to the praise of his
+    own name ... yea, whatsoever shall become of us and of our
+    mortal carcases, I doubt not but that this cause, in despite of
+    Satan, shall prevail in the realm of Scotland.'
+
+But his words were as life from the dead, and the sermon, which Buchanan
+also commemorates, was long after recalled by the preacher himself in St
+Giles, in another great crisis of the Evangel.
+
+    'From the beginning of God's mighty working within this realm, I
+    have been with you in your most desperate tentations. Ask your
+    own consciences, and let them answer you before God, if that
+    I--not I, but God's Spirit by me--in your greatest extremity
+    willed you not ever to depend upon your God, and in His name
+    promised unto you victory and preservation from your enemies, so
+    that ye would only depend upon his protection and prefer His
+    glory to your own lives and worldly commodity. In your most
+    extreme dangers I have been with you: St Johnstone, Cupar Muir,
+    and the Crags of Edinburgh, are yet recent in my heart: yea,
+    that dark and dolorous night wherein all ye, my Lords, with
+    shame and fear left this town, is yet in my mind; and God forbid
+    that ever I forget it!'
+
+'The voice of one man,' it was afterwards said of Knox by the English
+ambassador in Edinburgh, 'is able in one hour to put more life in us
+than five hundred trumpets continually blustering in our ears.' This day
+in Stirling was the very lowest point of the fortunes of the
+Congregation, and from this hour they began to rise. There were reverses
+still; but Scotland was sick of the French, and the end was to come with
+the coming year. In April 1560, the English forces surrounded Leith; the
+Queen Regent withdrew from it into the Castle of Edinburgh; and the
+Lords of the Congregation, stronger than they were originally by the
+accession of the Duke of Hamilton and the Earls of Morton and
+Huntly,[80] made one more 'Band' or Covenant. In it for the last time
+they fall back on liberty of conscience; for all they bind themselves to
+is,
+
+    'with our bodies, goods, friends, and all that we may do, to set
+    forward the Reformation of Religion, according to God's word;
+    and procure, by all means possible, that the truth of God's word
+    may have _free passage within this realm_, with due
+    administration of the Sacraments, and all things depending upon
+    the said word.'[81]
+
+A copy of this Band, by which each subscriber also bound himself not to
+make separate overtures to the Regent, was brought to her in the Castle.
+Knox, who by this time was become very hostile to Mary of Lorraine, and
+reports much doubtful gossip as to her rejoicing over the victories and
+cruelties of her soldiers, says that when she read the Band, she spoke
+in quite another and milder sense.
+
+    'The malediction of God I give unto them that counselled me to
+    persecute the preachers, and to refuse the petitions of the best
+    part of the true subjects of this realm.'
+
+But the time was past for her co-operating for the welfare of that
+realm. She had fallen into a dropsy, and, becoming daily worse, sent for
+the Earls Argyll, Glencairn, and Marischal, and the Lord James (her
+husband's son). They came to her separately, and to each she confessed
+that she had made a mistake, and should have acceded to the arrangement
+they had proposed. 'They gave unto her both the counsel and the comfort
+which they could in that extremity, and willed her to send for some
+godly learned man, of whom she might receive instruction.' They proposed
+Willock; but even that gentle preacher did not set forth 'the virtue and
+strength of the death of Jesus Christ,' without touching also upon 'the
+vanity and abomination of that idol, the mass.' The dying woman said
+nothing, good or bad, of the form in which Christianity had been first
+presented, long years ago, to her childish eyes. But 'she did openly
+confess "that there was no salvation but in and by the death of Jesus
+Christ."' And Knox, holding that in this 'Christ Jesus got no small
+victory' over her, grudges extremely that to her approval of 'the chief
+head of our religion, wherein we dissent from all Papists and Papistry,'
+she added no condemnation of opposing ways. But Mary of Lorraine had
+uttered the last even of her good-natured 'maledictions,' and on the
+10th of June the Regent of Scotland ended her 'unhappy life'--a life,
+that is, which had pleased neither party, though in its later years a
+great revolution, carried through at the expense of comparatively little
+violence or bloodshed, had narrowly missed attaining an even ideal
+result.
+
+And now those troubles were over. Nine months before, her daughter had
+become Queen of France, and a treaty was now concluded at Edinburgh,
+between the Queen of England on the one part and the 'King and Queen of
+France and Scotland' on the other, by which the French troops and
+officials withdrew from Scotland, and an indemnity was granted to the
+insurgent nobility for all that the Congregation had done. Elizabeth
+still looked on them as rebels; but Cecil, with more foresight,
+instructed her plenipotentiaries to provide 'that the government of
+Scotland be granted to the nation of the land'; and the treaty provided
+for a Council of Administration in the absence from Edinburgh of the
+Sovereigns, and--more important still--for an immediate meeting of the
+Estates, which was to be as valid as if presided over by them.[82] The
+most important Parliament which Scotland has ever seen sat on 1st August
+1560, and was very largely attended by nobles, lairds, and burgh
+representatives. Naturally, a petition was at once laid before it for
+the abolition of the old Church system. Equally naturally, this was met
+by a request for a statement of the new Church doctrine--a confession of
+faith. It was prepared by Knox and three others, and in four days
+presented to the Parliament.
+
+'I never heard,' says the English envoy to Cecil, 'matters of so great
+importance, neither sooner despatched nor with better will agreed unto.'
+Knox's narrative, which is borne out by the records of Parliament, says
+that
+
+    'This our Confession was publicly read, first in audience of the
+    Lords of the Articles, and after, in audience of the whole
+    Parliament, where were present, not only such as professed
+    Christ Jesus, but also a great number of the adversaries of our
+    religion, such as the fore-named bishops, and some others of the
+    temporal estate, who were commanded, in God's name, to object,
+    if they could, anything against that doctrine.'
+
+The ministers were present to defend it, but there was no opposition,
+and a second day was appointed, when the Confession was again read over,
+article by article, and then a vote was taken. Three, or at the most
+five, temporal peers voted against ratifying it; 'and yet for their
+disassenting they produced no better reason but, We will believe as our
+fathers believed.' Nor was this strange, for the Bishops present, Knox
+says, 'spake nothing,' Randolph explaining that the three who got to
+their feet, headed by the St Andrew's primate, said the doctrine was a
+matter new and strange to them, which they had not examined, and which
+they could not 'utterly condemn,' or, on the other hand, quite consent
+to. The vote on the side of the majority was largely a rejoicing
+outburst of individual conviction. The Earl Marischal indeed, took the
+obvious ground that
+
+    'seeing that my Lords Bishops, who for their learning can, and
+    for that zeal they should bear to the verity, would (as I
+    suppose) gainsay anything that directly repugns to the verity of
+    God--seeing, I say, my Lords here present speak nothing in the
+    contrary of the doctrine proposed, I cannot but hold it to be
+    the very truth of God, and the contrary to be deceivable
+    doctrine.'
+
+The rest of the Lords, says Randolph, with common consent, and 'as glad
+a will as ever I heard men speak,' allowed the same.
+
+    'Divers, with protestation of their conscience and faith,
+    desired rather presently to end their lives than ever to think
+    contrary unto that allowed there. Many also offered to shed
+    their blood in defence of the same. The old Lord of Lindsay, as
+    grave and goodly a man as ever I saw, said: "I have lived many
+    years; I am the oldest in this company of my sort; now that it
+    hath pleased God to let me see this day, where so many nobles
+    and others have allowed so worthy a work, I will say, with
+    Simeon, _Nunc dimittis_."'
+
+It was the birthday of a people. For not in that assembly alone, and
+within the dim walls of the old Parliament House of Edinburgh, was that
+faith confessed and those vows made. Everywhere the Scottish burgess and
+the Scottish peasant felt himself called to deal, individually and
+immediately, with Christianity and the divine; and everywhere the
+contact was ennobling. 'Common man' as he was, 'the vague, shoreless
+universe had become for him a firm city, and a dwelling-place which he
+knew. Such virtue was in belief: in these words well spoken, _I
+believe_.'[83] But being a common man in Scotland, his religion could
+not be isolated, or his faith for himself alone. Wherever he dwelt, 'in
+our towns and places reformed,' he was already a member of a
+self-governing republic, a republic within the Scottish State but not of
+it, and subject to an invisible King. 'The good old cause' was already
+born. It kindled itself, as that son of the Burgher mason in Annandale
+says again, 'like a beacon set on high; high as heaven, yet attainable
+from earth, whereby the meanest man becomes not a citizen only, but a
+member of Christ's visible Church; a veritable hero, if he prove a true
+man.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Day by day at this critical epoch Knox preached in St Giles from the
+'prophet Haggeus,' on what he called The Building of the House. In one
+sense the foundation was laid already. In another, Parliament might be
+called upon to supply one. What foundation was Parliament to lay, and
+what structure was promised for the days to come?
+
+[60] 'Works,' iii. 10.
+
+[61] 'Works,' iii. 133.
+
+[62] 'Works,' iii. 34. The rashness of the general proposition here can
+only be appreciated when we remember Knox's view that it was the duty of
+the Magistrate not only to suppress idolatry, but to punish it with
+death.
+
+[63] Hume Brown, i. 203.
+
+[64] 'Works,' iii. 224.
+
+[65] 'Works,' iv. 217, 218.
+
+[66] 'Works,' iv. 129.
+
+[67] 'Works,' iv. 261.
+
+[68] 'Works,' i. 272.
+
+[69] 'Works,' i. 300.
+
+[70] 'Works,' i. 307.
+
+[71] 'Works,' i. 256.
+
+[72] 'Works,' i. 258.
+
+[73] 'Works,' i. 310.
+
+[74] 'Works,' i. 320.
+
+[75] 'Works,' vi. 21.
+
+[76] 'Works,' vi. 26.
+
+[77] 'Works,' i. 378. Knox objected to this unlimited freedom of
+conscience being granted, even for a time; and actually succeeded in
+retaining the public worship on the ground that Edinburgh _had_ chosen
+already, though under compulsion. The interest lies in the fact that, at
+every turn of the open struggle which now took place between the two
+parties, the true ultimate solution, that of toleration, came to the
+front. But it was proposed, or suggested, by each party only when that
+party was in the minority, and ignored as soon as it regained the power
+to do wrong. See the following additional pages in Knox's own
+History:--'Works,' i. 389, 390, 428 ('idolatry _and_ murder'), 432, 442
+('chief duty'), and 444.
+
+[78] Knox himself takes care in his History 'to let the posterity that
+shall follow understand, by what instruments God wrought the familiarity
+and friendship, that after we found in England.'--'Works,' ii. 43.
+
+[79] 'It is not unknown to the most part of this realm, that there has
+been an old hatred and contention betwixt Edinburgh and Leith; Edinburgh
+seeking continually to possess that liberty which by donation of kings
+they have long enjoyed, and Leith, by the contrary, aspiring to a
+liberty and freedom in prejudice of Edinburgh.'--Declaration of the
+Lords of the Congregation in 1559. 'Works,' i. 426.
+
+[80] Lesser barons sign too, from Cranstoun and Cessford on the Borders,
+to Leslie of Buchan and John Innes of that Ilk in the North.
+
+[81] 'Works,' ii. 61. It is dated 26 April 1560.
+
+[82] It does not say that all its acts were to be valid. On the
+contrary, 'certain Articles concerning religion' having been presented
+on the part of the nobles and people of Scotland, and not meddled with
+by the plenipotentiaries 'as being of such importance that they judged
+them proper to be remitted to the King and Queen,' it was provided that
+the Estates, on their meeting, should choose some persons of quality 'to
+repair to their Majesties and remonstrate to them the state of their
+affairs, particularly those last mentioned.'
+
+[83] Thomas Carlyle.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE PUBLIC LIFE: LEGISLATION AND CHURCH PLANS
+
+
+The Confession presented to the Parliament of 1560 was one of a group
+which sprang as if from the soil, in almost every country in Europe.
+They had all a strong family likeness; but not because one imitated the
+other. They were honest attempts to represent the impression made on the
+mind of that age by the newly discovered Scriptures, and that
+impression--the first impression at least--was everywhere the same. And
+everywhere it was overwhelmingly strong. So far as Knox at least is
+concerned, he plainly held the extreme view, not only that no one could
+read the Scriptures without finding in them the new doctrine, but
+that--as he quite calmly observed on one memorable occasion in St
+Giles--'all Papists are infidels,' either refusing to consult the light,
+or denying it when seen. And, of course, nothing was more calculated to
+confirm this view than a scene like that which we have just described,
+and which had been recently rehearsed in innumerable cases in Scotland
+and elsewhere. But, in truth, the new light dazzled all eyes. Later on,
+men had to analyse it, and they found there were distinctions to be made
+as to its value:--for example, between truth natural and truth revealed,
+between the Old Testament and the New, between the truths even of the
+New Testament and its sacraments--distinctions which some among
+themselves admitted, and which others refused. The very last
+publication, too, of Knox in 1572 was an answer to a Scottish Jesuit;
+for by that time a counter-Reformation, which also was not without its
+convictions, had begun. But, in the meantime, the energy and the triumph
+were all on one side. And although only the first step had been taken,
+it must be remembered that the first step was, in Scotland, the great
+one. With the really Protestant party, and, of course, with the
+Puritans, the confession of truth was fundamental. Subsequent
+arrangements as to the State, and even as to the Church, were
+subordinate--they were, at the best, mere corollaries from the central
+doctrine affecting the individual. In every case truth comes first: and
+human authority a long way later on. In this transaction, for example,
+of the 17th August 1560, nothing is clearer than that the Parliament did
+not adopt the doctrine in any way on the authority of the new-born
+Church. All the forms of a free and deliberate voting of the doctrine
+_as truth_--as the creed of the estates, not of the Church, were gone
+through. Still less, on the other hand, did the Church really adopt it
+on the authority of the Parliament; (though it must be confessed that
+this expression of it--the written creed of 1560--had no formal sanction
+other than that of the State). But it was the confession 'professed by
+the Protestants,' and exhibited by them 'to the estates;' and it
+contained in itself abundant and adequate foundation for that
+independence of the Church which became so dear to Scotland in following
+ages, and of which Knox himself has always been recognised as, more than
+any other man, the historical embodiment.
+
+The great confession in this creed that 'as we believe in one
+God--Father, Son, and Holy Ghost--so do we most constantly believe that
+from the beginning there has been, now is, and to the end of the world
+shall be, one Kirk,' is there so deduced from the everlasting purpose
+and revelations of God, and is so concentrated upon the duty and the
+privilege of the individual man, that the church in Scotland, even had
+it never become national, would have stood square and perhaps risen high
+upon this one foundation. But it was by no means intended to stand on
+that foundation alone, however adequate. And it was with a view to
+further steps--not all of them taken at this time--that clauses as to
+the civil magistrate were introduced in the penultimate chapter,
+assigning to him 'principally' the conservation and purgation of the
+religion--by which, it is carefully explained, is meant not only the
+'maintenance' of the true religion, but the 'suppressing' of the false.
+One more remark may be made. Theoretically, the Church could improve its
+creed. In France it was read aloud on the first day of each yearly
+Assembly, that amendments or alterations upon it might be proposed; and
+in Scotland also the view was strongly held that the only standard
+unchangeable by the Church was Scripture. This theoretical view,
+however, was not to have much immediate practical result; especially as
+the Confession was now ratified by the Parliament. And this was done
+without change or qualification, though the preface prefixed to it by
+the Churchmen admits its fallibility and invites amendment--a view in
+which Knox had long since been encouraged by his earliest teacher.[84]
+
+The congregation had confessed the doctrine to the Parliament, and the
+Parliament had accepted and approved it. Had the Parliament more to do?
+
+Some things were absolutely necessary. It had to wipe out the previous
+legislation against the profession of the new faith. The Evangel had to
+be set free by statute. Once liberated from the ban of the law under
+which its previous victories had been won, it could finish its work
+independently, and without difficulty sweep the whole of Scotland. And
+Knox had no doubt as to the right of the Kirk to act independently, or
+as to its duty to do so--if it could not do more and better. Already,
+before the Parliament met, the members of it who were Protestants had
+gathered together in Edinburgh, and arranged for fixing this and that
+minister of the word in the various centres of population. And once the
+legal obstacles to proselytism were removed, the way would be open for a
+more glorious advance than they had yet seen. But such a work in the
+future, though comparatively easy, and though in Knox's view certain in
+its result, would be slow. Why not do it all at a stroke? Instead of
+merely revoking the intolerant laws, why not turn them against the other
+side?
+
+A very strong petition had been already presented against the Romish
+Church, and exactly a week after the ratification of the Confession,
+three Acts were passed.[85] These three Acts, with that ratification,
+constituted the public 'state of religion' during the seven years of
+Mary's reign, and they were re-enacted on her abdication in 1567 as the
+foundation of the regime of Protestantism. Of the three, the first was
+only ambiguously intolerant, for though it ordained that the Pope 'have
+no jurisdiction nor authority within this realm,' that might be held to
+reject mainly the Papal encroachment upon civil power. The second was
+not intolerant at all, and as being well within the power and duty of
+the nation, it ought to have come first. By it all Acts bypast, and
+especially those of the five Jameses, not agreeing with God's Word and
+contrary to the Confession, and 'wherethrow divers innocents did
+suffer,' were abolished and extinguished for ever. But the third, passed
+the same day, proceeded on the preamble that 'notwithstanding the
+reformation already made, according to God's Word, yet there is some of
+the said Papist Kirk that stubbornly persevere in their wicked idolatry
+saying Mass and baptising.' And it ordained, against not only them but
+all dissenters and outsiders for all time, 'that no manner of person in
+any time coming administer _any_ of the Sacraments foresaid, secretly or
+any other manner of way, but they that are admitted, or have power to
+that effect.' And lastly, with regard to the large minority (if, indeed,
+it was not a clear majority) of the nation who still clung to their
+ordinary worship, it provided that no one 'shall say Mass, nor yet hear
+Mass, nor be present thereat,' under the pains, for the first fault, of
+confiscation of goods and bodily punishment, for the second, of
+banishment, and for the third, of _death_.
+
+This has always remained the fundamental positive ordinance among the
+statutes of the Reformation; though it may be fair to take along with it
+the first of these three Acts, and especially a positive clause in it
+which forbids bishops to exercise jurisdiction by Papal authority. No
+farther establishment of the Church was at the time attempted; and there
+was indeed no farther legislation till Mary's downfall in 1567. In that
+year the three Acts of 1560 were anew passed; and they were followed by
+the formal statement (more or less implied even in the legislation of
+1560) that the ministers and people professing Christ according to the
+Evangel and the Reformed Sacraments and Confession are 'the only true
+and holy Kirk of Jesus Christ within this realm.' An Act followed by
+which each king at his coronation was to take an oath to maintain this
+religion, and also, explicitly, to root out all heretics and enemies 'to
+the true worship of God that shall be convict by the true Kirk of God.'
+It seems difficult for statutory religion to go farther: but the solid
+system and block of intolerance was completed by a group of statutes in
+1572, the year of Knox's death. They ordain that Papists and others not
+joining in the Reformed worship shall after warning be excommunicated by
+the Church (of which a previous Act, somewhat inconsistently, had
+declared them not to be at all members); and that 'none shall be reputed
+as loyal and faithful subjects to our sovereign Lord or his authority,
+but be punishable as rebels and gain-standers of the same, who shall not
+give their confession, and make their profession of the said true
+religion.'
+
+Scotland had taken the wrong legislative turning. The only defence of
+these statutes, and it is a very inadequate one, is that they could not
+be fully enforced and were not, and that perhaps they were not quite
+intended to be enforced. In point of fact Scotland in the Reformation
+time had little blood-shedding for mere religion on either side to shew,
+compared to the deluge which stained the scaffolds of continental
+Europe. That is no answer to the criticism that the only law now needed
+was one to 'abolish and extinguish' the persecuting laws which had been
+enacted of old. But even to such a critic, and on the ground of theory,
+there is something to be said. It is not true that the new theory was
+worse than the old. On the contrary, the old theory allowed no private
+judgment to the individual at all; he was bound by the authority of the
+Church, and it was no comfort to him to know that the state was bound by
+it too. On the Protestant theory neither the individual nor the state
+were in the first instance so bound; both were free to find and utter
+the truth, free for the first time for a thousand years! It was this
+feeling--that the state was free truthwards and Godwards--which
+accounted for half of the enthusiasm in the Scots Parliament a week
+before. And it was not at once perceived, there or elsewhere, that for
+the state to make use of this freedom by embracing a creed itself--even
+though it now embraced it as the true creed and no longer as the
+Church's creed--was perilous for the more fundamental freedom of the
+individual. He would be sure to feel aggrieved by his state adopting the
+creed which was not his. And the state might readily be led into holding
+that it had adopted it not for its officials only but for its subjects,
+and might shape its legislation accordingly.
+
+Knox was more responsible for the result than any other man, and for him
+also there is something to be said. The view that the state must adopt a
+religion for all its subjects and compel them all to be members of its
+Church, was common ground in that age; both parties proclaimed it
+(except when they were in too hopeless a minority), and the few
+Anabaptists and others who anticipated the doctrine of modern times had
+not been able to get it into practical politics. Knox too, in his first
+contact with the Reformed faith (and the contact, as we know, was a
+plunge), had found the tenet of the magistrate's duty in an exaggerated
+form. And in that form he now reproduced it. The statement of his
+Confession of 1560 that 'To Kings, Princes, Rulers, and Magistrates we
+affirm that chiefly and most principally the conservation and purgation
+of the Religion appertains,' is not at all stronger than that in the
+First Confession of Helvetia which Wishart had brought with him before
+1545. Switzerland, taught by bitter experience, exchanged it for a
+milder statement in its Second Confession of 1566.[86] But Calvin and
+Beza and Knox's friends in the French Protestant Church generally had
+held to the stronger view of the magistrate's duty, even amid all his
+persecutions of them; and Knox's passionate indignation against idolatry
+had led him, even in his early English career, to maintain the duty not
+only of the magistrate, but even of the subject in so far as he had
+power, to punish it with death. Indeed his only chance of escaping from
+the vicious circle of that murderous syllogism[87] was by going back to
+the right of the individual to stand against the magistrate, and if need
+be to combine against him, in defence of truth. On this side even that
+early Helvetic Confession had proclaimed (in Wishart's words but in
+Knox's spirit), that subjects should obey the magistrate only 'so long
+as his commandments, statutes, and empires, evidently repugn not with
+Him for whose sake we honour and worship the magistrate.' And Knox in
+later years had travelled so far on the road of modern constitutionalism
+as to maintain the right of subjects to combine against and overthrow
+the ruler whose intolerant statutes so _repugned_. How far he had
+exactly gone would have appeared had the chapter 'of the obedience or
+disobedience that subjects owe unto their magistrates' appeared in the
+Scottish Confession unrevised. Randolph says that the 'author of this
+work' was advised by Lethington and Winram to leave it out. Something,
+if not a whole chapter, has been left out; and the consequence is that
+the first Confession of the Scottish Church and people is very much
+overweighted on the side of absolute power. But had that chapter gone
+in, it would have been difficult not to have recognised even then, that
+there was an inconsistency between the alleged high function of the
+magistrate as to religion, and the _disobedience_ which on that head his
+subjects may 'owe unto him'--an inconsistency even in theory. The
+inconsistency in practice Providence was to make its early care.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It had been necessary for Parliament to revoke its old persecuting
+statutes. And on that side it had gone farther, proscribing the old
+religion and Church, and setting up, if not a new church, at least a new
+religion. But, on another side, and one with which Parliament alone
+could deal, there was also something necessary. What was to be done with
+the huge endowments of the Church now abolished and proscribed? And what
+provision was to be made by the State for that 'maintenance of the true
+religion' to which it had bound itself, and for its spread among a
+people, half of whom were not even acquainted with it, though all of
+them were already bound to it by law?
+
+The question of the endowments was a more difficult one, theoretically
+and practically, than that of the yearly tithes. For the former had been
+actual gifts, made to the Church or its officials by kings, barons, and
+other individuals, when there was no law compelling them to give them.
+What right had the State now to touch these? Two things are to be
+recalled before answer. All these individual donors had been by law
+compelled not only to be members of that Church, but to accept it
+(whether they wished to do so or not) as the exclusive receiver of
+whatever charities they might desire to institute or to bequeath. For
+many centuries past in Scotland the proposal to do otherwise would have
+been not only futile, but a deadly risk to him who tried it. Then,
+secondly, the same law which had bound the individual to the Church as
+the exclusive administrator of charities, had kept him in compulsory
+ignorance of other objects of munificence than those which the Church
+sanctioned; or if by chance that pious ignorance was broken, it sternly
+forbade him to support them. For reasons such as these the modern
+European state has never been able to treat ancient endowments made
+under the pressure of its own intolerance with the same respect as if
+the donors had been really free--free to know, and free to act. The
+presumption that the donor or testator, if he were living now, would
+have acted far otherwise than he did, and that in altering his
+destination the State may be carrying out what he really would have
+wished, is in such cases by no means without foundation. Knox and others
+reveal to us that this feeling was overwhelmingly strong at the time
+with which we are dealing, especially in the minds of the descendants
+and representatives of the donors themselves. And in the minds of the
+common people, and of Knox as one sprung from them, there was lying,
+unexpressed, the feeling which in modern times has been expressed so
+loudly, that the claim of the individual, whether superior or sovereign,
+to alienate for unworthy uses huge tracts of territory which carry along
+with them the lives and labours of masses of men--and of men who have
+never consented to it--is a claim doubtful in its origin and pernicious
+in its results. All over Protestant Europe the conclusion even of the
+wise and just was, that, subject to proper qualifications, the ancient
+endowments of the Church were now the treasury of the people.
+
+But there was another part of the patrimony of the old Church on which
+Knox had a still stronger opinion--viz., the yearly tithes or Teinds. To
+these, in his view, that Church and its ministers had neither the divine
+right which they had claimed, nor any right at all. The 'commandment' of
+the State indeed had compelled men, often cruelly and unjustly, to pay
+them to the Church. But the State was now free to dispose of them
+better, and it was bound to dispose of them justly. And in so far as
+they should still be exacted at all, they must now be devoted to the
+most useful and the most charitable purposes--purposes which should
+certainly include the support of the ministry, but should include many
+other things too. One of the positions taken up by Knox in his very
+first sermon in St Andrews (following the views which he reports as held
+by the Lollards of Kyle), was, 'The teinds by God's law do not appertain
+of necessity to the Kirkmen.'[88] And now the Book of Discipline, under
+its head of 'The Rents and Patrimony of the Kirk,' demanded that
+
+    'Two sorts of men, that is to say, the ministers and the poor,
+    together with the schools, when order shall be taken thereanent,
+    must be sustained upon the charges of the church.'[89]
+
+And again--
+
+    '_Of the teinds_ must not only the ministers be sustained, but
+    also the poor and schools.'
+
+The kirk was now powerful, and the poor and the schools were weak; and
+Knox now as ever put forward the strong to champion those who could not
+help themselves. But he had long before come to the conclusion,[90] that
+of the classes here co-ordinated as having a right to the teinds, it was
+the right of the poor that was fundamental, and the claim of the
+ministers was secondary or ancillary, and perhaps only to be sustained
+in so far as they preached and distributed to the poor, or possibly
+only in so far as they were of, and represented, the poor. Accordingly
+the Assembly of 1562, in a Supplication, no doubt written by Knox, and
+certainly breathing what had been his spirit ever since the early days
+of Wishart, conjoins the cause of both in passionate eloquence:
+
+    'The Poor be of three sorts: the poor labourers of the ground;
+    the poor desolate beggars, orphans, widows, and strangers; and
+    the poor ministers of Christ Jesus His holy Evangel: which are
+    _all_ so cruelly treated.... For now the poor labourers of the
+    ground are so oppressed by the cruelty of those that pay their
+    Third, that they for the most part _advance upon the poor_
+    whatsoever they pay to the Queen or to any other. As for the
+    very indigent and poor, _to whom God commands a sustentation to
+    be provided of the Teinds_, they are so despised that it is a
+    wonder that the sun giveth light and heat to the earth where
+    God's name is so frequently called upon, and no mercy, according
+    to His commandment, shown to His creatures. And also for the
+    ministers, their livings are so appointed, that the most part
+    shall live but a beggar's life. And all cometh of that
+    impiety--'[91]
+
+The position that the 'patrimony of the Church' is fundamentally rather
+the 'patrimony of the poor,' and that ecclesiastics are merely its
+distributors, was anything but new. It is a commonplace[92] among the
+learned of the Catholic Church--the difference was that at this crisis
+it was possible for Scotland to act upon it, and that the state was
+urged to remember the poor by a man who, with all his devotion to God
+and to the other world, burned with compassion for the hard wrought
+labourers of his people. For it will be observed that here, as
+elsewhere, Knox is concerned, not only for the 'very indigent,' and the
+technically 'poor,'[93] but for those especially whom he calls 'your
+poor brethren; the labourers and manurers (hand-workers) of the ground.'
+In the Book of Discipline, before entering upon its provisions for
+dividing the tithe between the ministers, the poor, and the schools, he
+urges that the labourers must be allowed 'to pay so reasonable teinds,
+that they may feel some benefit of Christ Jesus, now preached unto
+them.' For
+
+    'With the grief of our hearts we hear that some gentlemen are
+    now as cruel over their tenants as ever were the Papists,
+    requiring of them whatever before they paid to the Church, so
+    that the Papistical tyranny shall only be changed into the
+    tyranny of the lord or of the laird.'... But 'the gentlemen,
+    barons, earls, lords, and others, must be content to live upon
+    their just rents, and suffer the Church to be restored to her
+    liberty, that in her restitution, the poor, who heretofore by
+    the cruel Papists have been spoiled and oppressed, may now
+    receive some comfort and relaxation.'
+
+For Knox had now fully conceived that magnificent scheme of
+statesmanship for Scotland, which is preserved for us in his book of
+Discipline, presented, after the Confession, to the Estates of Scotland
+in 1560.[94] How long this project may have been in incubation in his
+mind, we do not know. But the germ of it may have been very early
+indeed. It may have come into existence simultaneously with his earliest
+hope for the 'liberty' and 'restitution' of the oppressed and captive
+kirk. For I shall now for the last time quote a passage from that early
+Swiss Confession which his master Wishart had brought over with him to
+Scotland so long ago; a passage which in its bold comprehensiveness may
+well have been the original even in his (Knox's) early East Lothian
+days, of his later 'devout imagination.' The Church, said the Swiss
+Reformers, as translated by the Scot (and translated, as there is high
+authority for believing,[95] for the express purpose of founding a
+Protestant Church in Scotland--or at least in those burghs of Scotland
+which had received his teaching), is entitled to call upon the
+magistrate for
+
+    'A right and diligent institution of the discipline of citizens,
+    and of the schools a just correction and nurture, with
+    liberality towards the ministers of the Church, with a
+    solicitate and thoughtful charge of the poor, to which end all
+    the riches of the Church [in German, _die Gueter der Kirche_] is
+    referred.'[96]
+
+Knox's 'Book' and scheme are an expansion of this one sentence. It was
+statesmanship in the fullest sense, including a poor-law and a system of
+education, higher and elementary, for the whole country. But it was in
+the first place a Book of the Church. And while its 'system of national
+education was realised only in its most imperfect fashion, its _system
+of religious instruction_ was carried into effect with results that
+would alone stamp the First Book of Discipline as the most important
+document in Scottish history' (Hume Brown). Even on the Church side it
+is somewhat too despotic. The power of discipline and of exclusion which
+is necessary to every self-governing society was rightly preserved. But
+in its application it tended here, as in Geneva, to press too much upon
+the detail of individual life. So, too, the prominence now given to
+preaching, and the duty laid down of habitually waiting upon it, may
+seem inconsistent with the primitive Protestant authority of the Word of
+God alone. This, however, would have been modified, had the system of
+'weekly prophesyings' (which provided for not one man only but for all
+who are qualified communicating their views), taken root in Scotland, as
+it has so largely done in Wales. And even as it was, this work of a
+trained ministry, and especially the preaching, passed in those early
+days like a ploughshare through the whole soil and substance of the
+Scottish character, and left enduring and admirable results.
+
+Had Knox been able to throw himself directly upon the people, all would
+have been well. But the people were to be approached through hereditary
+rulers, whose consent was necessary for funds with which the Church
+might administer, not the department of religion and worship only, but
+those also of national education and national charity. That the Church
+should be administrator was not the difficulty. Whether, indeed, the
+selection of one religion, to be by ordinance of Parliament the religion
+of the subjects of the State, was justifiable, will always be gravely
+questioned. But, rightly or wrongly, that had already been done; and it
+was clearly fitting that the body which was thus in a sense made
+co-extensive with the nation, should undertake national duties, of a
+kind cognate with those properly its own. No one--except perhaps the
+Catholics--doubted that the new Church, with both the new learning and
+the new enthusiasm behind it, was better fitted to administer alike
+education and charity than either the Estates or the Crown. And Knox's
+great scheme proposed that the Church, in addition to administering its
+own religion and worship, should in every parish provide--1. That those
+not able to work should be supported; 2. that those who were able should
+be compelled to work; 3. that every child should have a public school
+provided for it; 4. that every youth of promise should have an open way
+through a system of public schools on to the Universities. It was a
+great plan, but a perfectly reasonable one. And there was abundance of
+money for it. For the wealth of the Church now abolished, which the law
+held to be, at least after the death of the existing life-renters, at
+the disposal of the Crown,[97] and which was indeed afterwards
+transferred to it by statute,[98] is generally calculated to have
+amounted to nearly one half of the whole wealth of the country. But the
+crowning sin of the old hierarchy had been that on the approach of the
+Reformation they commenced, in the teeth of their own canons, to
+alienate the temporalities which they had held only in trust, to the
+lords and lairds around them as private holders. And the process of
+waste thus initiated by the Church and the nobles was continued by the
+Crown and its favourites; the result being that the aristocracy so
+enriched became a body with personal interests hostile to the people and
+their new Church. Even in the first flush of the Reformation all that
+the Reformers could procure was an immediate 'assumption' by the Crown
+of one-third of the benefices. And even of this one-third, only a part
+was to go to the Church, the rest being divided between the old
+possessors and the Crown; or, as Knox pithily put it, 'two parts are
+freely given to the devil, and the third must be divided between God and
+the devil.' Even God's part, however, was scandalously ill-paid during
+Mary's reign, and in addition the Church objected to receiving by way of
+gift from the Crown what they should have received rather as due from
+the parishes and the people. This came out very instructively in the
+Assembly of December 1566. The Queen was now courting the Protestants,
+and had signed an offer for a considerable sum for the maintenance of
+the ministers. What was to be said to her offer? The Assembly first
+requested the opinion of Knox and the other ministers, as the persons
+concerned. They retired for conference, and 'very gravely' answered--
+
+    'That it was their duty to preach to the people the Word of God
+    truly and sincerely, and to crave of the auditors the things
+    that were necessary for their _sustentation_, as of duty the
+    pastors might justly crave of their flock.'[99]
+
+This striking reversion to the Apostolic rule--all the more striking
+because it is easily reconcilable with the now accepted doctrine of
+toleration--was, no doubt, not only in substance but in form the
+utterance of Knox. But so also, if we are to judge by internal evidence,
+was the formal answer of the Assembly. They accepted the Queen's gift
+under the pressure of present necessity, but
+
+    Not the less, in consideration [of] the law of God ordains the
+    persons who hear the doctrine of salvation at the mouths of his
+    ministers, and thereby receive special food to the nourishment
+    of their souls, to communicate temporal _sustentation_ on [to]
+    their preachers: Their answer is, That having just title to
+    crave the bodily food at the hands of the said persons, and
+    finding no others bound unto them, they _only require at their
+    own flock_, that they will sustain them according to their
+    bounden duty, and what it shall please them to give for their
+    sustentation, if it were but bread and water, neither will they
+    refuse it, nor desist from the vocation. But to take from others
+    contrary to their will, whom they serve not, they judge it not
+    their duty, nor yet reasonable.'[100]
+
+The principle so admirably laid down by Knox has become the principle of
+modern Presbyterianism throughout the world. And even in that day it
+required nothing to be added to it except the recognition that
+Catholics, and others outside the 'flock,' who were merely statutory
+'auditors,' were not bound to its pastor in the tithe, or other
+proportion, of their means. Elementary as this may now seem, it was of
+course too much for that age. The same Assembly went on to declare that
+'the teinds properly pertain to the Kirk,' and while they should be
+applied not only to the ministers, but also to 'the sustentation of the
+poor, maintaining of schools, repairing of kirks, and other godly uses,'
+such application should be 'at the discretion of the Kirk.' It was all
+right, provided the intolerant establishment were to remain. For in that
+case the tithes as a State tax were the proper means for the State
+maintaining church and school and poor; and as the Church had already
+been set by the State over both poor and school, it was the fit
+administrator of all. And all this ascendancy was about to be renewed;
+for two months after this Assembly Bothwell murdered Darnley, and three
+months later Mary married Bothwell and abdicated. And the great
+Parliamentary settlement of 1567 commenced with the long delayed
+ratification of the three old statutes of 1560; two Acts being now
+added, one declaring that the Reformed Church is the only Church within
+the realm, the other giving it jurisdiction over Catholics and all
+others. It was fit that between these two later Acts should be
+interposed another,[101] giving the ministers a first claim on the
+'thirds' of benefices, 'aye and until the Kirk come to the full
+possession of their proper patrimony, which is the teinds.' The proper
+patrimony of the ancient Church was, perhaps, rather the endowments
+which had been gifted to it; yet Knox, who abhorred the idea of
+inheriting anything from that old Church, took a share of that money,
+even from the State, with reluctance. But the tithes, to be enforced
+yearly from Scotsmen by the law, he claimed freely, for they were due to
+the poor, were due to learning and the school, and were above all due to
+the Kirk, as entrusted with these other interests no less than with its
+own.
+
+The battle was not over. The scheme of the Book of Discipline remained,
+even after the statutes of 1567, a mere 'imagination,' all attempted
+embodiment of it being starved by the nobility and the crown. And in our
+own century the Church, retaining its statutory jurisdiction over
+Catholics and Nonconformists, has lost its statutory control over both
+the schools and the poor, while it has never got anything like 'full
+possession' or even administration of the teinds, in which all three
+were to share, but of which it desired to be sole trustee.
+
+It it easy for us, looking back--superfluously easy--to see the
+fundamental mistake in Knox's legislation. But taking that first step of
+intolerant establishment as fixed, I see nothing in his proposed
+superstructure which was not admirable and heroic, and also--as heroic
+things so often are--sane and even practicable. And it was all conceived
+in the interest of the people--of those 'poor brethren' of land and
+burgh, with whom Knox increasingly identified himself. No doubt the Kirk
+had no right to claim administration, even as trustee, of the tenth of
+the yearly fruits of all Scottish industry. But when we think of the
+objects to which these fruits were to be applied, we shall not be
+disposed to deal hardly with such a claim. It is not the divided and
+disinherited Churches of Scotland alone--it is, even more, the 'poor
+labourers of the ground'--who have reason, in these later days, to join
+in the death-bed denunciation by Knox of the 'merciless devourers of the
+patrimony of the Kirk.'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Knox's statesmanship may have failed--partly because an unjust and
+unchristian principle was unawares imbedded in its foundation, and
+partly because the hereditary legislators of Scotland could not rise to
+the level of its peasant-reformer. But Knox's churchmanship did not
+fail. It might well have been contended that the freedom of the Church
+had been compromised by the legislation which was granted or petitioned
+for. But that was not the Church's view, and the internal organisation
+which nobles and politicians refused to sanction, the Church, claiming
+to be free, instantly took up as its own work. In each town or parish
+the elders and deacons met weekly with the pastor for the care of the
+congregation. And these 'particular Kirks' now met half-yearly
+representatively as the 'Universal Kirk' of Scotland. From its first
+meeting in December 1560 onwards, the General Assembly or Supreme Court
+of the Church was convened by the authority of the Church itself, and
+year by year laid the deep foundations of the social and religious
+future of Scotland. It was a great work--nothing less than organising a
+rude nation into a self-governing Church. And there were difficulties
+and dangers in plenty, some of them unforeseen. The nobles were
+rapacious, the people were divided, the ministers leaned to dogmatism,
+the lawyers leaned to Erastianism, the Lowlands were menaced by
+Episcopacy, the Highlands were emerging from heathenism, and between
+them both there stretched a broad belt of unreformed Popery. There were
+a hundred difficulties like these, but they were all accepted as in the
+long day's work. For in Scotland the dayspring was now risen upon men!
+
+What we have here to remember is, that of this huge national struggle
+the chief weight lay on the shoulders of Knox, a mere pastor in
+Edinburgh. And during the first seven years of its continuance this
+indomitable man was sustaining another doubtful conflict, in which the
+issues not for Scotland only, but for Europe, were so momentous that it
+must be looked at separately.
+
+[84] The writers of the Scottish Confession in 1560 protest 'that if any
+man will note in this our Confession any article or sentence repugning
+to God's holy word, that it would please him of his gentleness, and for
+Christian charity's sake, to admonish us of the same in write; and we of
+our honour and fidelity do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth
+of God (that is, from His Holy Scriptures), or else reformation of that
+which he shall prove to be amiss.'--'Works,' ii. 96.
+
+Wishart, the translator in or before 1545 of the First Helvetic
+Confession, adds to it this similar and very beautiful declaration:--
+
+'It is not our mind for to prescribe by these brief chapters a certain
+rule of the faith to all churches and congregations, for we know no
+other rule of faith but the Holy Scripture; and, therefore, we are well
+contented with them that agree with these things, howbeit they use
+another manner of speaking or Confession, different partly to this of
+ours in words; for rather should the matter be considered than the
+words. And therefore we make it free for all men to use their own sort
+of speaking, as they shall perceive most profitable for their churches,
+and we shall use the same liberty. And if any man will attempt to
+corrupt the true meaning of this our Confession, he shall hear both a
+confession and a defence of the verity and truth. It was our pleasure to
+use these words at this present time, that we might declare our opinion
+in our religion and worshipping of God.'--'Miscellany of Wodrow
+Society,' i. 23.
+
+This 'declaration' is not in the original Confession, either in Latin or
+German, and must have been written, probably by Wishart himself, rather
+for the English readers or the Scottish churches for whom the rest was
+translated. It is a remarkable legacy.
+
+[85] As now in the Statute Book, 1567, chaps. 2, 3, and 5.
+
+[86] It may be interesting to read the statement of the First Helvetic
+in Wishart's translation (though this is one of the paragraphs in which
+that translation mangles the Latin and German originals). It is given in
+the 'Miscellany of the Wodrow Society,' i. 21:
+
+'Seeing every magistrate and high power is of God, his chief and
+principal office is (except he would rather use tyranny) to defend the
+true worshipping of God from all blasphemy, and to procure true religion
+... _then after_ to judge the people by equal and godly laws to exercise
+and maintain judgment and justice, &c.' (Sec. 26); and (Sec. 24), 'They
+that bring in ungodly sects and opinions ... should be constrained and
+punished by the magistrates and high powers.'
+
+The Second Helvetic Confession of 1566 rather inverts the order put by
+the First. 'The magistrate's _principal_ office is to procure and
+preserve peace and public tranquillity. _And_ he never can do this more
+happily' than by promoting religion, extirpating idolatry, and defending
+the Church.... For 'the care of religion belongs,' not to the magistrate
+simply, but 'to the pious magistrate.'
+
+[87] See page 67 and note.
+
+[88] 'Works,' i. 8, 194.
+
+[89] 'Works,' ii. 221, 222.
+
+[90] Knox's opinion was asked upon the point in or before 1556, and he
+answered ('Works,' iv. 127), 'Touching Tithes, by the law of God they
+appertain to no priest, for now we have no levitical priesthood; but by
+law, positive gift, custom, they appertain to princes, and by their
+commandment to "men of kirk," as they would be termed. In their first
+donation respect was had to another end, as their own law doth witness,
+than now is observed. For first, respect was had that such as were
+accounted distributors of those things that were given to churchmen,
+should have their reasonable sustentation of the same, making just
+account of the rest, how it was to be bestowed upon the poor, the
+stranger, the widow, the fatherless, _for whose relief all such rents
+and duties were chiefly appointed to the church_. Secondly, that
+provision should be made for the ministers of the church, &c.'
+
+[91] 'Works,' ii. 340.
+
+[92] Thomassin, a very great authority, devotes no fewer than eight
+chapters of his third folio _De Beneficiis_ to proving from Councils and
+the Fathers that 'Res Ecclesiae, res et patrimonia sunt pauperum. Earum
+beneficiarii non domini sunt sed dispensatores.' After voluminous
+evidence from all the centuries, he holds it superfluously plain that
+all beneficed men are 'mere dispensers and administrators, not
+proprietors nor even possessors, of what is truly the patrimony of the
+poor,' and what is held as trustee for the indigent by Christ Himself;
+so much so, that when this property of the poor is diverted to support a
+bishop or other dignitary, he is not entitled to enjoy his house, table,
+or garments, unless these have a certain suggestion and savour of
+destitution--_necesse est paupertatis odore aliquo perfundi_.
+Thomassin, of course, holds that the Church has a divine right to
+tithes; but it is a divine right to administer, not to enjoy, them. Knox
+and the Reformers denied the divine right even to administer: they urged
+that the State should make the Kirk _its_ administrators.
+
+[93] For them too, and even for the strong and sturdy and the Jolly
+Beggars among them, he had a certain fellow-feeling; as is witnessed by
+the zest with which he records their 'Warning' (p. 82). The one point,
+indeed, at which Knox and Burns come together is 'A man's a man for a'
+that!'
+
+[94] 'Works,' ii. 183 to 260.
+
+[95] I am indebted for this view to Dr. A.F. Mitchell, Emeritus
+Professor of Church History in St Andrews, to whom all are indebted who
+are interested in the historical learning of either the Reformation or
+the Covenant.
+
+[96] The 'end' to which or for which all the Church patrimony is here
+said to be given, does not seem to be merely the 'charge of the poor';
+though Protestants as well as Catholics often urge that as fundamentally
+true. It seems to be rather the whole group of good objects which are
+gathered together. The Latin and German originals must be consulted.
+
+[97] Stair's 'Institutions,' ii. 3, 36. Erskine's 'Institutes,' ii. 10,
+19.
+
+[98] 1587, c. 29.
+
+[99] 'Works,' ii. 538.
+
+[100] 'Book of the Universall Kirk of Scotland,' p. 46. The significance
+of this utterance was long ago pointed out by the Rev. J.C. Macphail,
+D.D., of Pilrig Church, Edinburgh.
+
+[101] 1567, c. 10.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE PUBLIC LIFE: THE CONFLICT WITH QUEEN MARY
+
+
+Parliament had made a great and revolutionary change. It had acted as if
+the government had been already granted to it, or, in Cecil's phrase, to
+'the nation of the land.' And the change was on one side a breaking off
+of the old alliance with Catholic France. But the sovereigns of
+Scotland, now and for the last twelvemonth, were no other than the King
+and Queen of France. They, rather than Parliament, were the 'Authority,'
+which, according to the consistent theory of that age, had the right to
+make and enforce changes of religion; and which, according to the more
+puzzling theory of Knox, had the right to do so--provided the religion
+so to be enforced was the true one. Accordingly the new Confession of
+Faith and the statutes passed by the late Parliament, were sent to Paris
+by the Lord St John. He waited there long, but, of course, brought back
+no ratification. But that, says Knox, 'we little regarded, nor yet do
+regard'; for, he adds, falling back rather too late upon one of those
+great principles his utterance of which has sunk into the hearts of his
+countrymen,
+
+    'all that we did was rather to shew our dutiful obedience than
+    to beg of them any strength to our religion, which from God has
+    full power, and needeth not the suffrage of man, but in so far
+    as man hath need to believe it, if that ever he shall have
+    participation of the life everlasting.'[102]
+
+It was no wonder that the royal pair did not ratify a Protestant
+Confession, for during their brief reign over France they were the
+centre of a keen crusade against Protestantism, conducted far more by
+Mary's counsellors and uncles, the Guises, than by her feeble-minded
+husband. Towards the end of 1560 this had gone so far that secret
+preparations seem to have been made for immediately anticipating the St
+Bartholomew of twelve years later. But the sudden death of Francis and
+the widowhood of Mary changed the whole situation. The new King was in
+the power, not of the Guises, but of his mother, Catherine de Medici;
+and Mary of Scots would now have to accept a second or a third place in
+Paris. But in Europe, and in the politics of Europe, the beautiful young
+widow sprang at once into the foremost rank, and became the star of all
+eyes. Ex-Queen of France, Queen-presumptive of England, and actual Queen
+of Scotland, which had always been the link between the other two, and
+to which she was now to return, the marriage destiny of this girl of
+eighteen would probably decide the wavering balance of Christendom.[103]
+
+Mary understood her high part, and accepted it with alacrity.
+Fascinating and beautiful, keen-witted and strong-willed, she would have
+found herself at home in this great game of politics, even if it had not
+turned upon an element of intense personal interest for herself. But
+while all men knew that her hand was the chief prize of the game, almost
+the first man to act on this knowledge, strange to say, was Knox. The
+Treaty of Edinburgh had acknowledged the right of the Duke (Hamilton or
+Chatelherault), and of his eldest son Arran, as the next in succession
+to the Scottish crown after its present holder. And while that present
+holder was still married to the King of France, the Scottish nobles had
+urged Arran as a suitable husband for Elizabeth of England. It would be
+the best arrangement, they thought, for binding the two countries
+together, and counteracting the inevitable pull asunder from the
+Sovereigns in Paris. Elizabeth, however, had replied, to the grave
+displeasure of the Estates, that she was not 'presently disposed to
+marry.' And now a new question was raised. Scotland was, of course,
+still more deeply interested in the probable second marriage of its own
+Queen. Arran, an extremely flighty young man, was at this moment much
+under the personal influence of the Reformer; and it was with Knox's
+privity, and perhaps on his suggestion, and certainly without the
+knowledge of the nobility generally, that before Mary had been a widow
+for a month, her young Protestant cousin sent her a ring and a secret
+letter of courtship. It was again in vain. When Elizabeth refused him,
+the Estates had been offended, but Arran himself bore the loss with much
+resignation. Now, however, the case was different; and though Mary at
+all times treated her young kinsman with kindness, Arran took her prompt
+rejection of his present overtures grievously to heart, and his wits,
+never very stable, were soon completely overturned. Knox, however, had
+now fair warning that Mary Stuart knew herself to be more than a mere
+Queen of Scots, and that the infinitely difficult questions, which her
+approaching return to Scotland must necessarily raise, were not to be
+evaded on easy terms.
+
+There was among these one theoretical question which _ought_ to have
+been a difficulty for Knox, but of which he was not now disposed to
+make much. According to his view women should not be sovereigns at all.
+But, in truth, this was but one branch of the general grievance of
+arbitrary power in that age. The Reformation took place, we must always
+remember, at a time when the hereditary authority of kings was greater
+than either before or since. And this arbitrary power of one man became,
+if possible, a little more absurd when it happened to be the power of
+one woman. In 1557, Knox had found himself confronted with a Queen of
+England, a Queen of Scotland, and a Queen-Regent in Scotland--all of
+them ladies immersed in Catholicism, and each in a position which, in
+his view, implied the duty of selecting religion for all her lieges. We,
+in our time, have a very simple way of getting rid of such an
+intolerable difficulty. But in that age a man even of the boldness of
+Knox was thankful to mitigate it. He thought he found a mitigation in
+the view (held by thinkers and publicists at the time commonly enough)
+that women should not be entrusted with such a power; and, in 1558, he
+published anonymously his 'First Blast of the Trumpet against the
+Monstrous Regiment [Regimen or Rule] of Women.' Though anonymous, the
+book was well known to be his; and being Knox's it was founded not so
+much on theory as on Scripture precedents, largely misread according to
+the exigencies of the argument. But the publication was, in any case, a
+practical mistake. Mary of England died immediately after, and was
+succeeded by Elizabeth, who was rather more of a woman than her sister,
+but to whom Knox and Scotland looked as their only ally against
+Continental Catholicism. Knox repeatedly tried to explain to the new
+English Queen; but that very great but very feminine ruler never forgave
+his book. Meantime he came, as we saw, into more personal contact with
+the Queen-Regent of Scotland, and had the highest hopes from her.
+Ultimately she disappointed these; but even when she was deposed by the
+nobles, to whom he had originally looked as the agents in the Reform,
+Knox insisted on keeping open a door for her restoration, in the event
+of her coming in the meantime to think with himself. And now her
+daughter was come to her native country as Queen in her own right. Knox,
+taught by experience, had already taken part in private overtures to
+her, and was no longer disposed to stand on any theoretical difficulty
+as to the rule of a woman. The practical difficulties were enough.
+
+And the practical difficulties were tremendous. Had Mary ruled as a
+modern constitutional Queen, with toleration of religion all around,
+things would have been easy. She would have enjoyed the freedom which
+she granted to the lowest of her subjects, and every one of them would
+have supported her enthusiastically against domestic and foreign
+aggression. But the reign of religion which, according to her first
+proclamation, she, on her arrival, 'found publicly and universally
+standing,' was very different. It was one by which half the lieges were
+forbidden the exercise of their own religion and of their ordinary
+worship; and by which Scotland and all its rulers were pledged to a
+faith she had been trained as a child to detest, and as a Queen to
+suppress. The situation was impossible from the first. The only question
+was, how long it would last.
+
+Knox would have met it fairly by making her acknowledgment of the
+Protestant Acts and Confession a condition of her being acknowledged by
+Scotland. And had the fact been known that Mary, by three secret
+documents, executed just before her childless marriage to the Dauphin,
+had already handed over her native kingdom, in the event of her having
+no issue, to the King of France, the crisis, which was to be postponed
+for so many years, might have come at once. But an intermediate plan
+was arranged in Paris through 'the man whom all the godly did most
+reverence,' and whose weight of character was gradually giving him the
+foremost place in Scotland--Lord James Stewart, the Queen's natural
+brother. Mary, quick to understand men, put herself under her brother's
+guidance, and the result was that she was joyfully received in
+Edinburgh, and a proclamation was issued forbidding, on the one hand,
+any 'alteration or innovation of the state of religion' as Her Majesty
+found it in the realm on her arrival, and, on the other, any tumult or
+violence, especially against Her Majesty's French domestics and
+followers. So, on the first Sunday, while the Evangel was publicly
+preached in St Giles in Edinburgh, and in all the great towns and burghs
+of Scotland, mass was privately celebrated in her chapel at Holyrood,
+the Lord James with his sword keeping the door, to 'stop all Scottish
+men to enter in,' whether to join in the worship or to disturb it. It
+was drawing a different line from that which had been fixed by the
+recent Parliament, whose Acts also the new Queen had evaded ratifying.
+Knox's passion against 'idolatry,' beyond all other forms of false
+religion or irreligion, was fully shared by the mass of his followers,
+and he tells us that, on this occasion, he worked in private 'rather to
+mitigate, yea to sloken, that fervency that God had kindled in others.'
+But in the pulpit 'next Sunday' he said that 'one Mass was more fearful
+to him than if ten thousand armed enemies were landed in any part of the
+realm, of purpose to suppress the whole religion'--an exaggeration of
+intolerance which is unintelligible, until we remember that the 'one
+mass' which he was thinking of was that of the ruler who might soon have
+the power, and perhaps had already the intention, of suppressing
+religion.
+
+Mary had come to Scotland with the deliberate plan of conciliating and
+capturing her native kingdom, and she was not the woman to shrink from
+whatever seemed to be necessary in the process. It may have been her
+brother who suggested a meeting between two people whom, in different
+ways, he certainly liked as well as admired. In any case, Knox was now
+at once sent for to the Court, and there followed the first of the
+famous interviews between Knox and the Queen, recorded in the Fourth
+Book of his History. The detailed truth of these Dialogues is not to be
+inferred merely from their vigour and verisimilitude. It results equally
+from the fact that, throughout, Knox represents the young Queen as
+meeting him with perfect intelligence, while on most points she actually
+has the better of the argument. The vindication of Knox has come, not so
+much from what he has himself so faithfully recorded, as from the
+judgment of history on the whole situation, and on the relation to it of
+speakers who were also actors.
+
+The first is probably the most important of the dialogues.[104] Mary and
+her brother received Knox in Holyrood, two ladies standing in the other
+end of the room. She commenced by taxing him with his book against her
+'regimen.' He explained that, if Scotland was satisfied with a female
+ruler, he would not object.
+
+    'But yet,' said she, 'ye have taught the people to receive
+    another religion than their Princes can allow: And how can that
+    doctrine be of God, seeing that God commands subjects to obey
+    their Princes?'
+
+    Knox, in answer, ignored the article of his Confession which
+    bears closely on this point,[105] and fell back on the more
+    fundamental truth.
+
+    'Madam, as right religion took neither original nor authority
+    from worldly princes, but from the Eternal God alone, so are not
+    subjects bound to frame their religion according to the
+    appetites of their Princes.'
+
+    He easily illustrated this by instances of men in Scripture, who
+    resisted such commands of Princes, and suffered.
+
+    'But yet,' said she, 'they resisted not with the sword.'
+
+    'God,' said he, 'Madam, had not given unto them the power and
+    the means.'
+
+    'Think ye,' quoth she, 'that subjects, having power, may resist
+    their Princes?'
+
+    'If their Princes exceed their bounds,' quoth he, 'Madam, and do
+    against that wherefore they should be obeyed, it is no doubt but
+    they may be resisted, even by power.'
+
+    That Princes should regulate the religion of subjects Knox held
+    to be within their 'bounds,' but only apparently if they
+    regulated it aright, and according to the Word. Otherwise, he
+    now explained, the prince might be restrained, like a father
+    'stricken with a frenzy.' At this remarkable argument the Queen
+    'stood, as it were, amazed more than the quarter of an hour.'
+    Recovering herself, she said--
+
+    'Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you and not
+    me.'...
+
+    'God forbid,' answered he, in words which really express his
+    fundamental view, 'that ever I take upon me to command any to
+    obey me, or yet to set subjects at liberty to do what pleaseth
+    them. But my travel is that both princes and subjects obey God,
+    who,' he added, 'commands queens to be nurses unto His people.'
+
+    'Yea,' quoth she, 'but ye are not the Church that I will
+    nourish. I will defend the Kirk of Rome, for, I think, it is the
+    true Kirk of God.'
+
+    'Your will,' quoth he, 'Madam, is no reason; neither doth your
+    thought make that Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate
+    spouse of Jesus Christ.'...
+
+    'My conscience,' said she, 'is not so.'
+
+    'Conscience, Madam, requires knowledge, and I fear that right
+    knowledge ye have none.'
+
+    'But,' said she, 'I have both heard and read.'
+
+    ... 'Have ye heard,' said he, 'any teach, but such as the Pope
+    and his Cardinals have allowed?'
+
+    The Queen avoided a direct answer,[106] but took the next point
+    with unfailing acuteness.
+
+    'Ye interpret the Scriptures,' said she, 'in one manner, and
+    they interpret in another; whom shall I believe? and who shall
+    be judge?'
+
+    And Knox's answer is from his side perfect--
+
+    'Ye shall believe God, that plainly speaketh in His word; and
+    farther than the word teacheth you, ye neither shall believe the
+    one nor the other. The word of God is plain in itself; and if
+    there appear any obscurity in one place, the Holy Ghost, who is
+    never contrarious to Himself, explains the same more clearly in
+    other places.'
+
+The conference was long, and was ended with mutual courtesies. Both
+parties in the country suspected that the new sovereign might be
+gradually coming round to the new faith. No triumph could have been more
+glorious for Knox, and at the opening of the interview he had used every
+method of conciliation. But he never henceforth deceived himself as to
+the chances in this case. Outwardly, the Queen remained friendly, and he
+remained loyal; but his opinion as expressed privately, immediately
+after this first meeting, was recorded later on.
+
+    'If there be not in her a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an
+    indurate heart against God and His truth, my judgment faileth
+    me.'
+
+Induration of heart was not a charitable judgment to pass against a
+young woman brought up in the worst school of morals in Europe, but whom
+the speaker held never to have met 'God and his truth' till that
+forenoon. Yet, as usual, Knox's judgment was by no means wholly wrong.
+There is a certain brilliant hardness about the charm of Mary Queen of
+Scots, even with posterity; and as to religion, whatever may have been
+the case in the later years of her sad imprisonment, there is no
+evidence in her early days in Scotland of personal or earnest interest
+in the religion even of her own church.[107] And a tender and serious
+interest in religion was held by the whole Protestantism of that day to
+be the one gate for the individual into 'God's truth.' Had his Queen
+shown anything of this spirit of earnest enquiry, our rough Reformer
+might have been precipitate to help her steps, though they should be as
+yet on the wrong side of the dividing line. But Mary made no pretences
+on the subject, and it was her misfortune, and that of all around, that
+her opinion on religion--a matter in which she took no more interest
+than was natural to her years--should have been all important to her
+subjects. They at least were, or professed to be, in earnest about it;
+and the man who in her presence now represented that earnestness made no
+pretences either. But we may be sure that Knox's judgment on a 'proud
+mind' as to the more central and personal truths of religion, would not
+be mitigated by that keen 'wit' which played so freely round its
+external parts, and transfixed so easily his own theory of Church and
+State. We know from himself that Mary, having found the weak point of
+the intolerant legislation, took care to press upon it. She was 'ever
+crying conscience, conscience! it is a sore thing to constrain the
+conscience;'[108] and she selected for her 'flattering words' the best
+of the men around her, till from the question, 'Why may not the Queen
+have her own Mass, and the form of her religion? what can that hurt us
+or our religion?' there came a formal discussion and a vote of the Lords
+that they were not entitled to constrain her. This state of matters
+continued during the year 1562. But the real danger, of course, was from
+abroad, and Knox had intelligence of all that was going on there. In
+December 1562 a victory of the Guises in France had been followed by
+dancing at Holyrood; and Knox preached against 'taking pleasure for the
+displeasure of God's people.' The Queen sent for him, and suggested his
+speaking to herself privately rather than haranguing publicly upon her
+domestic proceedings: a proposal which he so promptly rejected that she
+at once turned her back on him. It was on this occasion that, hearing
+the whisper as he went out, 'He is not afraid,' he replied, with a
+'reasonably merry' countenance, 'Wherefore should the pleasing face of a
+gentlewoman affray me? I have looked into the faces of many angry men,
+and yet have not been affrayed above measure.' But the effect of that
+pleasing face upon others around may be measured by a letter written
+next day to Cecil by Randolph, who had for some time been Queen
+Elizabeth's envoy in Edinburgh. He was an intelligent and well-meaning
+man; but Mary was far more than a match for him, as she had been in
+France for an abler diplomatist, Throckmorton. Randolph tells the
+English minister that Knox is still full of 'good zeal and affection' to
+England. 'I know also that his travail and care is great to unite the
+hearts of the princes and people of these two realms in perpetual love
+and hearty kindness.' In the previous year Randolph had heard an
+incident of Knox's first interview with Mary, which we only know from
+his letter. Even then Knox 'knocked so hastily upon her heart that he
+made her weep, as well you know there be of that sex that will do that
+as well for anger as for grief.' But since that date the Queen of Scots
+had turned her caressing courtesy directly upon this Englishman, and
+even the golden cup which she presented to him at Lord James Stewart's
+marriage had perhaps less influence with Randolph than the bright eyes
+of one of her 'four Maries' whom he was now pursuing. So he adds now
+that Knox 'is so full of mistrust in all the Queen's doings, words, and
+sayings, as though he were either of God's privy counsel, that know how
+He had determined of her from the beginning, or that he knew the secrets
+of her heart so well, that neither she did nor could have for ever one
+good thought of God or of His true religion.' No criticism could be more
+acute. And yet the research of later times has shown that Knox's
+judgment, or information, as to what Mary of Scots was now doing, was
+superior to that of all around him. This was the very close of 1562, and
+in the next month of January she extended her Catholic correspondence,
+which had hitherto been chiefly with the Guises and her Cardinal uncle,
+by letters to the Pope.[109] On the 31st she writes Pius IV. assuring
+him of her devotion to the Church, and that for it and for the
+restoration to it of her kingdom she is ready to sacrifice her
+life.[110] The bearer, too, of this secret missive was Cardinal
+Granvelle, from Madrid, and deep at this moment in the persecuting
+plans of Alva and his master Philip. For a new and greater danger was
+now rising for Scotland. Hitherto the chief pretenders for the hand of
+the Queen of Scots had been the Archduke Charles, and the Duke of Anjou.
+(The new King of France was also supposed to be in love with her.) But
+now the project was pressed of a marriage between her and Don Carlos,
+the oldest son of Philip and the heir of the mighty monarchy of Spain.
+And it was with this full in her mind, and with the determination to
+take a step forward in her own kingdom, that Mary again sent for
+Knox--this time to Lochleven, where she was hawking. The occasion was
+well chosen. The Queen's mass was now tolerated: why should not private
+subjects also be allowed to have it, provided they worshipped privately?
+'Who can stop the Queen's subjects to be of the Queen's religion?'
+Already many Catholics had acted upon this reasoning at Easter of 1563;
+but in the West the Protestant barons and magistrates, instead of
+complaining to the Queen and her Council, had apprehended the
+wrong-doers and proposed to punish them. 'For two hours' the Queen urged
+him to persuade the gentlemen of the West 'not to put hands to punish
+any man for _the using of themselves_ in their religion as pleased
+them.' Nothing could be more clearly right. But nothing could be more
+clearly against the law; and Knox assured her that if she would enforce
+that law herself her subjects would be quiet. But 'Will ye,' said she,
+'that they shall take my sword into their hand?'
+
+'The sword of justice, Madam,' he answered, 'is God's; and if the
+magistrate will not use it the people must do so. And therefore it shall
+be profitable to your Majesty to consider what is the thing your Grace's
+subjects look to receive of your Majesty, and what it is that ye ought
+to do unto them by mutual contract. They are bound to obey you, and
+that not but in God. You are bound to keep laws unto them. You crave of
+them service: they crave of you protection and defence against wicked
+doers.'
+
+The Queen, 'somewhat offended, passed to her supper,' and Knox prepared
+to return to Edinburgh. But her brother, afterwards the Regent, had
+heard the result of the conference, and Mary learned that matters could
+not safely be left in this condition. Next morning the Queen sent for
+Knox as she was going out hawking. She had apparently forgotten all the
+keen dispute of the evening before; and her manner was caressing and
+confidential. What did Mr Knox think of Lord Ruthven's offering her a
+ring? 'I cannot love him,' she added, 'for I know him to use
+enchantment.' Was Mr Knox not going to Dumfries, to make the Bishop of
+Athens the superintendent of the Kirk in that county? He was, Knox
+answered; the proposed superintendent being a man in whom he had
+confidence. 'If you knew him,' said Mary, 'as well as I do, ye would
+never promote him to that office, nor yet to any other within the Kirk.'
+In yet another matter, and one more private and delicate, she required
+his help. Her half-sister, Lady Argyll, and the Earl, her husband, were,
+she was afraid, not on good terms. Knox had once reconciled them before,
+but, 'do this much _for my sake_, as once again to put them at unity.'
+And so she dismissed him with promises to enforce the laws against the
+mass.
+
+Knox for once fell under the spell. He seems to have believed that this
+most charming of women was at last leaning to the side of her native
+land. And so he sat down and wrote a long letter to Argyll. He went to
+Dumfries, and on making enquiry, he found that the Queen was right in
+her shrewd estimate of the proposed superintendent, and took means to
+prevent the election. It turned out, too, that she had kept her promise
+about citing offenders, and no fewer than forty-eight persons, one of
+them an Archbishop, had been indicted. The first Parliament since her
+landing had been summoned for June, and Moray and Lethington seem to
+have suggested to Knox that the Queen would be glad then to ratify the
+Acts of 1560, in exchange for the approval by the estates of some
+suitable marriage. Even now, it was these two heads of the Protestant
+party whom Knox trusted rather than Mary. But the young Queen had
+outwitted all of them together. The prosecutions throughout the country
+had pacified the Protestants, and they did not come up to the
+Parliament. When it met, it did not even ask that the 'state of
+religion' should be ratified. Meantime the Cardinal of Lorraine had
+carried to the Council of Trent the adhesion of the Queen of Scots, and
+a special congregation was held by it for the private reception of her
+letter. Worse still, the plan for a Spanish marriage, and for setting a
+Scoto-Spanish queen upon the throne of the Bloody Mary, was now actively
+prosecuted. All this spring, while professing to carry out her promises
+to Knox, Mary was negotiating with Madrid, and 'already, in imagination,
+Queen of Scotland, England, Ireland, Spain, Flanders, Naples, and the
+Indies,' she was but little interested in the plans which her Scottish
+nobility were proposing for her to England. Knox had hoped that if not a
+Protestant noble like Leicester or Arran, at least a royal Protestant
+like the King of Denmark or the King of Sweden, would, with Elizabeth's
+help, be a successful suitor. But Queen Elizabeth, whom Knox pithily
+describes as 'neither good Protestant nor yet resolute Papist,' was not
+disposed to help any one to marry before herself, least of all her
+lovely cousin. And the Scottish statesmen, Moray and Maitland, like her
+own English advisers often, were now so driven to desperation by
+Elizabeth's vacillations that they had actually--possibly with the hope
+of frightening her--pressed both at home and abroad the project of
+marrying the Queen of Scots to the heir of Spain! This apparently came
+to the knowledge of Knox along with the refusal to meet his hopes on the
+part of the Scots Parliament; and now his cup was full. Lord James
+Stewart, by this time the Earl of Moray, son-in-law of the Earl
+Marischal, and gifted with great estates of the forfeited Earl of
+Huntly, had been his chief friend. But 'familiarly after that time they
+spake not together more than a year and a half; for the said John, by
+his letter, gave a discharge to the said Earl of all farther
+intromission or care with his affairs.' In this stately letter Knox
+recalled all their past career in common, and added that, seeing his
+hopes had been disappointed,
+
+    'I commit you to your own wit, and to the conducting of those
+    who better please you. I praise my God, I this day leave you
+    victor of your enemies, promoted to great honours, and in credit
+    and authority with your sovereign. If so ye long continue, none
+    within the realm shall be more glad than I shall be; but if that
+    after this ye shall decay (as I fear that ye shall) then call to
+    mind by what means God exalted you.'
+
+But the pulpit remained to him, and the pulpit in those days had
+sometimes to combine the functions of free Parliament and free press.
+Knox went into St Giles', and in a great sermon before the assembled
+Lords, from whose retrospective eloquence we have already quoted,[111]
+he drove right at the heart of the situation.
+
+    'And now, my Lords, to put end to all, I hear of the Queen's
+    marriage; dukes, brethren to emperors, and kings, all strive for
+    the best game. But this, my Lords, will I say--note the day, and
+    bear witness after--whensoever the nobility of Scotland,
+    professing the Lord Jesus, consent that an infidel (and all
+    Papists are infidels) shall be head to your Sovereign, ye do as
+    far as in you lieth to banish Christ Jesus from this realm; ye
+    bring God's vengeance upon the country, a plague upon
+    yourselves, and perchance ye shall do small comfort to your
+    Sovereign.'
+
+That sovereign could scarcely be expected to take the same view, and for
+the last time the Queen sent for Knox. No one knew so well as she that
+he had laid his finger on the true hinge of the political question, and
+that her opponent would have a far stronger case now than at any of
+their previous interviews. She burst into tears the moment he entered.
+'I have borne with you,' she said most truly, 'in all your rigorous
+manner of speaking; I have sought your favour by all possible means.'
+'True it is, madam,' he answered, 'your Grace and I have been at divers
+controversies, in the which I never perceived your Grace to be offended
+at me.' Knox's complacency is sometimes thick-skinned: but he was not
+wrong in thinking that Mary, a woman with immensely more brains than the
+generality of her posthumous admirers, had from the first understood
+and, perhaps, half liked her uncompromising adversary, and that she had
+at least enjoyed the dialectic conflicts in which she had held her own
+so well. But the matter was more serious now. 'What have you to do with
+my marriage?' she demanded. Knox in answer hinted that she had herself
+invited him to give her private advice; but what he had said was in the
+pulpit, where he had to speak to the nobility and to think of the good
+of the whole commonwealth.
+
+'What have you to do,' she persisted, 'with my marriage? or what are you
+within this commonwealth?'
+
+'A subject born within the same,' said he, 'Madam. And albeit I neither
+be earl, lord, nor baron within it, yet has God made me (how abject that
+ever I be in your eyes) a profitable member within the same.'
+
+Under the new discipline the preacher claimed a right to utter opinions
+even as to private marriages, and used it much beyond what the
+fundamental principles of Protestantism could justify. But Knox was now
+dealing with his Queen, and he felt himself well within the line of his
+duty in repeating to herself the deadly consequences to Scotland if its
+nobility ever consented to her being 'subject to an unfaithful husband.'
+It was unanswerable, except by a new passion of tears, under which the
+Reformer stood at first silent and unmoved. He broke silence at last
+with a clumsy attempt to explain or to console; and Mary's indignation
+was not diminished by Knox's quaint protest that he was really a
+tenderhearted man, and could scarcely bear to see his own children weep
+when corrected for their faults. She broke with him finally; and Knox,
+dismissed to the ante-chamber, found himself so solitary, though among
+the ladies of the Court, that (as we have already seen) he attempted to
+'procure the company of women' by moralisings which they too may have
+found impressive rather than delightful.
+
+From this point--June 1563--the history slopes steadily downwards.
+Mary's ambition was still to be Queen of Spain. Messengers on the
+subject went to Spain and came to Scotland. But her plans were secretly
+counterworked by her old enemy Catherine de Medici, the French
+Queen-mother, and Philip changed his mind continually. In December an
+incident happened which shewed Knox's new position. A riot arose in the
+Queen's absence between Catholics who wished to worship in her private
+chapel and Protestants who wished to prevent or denounce it. The latter
+were indicted for 'invading' the palace. Knox instantly wrote a letter
+summoning the faithful to attend in a body along with them; and he was
+cited to appear before the Queen in Council on a charge of 'convocation
+of the lieges.' Once more he stood before Mary, but now it was at her
+bar. Knox had the weakness of listening to gossip, especially as to what
+his feminine adversaries said; and he records not only what he saw, that
+'her pomp lacked one principal point, to wit, womanly gravity,' but also
+that she was heard to observe--this time apparently in admirable
+Scots--'Yon man gart me greet, and grat never tear himself. I will see
+if I can gar him greet.' Knox absolutely refused to withdraw his letter
+or to apologise for it: and though the Council did not desire to justify
+his conduct, they heard with some sympathy his plea that Papists were
+not good advisers of princes, being sons of him who was 'a murderer from
+the beginning.' Lethington, the Secretary, conducted the prosecution,
+and it was probably he who at this point remarked--
+
+'You forget yourself: you are not now in the pulpit.'
+
+'I am in the place,' said Knox--and again his word has become
+memorable--'where I am demanded of conscience to speak the truth, and
+therefore the truth I speak, impugn it whoso list.'
+
+The votes were taken twice over; but the nobles steadily refused to find
+Knox guilty, and 'that night there was neither dancing nor fiddling in
+the palace.' During the whole of 1564, however, Knox and the General
+Assembly were divided from the Protestant courtiers, who argued, with
+perfect justice, that the attitude of the Reformer and his fellow
+preachers to the Queen was one of scarcely veiled disloyalty. In a long
+and formal conference upon the subject, Knox said some things so plainly
+that Lethington answered--
+
+'Then will ye make subjects to control their princes and rulers?'
+
+'And what harm,' said the other, 'should the Commonwealth receive, if
+that the corrupt affections of ignorant rulers were moderated, and so
+bridled by the wisdom and discretion of godly subjects that they should
+do wrong nor violence to no man?'
+
+But even the leading men of the Court, themselves Protestants, were now
+beginning to be disquieted by a sense that they did not know what their
+queen was planning, and that they could not be responsible for her
+actions. During this year, 1564, she was making herself more
+independent, both of them and of her old advisers in France; one great
+step being the promotion of the Italian, Rizzio, who was now her
+confidential secretary. The Spanish marriage was becoming more hopeless,
+and the eyes of Mary's Catholic friends were now turning in another
+direction. The man at the English court nearest to the English throne
+was young Henry Darnley, and Elizabeth had herself jealously suggested
+that 'yonder long lad' might possibly please her Scottish cousin. Mary
+and he were both great-grandchildren of Henry VII., and their union
+would consolidate the Scottish claim to the English crown--a dangerous
+result for the daughter of Ann Boleyn. That was a sufficient reason for
+Darnley not being encouraged to go to Scotland; but he was at last
+allowed to leave London secretly in February 1565. The young people met
+in Wemyss Castle, and it was soon plain that Mary and her handsome
+cousin were on the best terms. Archbishop Beaton, acting as her
+secretary in Paris, was still pressing King Philip, and on the 15th of
+March he warned the Spanish ambassador that unless his master came to
+the rescue Mary would have to throw herself away on her English
+relative. There was no response, and between the 7th and 10th of April,
+Mary of Scots and Henry Lord Darnley were privately married in Rizzio's
+apartment in Holyrood. No one knew it; and nearly two months after, the
+Archbishop again urges the King of Spain to consent, for his Queen is
+not yet married, and there is still time for the greater alliance.
+Seven weeks more passed, and on the 29th June the public marriage took
+place, and Mary gave her husband the title of king.
+
+It was the downfall of Moray, and, as Knox points out, of the whole
+temporising Protestant policy since the Queen came to Scotland. Moray
+saw that clearly enough, and confederating with a number of the other
+Lords to protest against the marriage and the proposed kingship, the
+whole party were within three months driven out of Scotland by the
+energy of the Queen. In the field, Knox confesses, 'her courage
+increased manlike so much, that she was ever with the foremost.' And in
+her proclamation she frankly made it her case against the recalcitrant
+nobility
+
+    'that the establishment of Religion will not content them, but
+    we must be forced to govern by Council, such as it shall please
+    them to appoint us; a thing so far beyond all measure, that we
+    think the only mention of so unreasonable a demand is sufficient
+    ... for what other thing is this but to dissolve the whole
+    policy, and in a manner to invert the very order of nature, to
+    make the Prince obey and subjects command?'
+
+For now the triumph of absolutism and of Rizzio, as the Papal agent, was
+complete--more so than Moray or Knox knew. France and Spain, long
+divided, seemed at last to be working together for the faith. And the
+greatest of European monarchs, though he declined to wed his heir in
+Scotland, had by no means abandoned the cause there. On the contrary, in
+this very spring of 1565, while the Darnley-marriage was preparing, the
+savage Alva and Granvelle were laying down at Bayonne, by Philip's
+authority, the first lines of the plan for sending an Armada against
+Protestant England, in order to place Mary on its throne: and the
+assurance to that effect, given by Alva's own lips to Mary's envoy, was
+carried by him to Scotland in time to swell the exultation of her
+nuptials.[112]
+
+One man was left in Scotland, and he now had at least the people of
+Edinburgh with him. Darnley, though a Catholic, thought it prudent to
+come to Knox's preaching on a Sunday very soon after the marriage, but
+was so unfortunate as to hear a sermon on the text--'Other lords than
+Thou have had dominion over us.' The preacher explained that in very bad
+cases of ingratitude of the people, God permitted such lords to be 'boys
+and women,' and the weakness of Ahab was specially dwelt upon in not
+restraining his strong-minded wife. Worse than all, the service was an
+hour longer than he had expected; and the king, characteristically,
+'would not dine, and with great fury passed to the hawking.' Knox was
+summoned to the Council, and ordered not to preach while the Court
+remained in town. He gave the particularly cautious answer that '_if the
+Church_ would command him either to speak or abstain, he would obey, _so
+far_ as the Word of God would permit him'; but times were changed, and
+in this matter the Church had now to obey the Authority. The Lords of
+the Congregation, for four years the Queen of Scots' nominal advisers,
+were very soon in exile in England; and Queen Elizabeth, in mortal dread
+of the apprehended union of France and Spain in a Catholic crusade
+against her own crown, received 'her sister's rebels' with upbraiding
+and almost menace. Knox and the General Assembly maintained a defensive
+warfare all through the year 1565-6. But they had no representation in
+the Court, and Rizzio succeeded so far that Mary herself tells[113] how
+she had arranged for the counter-revolution being commenced by a
+Parliament in April 1566, 'the spiritual estate being placed therein in
+the ancient manner, tending to have done some good anent restoring the
+old religion.' Two things prevented this smooth programme being carried
+out. Mary's rather weak fancy for Darnley seems to have only lasted for
+a few weeks after her marriage. He turned out to be a fool; and his wife
+and the nobility declined to promise him the Crown-matrimonial, _i.e._,
+to make him successor to her in case there were no children. Darnley now
+courted the banished lords, and made a 'Band' with them according to the
+old Scots fashion, a fashion which was to break out nearer home in more
+savage survival still. For Mary's imprudent favouritism of Rizzio had
+roused the deadly jealousy both of her husband and of the nobles who
+remained at home. And on the 9th of March a band of men headed by Morton
+and Ruthven dragged the Italian out from her supper-table at Holyrood,
+and stabbed him to death in the ante-chamber; Darnley and the lords
+remaining in order to make terms with their Queen. The outrage was
+unavailing; in two days Mary had talked over her husband, escaped with
+him from Holyrood to Dunbar, and summoned her new favourite, Lord
+Bothwell, to her aid. Years before, when fighting the Earl of Huntly in
+the far North, she had expressed to Randolph her regret 'that she was
+not a man to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to
+walk on the causeway, with a jack and knapschalle, a Glasgow buckler,
+and a broadsword.' And now, as before, her energy swept the field clear
+of her enemies, and she returned to Edinburgh victorious. Knox may not
+have known of the formal Band; but he was even more opposed to his Queen
+than were those who signed it, and on 17th March 1566 he 'departed of
+the Burgh at two hours afternoon, with a great mourning of the godly of
+religion.' Five days before, on the very day, indeed, after Mary had
+ridden away through the night from Holyrood, he had penned, 'with
+deliberate mind to his God,' his retrospective confession,[114]
+prefixing to it the prayer--
+
+    'Lord Jesus, receive my spirit, and put an end, at thy good
+    pleasure, to this my miserable life; for justice and truth are
+    not to be found among the sons of men!'
+
+It was the old sigh, which has been breathed from the most heroic hearts
+in times of crisis and failure; 'Let me now die, for I am not better
+than my fathers!' And here once again it was premature. For the Queen,
+now awakened to the whole situation, saw how rash had been her recent
+aggressive policy. After the birth of her son in June 1566, instead of
+framing Parliamentary enactments against the new religion, she vaguely
+proposed to make some provision for the ministers, and allowed the
+banished lords, one by one, to come back. And though they now found
+their unfortunate confederate, Darnley, in neglect and disgrace, they
+found also their sovereign passing rapidly under a new and more
+controlling influence; and the Earl of Bothwell was a nominal
+Protestant. Knox at first was forbidden to return to his pulpit, and he
+visited the Churches in Ayrshire and Fife, occupying himself among other
+things in revising the first four books of his history--the only part
+which is finished by his trenchant pen. But in December the General
+Assembly met in Edinburgh, and Knox was with them. We have already seen
+the striking answer sent by this Assembly[115] as to the proposed gifts
+of the Queen. But their attention was arrested at this moment by another
+and very inconsistent order of the Crown restoring the Archbishop of St
+Andrews, the head of the old hierarchy, to his consistorial
+jurisdiction, contrary to the law of 1560. It was either a very absurd,
+or a very alarming, step; and Knox, at the request of the Assembly,
+prepared a powerful manifesto on the subject. He then went away, with
+their approval, on a long-meditated visit to England, to visit his sons
+in Northumberland or Yorkshire, and to strengthen his friends on the
+more Puritan side of the English Church in their new troubles under
+Elizabeth. Little is known of his proceedings there; though he remained
+in England during the whole time between the Assembly of December 1566
+and another which sat on 25th June 1567.
+
+But between these dates, and in Knox's absence, the most amazing tragedy
+in the history of Scotland had unrolled itself in Edinburgh. Week by
+week, the increasing power of Lord Bothwell over the Queen, and her
+increasing dislike of her husband, had attracted the attention of men.
+But before February there was a sudden reconciliation between her and
+Darnley. She brought him to a house in Kirk of Field, near Edinburgh,
+and at midnight of the 9th it was blown up with gunpowder by the
+servants of Bothwell, the body of the King being found in the garden. On
+21st April Bothwell waylaid and carried off Mary to Dunbar. But he was
+still a married man, having wedded Lord Huntly's sister fourteen months
+before. And now in May, came in the new consistorial jurisdiction of the
+Archbishop, for the only act which that prelate ever performed under it
+was to confirm a sentence of nullity of this very marriage, and that on
+the ground that Bothwell and his wife being too nearly related, had not
+procured a Papal dispensation (the Papal dispensation having not only
+been procured before the marriage, but having been granted by the hands
+of the Archbishop himself as Legate). Ten days after this divorce, and
+in spite of dissuasions from her friends at home and abroad, the
+ill-fated Queen publicly married the murderer of her husband, and the
+strong shudder of disgust that passed through the commons of Scotland
+shook her throne to the ground. So upon Mary's half-compulsory
+abdication, Moray became Regent for the infant King, who was crowned at
+Stirling, Knox preaching the coronation sermon. (There were men present
+on this triumphal occasion before whom he had preached once before in
+the same place, when sunk in despair after that 'dark and dolorous'
+flight from Edinburgh.) And now came that great winding up already
+discussed in our last chapter, the Protestant legislative settlement of
+Church matters in 1567.
+
+It was the second great climax of Knox's life; and now his public work
+was done. We shall not find it necessary to follow his later years in
+detail. They were troubled by ineffectual attempts to reverse the
+verdict of the people already given. For Mary had a majority of the
+nobles still with her, and Elizabeth of England resented the claim of a
+nation to judge its sovereign. An appeal to arms followed: the Regent
+was victorious at Langside, and the Queen of Scots fled to a long
+captivity in England. But her claims threw Scotland into civil war
+during most of the remaining life of Knox. Moray was assassinated in
+1570 by one of the Hamiltons whose life he had spared upon Knox's
+intercession; and next Sunday Knox, who had long since returned into
+friendship with him, preached on 'Blessed are the dead,' and 'moved
+three thousand persons to shed tears for the loss of such a good and
+godly governor.' But Lethington had now gone over to the exiled Queen,
+and took with him even Kirkaldy, who had fought with Moray at Langside.
+Henceforth the Castle, where they resided, was a danger to Edinburgh,
+and in July, 1571, Knox, by agreement of both parties there, was sent
+for a twelvemonth to St Andrews to be out of harm's way. He had left
+Edinburgh in wholly broken health, after a fit of apoplexy: he returned
+feebler still, and had a colleague at once appointed. Yet when the news
+came from Paris, in September, 1572, of the great massacre of St
+Bartholomew, Knox himself took charge of organising the protest of
+Scotland against the gigantic crime. But that crime of France saved
+Scotland, and the voice of Scotland's leader was no longer needed. The
+end was now near, and while 'so feeble as scarce can he stand alone' he
+sends a farewell message to 'Mr Secretary Cecil' through Killigrew, the
+new English envoy.
+
+    'John Knox doth reverence your Lordship much, and willed me once
+    again to send you word, that he thanked God he had obtained at
+    His hands, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is truly and simply
+    preached throughout Scotland, which doth so comfort him as he
+    now desireth to be out of this miserable life.'[116]
+
+And with an explosion, equally characteristic, against one who had
+anonymously accused Knox of 'seeking support against his native
+country,' we may close our notices of this great public life.
+
+    'I give him a lie in his throat!... What I have been to my
+    country, although this unthankful age will not know, yet the
+    ages to come will be compelled to bear witness to the truth....
+    To me it seems a thing most unreasonable, that, in this my
+    decrepit age, I should be compelled to fight against shadows and
+    howlets, that dare not abide the light!'[117]
+
+[102] 'Works,' ii. 126.
+
+[103] So much was this looked forward to, that two months _before the
+death_ of her husband King Francis, the English ambassador, writing from
+Paris to London of the King's feeble health, says: 'There is much talk
+of the Queen's second marriage. Some talk of the Prince of Spain, some
+of the Duke of Austrich, others of the Earl of Arran.
+
+[104] 'Works,' ii. 277.
+
+[105] 'To Kings, Princes, Rulers, and Magistrates we affirm that,
+chiefly and most principally, the reformation and purgation of the
+Religion appertains, so that, not only are they appointed for civil
+policy, but also for maintenance of the true Religion, and for
+suppressing of idolatry and superstition whatsoever.... And, therefore,
+we confess and avow that such as resist the supreme power (doing that
+thing which appertains to his charge) do resist God's ordinance, and
+therefore cannot be guiltless.'--'Works,' ii. 119.
+
+[106] Mary may not have met a Protestant teacher before, except those
+whom she and her husband had more than once viewed suffering on the
+scaffold; but she had read books like the Colloquies of Erasmus with
+keen appreciation, she was instructed in the great controversy from the
+Catholic side, and one of the youthful exercises which remain written in
+her girlish hand is a letter to John Calvin in defence of purgatory.
+
+[107] See Hume Brown, ii. 171, note.
+
+[108] 'Works,' ii. 276. Her answer to the General Assembly in 1565, was
+that 'she prays all her loving subjects, seeing they have had experience
+of her goodness, that she neither has in times past, nor yet means
+hereafter to press the conscience of any man, but that they may worship
+God in such sort as they are persuaded to be best, that they also will
+not press her to offend her own conscience.'--'Book of the Universall
+Kirk,' p. 34.
+
+[109] The Pope had already, since her husband's death, sent her the
+Golden Rose, with the suggestion that in Scotland she must be a rose
+_among thorns_.
+
+[110] Labanoff's 'Lettres de Marie Stuart,' i. 177.
+
+[111] Page 89.
+
+[112] The dates are indicated generally in Hill Burton's 'History,' iv,
+133.
+
+[113] Labanoffs 'Lettres de Marie Stuart,' i. 342.
+
+[114] Page 28.
+
+[115] Page 113.
+
+[116] 'Works,' vi. 633.
+
+[117] 'Works,' vi. 596.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CLOSING YEARS AND DEATH
+
+
+It is time to part from the public life of the greatest public man whom
+Scotland has known. That side of Knox's work, attractively presented to
+the world at first in the memorable biography of Dr Thomas M'Crie, has
+been admirably restated by Dr Hume Brown for a later age and from his
+own judicial standpoint. But Knox's public life was not the whole of his
+work: in bulk, it was a small part of it. When he became minister of
+Edinburgh in 1560 there was only one church there; St Cuthberts and
+Canongate were country parishes outside. It was some years before he got
+a colleague; and, as sole minister of Edinburgh, he preached twice every
+Sunday _and three times during the week_ to audiences which sometimes
+were numbered by thousands. Once a week he attended a Kirk Session; once
+a week he was a member of the assembly or meeting of the neighbouring
+elders for their 'prophesying' or 'exercise on Scripture.' Often he was
+sent away to different districts of the country on preaching visitations
+under the orders of the Church. But when Knox was at home, his
+preparations for the pulpit, which were regular and careful, and his
+other pastoral work, challenged his whole time. And this work was
+carried on in two places chiefly; in St Giles, which now became the High
+Church of Edinburgh, and in his house or lodging, which was always in or
+near the Netherbow, a few hundred yards farther down the High Street.
+The picturesque old building 'in the throat of the Bow,' which attracts
+innumerable visitors as the traditional house where Knox died, was not
+that in which he spent most part of his Edinburgh life. From 1560 down
+to about the time of his second marriage he lived in a 'great mansion'
+on the west side of Turing's or Trunk Close; and thereafter for some
+years in a house on the east side of the same close. Neither of them now
+exists; but the entrance into the High Street from both was under the
+windows of the third or Netherbow house, which is shewn in modern times,
+and which was probably ready for Knox's reception, if not earlier, at
+least when he came back from his latest visit to St Andrews. In these he
+kept his books, which constituted much the larger part of his personal
+property--('you will not always be at your book,' Queen Mary had said,
+as she turned her back upon him in closing their second interview). And
+with them, and with helps from the old logic and the new learning (for
+while abroad he had added Hebrew to his previous instruments of Greek
+and Latin) he studied hour by hour for the sermons which he
+delivered--and their delivery also lasted hour after hour--in the great
+church. In that church there was occasionally much to draw even the
+vulgar eye. One day it was Huntly, the great Catholic Earl, the most
+famous man in Knox's opinion among the nobility of Scotland for three
+hundred years for 'both felicity and worldly wisdom,' whose huge bulk as
+he had sat opposite to the preacher (the year before he died 'without
+stroke of sword' on the field of Corrichie) was afterwards, thus vividly
+recalled.
+
+    'Have ye not seen one greater than any of you sitting where
+    presently ye sit, pick his nails, and pull down his bonnet over
+    his eyes, when idolatry, witchcraft, murder, oppression, and
+    such vices were rebuked? Was not his common talk, When the
+    knaves have railed their fill, then will they hold their
+    peace?'[118]
+
+Or, again, it was the French Ambassador, Le Croc, sitting in state on
+the first Sunday after the news of St Bartholomew, who heard the
+preacher denounce his master, King Charles, as a 'murderer,' from whom
+and from whose posterity the vengeance of God would refuse to depart.
+But these were incidents dramatic and political. And noble as a
+political calling may be, there have always been some to believe that
+drawing men and women up to a higher moral life, especially when that
+life is fed from an immortal hope, is nobler still. But Knox, let us
+remember, was throughout his early ministry the witness of a still more
+fascinating and indeed unexampled spectacle--a whole generation suddenly
+confronted with the moral call of primitive Christianity, and striving
+to respond to it, no longer in dependence on Church tradition, but by
+each man moulding himself directly upon Christian facts and Christian
+promises in the very form in which these were originally delivered by
+the apostolic age. He was witness of it; and more than witness, for
+beyond any other man in Scotland Knox was its guide. And while the
+guidance of the great theological leaders of that generation tended
+naturally--and quite apart from their usurped statutory ascendency--to
+press too heavily upon the recovered freedom of Scotland, that danger
+was but little felt in those early days of enthusiasm in the High Church
+of Edinburgh.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+What like was the man who was seen, almost every day during all those
+years, pacing up and down between the Netherbow and St Giles?
+
+Knox, as we are told by a surviving contemporary (who enclosed a
+portrait of him along with the description), was a man of slightly less
+than middle height, but with broadish shoulders, limbs well put
+together, and long fingers. He had a rather swarthy face, with black
+hair, and a beard a span and a half long, also black, but latterly
+turning grey. The face was somewhat long, the nose decidedly so, the
+mouth large, and the lips full, so that the upper lip in particular
+seemed to be swollen. The chief peculiarity of his face was that his
+eyes--sunk between a rather narrow forehead, with a strong ridge of
+eyebrow, above, and ruddy and swelling cheeks, below--looked hollow and
+retreating. But those eyes were of a darkish blue colour, their glance
+was keen and vivid, and the whole face was 'not unpleasing.' We can
+easily believe that 'in his settled and severe countenance there dwelt a
+natural dignity and majesty, which was by no means ungracious, but in
+anger authority sat upon his brow.'[119]
+
+This seems to be a true portraiture of Knox in the days of his vigour;
+if we are to speak of vigour in the case of a man with a small and frail
+body (one of his early biographers speaks of him as a mere _corpuscle_),
+and a man throughout his whole public life struggling with disease. In
+the last year of his prematurely 'decrepit age,' we have another
+description of him; and this time it is taken in St Andrews. Edinburgh
+and Leith were now again at war, and the quarter of Knox's house was the
+most unsafe in the city. The 'King's Men' outside were always attempting
+to force the Netherbow Port; and their guns, planted close by on the Dow
+Craig,[120] and a little farther off on Salisbury Crags, smote from
+either side. They were crossed and answered, not only by the great guns
+of the castle, held by the Queen's Men under Kirkaldy, but by a nearer
+battery on the Blackfriars' Yard, and by guns planted on the roof of St
+Giles (the biggest of which the soldiers of course christened 'John
+Knox'). In these circumstances Knox was safer away; and from May 1571 to
+August 1572 his residence was St Andrews. There the mild James Melville,
+a student at St Leonards, watched the old man with the wistful reverence
+of youth.
+
+    'I saw him every day of his doctrine go _hulie and fear_,[121]
+    with a furring of martricks about his neck, a staff in the one
+    hand, and good godly Richard Ballanden, his servant, holding up
+    the other oxter,[122] from the Abbey to the parish kirk; and by
+    the said Richard and another servant, lifted up to the pulpit,
+    where he behoved to lean at his first entry; but before he had
+    done with his sermon, he was so active and vigorous that he was
+    like to _ding that pulpit in blads_,[123] and fly out of
+    it!'[124] And the impact on the mind of the youthful Melville
+    was scarcely less than that on the pulpit. He had his 'pen and
+    little book,' and for the first half hour of Knox's sermon, took
+    down 'such things as I could comprehend'; but when the preacher
+    'entered to the application of his text he made me so to
+    _grue_[125] and tremble that I could not hold a pen to
+    write!'[126]
+
+But his day was rapidly moving to its close; and Knox, without waiting
+for his return to Edinburgh, now wrote his Will. In it, after an
+unexpectedly mild address to the Papists, and a prophecy (which was not
+fulfilled) that his death would turn out a worse thing for them than his
+life, he turns to the other side, and in one striking paragraph sums up
+the work that was now to close.
+
+    'To the faithful I protest, that God, by my mouth, be I never so
+    abject, has shewn to you His truth in all simplicity. None I
+    have corrupted; none I have defrauded; merchandise have I not
+    made (to God's glory I write) of the glorious Evangel of Jesus
+    Christ. But according to the measure of the grace granted unto
+    me, I have divided the sermon [word] of truth into just parts:
+    beating down the pride of the proud in all that did declare
+    their rebellion against God, according as God in His law gives
+    to me yet testimony; and raising up the consciences troubled
+    with the knowledge of their own sins, by the declaring of Jesus
+    Christ, the strength of His death, and the mighty operation of
+    His resurrection in the hearts of the faithful.'
+
+When (still before leaving St Andrews) he publishes his last book, he
+dedicates it to the faithful 'that God of His mercy shall appoint to
+fight after me;' and he adds, 'I heartily salute and take my good-night
+of all the faithful of both realms ... for as the world is weary of me,
+so am I of it.' In those darkening days, even when he is merely to write
+his subscription, it is 'John Knox, with my dead hand but glad heart.'
+For in this inevitable anti-climax of failing life, Knox found his
+compensations not in the world, nor even in the Church. When he returned
+to Edinburgh, he had become unable for pastoral work. 'All worldly
+strength, yea, even in things spiritual,' he writes to his expected
+colleague, 'decays, and yet never shall the work of God decay.... Visit
+me, that we may confer together on heavenly things: for, in earth, there
+is no stability, except in the Kirk of Jesus Christ, ever fighting under
+the cross. Haste, ere you come too late.' His colleague hurried from
+Aberdeen to Edinburgh, and at his induction Knox appeared and spoke once
+more in public. But it was the last time, and at the close of the
+service the whole congregation accompanied the failing steps of their
+minister down to the Netherbow. And from that 9th November 1572 he never
+left his house.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We have at least two accounts of his death--one in Latin from a
+colleague, one in Scots by his old servitor and secretary; and the
+latter seems to have the merit of admiring and indiscriminating
+faithfulness. It is often said that such death-bed narratives are
+worthless, unless judged by the light thrown upon them from the
+previous life. It is true. Yet Death, too, is a great critic; and, at
+least when that previous life has included a problem, (as we have
+thought to be the case here), it may be well before we volunteer a
+verdict to listen to _his_ summing up. It may finally divide, or it may
+reunite, the inward and outward elements which have co-existed in the
+life. And it may at least reveal which of them was the ruling and
+radical characteristic. For while Knox had long been a beacon-light to
+Scotland, we have had reason to think that the flame was first kindled
+in this man's own soul. But now that the fuel which fed it is withdrawn,
+will that flame sink into the socket? Will it flicker out, now that the
+airs which fanned it have become still? How will it behave in the chill
+that falls from those winnowing wings?
+
+The day after Knox sickened he gave one of his servants twenty shillings
+above his fee, with the words, 'Thou wilt never get no more from me in
+this life.' Two days after, his mind wandered; and he wished to go to
+church 'to preach on the resurrection of Christ.' Next day he was
+better; and when two friends called he ordered a hogshead of wine to be
+pierced, and urged them to partake, for their host 'would not tarry
+until it was all drunk.' On Monday, the 17th, he asked the elders and
+deacons of his church, with the ministers of Edinburgh and Leith, to
+meet with him; and in solemn and affectionate words, nearly the same
+with those above quoted from his will, reviewed his ministry and took
+leave of them all. But here too trouble from his past awaited him. He
+had not long before accused from the pulpit Maitland of Lethington, now
+in the Castle, of having said that 'Heaven and hell are things I devised
+to fray bairns;' and Maitland's demand for evidence or apology was
+brought to him. Knox had never been able to bear contradiction,
+especially when he was somewhat in the wrong; and those who wish to
+acquire new virtues must not postpone them to their last hours. His
+defence was roundabout and ineffectual; and all were glad when he parted
+from these details of his long life-struggle, so that his friends, with
+tears, might take their last look of his worn and wearied face. The
+effort had been too much for him, and henceforth he never spoke but with
+great pain. Yet during the rest of the week he had many visitors. One
+after another the nobles in Edinburgh, Lords Boyd, Drumlanrig, Lindsay,
+Ruthven, Glencairn, and Morton (then about to be elected Regent) had
+interviews with him. Of Morton he demanded whether he had been privy to
+the murder of Darnley, and receiving an evasive assurance that he had
+not, he charged him to use his wealth and high place 'better in time to
+come than you have done in time past. If so ye do, God shall bless and
+honour you; but if ye do it not, God shall spoil you of these benefits,
+and your end shall be ignominy and shame.' When so many men pressed in,
+women, devout and honourable, were of course also present. One lady
+commenced to praise his works for God's cause: 'Tongue! tongue! lady,'
+he broke in; 'flesh of itself is overproud, and needs no means to esteem
+itself.' Gradually they all left, except his true friend Fairley of
+Braid. Knox turned to him: 'Every one bids me good-night; but when will
+you do it? I shall never be able to recompense you; but I commit you to
+One that is able to do it--to the Eternal God.' During the days that
+followed, his weakness reduced him to ejaculatory sentences of prayer.
+'Come, Lord Jesus. Sweet Jesus, into Thy hands I commend my spirit' But
+Scotland was still on his heart; and as Napoleon in his last hours was
+heard to mutter _tete d'armee_, so Knox's attendants caught the words,
+'Be merciful, O Lord, to Thy Church, which Thou hast redeemed. Give
+peace to this afflicted commonwealth. Raise up faithful pastors who will
+take charge of Thy Church. Grant us, Lord, the perfect hatred of sin,
+both by the evidences of Thy wrath and mercy.' Sometimes he was
+conscious of those around, and seemed to address them. 'O serve the Lord
+in fear, and death shall not be terrible to you. Nay, blessed shall
+death be to those who have felt the power of the death of the only
+begotten Son of God.'
+
+On his last Sabbath a more remarkable scene occurred. He had been lying
+quiet during the afternoon, and suddenly exclaimed, 'If any be present
+let them come and see the work of God.' His friend, Johnston of
+Elphinstone, was summoned from the adjacent church, and on his arrival
+Knox burst out, 'I have been these two last nights in meditation on the
+troubled Church of God, the spouse of Jesus Christ, despised of the
+world, but precious in His sight. I have called to God for her, and have
+committed her to her head, Jesus Christ. I have been fighting against
+Satan, who is ever ready to assault. Yea, I have fought against
+spiritual wickedness in heavenly things, and have prevailed. I have been
+in heaven and have possession. I have tasted of the heavenly joys where
+presently I am.' Gradually this rapture of retrospection and assurance
+wore itself down, with the help of recitation by the dying man of the
+Creed and the Lord's Prayer--Knox pausing over the clause 'Our Father,'
+to ejaculate, 'Who can pronounce so holy words?'
+
+Next day, Monday, 24 November, 1572, was his last on earth. His three
+most intimate friends sat by his bedside. Campbell of Kinyeancleugh
+asked him if he had any pain. 'It is no painful pain,' he said; 'but
+such a pain as shall soon, I trust, put an end to the battle.' To this
+friend he left in charge his wife, whom later of the day he asked to
+read him the fifteenth chapter to the Corinthians. When it was finished,
+'Now for the last [time],' he said, 'I commend my soul, spirit, and
+body' (and as he spoke he touched three of his fingers) 'into Thy hands,
+O Lord.' Later of the day he called to his wife again, 'Go read where I
+cast my first anchor!' She turned to the seventeenth chapter of John,
+and followed it up with part of a sermon of Calvin on the Epistle to the
+Ephesians. It seems to have been after this that he fell into a moaning
+slumber. All watched around him. Suddenly he woke, and being asked why
+he sighed, said that he had been sustaining a last 'assault of Satan.'
+Often before had he tempted him with allurements, and urged him to
+despair. Now he had sought to make him feel as if he had merited heaven
+by his faithful ministry. 'But what have I that I have not received?
+Wherefore,[127] I give thanks to my God, through Jesus Christ, who hath
+been pleased to give me the victory; and I am persuaded that the tempter
+shall not again attack me, but that within a short time I shall, without
+any great pain of body or anguish of mind, exchange this mortal and
+miserable life for a blessed immortality through Jesus Christ.' During
+the hours which followed he lay quite still, and they delayed reading
+the evening prayer till past ten o'clock, thinking he was asleep. When
+it was finished, his physician asked him if he had heard the prayers.
+'Would to God,' he answered, 'that you and all men had heard them as I
+have heard them; I praise God for that heavenly sound.' As eleven
+o'clock drew on he gave a deep sigh, and they heard the words, 'Now it
+is come.' His servant, Richard Bannatyne, drew near, and called upon him
+to think upon the comfortable promises of Christ which he had so often
+declared to others. Knox was already speechless, but his servant pleaded
+for one sign that he heard the words of peace. As if collecting his
+whole strength, he lifted up his right hand heavenwards, and sighing
+twice, peacefully expired.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Such a life had such a close.
+
+[118] 'Works,' ii. 362.
+
+[119] Sir Peter Young's letter to Beza, 13th Nov. 1579.--'Life of Knox,'
+by Hume Brown, ii. 323.
+
+[120] That is, the Craig Dhu or Black Rock. So the Calton Crags were
+called, which now look green amid surrounding buildings, but which then
+were a dark and frowning patch in a semicircle of green hill that
+stretched from St Cuthberts to Holyrood.
+
+[121] Slowly and warily.
+
+[122] Armpit.
+
+[123] Smite it into shivers.
+
+[124] 'Autobiography and Diary,' p. 33.
+
+[125] To grue = to thrill and shudder.
+
+[126] 'Autobiography and Diary,' p. 26.
+
+[127] It will be recognised that this sentence is translated from the
+Latin.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+Acts of Parliament, 24, 80, 99, 100, 114.
+
+Affliction, Treatise on, 59.
+
+Alnwick, Cupboard at, 55.
+
+Alva, 137.
+
+Anabaptists, 72, 102.
+
+Anchor, Knox's first, 30, 37, 39, 47, 153.
+
+Apostolic Order of Worship, 72.
+
+Appellation, 77.
+
+Appropriations, 21, 22.
+
+Archbishop of St Andrews, 140, 141.
+
+Argyll, Earl of, 130.
+
+Aristocracy, Scottish, 20-22, 73, 77, 115.
+
+Armenians, 68.
+
+Arran, Earl of, 119.
+
+Assembly, General, 107, 115, 140.
+
+Assurance, 28, 29, 30.
+
+Auditors bound to support, 112, 113.
+
+Autobiography, 9, 12, 13, 28, 31, 53.
+
+
+Balnaves, 36.
+
+Band, 73, 74, 90, 139.
+
+Bannatyne, Richard, 153.
+
+Bartholomew, St, 146.
+
+Beaton, David (Cardinal), 18, 24, 26, 38.
+
+Beaton, James (Archbishop), 17.
+
+Beggars' Warning, 82, 108.
+
+Benefices, 107, 112.
+
+Berwick, 49, 66.
+
+Beza, 10.
+
+Bible, 24, 30, 33, 72, 125.
+
+Bishopric offered Knox, 49.
+
+Bishops, The R.C., 93.
+
+'Bishops and Kings,' 71.
+
+Blast (against Women's Regimen), 120.
+
+Books in Knox's Library, 145.
+
+Borgia, 12.
+
+Bothwell, 139, 140, 141.
+
+Bothwellhaugh,
+
+Bowes, Mrs, 53-61.
+
+Bowes, Marjory, (Mrs Knox,) 49-51.
+
+Bowes, Sir R., 50.
+
+Brown, Dr Hume, 10, 21, 39, 68, 110, 144.
+
+Browning, 57.
+
+Buchanan, George, 19, 24.
+
+Bullinger, 68.
+
+Bunyan in Bedford, 55.
+
+Burghs, 75.
+
+Burton, J. Hill, 45.
+
+
+Calvin, 30, 43, 51, 67, 68.
+
+Campbell of Kinyeancleugh, 152.
+
+Cannon-ball, 63.
+
+Carlyle, 37, 38, 39, 46, 94.
+
+Catechism Palatinate, 30.
+
+Catholic system, 14-24, 23.
+
+Call, Knox's, 28, 31, 32, Chap. II. (25-47).
+
+Cecil, 87, 92, 143.
+
+Ceremonies, 36.
+
+Charities, 104.
+
+Chatelherault, Duke of, 51.
+
+Comfort, Knox's lack of, 53.
+
+Commonalty, Letter to, 77, 78.
+
+'Common Man, The,' 43, 48, 78, 94.
+
+Compensations, 149.
+
+'Conditions,' Knox's, 63.
+
+Confession of 1560, 92-97, 117, 123.
+
+Confession of Wishart (First Helvetic), 30, 36, 38, 97, 102, 103, 109.
+
+Confession, Knox's personal, 28, 140.
+
+Confessions, Change in, 97.
+
+Confessions of Protestantism, 95, 101.
+
+'Congregation, The,' 74.
+
+Conscience, 86, 90, 124, 126, 135.
+
+Constantine, 14.
+
+Constitutionalism, 19, 137.
+
+Consuetude, 55.
+
+Conversion, Knox's, 9, 27, Chap. II. (25-47).
+
+Convocation of Lieges, 135.
+
+Coronation Oath, 100.
+
+Coronation Sermon, 142.
+
+Corpuscle, 147.
+
+Council, General Church, 15-17, 18.
+
+Council, Provincial Church, 84.
+
+'Country, What I have been to my,' 143.
+
+Creed (_see_ Confession).
+
+Crisis in life, Chap. II.
+
+Crock, Le, 146.
+
+
+Darnley, 41, 136, 138-141.
+
+Death of Knox, 149-154.
+
+'Deliberate Mind,' 27-31, 140.
+
+Desertion, 59.
+
+Dialogues with Queen Mary, 123-134.
+
+Discipline, Book of, 106, 108, 109-115.
+
+Dispensation for Bothwell's Marriage, 141.
+
+Donations, 104.
+
+Dow Craig, 147.
+
+Dundee, 75.
+
+Dyspepsia, 63.
+
+
+Edinburgh, 61, 69, 86, 88, Chapter VII. (144-154).
+
+Edinburgh, Treaty of, 91.
+
+Ejectment, Summons of, 83, 84.
+
+Eleazar Knox, 51.
+
+Elizabeth, Queen, 82, 92, 119, 120, 131, 138.
+
+Endowments, 20-22, 83, 104, 105, 111, 114.
+
+England, 20, 21, 22, 24, 38, 41, 66, 67, 86, 141.
+
+Establishment, 14, 23, 100.
+
+Evangel, 28-31, 34, 39, 43, 44, 46, 69, 94, 148.
+
+Excommunication, 100.
+
+
+Face, Knox's, 146.
+
+Fairley of Braid, 151.
+
+'Familiarity,' never broken, 63.
+
+'Fearfulness' of Knox, 33.
+
+Fergus the First, 19.
+
+France, 82, 117, 118, 143.
+
+Francis II., 118.
+
+Frankfort, 67.
+
+Friars, The, 80, 83.
+
+
+Galleys, 32, 65, 66.
+
+Gallicanism, 15, 16, 17.
+
+Geneva, 68.
+
+Genius, Knox's, 45.
+
+Gentlewoman's face, 127.
+
+Gerson, Chancellor, 16.
+
+Golden Rose, 128.
+
+Granvelle, Cardinal, 128, 137.
+
+Gravel, 63.
+
+
+Haddington, 10, 12, 14, 19, 25.
+
+Hamilton, Patrick, 18, 24, 29.
+
+Hebrew, 145.
+
+Helvetic (First) Confession, 30, 36, 38, 97, 102, 103, 109.
+
+'History of Reformation,' 45, 140.
+
+Hospitals, 83.
+
+House, Knox's, 144, 145.
+
+Humanism, 16, 20, 23.
+
+Huntly, Earl of, 139, 145.
+
+
+Idolatry, 40, 67, 77, 102, 103, 122.
+
+Independence of Church, 94, 96, 98, 115.
+
+'Indifferency,' 70, 71, 81, 86.
+
+Individualism, 43, 56.
+
+Induration, 126.
+
+Infidelity, 56, 60, 95, 133.
+
+Inner Life, Knox's, Chapters II. and III.
+
+Intolerance, 14, 23, 24, 26, 32, 99-103.
+
+Irrevocableness of Call, 33.
+
+
+James V., 24.
+
+Jesuit (Tyrie), 96.
+
+Johnston of Elphinstone, 152.
+
+Jurisdiction, 99, 100, 114.
+
+
+Kirk of Field, 141.
+
+Kirkaldy of Grange, 42, 142.
+
+
+Laing, David, 26.
+
+Lawson, James, 10, 11.
+
+Leadership, Weight of, 34.
+
+Legislation, 14, 24, Chap. V. (95-116).
+
+Leith, 88, 147.
+
+Lethington, 42, 89, 131, 135, 142, 150.
+
+Letters of Knox (private), Chap, III.
+
+Lindsay, Sir David, 31.
+
+Lindsay, Lord, 93.
+
+Locke, Mrs, 61-63.
+
+Loire, 39, 65.
+
+Longniddry, 26, 31.
+
+Luther, 17, 18, 20, 36, 43.
+
+
+M'Crie, Dr Thomas, 144.
+
+M'Cunn, Mrs, 39.
+
+Macphail, Dr Jas. C, 113.
+
+'Magistrate, The,' 35, 36, 67, 68, 73, 77, 97, 103, 117, 120, 124.
+
+Mair (_see_ Major).
+
+Maitland (_see_ Lethington).
+
+Major, John, 10, 15-19, 22.
+
+Maries, The Four, 52, 63.
+
+Marischal, The Earl, 93.
+
+Marmion, 49.
+
+'Marriage, My,' 133.
+
+Marvels, 40-44.
+
+Mary of Lorraine, Queen Regent, 69-71, 76, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 90, 91,
+  126.
+
+Mary, Queen of Scots, 42, 52, 80, 82, Chap. VI. (117-143).
+
+Mary, Queen of England, 82.
+
+Mass, The, 67, 69, 99, 122, 127, 129.
+
+'Meditation or Prayer,' 27-31.
+
+Melancholy, Knox's, 63.
+
+Melville, James, 148.
+
+Mitchell, Dr A.F., 109.
+
+Moray, Earl of, 51, 122, 131, 132, 137, 142.
+
+Morton, Earl of, 33, 139, 151.
+
+Movements, Leadership of, 34.
+
+
+Nathaniel Knox, 51.
+
+National Churches, 15-18.
+
+'Need of all,' of Knox, 63.
+
+Netherbow, 145, 147, 149.
+
+Norham Castle, 48, 49.
+
+Notary, 11.
+
+
+Ochiltree, Lord, 52.
+
+Organisation of Church, 35, 110, 115, 116.
+
+
+Palatinate Catechism, 30.
+
+Parentage of Knox, 10.
+
+Paris, University of, 15-18.
+
+Parishes, 20-22.
+
+Parliament, 92, 94, 98, 138.
+
+Pasquil, 70.
+
+Patrimony of the Church, 106, 114, 115.
+
+Patrimony of the Poor, 83, 107.
+
+Persecution, 14, 23, 24, 26, 32, 35, 43, 57, 74, 76, 99-103.
+
+Perth, 85.
+
+Poor, The, 83, 106-108, 111, 115.
+
+Pope, The, 11, 12, 15, 18, 22, 23, 99, 128.
+
+Portraits, 10, 11.
+
+Prayer-Book, English, 67.
+
+Prayer, Treatise on, 66.
+
+Preaching, 20, 41, 75, 86, 89, 94, 110, 132, 138, 142, 144, 145, 146,
+  148.
+
+Predictions, 40-44.
+
+Priest, Knox as, 11, 12, 13.
+
+Principles, Fundamental, of Knox, 35, 36, 146.
+
+Private Life, Chap. III.
+
+'Prophesyings,' 110, 144.
+
+Prophet, Knox as, 39-44.
+
+'Proud Mind,' 126.
+
+Puritanism of Knox, 26, 35, 36, 67, 68, 96.
+
+
+Radicalism, 19, 103, 105, 110, 115, 124, 133, 135, 137.
+
+Randolph (English Ambassador), 90, 92, 93, 103, 127, 128.
+
+Ratification of Creed, 117.
+
+'Reconciliation, Articles of,' 75.
+
+Regimen of Women, 63, 120.
+
+Regular Priests, 21, 22.
+
+Renaissance, 20, 23.
+
+Repentance, 58.
+
+Reticence of Knox, 11, 12, 13.
+
+Risks of the Reformation, 34, 35.
+
+Rizzio, 136, 137, 139.
+
+Rouen, 65.
+
+Rough, John, 31, 32.
+
+Ruthven, Lord, 130, 139.
+
+
+Sacerdotalism, 14.
+
+Sandilands, Sir James, 117.
+
+Scholasticism, 14, 16, 18.
+
+Schools in Scotland, 110, 111.
+
+Scriptures, The, 24, 30, 35, 72, 125.
+
+Secrets of God's Counsel, 42.
+
+Self-torture, 58.
+
+Shakespeare, Priests in, 11.
+
+Simony, 22.
+
+Sir John Knox, 11 (_Note_).
+
+Spain, 129, 131, 132, 134, 136, 137.
+
+St Andrews, 10, 26, 31, 65, 85, 142, 148.
+
+St Giles, 144.
+
+Statesman, Knox as, 45, 46, 110, 111, 114, 115.
+
+Statutes, 24, 80, 99, 100, 114.
+
+Stewart, Lord James (_see_ Moray).
+
+Stewart, Margaret (Mrs Knox), 52.
+
+Stirling, 89, 142.
+
+Sustentation, 112, 113.
+
+Sword, The Civil, 124, 129.
+
+Syllogism, 67, 103.
+
+Sympathy of Knox, 13, 26, 53-64.
+
+
+Testamentary Charities, 104.
+
+Thomassin, 107.
+
+Teinds, 21, 22, 105-108, 112-115.
+
+Tithes (_see_ Teinds).
+
+Toleration, 14, 18, 23, 24, 35, 74, 76, 79, 80, 81, 86, 90, 91, 98-103,
+  112, 113, 114, 121, 126, 129.
+
+Trent, Council of, 131.
+
+Turing, or Trunk Close, 145.
+
+
+'Use themselves Godly,' 75, 81, 129.
+
+
+Vocation, Knox's, 28, 31, 32, Chap. II.
+
+
+Wallace, Sir William, 19.
+
+'Wholesome Counsel,' Letter of, 71, 72.
+
+Will, Knox's, 42, 51, 148.
+
+Willock, 91.
+
+Window, 29, 47.
+
+Wishart, George, 25, 26, 30, 36, 38, 97, 102, 109.
+
+Women Friends, Chap. III.
+
+
+Young, Sir Peter, 10, 146.
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+Transcriber's notes:
+
+   Obvious typographical and other printer errors and misspellings
+   have been corrected. Archaic spellings have been retained.
+
+   Footnotes are placed at the end of the chapter in which they
+   appear.
+
+   In the Index, page 1 as a reference for "Reticence of Knox" has
+   been changed to page 11 since there is no page 1, but page 11
+   does refer to the subject of Knox's reticence.
+
+   Page 141, omitted in the Index as a reference for "Kirk of
+   Field", has been added.
+
+   Omission in the Index of a page reference for "Bothwellhaugh"
+   has been retained as there is no mention of "Bothwellhaugh" in
+   the text.
+
+   The date 1563 on page 47 is a best guess since the final number
+   of the date is completely unreadable due to an ink blot.
+
+   The names Campbell of Kinzencleuch and Kirkcaldy of Grange have
+   been changed to Campbell of Kinyeancleugh and Kirkaldy of
+   Grange in the Index to agree with spelling in the text.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN KNOX***
+
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