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diff --git a/22106.txt b/22106.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d36bc60 --- /dev/null +++ b/22106.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5751 @@ +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*** + + +******* This file should be named 22106.txt or 22106.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/2/1/0/22106 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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