26

KNOX IN ENGLAND.

be true in certain ages, and of certain men. Of other men and other ages it is not true; and even Knox admitted the rites of baptism and of the Holy Communion. Meanwhile he already displayed his unparalleled candour and energy in political harangues from the pulpit. The reforming Somerset fell beneath the axe guided by Warwick (Northumberland), as the reforming Warwick (actually a Catholic) was more deservedly to fall in his turn. Knox even denounced, whether privately or in public seems uncertain, the execution of Somerset. In 1551 he became a royal chaplain : his stipend was but £40 per annum. Northumberland, perhaps to bridle Knox, offered him the bishopric of Rochester. "What moved me to refuse?" he asked Mrs Bowes a year or two later, and answered, "Assuredly the foresight of evils to come." Whether he alluded to his gift of prophecy, or only to an obvious inference from what would follow on the death of Edward VI., a sickly boy, may have been left to the decision of Mrs Bowes.12 "At a later period," remarks Mr Hume Brown, "he set down this refusal to his disapproval of bishops."

Meanwhile his energies were directed against the custom of kneeling at the celebration of the eucharist. He appears to have had a hand in the preparation of the "Black Rubric,” and, that once inserted, he had "a good opinion" of the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. That good opinion later changed into contempt.13 In February 1553 he was offered, and declined, the vicarage of All Hallows, in Bread Street. Presently came the conspiracy of Northumberland to secure the throne, on Edward's death, for his daughter-in-law, Lady Jane Grey. The hearts of the people of England were with Mary Tudor, her cause prevailed, and Knox found that his "foresight of troubles to come" was justified. He had denounced Northumberland, from the pulpit, before Edward VI. as Achitophel, Paulet as Shebna, and somebody unidentified as Judas.14 Mr Hume Brown suggests that Northumberland tolerated these harangues because he had no party except in the extreme Protestant body. Tolerated Knox was, and so he was confirmed in the habit of using the pulpit as the platform. This habit he carried into Scotland, and it practically meant that preachers, in a kind of inspired way, and with the sanction of their own and their flock's belief in their inspiration, were to guide the foreign and domestic policy of the State. These pretensions are · incompatible with political freedom. Through the reigns of Mary,

KNOX STIRS UP ENGLISH PROTESTANTS.

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James VI., Charles I., and Charles II. they were persisted in, till the Stewarts and the Hierocrats broke each other, and were broken, and the pulpiteers slowly became content to know their place.

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Under Mary Tudor, Knox did not hold his post and accept martyrdom. He went abroad in January 1554, and at Geneva and Zurich consulted Calvin and Bullinger on certain cases of conscience. Is obedience to be rendered to a magistrate who enforces idolatry and condemns true religion? This is a handsome example of Knox's method. After 1560 a Scot who thought that the old faith was "true religion" was to be compelled by severe penal laws to "obey the magistrate"-the Presbyterian magistrate. Our beliefs as to what is trew are subjective and uncontrollable. But Knox believed, with a faith that moved political mountains, that his religion was the only true religion. Much of his power lay in faith so absolute, so devoid of shadow of turning. He asked other questions, but this of godly resistance to the idolatrous magistrate was the most important. Calvin and Bullinger put the questions by; for Calvin they had not yet risen into the sphere of political politics. For the moment Knox bade the faithful, whom he had left to the tender mercies of Mary Tudor, "not to be revengers of their own cause," "not to hate with any carnal hatred these blind, cruel, and malicious tyrants." In "a spiritual hatred" they might freely indulge.15 Knox's hatred of Riccio, Mary, Mary of Guise, and his other opponents was, doubtless, not "carnal" but spiritual. The worldly eye does not easily detect any essential distinction in the two forms of deadly detestation. Returning to Dieppe, he sent a mission to "the professors of God's truth in England." 16 In this tract Knox, after lashing Mary Tudor with Biblical parallels, exclaims, "God, for his great mercy's sake, stir up some Phineas, Elias, or Jehu, that the blood of abominable idolaters may pacify God's wrath, that it consume not the whole multitude." 17 Jehu murdered Jezebel, and Knox's prayer is a provocation to murder. Did Knox forget Hosea i. 4? "The Lord said, . . . for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jezreel" (the scene of the deed) "upon the house of Jehu." As his most recent biographer says, "In casting such a pamphlet into England, at the time he did, he indulged his indignation, in itself so natural under the circumstances, at no personal risk, while he seriously compromised those who had the strongest claims on his most generous consideration." The fires of Smithfield soon after

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28

KNOX AND CALVIN (1555).

blazed out. It was easy, and perhaps natural, for opponents to say that Knox had lighted them. He had described the Queen of England as "an open traitress," had spoken of what would have occurred if she "had been sent to hell before these days," had called for a Jehu, and certainly had compromised the flock which he had abandoned. In uttering provocatives to, and applauses of, political murders, Knox of course spoke as a man of his age. Greece had applauded Harmodius and Aristogiton, murderers of a tyrant. Elijah had impelled Jehu, the murderer of an idolater. Catholics and Protestants at this period believed that they had Biblical and classical warrant for the dagger. But there was a certain shamefacedness, as a rule, in clerical abettors of murder. Knox, for his part, is frank enough. That Christ came to abolish such deeds of blood is no part of the reformed Christianity of Knox.

"19

He later moved to Frankfort, and took a vigorous part in the quarrels of the English Protestant refugees as to their Church service. A congregation, who sat under Cox, insisted on uttering the responses, or "mummuling" as Knox called it; and now he discovered even in the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. "things superstitious, impure, unclean, and imperfect.' In the end some of Cox's party denounced Knox to the Frankfort magistrates for the treason to the Kaiser, Philip, and Mary contained in his 'Godly Admonition' to the faithful in England. He had drawn a trenchant historical parallel between the Kaiser and the Emperor Nero. Knox had to leave Frankfort. He arrived in Geneva in April 1555. There he found Calvin wielding the full powers of a theocracy. Outlanders had been enfranchised: the native vote was swamped; the ministers could excommunicate, with all the civil consequences of a State "boycott," "virtually implying banishment." Such, or very similar, was the condition to which Knox and his successors endeavoured to reduce Scotland. And now, after harvest in 1555, to Scotland Knox returned, at the request of Mrs Bowes. He probably did not know himself how safe was this venture into the native country where, nine years ago, his peril had been extreme. Despite the execution of Wallace, various causes had contributed to keep down persecution. It was not the policy of Archbishop Hamilton. The ambitions of his House, disappointed for the time by the deposition of Châtelherault from the regency, would not be forwarded by the unpopularity that cruelties

KNOX AND LETHINGTON (1555).

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must arouse. Mary of Guise, for her part, was trying to conciliate the Protestants.

In 1549, and in 1552, the Church had been taking shame to herself for the evil lives of clerics: a Reformation from within was being attempted. The Catechism of Archbishop Hamilton was issued early in 1552, after the Provincial Council in January of that year. It is "a fine piece of composition, full of a spirit of gentleness and charity," says Mr Hill Burton. The tolerance of tone, and the preference for a Christian life as more essential than disputes on Christian mysteries, are worthy of Ninian Winzet.20 In these years, then, the Reformers, such as Harlaw (originally an Edinburgh tailor) and Willock (an Ayrshire man) ventured back into Scotland and held forth in private. "And last came John Knox, in the end of harvest." Lodging at Edinburgh with John Syme, "that notable man of God," Knox exhorted secretly. In a Mrs Barron Knox found another Mrs Bowes," she had a troubled conscience." Like Edward Irving, and other popular preachers, Knox had enormous influence over women. He seems to have been unwearied in listening to the long and complex chapter of their spiritual sorrows, to which the Catholic confessors probably lent an accustomed and uninterested hearing. At this juncture even masculine consciences were "affrayed" as to the propriety of bowing down in the house of Rimmon, and going to mass.

To discuss this question of conformity, Knox dined with Erskine of Dun, Willock, and William Maitland, younger of Lethington. Here we first meet this captivating and extraordinary man, a modern of the moderns, cool, witty, ironical, subtle, and unconvinced; a man of to-day, moving among fanatics and assassins, and using both, without relish as without scruple. Knox decided that it was not lawful for a Christian man to present himself to that idol, the mass. It was argued, perhaps by Lethington, that the thing had New Testament warrant. The probatory text was Acts xxi. 18-27. On St Paul's arrival at Jerusalem, after a missionary expedition among the Gentiles, St James pointed out to him that many Jews professed Christian principles, but remained "zealous for the law." accused of wishing them to "forsake Moses" and disuse circumcision. Would Paul give a practical proof that he had not broken with the old Law? Paul therefore ritually "purified" himself with

30

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KNOX AND MARY OF GUISE (1556).

four shaven men under a vow. With them he entered the temple "until that an offering should be offered for every one of them." Apparently the argument was that the sacrifice of the mass answered to this offering of "the shaven sort" of Hebrew votaries. As a matter of fact, Paul was mobbed by the Jews. Knox, evading the "offerings" (the essence of the parallel), replied that to pay vows . . . was never idolatry," but the mass was idolatry. "Secondly," said he, "I greatly doubt whether either James's commandment or Paul's obedience proceeded from the Holy Ghost." For, in fact, Paul was mobbed, which showed "that God approved not that means of reconciliation, but rather that he plainly declared that evil should not be done that good might come of it." Lethington had an obvious reply. First, by Knox's own showing, evil, in this case, was not done. Next, Stephen was worse handled than Paul; did such results prove God's displeasure? Lastly, by what right did Knox determine when the apostles were, and when they were not, inspired? However, Maitland is not reported to have pressed these answers, and conformity began to be disused by the godly. Knox now visited some country houses. He stayed with Erskine of Dun, and with old Sir James Sandilands at Calder House. Here he met Lord Erskine (later sixth Earl of Mar), Lord Lorne, who became fifth Earl of Argyll in 1558, and the Bastard of Scotland, Lord James Stewart, Prior of St Andrews and Macon, later Earl of Murray, and at this time a man of twenty-three or twenty-four years of age. Till Christmas, Knox lectured in Edinburgh, then in Kyle, Ayr, at the house of Glencairn, Finlayston, and elsewhere about the country, ministering the Sacrament in the Geneva way. Consequently he was summoned to appear for trial in the Dominicans' church in Edinburgh on May 15, 1556. But "that diet held not." Erskine of Dun, with divers other gentlemen, convened at Edinburgh, and the bishops, as Knox says, either "perceived informality in their own proceedings, or feared danger to ensue upon their extremity, it was unknown to us." The latter alternative is the more probable. After successful sermons, Knox sent a letter to the Regent, who showed it to the Cardinal's nephew, James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, saying, in mockage, " Please you, my Lord, to read a pasquil." The letter had been conciliatory, for Knox, who, irritated by the Regent's scorn, published it anew, with truculent additions. Nothing galled him like a gibe.21 Knox now