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KNOX on regaining
liberty would naturally have returned to Scotland, but had he done
so he would have courted the fate of George Wishart. The country was
in a very unsettled condition, and the policy of the governing
classes was dead against the Reformation. He accordingly went to
England, where he was welcomed by the Duke of Somerset as one likely
to aid him in spreading the Protestant religion.
England at this time
possessed very few capable preachers. Its parochial clergy were for
the most part ignorant priests, who ought to have been living in
retirement on their pensions, but who had been allowed by Henry
viii. to serve their cures and draw their stipends in order to save
his Exchequer. The reaction which took place under Bloody Mary would
perhaps never have succeeded had it not been that in most parishes
the ministers were Roman Catholic at heart, and ready to support a
revival of the old superstition.
Knox was sent to
Berwick-on-Tweed as a licensed preacher. The place was well chosen.
There he had a congregation composed partly of Scotsmen from across
the border, who had repaired thither for safety. Knox's fame
afterwards drew more of his countrymen to that town. In Berwick
there was also a garrison, and the Reformer's experience in the
Castle of St. Andrews, among the rough soldiery, would stand him in
good stead. We can well believe that his simple and direct method of
address, his graphic style, forcible delivery and clear, strong, and
burning convictions, would have great power over those who were
placed under his care. "Though the Battle appears strong, your
Captain is inexpugnable;" "Abide, stand, and call for His support,
and so the enemies which now affray you shall be confounded," are
specimens of the kind of imagery which he employed, and indicate how
vivid and real his preaching must have been.
Knox's Scottish
admirers forget that he spent what must have been the ten best years
of his life among Englishmen. Five were passed in England preaching
in different parts of the country, and to the Court, and in taking
his part in framing the Articles of Belief and the Prayer Book.
Knox, wherever he was, invariably was the real head of the table. In
other words, he possessed a personality so strong that it influenced
all who came into contact with him, and his convictions were so
definite and his courage so marked that he never allowed his
conscience to be wounded by timid silence. It is now seen that the
part which he played in shaping the Reformation in England was very
considerable, and that he was instrumental in imparting to it a
spirit of pure and sturdy Puritanism which in a later age burst
forth in all its power and saved the country from ruin. It seems to
us, therefore, somewhat necessary that we should at this stage try
to understand what Knox's religious views really were.
It is the fashion to
discount him as a systematic theologian, and he himself in the
Letter of Commendation which he wrote to Balnaves' Treatise makes no
claim to scientific scholarship; for he remarks: "It is no
speculative Theolog which desires to give you courage, but even so,
a brother in affliction, which partly hath experienced what Satan's
wrath may do against the chosen of God." With the exception of St.
Paul, none of the Apostles pretended to be systematic theologians,
and yet we hear of the Petrine and Johannine Gospels. It is the
"affliction of experience," after all, to which Knox refers, that
makes the true teacher and preacher. For Theology, we are told, is
as much of the heart as of the head. In this respect Knox stands out
pre-eminent, and to it he owed the tremendous power which he had
over his hearers, and it was in virtue of it that he afterwards
moved Scotland and conquered it for Protestantism.
Dr. M`Crie, the first
formal biographer of Knox, treats at considerable length of his
religious views, and we are bound to say that he seems to us to be
nearer the truth than Dr. Hume Brown, Knox's later biographer. The
latter, in a very interesting chapter on Knox's "Religious
Opinions," gives far too much weight to the supposed influence which
Balnaves' Treatise on Justification by Faith had on the Reformer. He
imagines that because Knox wrote the Note of Commendation to the
book it therefore expresses his entire religious views. Now, as a
matter of fact, although with all the other Reformers he attached
great importance to the doctrine of Justification by Faith, he did
not by any means regard it as the leading doctrine of Protestantism.
Dr. Hume Brown would be the first to admit that, like Knox himself,
he is no "speculative Theolog," and therefore cannot speak with
supreme authority on this question.
To discover the
Reformer's position we have not only to read his works, but to
interpret them in the light of scientific knowledge of the subject.
This, fortunately, has recently been done by one of the greatest
Scottish theologians of recent times, the late Professor Hastie of
Glasgow University. In his Croall Lectures on the "Theology of the
Reformed Church," a work published after his death, Dr. Hastie gives
a luminous sketch of Knox's religious opinions, and he shows that he
accepted the Reformed rather than the Lutheran view of the
Protestant Faith.
In order to arrive at
a clear knowledge of Knox's theological views it is necessary to
bear in mind a fundamental distinction between the Lutheran and
Reformed presentations of Protestantism. While Luther, and those who
sided with him, protested with all their might against the doctrine
of Works or the Judaic element in the Romish Church, Zwingli and
Calvin raised their voices with equal vehemence against the doctrine
of image worship or the pagan element in that Communion. Now while
all the Reformers accepted the two positions of Protestantism thus
stated, the Lutherans emphasised the former distinction and the
Reformed theologians the latter: and it is quite impossible to
understand the governing principles of the two Reforming parties in
Protestantism without bearing these divisions constantly in mind.
Knox, as can be clearly shown, was from the very beginning an ardent
disciple of the Reformed theologians, and from the first sermon
which he preached in St. Andrews to his last he never ceased to
denounce the pagan or idolatrous element in the Romish Church, which
made it, in his eyes, no Church at all, but a monstrosity that ought
at whatever cost to be got rid of.
Indeed, Knox's
watchword of "No idolatry," sounded in his famous sermon at Perth,
was also the watchword of the Lollards of Kyle, who in the fifteenth
century, during the reign of James IV., introduced into Scotland the
religious teaching of John Wycliff. We find that among the
thirty-four Articles of Heresy charged against them there were
several that clearly foreshadowed the position of Knox. One of them
was that "images were not to be had nor yet to be worshipped." A
second, that "the relics of saints are not to be worshipped," and a
third that "after the consecration in the Mass there remains but
bread."
The next great
movement in the religious life of Scotland is represented by Patrick
Hamilton, the protomartyr of the Reformation, who was burned at St.
Andrews in 1528. He had as a young man imbibed the Lutheran teaching
at Wittenberg; and as was then the fashion, he embodied his
theological convictions in a thesis or set of articles which were
published after his death under the title of Patrick's Places, or,
as we would say, "Commonplaces" or "Heads" of 'Theology. This
treatise is thoroughly Lutheran in standpoint, form, and expression,
and it would seem as if it was to be the divine of Erfurt and not
the theologian of Geneva who was to give his impress to the
Reformation movement in Scotland.
But after Hamilton
came George Wishart. Eighteen years divided the two, and during that
period the religious views of Scotland were being moulded afresh by
the influences that were bearing upon the country from the Continent
and England. Wishart gave a new direction to the religious revival,
for he was a believer in the Reformed Theology. He had come under
its influence while travelling on the Continent, and bore testimony
to his convictions by translating into English the first Helvetic
Confession. Indeed one of the Articles for which he sufflered
martyrdom was his repudiation of transubstantiation and the Mass.
And we read that one of the results of his preaching was an attack
by the men of Dundee and Montrose on some of the religious houses of
these towns, which were gloriously bedecked, and full of those
images the worship of which the Reformed 'Theologians declared to be
gross idolatry.
Knox had, by the time
he began his duties as a licensed preacher in England, written
almost nothing. His introduction to and synopsis of Balnaves'
Treatise on Justification would seem to have been his sole literary
venture, his only other record being one sermon preached by him,
that in St. Andrews, and his disputations with the leaders of the
Romish Church there. But these are quite enough to show the quality
of the man both as a speaker and as a writer, and it is hard for us
to believe that they were his first ventures in either capacity, for
they display a knowledge of the subject, a maturity of thought, a
directness and ease of expression that would do no discredit to a
past master. What Knox was then he remained ever after, and we find
that in the sermon he enunciated those opinions which he ever held
by.
Thus from the very
beginning he was an adherent of the Reformed rather than of the
Lutheran conception of the Protestant Faith. He declared the Pope to
be "that Man of Sin" and the Romish Church to be "the Synagogue of
Satan," and deplored the degeneracy of the Roman Church as compared
with the purity which was in the days of the Apostles. While lying
in irons in the French galley on the Loire he flung overboard the
image of the Virgin which he was asked to worship, declaring it to
be "but a pented brod."
In his defence at
Newcastle on the 4th April 1550, he made a powerful indictment
against the idolatry of the Roman Church as seen in the sacrifice of
the Mass, declaring it to be idolatry; and in a "Summary according
to the Holy Scriptures of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper," drawn
up about the same time, he distinctly throws in his lot with the
upholders of the Reformed Theology, repudiating the doctrine not
only of transubstantiation but that of consubstantiation as well,
and declaring the Sacrament to be altogether spiritual. His notable
stand against the rubric in the Second Prayer Book of Edward vi.
(October 1552), enjoining kneeling as the proper attitude for
receiving the Sacrament, resulted in a note being inserted that in
such a posture no "adoration" is intended.
In subsequent
publications written while in England, and before he came under the
personal influence of Calvin, who is supposed to have moulded him to
his own sweet will, we find the same principle laid down, and his
whole position may be summed up in his declaration that "all
worshipping, honouring, or service of God invented by the brain of
man in the religion of God without His own express command is
idolatry." |
