John Knox and the Reformation

x was now a State licensed preacher at Berwick, one of many "State officials with a specified mission." He was an agent of the English administration, then engaged in forcing a detested religion o

ohn xiii. 25), but Knox supposed them to have sat. In a letter to his Berwick flock, he reminds them of his practice on this point; but he would not dissent from kneeling if "magistrates make known, as that they" (would?) "have done if ministers were willing to do their duties, that kneeling is not retained in the Lord's Supper

d's help, "will give place to neither man nor angel teaching the contrary" of his preaching. Yet an angel might be supposed to be well informed on points of doctrine! "But as to ceremonies or rites, things of smaller weight, I was not minded to move contention. . . ." The one point which-"because I am but one, having in my contrary magistrates, common order, and judgments, and many learne

charge was Berwick (1549-51), where we have seen he celebrated holy Communion by the Swiss rite, all meekly sitting. The Second Prayer Book, of 1552, when Kno

moved, and Utenhovius prayed that the sermon might be of blessed effect. Knox was certainly in London at this date, and was almost certainly the excellent Scot referred to by Utenhovius. The Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. was then in such forwardness that Parliament had appointed it to be used in churches, beginning on November 1. The book included the command to kneel at the Lord's Supper, and any agitation against the practice might seem to be too late. Cranmer, the Primate, was in favour of the rubric

not to make trouble and disquietude when things be most quiet and in good order." {35} Their argument (Knox's favourite), that what

his doctrine is untrue, and not only untrue but seditious, and perilous to be heard of any subject

enant, when this question of kneeling was the first cause of the Bishops' w

o the Prayer Book, wherein it is asserted that the attitude does not imply adoration of the elements, or belief in the Real Presence, "for that were idolatry." Elizabeth dropped, and Charles II. rest

results will presently be conspicuous. In April 1550, Knox preached at Newcastle a sermon on his favourite doctrine that the Mass is "Idolatry," because it is "of man's invention," an opinion not shared by Tunstall, then Bishop of Durham. Knox used "idolatry" in a constructive sense, as when we talk of "con

dor, Protestant principles would be as unsafe as under "umquhile the Cardinal." Knox therefore, "from the foresight of troubles to come" (so he writes to Mrs. Bowes, February 28, 1554), {36b} declined any post, a

ears Knox was himself publicly expressing his own thirst for the Queen's death, and praying for a Jehu or a Phinehas, slayers of idolaters, such as Mary Tudor. If any fanati

land pled his cause against a charge of treason. In fact, however, the Court highly approved of his sermon. He was presently again in what he believed to be imminent danger of life: "I fear that I be not yet ripe, nor able to glorify Christ by my faith," he wrote to Mrs. Bowes, "but what lacketh now, God shall perform in His own ti

n them and Achitophel, Shebna, and Judas. Later, young Mr. Mackail, applying the same method to the ministers of Charles II., was hanged. "What wonder is it then," said Knox, "that a young and innocent kin

Northumberland could not then resent the audacities of pulpiteers, because the Protestants were the only party who might stand by him in his approaching effort to crown Lady Jane Grey. Now all the King's preachers, obviously by concerted action, "thundered" against Edward's Council, in the Lent or East

was settling herself on the throne. While within Mary's reach, Knox did not encourage resistance against that idolatress; he did not do so till he was safe in France. Indeed, in his prayer used after the death of Edward VI., before the fires of Ox

er, the wife of Richard Bowes, commander of Norham Castle, near Berwick, but to the anger and disgust of the Bowes family in general. They by no means shared Knox's ideas of religion, rather regarding him as a penniless unfrocked "Scot runaga

ck; he had no enthusiasm for taking part in the battle when unaided by the arm of flesh. On later occasions this was very apparent, and he has confessed, as we saw, that he did not choose to face "the trouble to come" without means of retreat. His valour was rather that of the general than of the lonely martyr. The popular idea of Knox's personal courage, said to have been expressed by the Regent Morton in the words spoken at his funeral, "here lieth a man who in his life never feared

ess to face the utmost torture," more than once doubts his own readiness for martyrdom. We must remember that even

ns to throw the first stone at a reluctant martyr, still less to applaud useless self-sacrifice, but we do take leave to think that, having fled early, himself, fr

ich, while he remained in England, the burden fell on the poor girl-may have been one reason for Knox

, he was approaching his fortieth rather than his fiftieth year. Older than he are happy husbands made, sometimes, though Marjorie

the pulpit, like Edward Irving, has always been potent with women, as Sir Walter Scott remarks in Irving's own case. His expression, says Young, had a certain geniality; on the whole we need not doubt that Knox could please w

nox's letters to Mrs. Bowes show the patience and courtesy with which the Reformer could comfort and counsel a middle-aged lady in trouble about her innocent soul. As she recited her infirmities, he reminds her, he "started back, and that is my common consuetude when anything pierces or touches 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"-not by the charms of Mrs. Bowes, of course: he fou

may or may not have sa

s. Bowes is the dearest of mankind to Knox. No mortal was ever more long-suffering with a spiritual hypochondriac, who avers that "the sins that reigned in Sodom and

lessons of comfort to her mother. Meanwhile the lovers were parted, Knox