02.05. Chapter 5. John Knox and His Times.

Chapter 5.

John Knox and His Times. The faithful preaching and martyr death of George Wishart had not been in vain. The Gospel of the grace of God, so zealously proclaimed by that devoted evangelist, had produced a real and lasting revival among the common people, which was to have deep and far-reaching results. This had its effect in opening the way for more widespread instruction in divine truth; and those who were desirous of being thus taught, had soon the privilege of such teaching, for God, who of old sent Peter to Cornelius, was preparing the man He was about to use to further the cause of Christ in Scotland, at a time when wickedness seemed to come in like a flood. That man was John Knox. He had taken refuge, as we have seen, in the castle of St. Andrews, to be safe from the plots of Archbishop Hamilton, who had put a price upon his head, and when the castle fell before the combined efforts of the Regent’s army and the French fleet, Knox, in direct violation of the terms of capitulation, had been shipped off to the galleys.

We can have little idea of all the suffering and misery entailed upon the wretched men who were sent to this worse than penal servitude, but the following description by a writer on the subject will enable us to realize something of what Knox endured during the space of nearly two years before he was released. "The galleys were long craft, rowed by forty or fifty oars a-piece. Able-bodied vagrants, convicts, and the worst off-scourings of France were swept into these floating prisons. The long, low undecked waist of the ship was packed full of rowers, five or six of them chained to each oar. The labour of rowing was terrible. From the great length of the oars, the rowers had to rise to their feet at every stroke. They wrought stripped to the loins, and along the centre of the galley ran a gangway, on which the ’forcers’ walked up and down with a long whip in hand which they mercilessly applied to the naked backs of the rowers, whenever they thought that any oar did not keep touch with the rest. In the hold there was a low dark room, entered by a scuttle about two feet square. This was the hospital; it was so low that the deck above was only three feet from the sick men’s faces as they lay on the bare boards. The stench was so horrible in this dismal hole that slaves stricken with disease often chose to keep at their oar till they dropped and died rather than enter it."

Such was the place, and such were the masters under whom Knox acquired part of his education, but in the midst of it all we see his unflinching faith and trust in God, calmly waiting for the time when He would deliver him and send him forth into His service. Here he learned meekness in the endurance of wrong, self-control, patience, and also that resolute resistance to everything evil which comes out time after time in his after-life. He would tolerate no shams, neither in men nor things; what he insisted on was reality. One day a gorgeously painted lady, a figure of the Virgin Mary, was brought aboard to be kissed, but when presented to Knox, he gently said, "Trouble me not, such an idol is accursed, and I will not touch it." "Thou shalt handle it," said the officer, and violently thrust it into his face. Knox, seeing no other alternative, promptly used the opportunity and cast it into the sea, saying, "Let our lady save herself; she is light enough let her swim." The galley in which Knox was confined returned to Scotland in 1548 accompanied by the French fleet sent to repair the damages wrought by Protector Somerset, at the Battle of Pinkie. Anchored off the Fife coast, a fellow-prisoner pointed out to him the steeple of St. Andrews, and asked him if he knew the place. Knox was worn down by fever and thought to be dying, but raising himself, he said, "Yea, I know it well, for I see the place where God first opened my mouth for His glory, and I am fully persuaded that I shall not depart this life till my tongue shall again glorify His holy name in the same place."

Knox was liberated in 1549, and went to England. Here he and others were employed by Cranmer, then in power, to go into the various districts where the Romish clergy were most opposed to the Reformation and preach the Gospel. Knox was appointed to Berwick. This work he entered into with much zeal and fervour, with a deep sense of the love of Christ to lost sinners, and of the grace of God in providing salvation without money and without price. He was not content with the district allotted to him, but travelled round the surrounding country as far as Newcastle, "in season and out of season preaching the Word." In December 1553 we find him in London. King Edward had died in July. Lady Jane Grey, after a reign of ten days had passed from the throne to the prison; from the prison to the block, and Mary Tudor is queen. Night is settling down upon England to be lighted only by lurid gleams from the stakes of the confessors and martyrs of Jesus Christ. Protestants were allowed till the 20th of December to "change their opinions," after that it was to be "turn or burn." Knox knowing that the time was short, preached on. "I have no time to answer your letter," he wrote to a friend, "for I must preach every day as long as this poor, weak body will allow." At last at the urgent entreaties of his friends he returned from London and arrived at Dieppe in January 1554. The same year Mary of Guise was appointed Regent of Scotland; at heart a bigoted papist, yet she had won the affections of the protestant party of befriending them from the severity of Arran after his apostacy, and it was by this means she had succeeded in procuring his resignation.

Now that she was in power, she courted their influence by promising to support them against the clergy. Thus the policy of the Regent gave liberty to Christians to meet in private for the preaching of the Word and exhortation, though at heart she cared for none of these things. The bitter persecution in England under Queen Mary led many to flee into Scotland where they became a help to their brethren by their zeal for the truth and their desire to further the Gospel among the common people. But the favour of the Queen Regent had a very different effect on the Lords of the Congregation (as the nobles who favoured the Reformation came to be called); they sought to please her by going to mass, and attending the outward services of the papists. This conduct brought out a strongly-worded warning from Knox. "Arme yourselves," said he, "to stand with Christ in this shorte batell; for avoyding ydolatrie your substance salbe spoillit; but for obeying ydolatrie heavenlie ryches shalbe lost; for avoyding of ydolatrie ye may fall into the handis of earthly tirantis, but obeyeris, manteaneris, and consentaris to ydolatrie sall not eschaip the hands of the liveing God. Hes not the maist part of the sanctis of God from the beginning entered into rest be torment and troubillis. Did God comforte theme and sail He despyse us, gif in fichting aganis iniquitie we follow thair footstepis? He will not." But when the Regent found her power firmly established, she threw off the mask and gave them a rude awakening by summoning four of the protestant preachers to appear at Stirling and answer to a charge of heresy and rebellion. The nobles remonstrated, and reminded Mary of her promises. She replied like a true Jesuit, that "princes are not to be expected to keep their promises unless it suits their own convenience," and that she would "drive every preacher from Scotland, though they preached as soundly as St. Paul." Nevertheless, at this time she yielded, departed from the diet, and forbade the preachers to appear; but when the day arrived she ordered the summons to be called, and the prescribed to be outlawed for not appearing. At this time Knox returned from the continent and arrived in Scotland in 1555. He was invited to Ayrshire, and preached every day wherever he found an open door. But the Roman clergy hearing of his arrival, cited him to appear before them in the Blackfriar’s Church at Edinburgh. Knox feared God too much to fear man, and set out to be present at the diet; but the priests were afraid to bring the matter to an issue.

Knox arrived, but found that his enemies had departed, and, finding no accusers, he quietly went up into the pulpit and preached the gospel to the multitude who were gathered together to see how the matter would end. For the following ten days in succession, he preached to large audiences from the same place. Next year we find him back in Geneva. In 1558 he finally returned to Scotland. The clergy immediately proclaimed him an outlaw and a rebel, and put a price upon his head, but the nobles protected him from their violence, and arranged a meeting at St. Andrews. Knox preached in the villages along the Fife coast by the way, and arrived in St. Andrews on the 9th of June. The Archbishop, hearing of the gathering of the nobles, dashed after them with two hundred horse; but, finding them stronger than he expected, fled again for his life, leaving a message for Knox "that if he dared to preach from his pulpit, a dozen bullets should light upon his nose." The nobles were intimidated, but Knox said, "As for the fear of danger that may come to me, let no man be anxious, for my life is in the hands of Him whose glory I seek. I desire the hand or weapon of no man to defend me; I only crave audience." Next Sunday he preached without interruption, and continued to do so for some days longer. In July we find him in Edinburgh, and, when the army of the nobles had to retire to Stirling before the combined forces of the Queen Regent and the French auxiliaries, we find him with them, telling them in blunt, plain language that they had failed because they had forsaken the Lord and put their confidence in man. "When we were few in number we called upon God, but since our strength has increased there has been nothing heard but ’This lord will bring us so many hundred spears,’ and ’ If this earl be on our side, no man in that district will trouble.’ Let us unfeignedly return unto the Lord, for it is the Eternal Truth of the Eternal God for which we contend, and it shall finally prevail, though it be resisted for a season." Next year help arrived from England. The French troops in Leith were forced to sue for terms of peace. A treaty was signed in Edinburgh whereby the foreign soldiers were withdrawn, and the Queen Regent, wearied out and heartsick of the struggle, died in Edinburgh Castle on the 10th of June. Feeling the end to be near, she sent for Lord James Stuart and told him she was sorry for Scotland and for her own share in Scotland’s sufferings, and asked forgiveness of all whom she had wronged. Lord James advised her to see the preacher Willocks. She did so, and listened to him with much attention, but afterwards sent for a popish priest and died a "good Catholic." Her bigotry was supreme, — a determined opposer of Christ; an oppressor and persecutor of His people, and a hater of His Word. She became the patron of a party whose members were unscrupulously wicked, whose actions were relentlessly cruel, whose system of fraud and falsehood were a disgrace to intelligent humanity. She lived to see her power broken, her hopes blasted, and her schemes defeated, and died in darkness and despair. Verily "the way of the wicked He turneth upside down." The man of God is called upon to stand for the truth, not only in the face of open opposition and persecution, but more so when Satan appears as an angel of light, when evil is called good, and when the love of many is waxing cold. Then, indeed, is the faithful servant called upon to show that he is not ignorant of the doings of the enemy of souls, that, living by faith, he is ready to fight the good fight of faith, and witness a good confession for Christ Jesus. Under the regency of Mary of Guise, Knox had been persecuted, banished, outlawed, a price set upon his head, and assassins hired to slay him. Under the government of Mary Stuart, he had the grief of seeing many who walked uprightly in time of persecution turning aside in time of peace, to make servile courtiers, for worldly advancement, to a vain and dissembling woman. He, himself, by turns was threatened and fawned upon, publicly accused and privately slandered, but nevertheless the great Reformer went steadfastly on, doing the work put into his hands, and ever seeking to advance the cause of Christ in Scotland.

Mary Stuart arrived in Scotland on the 19th of August 1561. She had been brought up in France — the most polluted court in Europe; a place where every vice was cultivated, where every virtue was ridiculed, and for the brief period of eighteen months she had been partner of the throne. Her uncles, the Duke of Guise and Cardinal of Lorraine, had engaged her to devote herself heart and hand to the extirpation of the "new opinions" with fire and sword, if need be; and with this purpose she came to Scotland. She refused to condescend to examine the subject of difference between papist and protestant. She scorned to hear the preachers, and so wilfully did she shut her eyes to the truth that she would not even allow them to lay before her in writing the ground of their faith. But the protestant party was now in power, and she had to conceal her real designs until a time came more favourable for their execution.

Nevertheless, the people were captivated by the charms of their young queen, and the first night she slept in Holyrood she was awakened by a serenade under her windows — not very successful as music, and all the more distasteful to Mary because the people were singing psalms. Next Sunday she ordered mass to be said in her chapel, upon which Knox said "he was more afraid of one mass than of ten thousand armed enemies." There was just cause for fear. In the Netherlands, multitudes had been put to death under Charles V. and his more wicked son Philip II. In France, the followers of Jesus were being persecuted by the Guises. In Spain, the martyr piles still continued to blaze, and in the sister kingdom of England they had newly gone out with the death of Mary Tudor. Knowing the knowledge of the truth to be the only safeguard from error, Knox continued to preach with increased energy twice every Sunday and three times during the week in the great building of St. Giles, which was crowded by interested listeners. From some of his writings which have come down to us, we learn that in his preaching he gave forth no uncertain sound. Heaven and Hell, salvation and judgment, justification by faith, or condemnation through unbelief, were to him solemn realities. Death by sin, and life by Christ alone, were the cardinal points of his doctrine. No mere set of opinions, whether protestant or otherwise, were sufficient. There must be regeneration through the work of the Spirit, producing new life in the soul, and from this new life Knox looked for new conduct — the "fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God." Knox had settled in Edinburgh in 1560, and the house he inhabited may still be seen in the High Street. Over the west front is the inscription, "Lufe God above al and your nichbour as yourself." A stair leads up from the street to the audience hall, in which is a window, called the "preaching window," because from it Knox was in the habit of addressing the people assembled in the street below. Underneath this window are the words, "DEUS THEOS, GOD."

Mary having set her mind upon subduing Knox and bending him to her will, summoned him to the palace. In one of their many interviews, after a long conference, she charged him with teaching the people a different religion from that allowed by their princes. He replied that true religion derived its origin from the eternal God, and that if subjects were bound to frame their religion according to the will of their rulers, the Hebrews would have been of the same religion as Pharaoh. The papists feared that Knox’s appeals would shake the Queen’s constancy; the protestants hoped she would be won over to attend the preaching at least, but Knox thought differently. He says, "Her whole proceedings declare that the Cardinal’s lessons are so deeply printed in her heart that the substance and the quality are like to perish together." The news of the massacre of Vassy, which took place in France at this time, brought much joy to the papists. One Sunday morning the Duke of Guise had surrounded their meeting house, where about 1200 Huguenots — as the French Christians were called — were gathered together, and the troops bursting open the doors, with cries of "Kill, kill," the work of butchery began. When it was over the soldiers gathered together the Bibles and hymn books and burned them. About eighty persons — men, women, and children — were slain, and several hundreds wounded. When tidings of this exploit of her uncle reached Scotland, Mary gave a grand ball in the palace, and this unseenly mirth called forth the stern rebuke of Knox, who said that "princes were more exercised in dancing and music than in hearing or reading the Word of God; and that they delighted more in fiddlers and flatterers than in the company of wise men, capable of giving them wholesome counsel." As to dancing, he said it was "a gesture more becoming to mad, than to sober men, and that those who danced for joy at the misfortunes of God’s people would soon have their mirth converted into mourning." Next day he was summoned to the palace, ushered into the royal chamber where the Queen sat with her ladies and counsellors, and accused of having spoken irreverently of Her Majesty. Knox bluntly told her that if she refused to hear the preacher herself, she must depend on the false reports of flatterers, but that for her benefit he would repeat the substance of what he had said. Thereupon she was compelled for once to listen to a sermon, though much against her will. Mary could find nothing faulty in his discourse, and was reluctantly compelled to let the bold preacher go free.

We next find Knox in the West, visiting with untiring energy the different Churches, and seeking to confirm the Christians in the faith of Christ. In 1566 France and Spain concluded a peace with the object of "rooting out the new heresy." Just as Herod and Pilate were made friends together over the condemnation of the Lord Jesus, so Catharine de Medici — one of the most wicked women that ever lived — patched up a peace with the cruel, vindictive, and bigoted Philip of Spain, who was responsible for the unjust murder of nearly 100,000 of his subjects — the followers of Christ — in the Netherlands. The object of this agreement was that they might use their joint powers against the Protestants, and exterminate every man, woman, and child who refused to worship the Roman idol. The massacre of St. Bartholomew, six years afterwards, was the outcome of this atrocious compact, when a beginning was made in Paris with the slaughter of Admiral Coligny and the principal leaders, who had been decoyed to the city by fair words and false promises of security, made, only to be broken. The work of death proceeded through the provinces till over 50,000 of the best citizens of France had been destroyed; their only crime being that they dared to differ from the teaching of Rome and sought to worship God in sincerity and truth.

Influenced by her uncles, the Guises, Mary readily became a partner to the scheme. The intentions of the papists were to reduce Scotland to obedience to the pope; next, to depose Elizabeth and seat Mary on the throne of England instead. The dagger of the assassin and the art of the poisoner were considered legitimate weapons, and the pope promised "pardon for all his sins," to the man who would succeed in assassinating Elizabeth. But all those deep-laid plots came to nought, and the misguided Scottish Queen, in place of sitting upon an English throne, laid her head upon an English block, and her better qualities were lost sight of in the vices which she allowed to govern her life and conduct.

Meanwhile, she temporised. Smiles, caresses, and hypocritical promises were the weapons she used, until the majority of the nobles should be won over. With these weapons Mary was an adept. She made a show of favouring the Reformed party till the plot was ripe for the stake and the faggot, and her arts were largely successful. Many zealous professors grew cold to the cause of Christ in proportion as they courted Mary’s favour, and the more they reverted from Christ, the more they grew in the queen’s good graces. But there was one man who would neither be won by flattery nor silenced by threats. That man was Knox, and Mary having already measured herself against him, and found that neither her tears nor her frowns had the slightest effect upon his massive sense of righteousness, and that to win her smile or escape her anger, he would not deviate one hair-breadth from the straight line of what he considered duty, she determined to bring him to the block. Events which took place shortly afterwards placed her enemy in her power. In 1563 she had taken a journey to Stirling, and while the queen was away, mass was openly celebrated at Holyrood, and some of the turbulent spirits among the protestants, offended at these proceedings, burst into the chapel and asked the priest how he dared to be so malapert in the queen’s absence. Mary, when she heard of this, was indignant, and ordered two of the protestants to be brought to trial. Fearing this was only a beginning to measures still more hostile, some of the nobles induced Knox to write to the principal gentlemen interested in the case, to be present at the trial. Knox did so, and one of the circular letters came into the hands of the queen. This she laid before the Privy Council, who, to her great delight, pronounced it treasonable. Knox himself was now brought to trial, and great was the anxiety on the part of the people as to the result. The queen took her place at the head of the counsel with much dignity, but seeing Knox standing uncovered at the foot of the table, she forgot herself and burst into loud and unbecoming laughter. "That man," she said, "has made me weep, and shed never a tear himself; now I will see if I can make him weep." But Knox, however, was made of sterner stuff. The proceedings began, and Knox was asked if he was sorry for what he had done. He replied that before he could be sorry he must first be taught his offence. "You shall not escape me," said the queen; "is it not treason to accuse a prince of cruelty?" "Is it lawful, madam, for me to answer for myself, or shall I be condemned unheard?" "Say what you can, for I think you will have enough to do," said the queen exultingly. "I desire then," said Knox, "of your grace and of this honourable audience, whether you do not know that the obstinate papists are deadly enemies of all such as profess the gospel of Jesus Christ, and that they most earnestly desire the extermination of them, and of the true doctrine taught in this realm." The queen was silent; her conscience told her that the words of the fearless confessor were true, but the lords answered with one voice, God forbid that ever the lives of the faithful stood in the power of the papists, for sad experience has taught us what cruelty lies in their hearts." Knox proceeded and told the queen that the papists who had her ear were dangerous counsellors, and such her mother had found them to be before her. "But," said he, "cast up the acts of your parliament; I have offended nothing against them, but I affirm that those who have inflamed your grace against the protestants are the children of the devil, and therefore must obey the desire of their father, who was a liar and a manslayer from the beginning." This plainness of speech the queen and counsel were not in the habit of hearing. They liked not this rugged man’s rugged way of calling things by rugged names, and the chancellor interrupting, informed him that he was not in the pulpit. "I am in the place where conscience demands me to speak the truth, and therefore the truth I speak impugn it whoso list," was his reply. After some further discussion he was told he might return home. "I thank God and the queen’s majesty," said he, and withdrew. The votes were then taken as to his conduct, and he was pronounced Not Guilty by a large majority. Secretary Maitland was enraged, for he had assured the queen of his condemnation, and Mary was mortified and displeased at his acquittal, and "That nicht," says Knox, "was nyther dancing nor fiddeling in the court, for madam was disappointed of her purpose, quhilk was to have Johne Knox to her will by vote of her nobility."

Two years afterwards, the queen was married to Darnley. The Earl of Murray and many of the principal nobility objected to a man who could be "either papist or protestant as it suited him," and Mary, finding that nothing would bring them over to her party, dismissed them from her presence with taunts and reproaches. At the age of twenty-three, on a mid-summer day in 1565, she was married; and from that moment the steps of the misguided queen led rapidly downwards through a series of follies and crimes, each of which brought greater troubles in its train than those it was intended to cure. After six months of married life she found that "she hated Darnley as much as before she had loved him." He, in turn, became jealous of the Vatican agent, Rizzio, and one Saturday night a dark tragedy took place in Holyrood. Rizzio was slain in the queen’s apartments. He who had plotted the death of thousands meets with a bloody death himself.

Henceforth Mary lived only for revenge. Outwardly she masked her hatred until everything was ready for another tragedy, and then, one Sunday night in February 1567, we find her seated by the bedside of her sick husband, promising that "all should be forgotten and forgiven," and that they should live together — as in the happy days of old. About midnight she left him to "attend a ball in the palace." When she arrived at Holyrood, Bothwell left on his dark mission, and next morning the dead body of the king was found in the garden. Three months afterwards she was married to the murderer of her lawful husband. Another month, and at Carberry Hill the guilty pair met the nation in open rebellion against such high-handed wickedness. Bothwell escaped, but Mary was made prisoner and confined in Lochleven Castle. Truly "the way of trangressors is hard." The Earl of Murray, called "the Good Regent," was now elected to govern for the young king, and by his prudence and ability the country was again reduced to quietness. When Mary escaped from captivity, she met the Regent’s forces at Langside, and being once more defeated was forced to flee. This time she took refuge in England, where after a lingering imprisonment of nineteen years she was finally brought to the block.

Mary Stuart had often been warned by the faithful, if stern Knox, of the danger of her course. She lived in a day when the truths of Scripture were faithfully preached by many of her protestant subjects, but she slighted the warnings, scorned the preachers, refused to read the Scriptures for herself, lived only for pleasure, and circumstances alone hindered her from being a bitter persecutor of God’s people. The Regent Murray was an earnest, God-fearing man who sought to do that which was true and right in the high position he had been called to fill; and Knox now seeing the popish idolatry, as bethought, rooted out, and Christianity the professed religion of the nation, felt that his work was done. He was now an old man, and his life of incessant labour had told heavily on a constitution never very strong. But the papists soon found means to murder the Regent at Linlithgow, and this awakened Knox from his dreams of ease. The body was brought to Edinburgh, and Knox preached the funeral sermon from the text, "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord." Three thousand persons sat before him dissolved in tears as he described the Regent’s virtues and bewailed his loss. Knox’s grief at this event brought on a stroke of palsy, and his enemies hoped he would preach no more, but he recovered, and during the civil wars which followed between the king’s party and the queen’s party, he continued to preach in St. Giles as often as his strength would permit. Obnoxious to both parties by his fearless denunciation of evil, his life was often in danger, and one evening a musket ball was fired through the window at which he was in the habit of sitting. It happened that he was in a different part of the room at the time and so escaped the assassin’s bullet.

After a short visit to St. Andrews we find him back in Edinburgh in 1572. Here he learned with deep distress of the murder of many of his acquaintances and friends in France during the massacre of Bartholomew. But his grief speedily gave way to indignation, and he caused himself to be conveyed to the pulpit, where he summoned up his strength to thunder forth, like some Hebrew prophet of old, the vengeance of Heaven against “that cruel murderer, the King of France." The French Ambassador, Le Croc, resented Knox’s plain speech, and requested the Regent Morton to silence him. But Morton, believing that Knox had spoken only the truth, refused to interfere. Thereupon Le Croc, in much umbrage, took his departure. When tidings of the massacre reached Rome it was received in a different manner. The Pope ordered a day of solemn thanksgiving and proclaimed a year of jubilee. On the 9th of November he preached for the last time, and afterwards, "leaning upon his staff, he crept down the street to his house," from which he never came out again alive. A few days afterwards, feeling the end to be near, he sent for some of his elders and deacons, and the words with which he addressed them give us the keynote to the man’s character — the object of his life. "The day now approaches," said he, "when I shall be released from my great labours, and shall be with Christ. And now God is my witness, whom I have served in spirit, in the gospel of His Son, that I have taught nothing but the true and solid doctrine of the gospel of the Son of God." On Monday, November 24th, he fell asleep. His body was buried in the Old Greyfriar’s Churchyard, and the Regent Morton, standing at the head of the open grave, said, "There lies he who never feared the face of man." By the side of Morton’s wreath, we place another of modern manufacture. Pope Pius IX. in 1877, bewailing the loss of Scotland, says, "That savage apostate Knox, perverted Scotland by the protestant heresy, and won it over to a sect which repudiates all hierarchy, and admits only simple presbyters all equal among each other." A small plate of metal, with the initials "J.K.," let into the pavement of Parliament Square, now marks the last resting place of John Knox.