John Knox and the Reformation | Page 6

cannot be moved. He had now a pou sto,
whence he could, and did, move the world of human affairs. A faith not
to be shaken, and enormous energy were the essential attributes of the
Reformer. It is almost impossible to find an instance in which Knox
allows that he may have been mistaken: d'avoir toujours raison was his
claim. If he admits an error in details, it is usually an error of
insufficient severity. He did not attack Northumberland or Mary Stuart
with adequate violence; he did not disapprove enough of our prayer
book; he did not hand a heretic over to the magistrates.
While acting as a priest and notary, between 1540, at latest, and 1543,
Knox was engaged as private tutor to a boy named Brounefield, son of
Brounefield of Greenlaw, and to other lads, spoken of as his "bairns."
In this profession of tutor he continued till 1547.
Knox's personal aspect did not give signs of the uncommon strength
which his unceasing labours demanded, but, like many men of energy,
he had a perpetual youth of character and vigour. After his death, Peter
Young described him as he appeared in his later years. He was
somewhat below the "just" standard of height; his limbs were well and
elegantly shaped; his shoulders broad, his fingers rather long, his head
small, his hair black, his face somewhat swarthy, and not unpleasant to
behold. There was a certain geniality in a countenance serious and stern,
with a natural dignity and air of command; his eyebrows, when he was
in anger, were expressive. His forehead was rather narrow, depressed

above the eyebrows; his cheeks were full and ruddy, so that the eyes
seemed to retreat into their hollows: they were dark grey, keen, and
lively. The face was long, the nose also; the mouth was large, the upper
lip being the thicker. The beard was long, rather thick and black, with a
few grey hairs in his later years. {12} The nearest approach to an
authentic portrait of Knox is a woodcut, engraved after a sketch from
memory by Peter Young, and after another sketch of the same kind by
an artist in Edinburgh. Compared with the peevish face of Calvin, also
in Beza's Icones, Knox looks a broad-minded and genial character.
Despite the uncommon length to which Knox carried the contemporary
approval of persecution, then almost universal, except among the
Anabaptists (and any party out of power), he was not personally
rancorous where religion was not concerned. But concerned it usually
was! He was the subject of many anonymous pasquils and libels, we
know, but he entirely disregarded them. If he hated any mortal
personally, and beyond what true religion demands of a Christian, that
mortal was the mother of Mary Stuart, an amiable lady in an impossible
position. Of jealousy towards his brethren there is not a trace in Knox,
and he told Queen Mary that he could ill bear to correct his own boys,
though the age was as cruel to schoolboys as that of St. Augustine.
The faults of Knox arose not in his heart, but in his head; they sprung
from intellectual errors, and from the belief that he was always right.
He applied to his fellow-Christians--Catholics--the commands which
early Israel supposed to be divinely directed against foreign
worshippers of Chemosh and Moloch. He endeavoured to force his own
theory of what the discipline of the Primitive Apostolic Church had
been upon a modern nation, following the example of the little city
state of Geneva, under Calvin. He claimed for preachers chosen by
local congregations the privileges and powers of the apostolic
companions of Christ, and in place of "sweet reasonableness," he
applied the methods, quite alien to the Founder of Christianity, of the
"Sons of Thunder." All controversialists then relied on isolated and
inappropriate scriptural texts, and Biblical analogies which were not
analogous; but Knox employed these things, with perhaps unusual
inconsistency, in varying circumstances. His "History" is not more

scrupulous than that of other partisans in an exciting contest, and
examples of his taste for personal scandal are not scarce.
CHAPTER II
: KNOX, WISHART, AND THE MURDER OF BEATON: 1545-1546
Our earliest knowledge of Knox, apart from mention of him in notarial
documents, is derived from his own History of the Reformation. The
portion of that work in which he first mentions himself was written
about 1561-66, some twenty years after the events recorded, and in
reading all this part of his Memoirs, and his account of the religious
struggle, allowance must be made for errors of memory, or for
erroneous information. We meet him first towards the end of "the holy
days of Yule"--Christmas, 1545. Knox had then for some weeks been
the constant companion and armed bodyguard of George Wishart, who
was