John Knox | Page 4

a great Council
had died out. And the University of Paris, instead of continuing to act
in place of that coming Council as 'a sort of standing committee of the
French, or even of the universal, Church,'[3] had become a reactionary
and retarding power. It opposed Humanism, and was the stronghold of
the method of teaching which the new generation knew as 'Sophistry.' It
opposed Reuchlin, and was preparing to oppose Luther, and to urge
against its own most distinguished pupils the law of penal fire. It
continued to oppose the despotism of the Pope, but it did so rather from
the standpoint of a narrow and nationalist Gallicanism, based largely
upon the counter-despotism of the King. This selfish policy attained in
Major's own time its fitting result and reward. The despotic King and
despotic Pope found it convenient for their interests to partition
between them the 'liberties' of the Gallican Church; and by the
Concordat of Bologna in 1516, Leo gained a huge revenue from the
ecclesiastical endowments of France, while Francis usurped the right of
nominating all its bishops. The University, as well as the Parliaments,
resisted, and Major, who now lectured in the Sorbonne as Doctor in
Theology, and had become famous as a representative of the anti-Papal

school of Occam, took his share in the work. He was preparing for
publication a Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, and he now
added to it four Disputations against the arbitrary powers of Popes and
Bishops, and especially against the authority of Popes in temporal
matters over Kings, and in spiritual matters over Councils. It was all in
vain. In 1517 the University was forced by the Crown to submit, after a
protest of the broadest kind;[4] and in 1518 Major returned to his native
country a famous teacher, but a defeated churchman. Yet the grave fact
for Scotland was that Major and his old University, and the Western
hierarchy everywhere, henceforward practically acquiesced in their
own defeat. A greater question had arisen, and one which they were
unwilling to face. On the other side of the Rhine, Luther and his friends
now claimed for the individual Christian the same kind of freedom
against Councils and Bishops which the previous century had claimed
for Councils and Bishops against Popes. Paris took the lead in
opposition to the new Evangel by its Academic decrees of 1521. And
when Major, in 1530, republished his Commentary, he not only omitted
from it his Disputations against Papal absolutism, but dedicated it to
Archbishop James Beaton as the 'supplanter' and 'exterminator' of
Lutheranism, and, above all, as the judge who, amid the murmurings of
many, had recently[5] and righteously condemned the nobly-born
Patrick Hamilton.
It may be well thus to represent to ourselves what must have been the
outlook into the Western Church of Major, or of any one who looked
through Major's eyes, in that year 1523. But I think it very unlikely that
Knox could have derived from such an outlook, or from Major in any
aspect, a serious impulse to his career as Reformer. Knox no doubt
learned from him scholastic logic, and turned it in later days with much
vigour to his own purposes. Major, too, may have unconsciously
revealed to his pupils with how much hope the former generation had
looked forward to a council. We find afterwards that Knox and his
friends, like Luther in his earlier stages, when appealing against the
hierarchy, sometimes appealed to a General Council. But neither side
regarded this as serious. It would have been more important if we could
have shown that Major transmitted to his pupil the opposition
maintained for centuries by his university to an ultramontane Pontiff as

the hereditary opponent of all Church freedom and all Church reform.
But Luther and the German Reformers had already exaggerated this
view, so far as to suggest that the usurping chief of the Church must be
the scriptural Antichrist. And their views, brought direct to Scotland by
men like Hamilton, had, as we have seen, immensely increased the
reaction in the mind of Major, which was begun abroad before 1518. It
is, indeed, curious to notice how in his later writings the old university
feeling against tyranny in the Church almost disappears, while the
equally old and honourable feeling of the learned Middle Age, and
especially of its universities, against the tyranny of kings and nobles,
finds expression alike in his history and his commentaries. Buchanan,
who proclaimed to all Europe the constitutional rights, even against
their sovereign, of the people of Scotland, and Knox, the 'subject born
within the same,' who was destined to translate that Radical theory so
largely into fact, were both taught by Major. And they may well have
been much influenced on this side by a man who