John Knox | Page 5

had long before
written that 'the original and supreme power resides in the whole of a
free people, and is incapable of being surrendered,' insomuch that an
incorrigible tyrant may always be 'deposed by that people as by a
superior authority.'[6] For even Fergus the First, he narrates, 'had no
right' other than the nation's choice, and when Sir William Wallace was
yet a boy, he was taught by his Scottish tutor to repeat continually the
rude inspiring rhyme, 'Dico tibi verum Libertas optima rerum.'[7]
These views as to the rights of man, and of Scottish men, may well
have fanned, or even kindled, the strong feeling of independence in
secular matters and as a citizen, which burned in the breast of Knox.
But as to spiritual matters and the Church universal, the only feelings
which we can imagine Major, on his return from abroad, to have
impressed upon the younger man from Haddington are a despair of
reform, and a disbelief in revolution.
Let us turn, therefore, from abroad to the Church at home. It is admitted
on all hands that the clergy of this age in Scotland were extraordinarily
corrupt in life, a reproach which applied eminently to the higher ranks
and the representative men. But corruption of churchmen is always a
symptom of deeper things. It does not appear that Scotland was much
influenced by the spirit of the Renaissance, whether you apply that term

to the intellectual passion for both knowledge and beauty which spread
over most parts of Europe during the three previous centuries, or to the
more specific and half-Pagan culture which in some parts of Europe
was the result. It may be more important to observe that the Church in
Scotland had not enjoyed any period of inward religious revival--any
which could be described as native to it or original. On the contrary its
great epoch had been its transformation, through royal and foreign
influence, into the likeness of English and continental civilisation, as
civilisation was understood in the Middle Age. And that transformation
in the days of Queen Margaret and her sons was accompanied, and to a
large extent compensated, by a less desirable incorporation into the
western ecclesiastical system. The later 'coming of the Friars' had not
the same powerful effect in the remote north which it had in some other
realms. And in any case that impulse too had long since yielded to a
strong reaction, and the preachers were now regarded with the disgust
with which mankind usually resent the attempt to manipulate them by
external means without a real message. But there were two great
sources of ruin to the Scottish church, both connected with its relation
to a powerful aristocracy. One was the extraordinary extent to which its
high offices were used as sinecures for the favourites, and the sons of
favourites, of nobles and of kings. This did not tend to impoverish the
church; on the contrary, it made it an object to all the great families to
keep up the wealth on which they proposed that their unworthy scions
should feed. 'In proportion to the resources of the country the Scottish
clergy were probably the richest in Europe.'[8] But the wealth,
accumulated in idle and unworthy hands, was now a scandal to religion,
and a constant fountain of immorality. Still worse was the extent to
which that wealth was in Scotland diverted from its best uses to the less
desirable side--the monastic side--of the mediæval church. In the
revival which came from England before the twelfth century, a great
impulse had been given to the parochialising of the country, and to
keeping up religious life in every district and estate. But a prejudice
running back to very early centuries branded the parish priests as
seculars, and gradually drew away again the devotion and the means of
the faithful from the parishes where they were needed, and to which
they properly belonged. It drew them away, in Scotland, not only to
rich centres like cathedrals, with their too wasteful retinue, but far more

to the great monasteries scattered over the land. Kings and barons, who
proposed to spend life so as to need after its close a good deal of
intercession, naturally turned their eyes, even before death-bed, to these
wealthy strongholds of poverty and prayer; and of a hundred other
places besides Melrose, we know 'That lands and livings, many a rood,
had gifted the shrine for their soul's repose.' But the transfer, to such
centres, of lands (which were supposed, by the feudal law, to belong to
chiefs rather than to the community), was not so direct an injury to the
people of Scotland, as the alienation to the same institutions of
parochial tithes--sometimes under the form of alienating the churches
to which the tithes were