John Knox | Page 8

a letter, 'which
received and read, he called for John Knox, who had waited upon him
carefully from the time he came to Lothian.' And the same evening,
with a presentiment of his coming arrest, he 'took his good-night, as it
were for ever,' of all his acquaintance, and
'John Knox pressing to have gone with the said Master George, he said,
"Nay, return to your bairns, and God bless you! One is sufficient for
one sacrifice." And so he caused a two-handed sword (which
commonly was carried with the said Master George) be taken from the
said John Knox, who, although unwillingly, obeyed, and returned with
Hugh Douglas of Longniddrie.'[11]
The same night Wishart was arrested by the Earl of Bothwell, and
afterwards handed over to the Cardinal Archbishop, tried by him as a
heretic, and on 1st March 1546 burned in front of his castle of St
Andrews. Ere long this stronghold was stormed, and the Cardinal
murdered in his own chamber by a number of the gentlemen of Fife,
whose raid was partly in revenge for Wishart's death. They shut

themselves up in the castle for protection, and we hear no more of John
Knox till the following year. Then we are told that, 'wearied of
removing from place to place, by reason of the persecution that came
upon him by the Bishop of St Andrews,' he joined Leslie's band in their
hold in St Andrews, in consequence of the desire of his pupils' parents
'that himself might have the benefit of the castle, and their children the
benefit of his doctrine [teaching].' It is plain that by this time what
Knox taught was the doctrine of Wishart. Indeed he had not been long
in St Andrews when, urged by the congregation there, he consented to
become its preacher. And his very first sermon in this capacity rang out
the full note of the coming reform or rather revolution in the religion of
Scotland.
Now, this is a startlingly sudden transition. The change from the
position of a nameless notary under Papal authority, who is in addition
a minister of the altar of the Catholic Church, to that of a preacher in
the whole armour of the Puritan Reformation, is great. Was the
transition a public and official one only? Was it a change merely
ecclesiastical or political? Or was it preceded by a more private change
and a personal crisis? And was that private and personal crisis merely
intellectual? Was it, that is, the adoption of a new dogma only, or
perhaps the acceptance of a new system? Or if there was something
besides these, was it nothing more than the resolve of a very powerful
will--such a will as we must all ascribe to Knox? Was this all? Or was
there here rather, perhaps, the sort of change which determines the will
instead of being determined by it--a personal change, in the sense of
being emotional and inward as well as deep and permanent--a new set
of the whole man, and so the beginning of an inner as well as of an
outer and public life?
The question is of the highest interest, but as we have said, there is no
direct answer. It would be easy for each reader to supply the void by
reasoning out, according to his own prepossessions, what must have
been, or what ought to have been, the experience of such a man at such
a time. It would be easy--but unprofitable. Far better would it be could
we adduce from his own utterances evidence--indirect evidence
even--that the crisis which he declines to record really took place; and

that the great outward career was founded on a new personal life within.
Now there is such an utterance, which has been hitherto by no means
sufficiently recognised. It is 'a meditation or prayer, thrown forth of my
sorrowful heart and pronounced by my half-dead tongue,' on 12th
March, 1566, at a moment when Knox's cause was in extremity of
danger. Mary had joined the Catholic League and driven the Protestant
Lords into England, and their attempted counter-plot had failed by the
defection of Darnley. Knox had now before him certain exile and
possible death, and on the eve of leaving Edinburgh he sat down and
wrote privately the following personal confession. Five years later,
when publishing his last book, after the national victory but amid great
public troubles, he prefixed a preface explaining that he had already
'taken good-night at the world and at all the fasherie of the same,' and
henceforward wished his brethren only to pray that God would 'put an
end to my long and painful battle.' And with this preface he now
printed the old meditation or confession of 1566. It is therefore
autobiographical by a double title. And