John Knox and the Reformation Part 10

A supplication was presented by "the Barons, gentlemen, Burgesses, and others" to "the n.o.bility and Estates" (of whom they do not seem to reckon themselves part, contrasting _themselves_ with "yourselves"). They reminded the Estates how they had asked the Regent "for freedom and liberty of conscience with a G.o.dly reformation of abuses." They now, by way of freedom of conscience, ask that Catholic doctrine "be abolished by Act of this Parliament, and punishment appointed for the transgressors."

The Man of Sin has been distributing the whole patrimony of the Church, so that "the trew ministers," the schools, and the poor are kept out of their own. The actual clergy are all thieves and murderers and "rebels to the lawful authority of Emperors, Kings, and Princes." Against these charges (murder, rebellion, profligacy) they must answer now or be so reputed. In fact, it was the n.o.bles, rather than the Pope, who had been robbing the Kirk, education, and the poor, which they continued to do, as Knox attests. But as to doctrine, the barons and ministers were asked to lay a Confession before the House. {172}

It will be observed that, in the pet.i.tion, "Emperors, Kings, and Princes"

have "lawful authority" over the clergy. But that doctrine a.s.sumes, tacitly, that such rulers are of Knox's own opinions: the Kirk later resolutely stood up against kings like James VI., Charles I., and Charles II.

The Confession was drawn up, presented, and ratified in a very few days: it was compiled in four. The Huguenots in Paris, in 1559, "established a record" by drawing up a Confession containing eighty articles in three days. Knox and his coadjutors were relatively deliberate. They aver that all points of belief necessary for salvation are contained in the canonical books of the Bible. Their interpretation pertains to no man or Church, but solely to "the spreit of G.o.d." That "spreit" must have illuminated the Kirk as it then existed in Scotland, "for we dare not receive and admit any interpretation which directly repugns to any princ.i.p.al point of our faith, to any other _plain_ text of Scripture, or yet unto the rule of charity."

As we, the preachers of the Kirk then extant, were apostate monks or priests or artisans, about a dozen of us, in Scotland, mankind could not be expected to regard "our" interpretation, "our faith" as infallible.

The framers of the Confession did not pretend that it was infallible.

They request that, "if any man will note in this our Confession any article or sentence repugning to G.o.d's Holy Word," he will favour them with his criticism in writing. As Knox had announced six years earlier, that, "as touching the chief points of religion, I neither will give place to man or angel . . . teaching the contrair to that which ye have heard," a controversialist who thought it worth while to criticise the Confession must have deemed himself at least an archangel. Two years later, written criticism was offered, as we shall see, with a demand for a written reply. The critic escaped arrest by a lucky accident.

The Confession, with practically no criticism or opposition, was pa.s.sed en bloc on August 17. The Evangel is candidly stated to be "death to the sons of perdition," but the Confession is offered hopefully to "weak and infirm brethren." Not to enter into the higher theology, we learn that the sacraments can only be administered "by lawful ministers." We learn that _they_ are "such as are appointed to the preaching of the Word, or into whose mouth G.o.d has put some sermon of exhortation" and who are "lawfully chosen thereto by some Kirk." Later, we find that rather more than this, and rather more than some of the "trew ministeris" then had, is required.

As the doc.u.ment reaches us, it appears to have been "mitigated" by Lethington and Wynram, the Vicar of Bray of the Reformation. They altered, according to the English resident, Randolph, "many words and sentences, which sounded to proceed rather of some evil conceived opinion than of any sound judgment." As Lethington certainly was not "a lawful minister," it is surprising if Knox yielded to his criticism.

Lethington and Wynram also advised that the chapter on obedience to the sovereign power should be omitted, as "an unfit matter to be treated at this time," when it was not very obvious who the "magistrate" or authority might be. In this sense Randolph, Arran's English friend, wrote to Cecil. {174a} The chapter, however, was left standing. The sovereign, whether in empire, kingdom, duke, prince, or in free cities, was accepted as "of G.o.d's holy ordinance. To him chiefly pertains the reformation of the religion," which includes "the suppression of idolatry and superst.i.tion"; and Catholicism, we know, is idolatry. Superst.i.tion is less easily defined, but we cannot doubt that, in Knox's mind, the English liturgy was superst.i.tious. {174b} To resist the Supreme Power, "doing that which pertains to his charge" (that is, suppressing Catholicism and superst.i.tion, among other things), is to resist G.o.d. It thus appears that the sovereign is not so supreme but that he must be disobeyed when his mandates clash with the doctrine of the Kirk. Thus the "magistrate" or "authority"--the State, in fact--is limited by the conscience of the Kirk, which may, if it pleases, detect idolatry or superst.i.tion in some act of secular policy. From this theory of the Kirk arose more than a century of unrest.

On August 24, the practical consequences of the Confession were set forth in an Act, by which all hearers or celebrants of the Ma.s.s are doomed, for the first offence, to mere confiscation of all their goods and to corporal punishment: exile rewards a repet.i.tion of the offence: the third is punished by death. "Freedom from a persecuting spirit is one of the n.o.blest features of Knox's character," says Laing; "neither led away by enthusiasm nor party feelings nor success, to retaliate the oppressions and atrocities that disgraced the adherents of popery." {174c} This is an amazing remark! Though we do not know that Knox was ever "accessory to the death of a single individual for his religious opinions," we do know that he had not the chance; the Government, at most, and years later, put one priest to death. But Knox always insisted, vainly, that idolaters "must die the death."

To the carnal mind these rules appear to savour of harshness. The carnal mind would not gather exactly what the new penal laws were, if it confined its study to the learned Dr. M'Crie's Life of Knox. This erudite man, a pillar of the early Free Kirk, mildly remarks, "The Parliament . . . prohibited, under certain penalties, the celebration of the Ma.s.s." He leaves his readers to discover, in the Acts of Parliament and in Knox, what the "certain penalties" were. {175} The Act seems, as Knox says about the decrees of ma.s.sacre in Deuteronomy, "rather to be written in a rage" than in a spirit of wisdom. The majority of the human beings then in Scotland probably never had the dispute between the old and new faiths placed before them lucidly and impartially. Very many of them had never heard the ideas of Geneva stated at all. "So late as 1596," writes Dr. Hay Fleming, "there were above four hundred parishes, not reckoning Argyll and the Isles, which still lacked ministers." "The rarity of learned and G.o.dly men" of his own persuasion, is regretted by Knox in the Book of Discipline. Yet Catholics thus dest.i.tute of opportunity to know and recognise the Truth, are threatened with confiscation, exile, and death, if they cling to the only creed which they have been taught--after August 17, 1560. The death penalty was threatened often, by Scots Acts, for trifles. In this case the graduated scale of punishment shows that the threat is serious.

This Act sounds insane, but the Convention was wise in its generation.

Had it merely abolished the persecuting laws of the Church, Scotland might never have been Protestant. The old faith is infinitely more attractive to mankind than the new Presbyterian verity. A thing of slow and long evolution, the Church had a.s.similated and hallowed the world-old festivals of the year's changing seasons. She provided for the human love of recreation. Her Sundays were holidays, not composed of gloomy hours in stuffy or draughty kirks, under the current voice of the preacher. Her confessional enabled the burdened soul to lay down its weight in sacred privacy; her music, her ceremonies, the dim religious light of her fanes, naturally awaken religious emotion. While these things, with the native tendency to resist authority of any kind, appealed to the mult.i.tude, the position of the Church, in later years, recommended itself to many educated men in Scotland as more logical than that of Knox; and convert after convert, in the n.o.ble cla.s.s, slipped over to Rome. The missionaries of the counter-Reformation, but for the persecuting Act, would have arrived in a Scotland which did not persecute, and the work of the Convention of 1560 might all have been undone, had not the stringent Act been pa.s.sed.

That Act apparently did not go so far as the preachers desired. Thus Archbishop Hamilton, writing to Archbishop Beaton in Paris, the day after the pa.s.sing of the Act, says, "All these new preachers openly persuade the n.o.bility in the pulpit, to put violent hands, and slay all churchmen that will not concur and adopt their opinion. They only reproach my Lord Duke" (the Archbishop's brother), "that he will not begin first, and either cause me to do as they do, or else to use rigour on me by slaughter, sword, or, at least, perpetual prison." {177a} It is probable that the Archbishop was well informed as to what the bigots were saying, though he is not likely to have "sat under" them; moreover, he would hear of their advice from his brother, the Duke, with whom he had just held a long conference. {177b} Lesley, Bishop of Ross, in his "History,"

praises the humanity of the n.o.bles, "for at this time few Catholics were banished, fewer were imprisoned, and none were executed." The n.o.bles interfering, the threatened capital punishment was not carried out. Mob violence, oppression by Protestant landlords, Kirk censure, imprisonment, fine, and exile, did their work in suppressing idolatry and promoting hypocrisy.

No doubt this grinding ceaseless daily process of enforcing Truth, did not go far enough for the great body of the brethren, especially the G.o.dly burgesses of the towns; indeed, as early as June 10, 1560, the Provost, Bailies, and Town Council of Edinburgh proclaimed that idolaters must instantly and publicly profess their conversion before the Ministers and Elders on the penalty of the pillory for the first offence, banishment from the town for the second, and death for the third. {177c}

It must always be remembered that the threat of the death penalty often meant, in practice, very little. It was denounced, under Mary of Guise (February 9, 1559), against men who bullied priests, disturbed services, and ate meat in Lent. It was denounced against shooters of wild fowl, and against those, of either religious party, who broke the Proclamation of October 1561. Yet "n.o.body seemed one penny the worse" as regards their lives, though the punishments of fining and banis.h.i.+ng were, on occasions, enforced against Catholics.

We may marvel that, in the beginning, Catholic martyrs did not present themselves in crowds to the executioner. But even under the rule of Rome it would not be easy to find thirty cases of martyrs burned at the stake by "the bloudie Bishops," between the fifteenth century and the martyrdom of Myln. By 1560 the old Church was in such a hideous decline--with ruffianly men of quality in high spiritual places; with priests who did not attend Ma.s.s, and in many cases could not read; with churches left to go to ruin; with license so notable that, in one foundation, the priest is only forbidden to keep a _constant_ concubine--that faith had waxed cold, and no Catholic felt "ripe" for martyrdom. The elements of a League, as in France, did not exist. There was no fervently Catholic town population like that of Paris; no popular n.o.ble warriors, like the Ducs de Guise, to act as leaders. Thus Scotland, in this age, ran little risk of a religious civil war. No organised and armed faction existed to face the Congregation. When the counter-Reformation set in, many Catholics endured fines and exile with constancy.

The theology of the Confession of Faith is, of course, Calvinistic. No "works" are, technically, "good" which are not the work of the Spirit of our Lord, dwelling in our hearts by faith. "Idolaters," and wicked people, not having that spirit, can do no good works. The blasphemy that "men who live according to equity and justice shall be saved, what religion soever they have professed," is to be abhorred. "The Kirk is invisible," consisting of the Elect, "who are known only to G.o.d." This gave much cause of controversy to Knox's Catholic opponents. "The notes of the true Church" are those of Calvin's. As to the Sacrament, though the elements be not the _natural_ body of Christ, yet "the faithful, in the right use of the Lord's Table, so do eat the body and drink the blood of the Lord Jesus that He remains in them and they in Him . . . in such conjunction with Christ Jesus as the natural man cannot comprehend."

This is a highly sacramental and confessedly mystical doctrine, not less unintelligible to "the natural man" than the Catholic theory which Knox so strongly reprobated. Alas, that men called Christian have shed seas of blood over the precise sense of that touching command of our Lord, which, though admitted to be incomprehensible, they have yet endeavoured to comprehend and define!

A serious task for Knox was to draw up, with others, a "Book of the Policy and Discipline of the Kirk," a task entrusted to them in April 1560. In politics, till January 1561, the Lords hoped that they might induce Elizabeth (then entangled with Leicester, as Knox knew) to marry Arran, but whether "Glycerium" (as Bishop Jewel calls her) had already detected in "the saucy youth" "a half crazy fool," as Mr. Froude says, or not, she firmly refused. She much preferred Lord Robert Dudley, whose wife had just then broken her neck. The unfortunate Arran had fought resolutely, Knox tells us, by the side of Lord James, in the winter of 1559, but he already, in 1560, showed strange moods, and later fell into sheer lunacy. In December died "the young King of France, husband to our Jezebel--unhappy Francis . . . he suddenly perished of a rotten ear . . .

in that deaf ear that never would hear the truth of G.o.d" (December 5, 1560). We have little of Knox's poetry, but he probably composed a translation, in verse, of a Latin poem indited by one of "the G.o.dly in France," whence he borrowed his phrase "a rotten ear" (aure putrefacta corruit).

"Last Francis, that unhappy child, His father's footsteps following plain, To Christ's crying deaf ears did yield, A rotten ear was then his bane."

The version is wonderfully close to the original Latin.

Meanwhile, Francis was hardly cold before Arran wooed his idolatrous widow, Queen Mary, "with a gay gold ring." She did not respond favourably, and "the Earl bare it heavily in his heart, and more heavily than many would have wissed," says Knox, with whom Arran was on very confidential terms. Knox does not rebuke his pa.s.sion for Jezebel. He himself "was in no small heaviness by reason of the late death of his dear bedfellow, Marjorie Bowes," of whom we know very little, except that she worked hard to lighten the labours of Knox's vast correspondence. He had, as he says, "great intelligence both with the churches and some of the Court of France," and was the first to receive news of the perilous illness of the young King. He carried the tidings to the Duke and Lord James, at the Hamilton house near Kirk o' Field, but would not name his informant. Then came the news of the King's death from Lord Grey de Wilton, at Berwick, and a Convention of the n.o.bles was proclaimed for January 15, 1561, to "peruse newly over again" the Book of Discipline.

CHAPTER XIII: KNOX AND THE BOOK OF DISCIPLINE

This Book of Discipline, containing the model of the Kirk, had been seen by Randolph in August 1560, and he observed that its framers would not come into ecclesiastical conformity with England. They were "severe in that they profess, and loth to remit anything of that they have received." As the difference between the Genevan and Anglican models contributed so greatly to the Civil War under Charles I., the results may be regretted; Anglicans, by 1643, were looked on as "Baal wors.h.i.+ppers" by the precise Scots.

In February 1561, Randolph still thought that the Book of Discipline was rather in advance of what fallen human nature could endure. Idolatry, of course, was to be removed universally; thus the Queen, when she arrived, was constantly insulted about her religion. The Lawful Calling of Ministers was explained; we have already seen that a lawful minister is a preacher who can get a local set of men to recognise him as such. Knox, however, before his return to Scotland, had advised the brethren to be very careful in examining preachers before accepting them. The people and "every several Congregation" have a right to elect their minister, and, if they do not do so in six weeks, the Superintendent (a migratory official, in some ways superior to the clergy, but subject to periodical "trial" by the a.s.sembly, who very soon became extinct), with his council, presents a man who is to be examined by persons of sound judgment, and next by the ministers and elders of the Kirk. n.o.body is to be "violently intrused" on any congregation. Nothing is said about an university training; moral character is closely scrutinised. On the admission of a new minister, some other ministers should preach "touching the obedience which the Kirk owe to their ministers. . . . The people should be exhorted to reverence and honour their chosen ministers as the servants and amba.s.sadors of the Lord Jesus, obeying the commandments which they speak from G.o.d's mouth and Book, even as they would obey G.o.d himself. . . . "

{182}

The practical result of this claim on the part of the preachers to implicit obedience was more than a century of turmoil, civil war, revolution, and reaction. The ministers constantly preached political sermons, and the State--the King and his advisers--was perpetually arraigned by them. To "reject" them, "and despise their ministry and exhortation" (as when Catholics were not put to death on their instance), was to "reject and despise" our Lord! If accused of libel, or treasonous libel, or "leasing making," in their sermons, they demanded to be judged by their brethren. Their brethren acquitting them, where was there any other judicature? These pretensions, with the right to inflict excommunication (in later practice to be followed by actual outlawry), were made, we saw, when there were not a dozen "true ministers" in the nascent Kirk, and, of course, the claims became more exorbitant when "true ministers" were reckoned by hundreds. No State could submit to such a clerical tyranny.

People who only know modern Presbyterianism have no idea of the despotism which the Fathers of the Kirk tried, for more than a century, to enforce.

The preachers sat in the seats of the Apostles; they had the gift of the Keys, the power to bind and loose. Yet the Book of Discipline permits no other ceremony, at the induction of these mystically gifted men, than "the public approbation of the people, and declaration of the chief minister"--later there was no "_chief_ minister," there was "parity" of ministers. Any other ceremony "we cannot approve"; "for albeit the Apostles used the imposition of hands, yet seeing the miracle is ceased, the using of the ceremony we judge it not necessary." The miracle had _not_ ceased, if it was true that "the commandments" issued in sermons--political sermons often--really deserved to be obeyed, as men "would obey G.o.d himself." C'est la le miracle! There could be no more amazing miracle than the infallibility of preachers! "The imposition of hands" was, twelve years later, restored; but as far as infallible sermons were concerned, the State agreed with Knox that "the miracle had ceased."

The political sermons are sometimes justified by the a.n.a.logy of modern discussion in the press. But leading articles do not pretend to be infallible, and editors do not a.s.sert a right to be obeyed by men, "even as they would obey G.o.d himself." The preachers were often right, often wrong: their sermons were good, or were silly; but what no State could endure was the claim of preachers to implicit obedience.

The difficulty in finding really qualified ministers must be met by fervent prayer, and by compulsion on the part of the Estates of Parliament.

Failing ministers, Readers, capable of reading the Common Prayers (presently it was Knox's book of these) and the Bible must be found; they may later be promoted to the ministry.

Stationary ministers are to receive less sustenance than the migratory Superintendents; the sons of the preachers must be educated, the daughters "honestly dowered." The payment is mainly in "bolls" of meal and malt. The state of the poor, "fearful and horrible" to say, is one of universal contempt. Provision must be made for the aged and weak.

Superintendents, after election, are to be examined by all the ministers of the province, and by three or more Superintendents. Other ceremonies "we cannot allow." In 1581, a Scottish Catholic, Burne, averred that Willock objected to ceremonies of Ordination, because people would say, if these are necessary, what minister ordained _you_? The query was hard to answer, so ceremonies of Ordination could not be allowed. The story was told to Burne, he says, by an eyewitness, who heard Willock.

Every church must have a schoolmaster, who ought to be able to teach grammar and Latin. Education should be universal: poor children of ability must be enabled to pa.s.s on to the universities, through secondary schools. At St. Andrews the three colleges were to have separate functions, not clas.h.i.+ng, and culminating in Divinity.

Whence are the funds to be obtained? Here the authors bid "your Honours"

"have respect to your poor brethren, the labourers of the ground, who by these cruel beasts, the papists, have been so oppressed . . . " They ought only to pay "reasonable teinds, that they may feel some benefit of Christ Jesus, now preached unto them. With grief of heart we hear that some gentlemen are now as cruel over their tenants as ever were the papists, requiring of them whatsoever they paid to the Church, so that the papistical tyranny shall only be changed into the tyranny of the landlord or laird." Every man should have his own teinds, or t.i.thes; whereas, in fact, the great lay holders of t.i.thes took them off other men's lands, a practice leading to many blood-feuds. The attempt of Charles I. to let "every man have his own t.i.thes," and to provide the preachers with a living wage, was one of the causes of the distrust of the King which culminated in the great Civil War. But Knox could not "recover for the Church her liberty and freedom, and that only for relief of the poor." "_We speak not for ourselves_" the Book says, "but in favour of the poor, and the labourers defrauded . . . The Church is only bound to sustain and nourish her charges . . . to wit the Ministers of the Kirk, the Poor, and the teachers of youth." The funds must be taken out of the t.i.thes, the chantries, colleges, chaplainries, and the temporalities of Bishops, Deans, and cathedrals generally.

The ministers are to have their manses, and glebes of six acres; to this many of the Lords a.s.sented, except, oddly enough, those redoubtable leaders of the Congregation, Glencairn and Morton, with Marischal. All the part of the book which most commands our sympathy, the most Christian part of the book, regulating the disposition of the revenues of the fallen Church for the good of the poor, of education, and of the Kirk, remained a dead letter. The Duke, Arran, Lord James, and a few barons, including the ruffian Andrew Ker of Faldonside, with Glencairn and Ochiltree, signed it, in token of approval, but little came of it all.

Lethington, probably, was the scoffer who styled these provisions "devout imaginations." The n.o.bles and lairds, many of them, were converted, in matter of doctrine; in conduct they were the most avaricious, b.l.o.o.d.y, and treacherous of all the generations which had banded, revelled, robbed, and betrayed in Scotland.

There is a point in this matter of the Kirk's claim to the patrimony of the old Church which perhaps is generally misunderstood. That point is luminous as regards the absolute disinterestedness of Knox and his companions, both in respect to themselves and their fellow-preachers. The Book of Discipline contains a sentence already quoted, conceived in what we may justly style a chivalrous contempt of wealth. "Your Honours may easily understand _that we speak not now for ourselves_, but in favour of the Poor, and the labourers defrauded . . . " Not having observed a point which "their Honours" were not the men to "understand easily,"

Father Pollen writes, "the new preachers were loudly _claiming for themselves_ the property of the rivals whom they had displaced." {186} For themselves they were claiming a few merks, and a few bolls of meal, a decent subsistence. Mr. Taylor Innes points out that when, just before Darnley's murder, Mary offered "a considerable sum for the maintenance of the ministers," Knox and others said that, for their sustentation, they "craved of the auditors the things that were necessary, as of duty the pastors might justly crave of their flock. The General a.s.sembly accepted the Queen's gift, but only of necessity; it was by their flock that they ought to be sustained. To take from others contrary to their will, whom they serve not, they judge it not their duty, nor yet reasonable."

Among other things the preachers, who were left with a hard struggle for bare existence, introduced a rule of honour scarcely known to the barons and n.o.bles, except to the bold Buccleuch who rejected an English pension from Henry VIII., with a sympathetic explosion of strong language. The preachers would not take gifts from England, even when offered by the supporters of their own line of policy.

Knox's failure in his admirable attempt to secure the wealth of the old Church for national purposes was, as it happened, the secular salvation of the Kirk. Neither Catholicism nor Anglicanism could be fully introduced while the barons and n.o.bles held the t.i.thes and lands of the ancient Church. Possessing the wealth necessary to a Catholic or Anglican establishment, they were resolutely determined to cling to it, and oppose any Church except that which they starved. The bishops of James I., Charles I., and Charles II. were detested by the n.o.bles. Rarely from them came any lordly gifts to learning and the Universities, while from the honourably poor ministers such gifts could not come. The Universities were founded by prelates of the old Church, doing their duty with their wealth.

The arrangements for discipline were of the drastic nature which lingered into the days of Burns and later. The results may be studied in the records of Kirk Sessions; we have no reason to suppose that s.e.xual morality was at all improved, on the whole, by "discipline," though it was easier to enforce "Sabbath observance." A graduated scale of admonitions led up to excommunication, if the subject was refractory, and to boycotting with civil penalties. The processes had no effect, or none that is visible, in checking lawlessness, robbery, feuds, and manslayings; and, after the Reformation, witchcraft increased to monstrous proportions, at least executions of people accused of witchcraft became very numerous, in spite of provision for sermons thrice a week, and for weekly discussions of the Word.

The Book of Discipline, modelled on the Genevan scheme, and on that of A'Lasco for his London congregation, rather reminds us of the "Laws" of Plato. It was a well meant but impracticable ideal set before the country, and was least successful where it best deserved success. It certainly secured a thoroughly moral clergy, till, some twelve years later, the n.o.bles again thrust licentious and murderous cadets into the best livings and the b.a.s.t.a.r.d bishoprics, before and during the Regency of Morton. Their example did not affect the genuine ministers, frugal G.o.d- fearing men.

CHAPTER XIV: KNOX AND QUEEN MARY, 1561

In discussing the Book of Discipline, that great constructive effort towards the remaking of Scotland, we left Knox at the time of the death of his first wife. On December 20, 1560, he was one of some six ministers who, with more numerous lay representatives of districts, sat in the first General a.s.sembly. They selected some new preachers, and decided that the church of Restalrig should be destroyed as a monument of idolatry. A fragment of it is standing yet, enclosing tombs of the wild Logans of Restalrig.

The a.s.sembly pa.s.sed an Act against lawless love, and invited the Estates and Privy Council to "use sharp punishment" against some "idolaters,"