337 CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE REFORMATION. (Continued.) POLITICAL POSITION OF THE REFORMATION QUESTION IN EUROPEAN -- DIFFICULTY OF THERE were early symptoms that Scotland would not struggle hard for the old religion. In 1542 a project already referred to was laid before the Estates, as a bill is now read in Parliament, authorising the common reading of the Scriptures, "baith the New Testament and the Auld, in the vulgar tongue, in Inglis or Scottis, of ane good and true translation." 1 The Archbishop of Glasgow, on behalf of the clerical estate, protested against this measure until the question should be discussed at a 1 Act. Parl., ii. 415. VOL. III. Y general council; but it was adopted by the Estates. From 1554 to 1558—that is, during the reign of Queen Mary in England-many English converts to the doctrines of the Reformation thought it prudent to seek refuge in Scotland, where anything that had in it an element of opposition to the ruling power in England was still sure to find welcome. Among these was a distinguished preacher named Willock. John Knox, too, was virtually a fugitive from the same danger. He went first from England to France; but in 1555 he returned to Scotland, and there taught for a time, until, for reasons about which there has been much dispute, he went to take charge of the English congregation at Geneva. There was nothing in Scotland parallel to the English persecutions under Philip and Mary. The Scots looked upon the troubles there as on the work of their enemies, and would readily listen to Knox's sonorous denunciations of that wicked woman of Spanish blood who was persecuting the faithful. reason. It is of great importance, in understanding how the spirit of the Reformation was silently consolidating itself in Scotland, to keep in view that as yet the French connection, however distasteful it was becoming otherwise, did not of necessity involve hostility to the new doctrines. France, indeed, was that enemy-or at all events unsatisfactory servant of the Popedom, which the Empire, Spain, and England had been united in holy league to bring to Their religion hung lightly on the people, especially those of the higher and educated classes. The doctrines of the more moderate Reformers, which oozed into the northern provinces from England and Germany, were gaining on them before the cause was injured by the fiery and sanguinary zealots of the south. As yet the great discovery had not been made, that disloyalty to the Church was the partner of disloyalty to the Crown. This was a very significant discovery, for it involved the fate of France, and almost of Europe, for half a century. It was the stock-in-trade with which the great house of Guise worked. It enabled the head of that house to defy the sovereign, and almost drive him from the throne, the house of Guise being more loyal to Church and King than the house of Valois itself. The conspiracy of Amboise may be dealt with as the turning-point at which the party of the league and that of the Huguenots appear to have taken up their respective positions, and this event dates in 1560. During the time of the persecution in England, therefore, the queen-regent had not received the hint from her brothers that the enemies of the Church of Rome were to be dealt with as enemies of the state. Indeed there is strong reason to believe that the information she gave of her experience in Scotland in the years 1559 and 1560, helped her brothers to that important conclusion. So little hostility did she at first show to the preachers of the Reformation, that she was supposed privately to favour them; and this supposition reacted on her, by deepening the charges of treachery to which she became amenable afterwards. Queen Elizabeth had been scarce half a year on the throne when, on "the 2d of May 1559, arrived John Knox. from France." 1 Suchare the words in which he enters the event in his own chronicle. Henceforth for a time we live in the broad clear light of that wonderful book. There certainly is in the English language no other parallel to it in the clearness, vigour, and picturesqueness with which it renders the history of a stirring period. Whoever would see and feel the spirit of the Reformation in Scotland—and in England too, for that matter-must needs read and study it. The reader who may happen not to be a zealous Calvinist will deal with it as the work of a partisan. From first to last there is no mistaking it for anything else. It is throughout the living spirit of partisanship-strong, resolute, and intolerant. But, for all that, it is full of truth. In fact the author had achieved a perfection of positivism which is incompatible with dissimulation and concealment. Whatever is done by him and his is so absolutely right, and so valuable as an example and encouragement to others, that the more loudly and fully it is proclaimed to the world the better. 1 History, i. 318. Of all the revelations in this book, none is more remarkable than its writer's own character. His arrival in Scotland is an important event-all his doings are important in his own eyes, as well as in those of others. Whether it be for the adoration of the just or the malignity of the wicked, "John Knox" is ever the conspicuous figure in John Knox's book. When the regent, Mary of Lorraine, is seized with a fit of untimely exultation, it is against him that she flings. "She burst forth in her blasphemous railing and said, 'Where is now John Knox his God? My God is now stronger than his, yea, even in Fife.'" 1 Speaking of the last ecclesiastical council which attempted the internal reform of the Church, he says, "The bishops continued in their provincial council until that day that John Knox arrived in Scotland," as if this conjunction. aggravated the audacity of their doings.2 The way in which he thus sets forth his motions, as if he were writing the biography of some great man whose deeds he had the good fortune to witness, might be called egotism or vanity in one less in earnest. But it all comes of natural impulse, and reads naturally. All the world is astir, and he, John Knox, is the centre of its motion. He was a man of thorough practical experience, who had seen life in all grades-from the court to the galley-slave's bench. He was signally acute in penetrating political mysteries, and unfolding the designs of men when these were hostile ; but he was as signally blind to the true character of compliant or perfidious partisans. Working with greedy selfish men intent on their own aggrandisement, he deemed them to be as completely as himself under the influence of an unselfish religious spirit; and when the evidence of sordidness was all too flagrant, he turned his honest eyes on it with surprise, like one who beholds his sober sedate friend take suddenly to drinking, or go off in a fit of acute madness. Although the spirit of the Reformation in Scotland cannot be felt without a full study of the works of Knox, yet his testimony must be limited to the part of the field of 2 Ibid., i. 191. 1 History, ii. 8. battle in which he acted. He viewed the whole conflict as a triumph of the pure faith through its sole purity and acceptance with the Deity, and took little heed of the political and personal forces at work. Of these we form a livelier notion from the works of Sir David Lindsay, of which note is taken elsewhere. His attacks on the Church were earlier than Knox's, and indeed belong to a time when there was great danger for those who came within the ban of heresy. That this bold satirist and denouncer should have been spared when others less conspicuous and far less formidable suffered death, may at first sight be hard to account for, but is in reality very simple. In attacking the clergy for licentiousness, greed, and cruelty, he was but repeating what the authorities of the realm asserted and the Church itself mournfully confessed. Anything might be said to this purport, if he who said it were so skilful as to avoid points of heresy-such as the denial of purgatory, the real presence, and the intermediating power of the saints. To justify his burning, the heretic must have committed the sin which could only be expiated for his soul in the next world by the burning of his body. in this. When Knox arrived in Scotland, it was to take up the work where he had left it in 1554. It was scarcely then of sufficiently conspicuous magnitude to affect the tenor of history. It influenced private conferences, and sometimes broke out into polemical discussion. But it is in connection with the public influence of his return that these earlier doings become significant. We have one of his earliest triumphs among the politicians of his country told by himself, and in the full spirit of his own temper and character. It is in the year 1555, when the Reformers, far from supremacy, have not even achieved toleration-when everything tended towards the supremacy of the Romish power, and the Protestant party in Scotland were coming to an understanding with each other in quiet secrecy, doing the while all they could through their external conduct to evade inquiry and notice. Among these Knox naturally found "divers who had a zeal to godliness make small scruple to go |