much gold. The inhabitants there are The inhabitants there are rightly instructed in religion, and obedient to all the laws and ordinances of the English. May the Almighty God, the Chief Governor of all things, grant that our life and actions may sometime correspond to the word and doctrine of his Son, which is at this time gloriously proclaimed both by land and sea. All persons are beginning to speak well about Christ; but there are yet very few who live agreeably to Christian principle. Farewell, most learned sir.*

"Bradgate, May 29, 1551."

* "Original Letters relative to the English Reformation," p. 434. (Parker Society.)-Bradgate, near Leicester, was the Seat of the Marquis of Dorset, and the home of Lady Jane Grey. It is interesting to think of John Willock, Knox's friend, as having been for several years the pastor and teacher of that pious, accomplished, and unfortunate lady. It was, no doubt, he who taught her in the first instance to think so highly of Bullinger, whose correspondent she became; for Willock too, like Knox, was a reformer of the Helvetic type. The only letter of his found among the Zurich collection was drawn from him by a kind reference made to him by Bullinger, in the dedication of the Fifth Decade to the Marquis of Dorset. "Your piety," said Bullinger to the Marquis, "needs none of my teaching, seeing that it is well enough instructed in true religion, and is surrounded with most learned and godly men on all sides, of whom Master Robert Skinner and Master John Willock, very excellent individuals, are none of the least." Whereupon Willock, in a letter of May 12, 1552, from Oxford, thus expresses his gratified feelings: "Health in Christ. I came over to Oxford on the 11th of May, which as soon as John ab Ulmis knew, he has never ceased asking me, most excellent sir, to send you a letter. I wrote you soon after Christmas, but knew not whether my letter ever reached you; I will, therefore, only at present briefly touch upon the heads of what I then wrote. First of all, everlasting thanks for the kindness by which you were induced to make such affectionate mention of me in your dedicatory preface to our Prince [The Marquis of Dorset, now Duke of Suffolk]. I have ever admired your universally acknowledged learning and erudition. The Prince certainly received that little present of yours with a most grateful and well-disposed mind; and you must know that you have not acted more honourably than usefully and piously; for, as Socrates says, the exhortations of great men are as a whip and spur to happy perseverance in a praiseworthy course of life. Every night, when we were employed on the Scottish borders, after the book had been received there from John ab Ulmis, with great difficulty on his part, his Highness was not satisfied with having a large portion of your book merely read to him, but would have it diligently examined, by which I perceived him, endued as he was with a most excellent disposition, greatly to improve; and, indeed, he very often expressed himself greatly obliged to you for it."

It is curious to read the above notice, coming to us from so unexpected a quarter, of the religious condition of so interesting a spot as Holy Island, where St. Aidan, nearly a thousand years before, had fixed the head-quarters of his renowned mission to the Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, and from which, as a holy centre, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as it was understood and loved in the monastery of Iona, was radiated all round to the heathen subjects of good King Oswald.

If, as early as 1551, the Gospel had been restored to the island of St. Aidan and St. Cuthbert, it cannot be doubted that this was the work of John Knox. There was no other preacher in that remote corner of the kingdom to do it at so early a date but himself. Though located in Berwick, we know that he was an Evangelist to all the country round. He resumed and repeated, after many centuries of darkness and superstition, the work of the Columban missionaries; and if Aidan has been justly called the Apostle of Northumbria, the four years of incessant and devoted labour which Knox spent in carrying back the lost Gospel to the same interesting region, may well entitle him to the gratitude of all Protestant Northumbrians, as the second apostle of the English border.

Before the scene of our narrative changes to Newcastle, the following interesting paragraph must be added here from the pages of Knox's learned biographer :

"Before he left Berwick, Knox had paid his addresses to Marjory Bowes, and met with a favourable reception. Her mother, also, was friendly to the match; but, owing to some reason, most probably the presumed aversion of her father, it was deemed prudent to delay solemnizing the union. But, having come under a formal promise to her ("faithful promise before witness," as he wrote himself), he considered himself from that time as sacredly bound, and, in his letters to Mrs. Bowes, always addressed that lady by the name of 'Mother.'"*

* M'Crie's “Knox,” i. p. 89.

NOTE. On the Influence of Bullinger upon Archbishop Cranmer. In 1849, Mr. Gorham published "Extracts from the Writings of Martyr and Bullinger on the Effects of Baptism; in Illustration of the Doctrine held by the Church of England," in which pamphlet, at p. 5, he makes the following

statement:

"Henry Bullinger's views on the Sacraments produced a powerful influence on the mind of Cranmer, as well as of other English divines. It is a very remarkable and a most important fact (though unknown, with any distinctness, till my advocate, Dr. Bayford, produced the evidence in the Court of Arches), that, in 1551, Cranmer expressed his unqualified approbation of Bullinger's 'Tract on the Sacraments,' which was, by the Archbishop's earnest desire, published in England in a separate form by John-A-Lasco, contemporaneously with its appearance in the Fifth Decade of the eminent Zurich divine, although neither Cranmer nor John-A-Lasco was aware of the fact of its foreign publication till the tract had issued from the English press. The conclusion is inevitable that Cranmer's views on Baptism were not opposed to, but in principle consentient with, those of Bullinger."

In the preface to Dr. Cardwell's "Liturgies of Edward VI.," it is stated that when John-A-Lasco presented to Cranmer Bullinger's treatise, "De Sacramentis," the Archbishop desired it might be printed immediately, observing that Nothing of Bullinger's required to be read and examined previously.”

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The authority upon which Mr. Gorham's and Dr. Cardwell's statements rest is a letter from John-A-Lasco to Bullinger, written from London on the 10th of April, 1551, which is included in the collection of A-Lasco's letters published by Gerdesius in his "Scrinium Antiquarium," vol. iv., part 2. The following is the passage referred to :

"Libellus tuus de Sacramentis ante triennium ad me missus jam tandem sub prelo est. Ubi ad me cum reliqua bibliothecæ meae parte nuper advectus est, exhibui illum D Cantuariensi. Is vero ubi audisset nondum esse editum, voluit ut ederetur, etiamsi eum non legisset, hoc addens, Tua nulla egere inspectione. Itaque propediem exibit. Dicabo illum Sorori Regiæ, virgini et doctissimæ et pientissimæ, Elizabethæ. Mississem tibi aliquot exemplaria, si absolutus fuisset, sed hac hebdomade futura absolvetur."

The title of Bullinger's tract referred to was "Absoluta de Christi Domini et Catholicæ ejus Ecclesiæ Sacramentis Tractatio." The editor of the Parker Society's edition of the Decades (Rev. Thomas Harding) states that it was composed in the year 1546, and sent first to Calvin, who approved of it, and then to John-A-Lasco, and by him published at London, in April, 1551. The substance of this treatise was embodied by Bullinger in his Fifth Decade. It is remarkable that Cranmer should have expressed a desire for its publication in England before having read it. That could only have been because he was already acquainted with Bullinger's views of the Sacraments, and approved of them. It is to be remembered that the "Consensus Tigurinus," containing the Sacramental doctrine held equally by Bullinger and Calvin, had been published as early as 1549, of which Cranmer could not be ignorant; and, in fact, he had openly declared himself a convert to that doctrine in 1548-49, while the First Prayer-book of Edward was in preparation. This is clear from a letter of Traheron to Bullinger, dated London, December, 1548, in which he informs him that a disputation had been held at London concerning the Eucharist in the presence of almost all the nobility of England. "The argument was sharply contested by the bishops. The Archbishop of Canterbury, contrary to general expectation, most openly, firmly, and learnedly main

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tained your opinion on this subject. His arguments were as follows:-"The body of Christ was taken up from us into heaven. Christ has left the world. Ye have the poor always with you, but me ye have not always.' . . . The truth never obtained a more brilliant victory among us. I perceive it is all over with heathenism, now that those who were considered its principal and almost only supporters have altogether come over to our side." John ab Ulmis adds a postscript to Traheron's letter, in which he says: "The foolish bishops have made a marvellous recantation "-plainly referring to Cranmer and Ridley, who had hitherto been attached to the Lutheran doctrine of Consubstantiation and the ubiquity of the body of Christ. The influence of Bullinger, therefore, upon Cranmer and Ridley was of an earlier date than the publication of the Fifth Decade in 1551. But the wish of Cranmer, that the earlier tract, which was incorporated with that work, should be published in England without delay, was a proof not only of his own cordial acceptance of its Sacramental teaching, but also of his opinion that the work was well fitted to prepare the minds of English theologians for a more unequivocal confession of that doctrine in the Second Prayer-book of Edward VI., which was already in hand in 1551-52, than he had been able to obtain from the rest of the bishops and doctors of the Church in 1548-49.

CHAPTER II.

KNOX IN NEWCASTLE, 1551-53.

IN the early summer of 1551, Knox was transferred, no doubt by authority of the Privy Council, from Berwick to Newcastleupon-Tyne, where he remained, with occasional absences in London and other parts of the kingdom, till the spring of 1553.

But this was not the first of his connection with Newcastle. In the spring of 1550 an incident had occurred to him there which was of great importance, not only to his personal status and usefulness, but to the interest of the Reformation throughout the whole northern province; and to this incident we must go back before proceeding to speak of his Newcastle ministry in 1551-52. "The 4th of April, in the year 1550, was appointed to John Knox to give his Confession why he affirmed the Mass idolatry; which day, in presence of the Council and Congregation, amongst whom was also present the Bishop of Durham and his doctors, in this manner he beginneth."*

In explanation of this incident, Dr. M'Crie remarks that although the town of Berwick was Knox's principal station during the years 1549 and 1550, it is probable that he was appointed to preach occasionally in the adjacent country. Whether in the course of his itinerancy he had preached in Newcastle, or whether he was called up to it in consequence of complaints against the sermons which he had delivered at Berwick, it is difficult to ascertain. It is, however, certain that a charge was exhibited against him before the Bishop (Tunstall), for teaching that the Sacrifice of the Mass was idolatrous, and that a day was appointed for him publicly to assign his reasons for this opinion." In a note the author adds that "Knox might owe to the Council of the North, and not to the Bishop, the liberty of this public * Knox's Works, vol. iii. p. 33.—“ A Vindication of the Doctrine that the Sacrifice of the Mass is Idolatry."