John Knox and the Reformation

John Knox and the Reformation,
by Andrew Lang

The Project Gutenberg eBook, John Knox and the Reformation, by
Andrew Lang
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title: John Knox and the Reformation
Author: Andrew Lang
Release Date: November 10, 2004 [eBook #14016]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN
KNOX AND THE REFORMATION***

Transcribed from the 1905 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David
Price, email [email protected]

John Knox and the Reformation
[John Knox. From a Posthumous Portrait. Beza's Icones, 1850:
knox1.jpg]
To Maurice Hewlett

PREFACE
In this brief Life of Knox I have tried, as much as I may, to get behind
Tradition, which has so deeply affected even modern histories of the
Scottish Reformation, and even recent Biographies of the Reformer.
The tradition is based, to a great extent, on Knox's own "History,"
which I am therefore obliged to criticise as carefully as I can. In his
valuable John Knox, a Biography, Professor Hume Brown says that in
the "History" "we have convincing proof alike of the writer's good faith,
and of his perception of the conditions of historic truth." My reasons
for dissenting from this favourable view will be found in the following
pages. If I am right, if Knox, both as a politician and an historian,
resembled Charles I. in "sailing as near the wind" as he could, the
circumstance (as another of his biographers remarks) "only makes him
more human and interesting."
Opinion about Knox and the religious Revolution in which he took so
great a part, has passed through several variations in the last century. In
the Edinburgh Review of 1816 (No. liii. pp. 163-180), is an article with
which the present biographer can agree. Several passages from Knox's
works are cited, and the reader is expected to be "shocked at their
principles." They are certainly shocking, but they are not, as a rule, set
before the public by biographers of the Reformer.
Mr. Carlyle introduced a style of thinking about Knox which may be
called platonically Puritan. Sweet enthusiasts glide swiftly over all in
the Reformer that is specially distasteful to us. I find myself more in
harmony with the outspoken Hallam, Dr. Joseph Robertson, David
Hume, and the Edinburgh reviewer of 1816, than with several more

recent students of Knox.
"The Reformer's violent counsels and intemperate speech were
remarkable," writes Dr. Robertson, "even in his own ruthless age," and
he gives fourteen examples. {0a} "Lord Hailes has shown," he adds,
"how little Knox's statements" (in his "History") "are to be relied on
even in matters which were within the Reformer's own knowledge." In
Scotland there has always been the party of Cavalier and White Rose
sentimentalism. To this party Queen Mary is a saintly being, and their
admiration of Claverhouse goes far beyond that entertained by Sir
Walter Scott. On the other side, there is the party, equally sentimental,
which musters under the banner of the Covenant, and sees scarcely a
blemish in Knox. A pretty sample of the sentiment of this party appears
in a biography (1905) of the Reformer by a minister of the Gospel.
Knox summoned the organised brethren, in 1563, to overawe justice,
when some men were to be tried on a charge of invading in arms the
chapel of Holyrood. No proceeding could be more anarchic than
Knox's, or more in accordance with the lovable customs of my dear
country, at that time. But the biographer of 1905, "a placed minister,"
writes that "the doing of it" (Knox's summons) "was only an assertion
of the liberty of the Church, and of the members of the Commonwealth
as a whole, to assemble for purposes which were clearly lawful"--the
purposes being to overawe justice in the course of a trial!
On sentiment, Cavalier or Puritan, reason is thrown away.
I have been surprised to find how completely a study of Knox's own
works corroborates the views of Dr. Robertson and Lord Hailes. That
Knox ran so very far ahead of the Genevan pontiffs of his age in
violence; and that in his "History" he needs such careful watching, was,
to me, an unexpected discovery. He may have been "an old Hebrew
prophet," as Mr. Carlyle says, but he had also been a young Scottish
notary! A Hebrew prophet is, at best, a dangerous anachronism in a
delicate crisis of the Church Christian; and the notarial element is too
conspicuous in some passages of Knox's "History."
That Knox was a great man; a disinterested man; in his regard for the
poor a truly