The Scottish Reformation

Scottish Reformation, by
Alexander F. Mitchell

Project Gutenberg's The Scottish Reformation, by Alexander F.
Mitchell 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.org
Title: The Scottish Reformation Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and
Distinctive Characteristics
Author: Alexander F. Mitchell
Editor: David Hay Fleming
Release Date: July 9, 2007 [EBook #22023]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
SCOTTISH REFORMATION ***

Produced by Susan Skinner, Jordan, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

[Transcriber's Note: This text is intended for users whose text readers

cannot use the "real" (unicode/utf-8) version of the file. Characters that
could not be fully displayed have been represented using the following
scheme:
[=x] represents the any character 'x' with a macron above.
The oe ligature is represented by the two characters oe.]

THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION
[Illustration: [Handwritten: yrs always cordially Alex F. Mitchell]]

THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION
Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics
(Being the Baird Lecture for 1899)
BY THE LATE ALEXANDER F. MITCHELL, D.D., LL.D.
EMERITUS PROFESSOR OF CHURCH HISTORY IN ST.
ANDREWS UNIVERSITY
EDITED BY
D. HAY FLEMING, LL.D.
WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR BY JAMES
CHRISTIE, D.D.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS EDINBURGH AND
LONDON MDCCCC

PREFACE.

Few men have shown more indomitable application to an arduous duty,
amid physical weakness and bodily pain, than did the author of these
Lectures in their preparation and revision. In the MS. there are a goodly
number of additions and minute alterations in his own hand--some of
them very tremulous, some of them in ink, some of them in pencil. He
intended to revise them still more carefully ere they were published;
but expressed the desire that, if he were not spared to do so, I would see
them through the press. The Master, whom he served so long and so
faithfully, having released him from the work he loved so well, and
from the suffering he so patiently endured, the final revision has
devolved upon me.
On the suggestion of Professor Robertson the book has been arranged
in chapters. The sixth lecture having temporarily gone amissing before
its delivery, Dr Mitchell prepared a rescension of it. The original and
the rescension are now combined in chapter x. He intended to devote an
extra lecture to Alesius, and another to Andrew Melville, but
unfortunately was unable. The chapter on Alesius is therefore taken
from two of his class-lectures, some of the longer extracts being thrown
into appendices, and a few passages being slightly compressed. This is
at once the fullest and the best account of Alesius that has yet been
published. The facts concerning Melville in chapter x. are
supplemented to a small extent in the paper quoted in Appendix A.
Comparatively few of the authorities were entered in the MS. when it
was placed in my hands. I have filled in many, and have taken care, in
almost every instance where volume and page are given, to check the
quotations with the originals. My notes, and my additions to Dr
Mitchell's notes, are enclosed within square brackets; but when I have
merely supplied authorities, they are not so distinguished. The list
which he had drawn up of the works of Alesius was partly in an
obsolete form of shorthand, which to me was quite undecipherable.
Having been privileged to examine a good many of these rare treatises
in various public libraries, I have been able, though only to an
inconsiderable degree, to supplement the list; these additions being
marked like those in the notes and other appendices. In revising the
Lectures themselves, I have corrected a number of trifling slips, but

have made no alteration of which Dr Mitchell would not have cordially
approved had his attention been drawn to it.
In preparing the Lectures, Dr Mitchell availed himself of elaborate
articles he had written at various times for periodicals and other
publications. The present volume is valuable in several ways, not the
least of these being that it embodies, on many obscure and important
points, the matured views of one of the most competent and cautious of
historical students--of one who grudged no time and spared no labour
in eliciting and elucidating the truth.
D. H. F.
December 1899.
[Illustration: (signed) yrs always cordially Alex. F. Mitchell]

THE SCOTTISH REFORMATION CONTENTS.
PAGE
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF DR MITCHELL xiii
CHAPTER I.
THE NATURE AND NEED OF THE REFORMATION 1
CHAPTER II.
PATRICK HAMILTON 19
CHAPTER III.
THE OPPRESSED AND THE OPPRESSORS 34
CHAPTER IV.

GEORGE WISHART 56
CHAPTER V.
KNOX AS LEADER OF OUR REFORMATION 79
CHAPTER