JOHN KNOX
5
JOHN KNOX
S. M. Houghton
It is highly unfortunate that to the great majority of Englishmen, Christian and otherwise, John Knox is known only in caricature. The normal limit of an Englishman’s knowledge runs to this, that Knox wrote an infamous book about the rule of women, that he browbeat a Scottish queen, that he used to beat a pulpit into blads, and that in old age he married a girl in her teens. Three of these charges are factual and provable; the other is matter of opinion to which I do not subscribe. Maybe, too, the Englishman knows that Knox merited the words spoken over his grave, that he never feared the face of man, or to be more accurate, that he neither flattered nor feared any flesh. Even so, it is not a very pleasing image of a man who bestrode a certain kingdom like a colossus, or, in more biblical language, was called of God to root out, to pull down and to destroy, to throw down, to build and to plant, a work which he did right nobly.
But Knox’s image in the eyes of the spiritually-minded is in vivid contrast with that formed by the unlearned, and were there in existence a Christian portrait gallery of heroes of the faith such as the Epistle to the Hebrews supplies for the Old Testament, then assuredly John Knox would qualify for a place. Through faith he subdued a kingdom to the truth, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions (many of them), escaped by long-drawn-out miracle the edge of the sword, out of weakness was made strong, waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the foes of the gospel. Certain it was, too, that he had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea moreover, of bonds and imprisonment; was he not for a period of many months a galley slave to the French? It is but fitting that he should find a place, if not among the first three mighties, yet among the first four, in the city which he accounted an earthly paradise. I refer, of course, to the Reformation’s mural monument in a European world-city.
Personally I regard John Knox as primarily a man of action. He is not particularly high placed as a theologian, though there is such clarity and warmth in his writings that his reputation as such deserves to be raised. He was no recluse; a close student of the Word certainly, but not a man whose study was his little heaven upon earth. In the days of his strength he loved to itinerate ceaselessly, and even when in his later years his physical powers declined through long wear and tear, and he longed for release from his toils, the very measure of his weariness was also the measure of his life-labors. He wore himself out. Earthly honors he never sought. To the end he remained “John Knox, minister,” “Plain Mr. Knox.”
Throughout his career after conversion, Knox was a warrior. He wielded a trenchant pen and wrote as if he were earthly leader of the Lord’s hosts militant. But it was with tongue rather than pen that he waged his fierce fight of faith. It was from the pulpit that he surveyed the serried ranks of the foe and sought to urge on the warriors of the Lord. He would have agreed well with Luther’s statement that the gospel cannot well be “advanced without tumult, trouble and uproar.” Scotland was desperately in need of such a man and such a gospel as Knox brought to its ears. Its plight was extreme. The case of England was sufficiently bad, that of Scotland was palpably worse. Professor James Stalker wrote a book on Knox, his ideas and his ideals, in which he assures us that “those who know best what the moral condition of Scotland was before the Reformation, as this is revealed in her literature . . . are the most likely to be thankful to Knox for the changes he introduced into the country. Had he done nothing more than what he did to promote decency, he would have earned the eternal gratitude of Scotsmen.”
The sermons preached by Knox—and he was always preaching in season and out of season—were often tremendous in their effect. The whole sanctified personality of the man was alive in his utterance. In the passionate furnace of his words, many were saved by fear, pulled out, as Jude speaks, from their ungodliness, and caused to hate the garment spotted by the flesh. Sin was lashed with a vehemency equaled by few in the long history of Christendom. Sins public and private were set forth as in the light of God’s countenance. Men who sat under the torrent of his denunciations must have been either petrified with fear or, if repentance forsook them, fired with burning anger against the preacher. Knox was loved or hated. He gave to his generation and I may even say to all later generations, a superb demonstration of the vigor and the validity of pulpit utterance in the power of God most High. And this had, as its background, a fervency in prayer, both in public and in private, which was the envy of lesser men. Spurgeon spoke plain truth when he said that, “when John Knox went upstairs to plead (with God) for Scotland, it was the greatest event in Scottish history.”
It has been charged against Knox that to a great extent his message and his manner were much more akin to those of the Old Testament prophets than to those of the New Testament apostles, and there is undoubtedly a measure of truth in the allegation, arising from the fact that much of his earlier work was in the nature of a campaign against the evils which had to be extirpated from Scottish hearts and Scottish life before the gentler words of gospel truth could be cast abroad. It seems undeniable that many of his public discourses, perhaps the majority of them, were based on Old Testament themes. “He possessed a marvelous faculty for taking a book of the Old Testament or a portion of the Old Testament history, and laying it alongside of the contemporary history of his own country in such a way as to bring out comparisons and contrasts which illuminate the situation and reveal the path of duty.”
The outcome of such preaching, and of other hard labor accompanying it was remarkable by all human standards. Knox purged the floor of Scotland as it were with fire. The domination of falsehood and foulness was ended. Morality came in the wake of godliness. Licentious song gave place to psalm-singing. Scotland was transformed.
Many of the changes which Knox envisaged corresponded to the doctrine and discipline of Calvin’s Geneva. Not that Knox had received his doctrine from Geneva in the first instance. Long before he entered Swiss territory he was to all intents and purposes a Puritan of strong Calvinistic bent. His inward struggles, his outlook on the world of men and his program of reform coincided with that which met him on his first entry into Europe’s city of God. Geneva did not mean for Knox an initiation into the truth, but consolidation in its principles, and increase of zeal, if that were possible, for its propagation and application to a certain national situation. Doubtless the first glimmerings of light reached him through the ministry of one (Wishart) who had visited the Swiss Churches in 1541–42, and who had already translated their Confession of Faith into the Scottish tongue. In Knox’s case Lutheranism was bypassed, and he arrived, not by devious ways but by a direct road, in the Calvinist camp, so that when in 1554 he arrived for the first time in Geneva, it was to him a spiritual home from the commencement.
Knox and the English Reformation
Before I deal with the principles of reform which Knox so energetically and ably expounded and applied, I must briefly advert to his close links with England and its struggles to disengage itself from darkness and to pass into marvelous light. It is often forgotten that Knox spent several years in England, that he ministered with tireless energy in the areas of Berwick and Newcastle, and afterwards in the Home Counties (chiefly Buckinghamshire and principally perhaps in the area around Amersham), that he was offered a bishopric which he refused, that he was consulted by Cranmer when the Articles of Religion were being drawn up, and that as a Court preacher he made an impression similar to that made by Latimer. It is not easy to refrain from enlarging on this English ministry, which was fully equal in scope and character to the best ministry of the period as exercised by born-and-bred Englishmen. It seems to have appealed strongly to King Edward VI. One or two of its features only must receive limited enlargement.
Was Knox happy in a ministry of the English pattern? Not altogether so. From time to time he showed signs of considerable uneasiness. It was his conviction that Cranmer and his closest associates were prepared to concede too much to the traditions of the Papist past. Then as always after his conversion in 1546 he stood solidly and immovably on the thesis that the Word of God alone was the source of authority in the Church of God.
The matter came to a head in respect of the vexed question of kneeling at the Lord’s Table. The enforcement of the Second Prayer Book (1552) was shortly to begin. To Knox, kneeling as required by a threefold repetition in the instructions for clergy and people was a positive infringement of the divine law that Christians must at all costs keep themselves from idols. Knox’s protest was really one aspect of his denunciation of the mass itself. Cranmer defends kneeling in an interesting letter in which he contends that, if the Greek words used of sitting were interpreted with absolute literality, they would mean “to lie down on the floor or the ground” and not “to sit on a form or a stool.” In the outcome, although kneeling remained, the introduction of a special rubric was a concession to Knox, known afterwards as the Black Rubric, which stated categorically that, lest the act of kneeling be “misconstrued and depraved,” it must on no account be taken to signify adoration of the sacramental elements, which remained bread and wine in their very natural substances, whereas the natural body and blood of our Savior are in heaven and not in earth. The special rubric was omitted from the Prayer Book issued under the Second Act of Uniformity of 1559 (possibly, and even probably, with a view to the comprehension of all parties in the one Church of England) but it was brought back again, remarkably enough, in 1662 (possibly to induce men of Puritan leanings to remain in the Establishment).
Notwithstanding this concession, it would seem that Knox was not completely happy in his link with the Church of England. Vestments troubled him. As late as 1566 we find him leading his Scottish brethren in a protest to their brethren, the bishops and pastors in England, in support of Puritan ministers who were in trouble over this matter before the Court of High Commission.
The year 1566–67 saw the first Puritan secession from the Church of England in consequence of the suspension and subsequent deprivation of certain ministers. They seem to have communicated with Knox on the matter, and to have asked for his support, but his reply, though not preserved, was probably not altogether to their liking. He seems to have thought that, before taking so serious a step as secession, they should have consulted other churches, the more so because the brethren whom they were leaving undeniably preached the substance of doctrine and salvation through Christ. Secession seemed to him to be tantamount to the condemnation of the Church of England.
But perhaps it is the famous Frankfurt controversy of 1554 which best illustrates the attitude of Knox to Anglicanism, for it had the effect of causing him to embrace more closely than before the paradisiacal fellowship of Geneva and to draw apart from the Church of England.
Knox’s Principles of Reformation
From Frankfurt, Knox went to Geneva. A Church of English refugees was organized, and there followed the brief period which for Knox must have been the most peaceful of his Christian career. He looked back on it afterwards with unmitigated joy.
From 1554 to 1559, except for brief periods in the homeland, Knox was an exile. The English congregation in Geneva which had chosen him as their minister was reluctant to release him, and equally he longed to remain with them, but the knowledge that there were many in Scotland who desired his presence, and the clear call of duty hammering ever and anon at his conscience finally drove him back to his banks and braes. In any event, the death of Mary Tudor in November 1558 and the accession of Elizabeth completely changed the situation, and the Church in Geneva broke up as the exiles returned home.
Knox was home again by the spring of 1559. He returned to the land as the ambassador of the blessed and only Potentate; his pulpit shortly became his throne, and from it, in cooperation with like-minded men, there proceeded both a fiery and a healing word. “Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway.” Evil doctrine was attacked in its strongholds. Strong men bowed themselves. Idolatry fled apace. The pulpit drew its strength solely from the exposition and the enforcement of the Word of God in the power of the Spirit of God. Hence it was that Randolph, Elizabeth’s ambassador in Scotland, could say, “The voice of one man is able in an hour to put more life into us, than 600 trumpets continually blustering in our ears”; and of all trumpets of the era, that blown by Knox was most certain in its sound. Now was Scotland’s hour of destiny. It was Knox who set Scotland on the pathway that it was to follow more or less faithfully for generations.
What were the principles of reformation followed by Knox? On the negative side, of course, was the overthrow of papistry (as he termed Romanism), and his profound mistrust of the system which England chose to follow in the so-called Via Media settlement of 1559. In Knox’s eyes a middle way of compromise could not meet the requirements of standards set by the Word of God. On the positive side there is much to be said. On his return from Geneva, Knox shortly found in his native Scotland a clear field of action. To him it was a matter of first importance that he was not under necessity to cooperate with and yield to an earthly throne. Since 1548 Mary of Scots had been in France, and when in 1561 she returned to Edinburgh a widow, she found that her country had already passed through the throes of reformation and that the Protestant faith and worship was firmly inaugurated. Until her flight into England in 1568, she used every artifice known to her to overthrow what had been accomplished. But the work of reform moved steadily forward and proved itself to be on such secure foundations that all the skill and strength of an extraordinarily crafty and powerful enemy was in vain. It was a seventeenth-century prelate who laid claim to the word thorough as descriptive of his anti-Puritan policy; it was Knox whose work much more deserves the term for the far-reaching changes which it set in motion.
It was greatly to Knox’s advantage that he had a free hand in reform. The Genevan example filled his memory, but whereas that involved reformation within the small compass of a single city, his task began with the survey of a wide terrain, white already (in its lowlands at least) to harvest. It was on a nationwide scale that his efforts applied, and, humble in mind as he was, the task did not affright him. His work was done with speed. His incessant preaching ministry was linked with the work of creating an organization within the Church which would suffice to evangelize Scotland to its utmost bounds, and provide it with a ministry competent and sufficient for such a task. Time-servers and men-pleasers were cast out. In their place Knox aimed at a ministry educated, zealous, and above all, completely faithful to the Word of God. His work in this respect was somewhat akin to that of the Puritan party in England after the Civil War against Charles I was concluded, but his raw material probably even less tractable than theirs.
The instruments which Knox employed to produce the results he sought were, in the first instance, documentary, and we begin with mention of the Confession of Faith of 1561.
The articles of the Confession proceed as follows: God; the Creation of Man; Original Sin; the Revelation of the Promise; the Continuance, Increase and Preservation of the Church; the Incarnation of Christ Jesus; Why it behoved the Mediator to be very God and very Man; and Election (which is remarkable for its scant direct reference to the subject). Then follow articles on Christ’s Death and atoning work, His Passion and His Burial, His Resurrection and His Ascension, the last-named including mention of the Second Coming:
Christ shall visibly return as He was seen to ascend. Then shall the time of refreshing and restitution of all things begin; the righteous shall then inherit the bliss promised them from the beginning, but the wicked shall be cast into the dungeon of outer darkness. The remembrance of these things must not only bridle our carnal lusts, but also comfort us against the threatening of worldly princes. So that neither temporal death nor present danger is to move us to forsake that blessed society which we the members have with our Head and only Mediator, Christ Jesus, whom we confess to be the promised Messiah, the only Head of His Church, our just Lawgiver, our only High Priest, Advocate and Mediator. If any presume to intrude into these offices, we utterly detest and abhor them as blasphemers to our Sovereign and Supreme Governor, Christ Jesus.
Under the head “Faith in the Holy Ghost,” we read:
Our faith and faith’s assurance do not proceed from our natural powers but from the Holy Ghost. By nature we are so dead, so blind, and perverse, that we can neither feel when we are pricked, see the light when it shines, nor assent to the will of God when it is revealed. But the Spirit quickens that which is dead, and bows our stubborn wills to the obedience of His blessed will. So we confess that as God the Father created us when we were not; as the Son redeemed us when we were His enemies; so also the Holy Spirit sanctifies and regenerates us, without any respect to any merit of our own, be it before or be it after our regeneration. The glory is not ours but God’s. Of ourselves we cannot think one good thought. He that has begun a good work in us is He that continues the same, to the praise and glory of His undeserved grace.
Article eighteen clearly sets out the marks of a true Church of God. I quote the first part:
Satan from the beginning has decked his own pestilent synagogue with the title of the Church of God, and it is essential to distinguish the one from the other, lest, being deceived, we embrace to our own condemnation the one for the other. The tokens whereby Christ’s true Church is to be known from that horrible harlot, the Kirk malignant, are neither antiquity, nor title usurped, nor lineal descent, nor multitude of men approving of it; but
1. The true preaching of the Word of God, in the which God has revealed Himself to us;
2. The right administration of the sacraments of Christ, which must be annexed to the Word and promise of God, to seal and confirm the same in our hearts;
3. Ecclesiastical discipline uprightly ministered, as God’s Word prescribes, whereby vice is suppressed and virtue nourished. Wherever these three things are found (be the number never so few above two or three), there, beyond all doubt, is the true Church of Christ, who, according to His promise, is in the midst of the same; not the universal but the particular, such as was in Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus and other places.
Next follow articles on The Authority of Scripture, General Councils, and Sacraments.
In the article on the Sacraments, we read:
We utterly deny that these sacraments are nothing else but naked and bare signs. We assert that by baptism we are engrafted in Christ to be made partakers of His justice (righteousness), by the which our sins are covered and remitted, and that in the Supper, rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us that He becomes the very nourishment and food of our souls. We deny the pernicious and damnable error of the Papists, transubstantiation, but the union and communion we affirm is wrought by operation of the Holy Ghost who by true faith carries us above all things visible, carnal and earthly, and makes us feed on the body and blood of Christ, once broken and shed for us, who now is in heaven, and appears in the presence of God for us. . . . We certainly distinguish between Christ in His natural substance and the elements in the sacramental signs, so that we neither worship the signs in place of that which they signify, nor despise and interpret them as unprofitable and vain. . . . We judge two things to be requisite to the right administration of the sacraments: (1) that they be ministered by lawful ministers (chosen by the Church) and (2) that they be ministered in such elements and in such way as God has appointed. Hence we fly the society of the Papistical Church in its sacraments, for their ministers are no ministers of Christ; also they have adulterated both sacraments with their own inventions. Also the receiver as well as the minister must understand the true end and purpose of the sacrament. The Papists claim that their priests are mediators . . . who offer a propitiatory sacrifice for the sins of the quick and the dead, which doctrine we utterly abhor, detest and renounce.
Baptism appertains to the infants of the faithful as well as to those of age and discretion. Hence we deny the error of the Anabaptists.
Article twenty-four: “Concerning Civil Magistrates: To rulers and magistrates the reformation and purification of religion appertains. They are not only appointed (of God) for civil purposes, but also for the maintenance of true religion and for suppressing idolatry and superstition. David and others were highly commended for this.”
The closing article (twenty-five) speaks of Gifts freely given to the Church, viz: “remission of sins and resurrection to blessedness.”
This Confession of Faith originated in a request of the Parliament for a summary of the doctrine which the reformers wished to see accepted in Scotland. In the short space of four days—hence some of the defects of the Confession—the work was accomplished. It held the field for nearly a century until replaced by the more famous Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 (established by Acts of Parliament in 1649 and 1690), of which it was a not unworthy predecessor.
The Confession of Faith was followed by the First Book of Discipline, compiled as before at the request of the civil government. Both documents were composed by six men, all with the Christian name of John, of whom Knox was chief. The Preface of the Book of Discipline asserts that all rules and regulations of the Church must be according to the Word of God. In this document we have an insight into the practical issues of the Reformation which is completely authentic and also the explanation of many things in Scotland from that day to this. Here, in fact, is the work of reformation with all its values and (as some would wish to add) with all its defects seen at its clearest in Church, home, and State. Maybe it speaks of Knox’s ideal rather than of genuine achievement; at the same time it needs to be remembered that Knox’s fiery energy and stimulating personality brought, under God, quick results. Although it was prepared with the needs of the whole of Scotland in view, it indicates clearly the impact made by the reformation at local level, and herein lies its peculiar interest.
I hope you will not consider it tedious if I supply brief quotations from its most important parts.
Preface: “Nothing must be admitted which God’s plain Word does not approve, and nothing must be rejected that God’s Word specifies. There must be no man-pleasing, but all must be according to the Word.”
1. Doctrine: “Christ’s Gospel must be truly and openly preached . . . and all doctrine repugnant to it must be utterly repressed, as damnable to man’s salvation.”
2. Sacraments: The practice of the Lord Jesus and His apostles must be kept. The order of Geneva, as used in some of our churches, is sufficient to instruct the reader, but to make all clear we add the following: Water only is to be used (i.e. in baptism), not oil, salt, spittle, conjuration and crossing, etc., else Christ’s institution is pronounced imperfect.
3. Ministers and their election: In a reformed church none ought to preach or minister the sacraments until that orderly they are called to the same. (a) It appertains to the people and to every several congregation to elect their minister. (b) If it is needful for the superintendent to act in the matter, the person selected must appear for examination before men of the soundest judgment in the nearest principal town, or in the town of the superintendent, where he must demonstrate his gift and his knowledge by interpreting some part of Scripture chosen by the ministry. (c) If all is satisfactory, it is unreasonable of the destitute church to refuse him, and receive him they must unless they can produce a better. (d) The admission of ministers to their office must consist in the consent of the church where they are to minister and the approbation of the learned ministers appointed for their examination.
4. Financial arrangements: Ministers must be supported, also their wives and children after their decease. Uniformity of treatment is impossible, and responsibilities vary. Some will be single men, others will have families to support. Every several church much provide for the poor, though not for stubborn and idle beggars.
5. Schools and universities: God does not illuminate men miraculously, but youth must be given a godly education. Every church must have one schoolmaster, able to teach grammar and the Latin tongue if the town be of any reputation.
6. Ecclesiastical discipline: A commonwealth needs good laws and sharp execution of the same; so too does the church of God. The civil authorities should deal with blasphemy, adultery, murder, perjury, and capital crimes worthy of death. The church should deal with drunkenness, excess in apparel, or in eating and drinking, fornication, exacting of the poor, buying and selling with deceitful weights, slander and licentious living, and should use the sword of the Word of God.
The discipline of the church shall extend to all estates within the realm, as well the rulers and the preachers as the ruled and the people, even to the poorest.
7. The Policy of the Church: (i.e. the work of the Church.) This falls under two heads: (1) The essential—preaching and prayers, the administration of the sacraments, and the correcting and punishing of offenses. Without these there is no sign of a visible church. And (2) the profitable but non-essential—for example, the singing of psalms, which some churches may find difficult to manage, and the assembling of the church, whether daily, or twice, thrice, or but once a week.—Every church must decide these matters for itself.
Sunday must be kept strictly both before and after noon in all towns.
Four times in the year is sufficient for the administration of the Lord’s Supper, for people are prone to attend it superstitiously at Easter time, as if the season gave virtue to it, and for the rest of the year they are negligent of it.
Every church must have an English Bible, and the people taught the importance of reading it frequently.
Every head of a household is responsible for the instruction of his children, servants and family in the Christian religion.
So that the church may make trial of men’s knowledge, graces and utterances, and to cause men to grow in grace, it is expedient that in every town where schools and learned men are found, there should be a weekly gathering for the purpose of what Paul, in 1 Corinthians 14 calls prophesying.
No attempt was made to legislate through Parliament for the Church. The Book of Discipline was never authorized by Parliament, but it certainly molded the life of Scotland for centuries. Professor Mackie, writing as a secular historian, sums the matter up in these words: “Some say it produced a people narrow in religion, indifferent to the graces of life, blind to the beauty of holiness, and deaf to all music save the psalms. Others believe that it was a great factor in producing a race patient in discipline, valuing moral integrity, and anxious for education. . . . Those who disparage Knox would do well to remember that in denouncing him they denounce also the qualities which have enabled the children of a small poor country to set their mark upon the history of the world.” And we may also add, from our own angle of vision, “their mark upon the church of God.”
Dr. Stalker says that the Book of Discipline was Knox’s own vision of a Scotland religious, virtuous, intelligent, and happy; and such was in considerable measure its direct outcome. It was the most remarkable document which the Reformation age produced in Britian, and was the means, under God, of constituting an entire people—I speak generally—a “school of Christ.” Scotland became, as it were, an extramural Geneva, though obviously, in the very nature of the case, there could never be on a country-wide scale an extension of the tight arrangements possible in a small city; but as far as was humanly possible, this was Knox’s ideal, and through Scotland during the ensuing centuries his work reverberates.
To complete the work in his own lifetime, the reformer added the Book of Common Order, based closely on that used by him in Geneva during his pastorate there. It was virtually a prayer and a service book, though its prayers were intended as models rather than as prayers to which ministers were rigorously tied. In 1567 a Gaelic translation was made. The Book of Common Order was accompanied by a complete Book of Psalms in meter, and this became the congregational worship book of the Church, Scotland’s new-found joy.
Thus it was that, when Knox died in 1572, the Reformed Church was firmly established in Scotland. The principles of the Christian faith had been learned in innumerable Scottish homes, and to a remarkable extent the Church was independent of the State and self-governing. The Scottish Church was not a State establishment. Control over it was in the hands of its own ministers and people. Parliament had virtually confined itself to the condemnation and the rendering illegal of the Roman Mass, but it had not legislated for the new Church. Though Knox looked to the magistrates to enforce punishments for certain offenses, it was from the beginning his endeavor to retain control of the Church in Church hands, and this he succeeded in doing.
The fact is clear that “John Knox, minister” had been the instrument under God of a great work of reformation, in some respects greater and more potent than that which had come to England, a reformation which included a tremendously strong strain of Puritanism, and which therefore found much in common with the English Puritan movement of later days. In the ensuing years it produced an abundance of expert theologians, a martyrology, a Bible-based national life (I speak generally), and a Church which has played no mean part in upholding the “crown rights of the Redeemer.”