Chapter VIII: Appendix: , 374 (7)

The affectionate veneration in which his memory continued to be held in Scotland after his death, evinces that the influence which he possessed among his countrymen during his life was not constrained, but founded on the high opinion which they entertained of his virtues and talents. Bannatyne has {237} drawn his character in the most glowing colours; and, although allowances must be made for the enthusiasm with which a favourite servant[302] wrote of a beloved and revered master, yet, as he lived long in the Reformer’s family, and was himself a man of respectability and learning, his testimony is by no means to be disregarded. In a speech which he delivered before the General Assembly in March 1571, when in his master’s name he craved justice against the calumnies circulated by the queen’s party, he said, “It has pleased God to make me a servant to that man John Knox, whom I serve, as God bears me witness, not so much in respect of my worldly commodity, as for that integrity and uprightness which I have ever known, and presently understand, to be in him, especially in the faithful administration of his office, in teaching of the word of God; and if I understood, or knew that he was a false teacher, a seducer, a raiser of schism, or one that makes division in the church of God, as he is reported to be by the former accusations, I would not serve him for all the substance in Edinburgh.”[303] And, in his journal, after giving an account of Knox’s death, he adds:――“In {238} this manner departed this man of God: the light of Scotland, the comfort of the church within the same, the mirror of godliness, and pattern and example to all true ministers, in purity of life, soundness of doctrine, and boldness in reproving of wickedness; one that cared not the favour of men, how great soever they were. What dexterity in teaching, boldness in reproving, and hatred of wickedness was in him, my ignorant dullness is not able to declare, which if I should preis[304] to set out, it were as one who would light a candle to let men see the sun; seeing all his virtues are better known and notified to the world a thousand fold than I am able to express.”[305]

Principal Smeton’s character of him, while it is less liable to the suspicion of partiality, is equally honourable and flattering. “I know not,” says he, “if ever so much piety and genius were lodged in such a frail and weak body. Certain I am, that it will be difficult to find one in whom the gifts of the Holy Spirit shone so bright, to the comfort of the church of Scotland. None spared himself less in enduring fatigues bodily and mental; none was more intent on discharging the duties of the province assigned to him.” And again, addressing his calumniator Hamilton, he says, “This illustrious, I say illustrious servant of God, John Knox, I shall clear from your feigned accusations and slanders, by the testimony of a venerable assembly rather than by my own denial. {239} This pious duty, this reward of a well‑spent life, all its members most cheerfully discharge to their excellent instructor in Christ Jesus. This testimony of gratitude they all owe to him, who, they know, ceased not to deserve well of all till he ceased to breathe. Released from a body exhausted in Christian warfare, and translated to a blessed rest, where he has obtained the sweet reward of his labours, he now triumphs with Christ. But beware, sycophant, of insulting him when dead; for he has left behind him as many defenders of his reputation as there are persons who were drawn, by his faithful preaching, from the gulf of ignorance to the knowledge of the gospel.”[306]

The divines of the church of England, who were contemporary with Knox, entertained a great respect for his character, and ranked him along with the most eminent of their own reformers.[307] I have already produced the mark of esteem which bishop Bale conferred on him, and the terms of approbation in which he was mentioned by Dr Fulke, one of the most learned of the English divines in the sixteenth century.[308] Aylmer, in a work written to confute one of his opinions, bears a voluntary testimony to his {240} learning and integrity.[309] And Ridley, who stickled more for the ceremonies of the church than any of his brethren in the reign of Edward VI., and who was displeased with the opposition which Knox made to the introduction of the English liturgy at Frankfort, expressed his high opinion of him, as “a man of wit, much good learning, and earnest zeal.”[310] Whatever dissatisfaction they felt at his pointed reprehension of several parts of their ecclesiastical establishment, the English dignitaries, under Elizabeth, rejoiced at the success of his exertions, and without scruple expressed their approbation of many of his measures which were afterwards severely censured by their successors.[311] I need scarcely add, that his memory was held in veneration by the English Puritans. Some of the chief men among them were personally acquainted with him during his residence in England and on the continent; and others of them corresponded with him by letter. They highly esteemed his writings, sought for his manuscripts with avidity, and published them with testimonies of the warmest approbation.[312]

{241} Towards the close of the sixteenth century, there arose another race of prelates, of very different principles from the English reformers, who began to maintain the divine right of diocesan episcopacy, with the intrinsic excellency of a ceremonious worship, and to adopt a new language respecting other reformed churches. Dr Bancroft, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, was the first writer among them who spoke disrespectfully of Knox,[313] after whom it became a fashionable practice among the hierarchical party. This was resented by the ministers of Scotland, who warmly vindicated the character of their Reformer,[314] at the expense of incurring the frowns and resentment of their sovereign. Though educated under the greatest scholar of the age, and one who was a decided friend to popular liberty, James, in spite of {242} the instructions of Buchanan, proved a pedant, and cowardice alone prevented him from becoming a tyrant. His early favourites flattered his vanity, fostered his love of arbitrary power, and inspired him with the strongest prejudice against the principles and conduct of those men who, during his early years, had been the instruments of preserving his life and supporting his authority. To secure his succession to the English crown, he entered into a private correspondence with Bancroft, and concerted with him the scheme of introducing episcopacy into the church of Scotland. The presbyterian ministers incurred his deep and lasting displeasure by their determined resistance to this design, and by the united and firm opposition which they made to the illegal and despotic measures of his government. He was particularly displeased at the testimony which they publicly bore to the characters of Knox, Buchanan, and the regent Murray, who “could not be defended,” he said, “but by traitors and seditious theologues.” Andrew Melville told him that they were the men who had set the crown on his head, and deserved better of him than to be so traduced. James complained that Knox had spoken disrespectfully of his mother; to which Patrick Galloway, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, replied, “If a king or a queen be a murderer, why should they not be called so?” Walter Balcanquhal, another minister of the city, having, in one of his sermons, rebuked those who disparaged the Reformer, the king sent for him, and in a passion protested that “either he should lose his crown, or Mr Walter {243} should recant his words.” Balcanquhal “prayed God to preserve his crown; but said, that if he had his right wits, the king should have his head, before he recanted any thing he spake.”[315]

James carried his antipathies to the presbyterian church and reformers along with him to England, and he found it an easy matter to infuse them into the minds of his new subjects. Incensed at the freedom which Buchanan had used in his history of the transactions during the reign of Mary, he had, before leaving Scotland, procured the condemnation of that work by an act of parliament. And now he did not think it enough that he had got Camden’s history of that period manufactured to his mind, but employed agents to induce the French historian, De Thou, to adopt his representations; and because that great man scrupled to receive the royal testimony respecting events which happened before James was born, or when he was a child, in opposition to the most credible evidence, his majesty was pleased to complain that he had been treated disrespectfully.[316] Charles I. carried these prejudices even farther than his father had done. During his reign, passive obedience, arminianism, and semi‑popery, formed the court religion; Calvinism and presbytery were held in the greatest detestation, and proscribed both as {244} political and religious heresies. In the reign of the second Charles, the court, the bench, the pulpit, the press, and the stage, united in loading presbyterians with every species of abuse, and in holding them forth as a gloomy, unsocial, turbulent, and fanatical race. And a large share of these contumelies uniformly fell on the head of Knox, who, it was alleged, had brought the obnoxious principles of the sect from Geneva, and planted them in his native country, from which they had spread into England. The revolution was effected in England by a coalition of parties of very different principles, some of which were not of the most liberal kind. Though this event abated the force of the prejudices alluded to, it by no means removed them; and a considerable time after it took place, the great, the fashionable, and even the learned, among the English, regarded the Scots as only beginning to emerge from that inelegance and barbarism which had been produced by the peculiar sentiments of Knox and his followers.

The great body of his countrymen, however, continued long to entertain a just sense of the many obligations which they were under to Knox. After the government of the church of Scotland was conformed to the English model, the Scottish prelates still professed to look back to their national Reformer with sentiments of gratitude and veneration; and archbishop Spotswood describes him as “a man endued with rare gifts, and a chief instrument that God used for the work of those times.”[317] For a considerable {245} time after the revolution, the presbyterians of Scotland treated with deserved contempt the libels which English writers had published against him; and blushed not to avow their admiration of a man to whose labours they were indebted for an ecclesiastical establishment, more scriptural and more liberal than that of which their neighbours could boast. The Union first produced a change in our national feelings on this subject. The shortlived jealousy of English predominance, felt by many of our countrymen on that occasion, was succeeded by a passion for conformity to our southern neighbours; and so fond did we become of their good opinion, and so eager to secure it, that we were disposed to sacrifice to their taste and their prejudices, sentiments which truth as well as national honour required us to retain and cherish. Our most popular writers are not exempt from this charge; and even in works professing to be executed by the united talents of our literati, the misrepresentations and gross blunders of which English writers had been guilty in their accounts of our reformation, and the false and scandalous accusations which they had brought against our reformers, have been generally adopted and widely circulated, instead of meeting with the exposure and reprobation which they so justly merited.

The prejudices entertained against our Reformer by the friends of absolute monarchy, were taken up in all their force, subsequently to the revolution, by the adherents of the Stuart family, whose religious notions, approximating very nearly to the popish, {246} joined with their slavish principle respecting non‑resistance to kings, led them to disapprove of almost every measure adopted at the time of the Reformation, and to condemn the whole as a series of disorder, sedition, and rebellion against lawful authority. The spirit by which the Jacobitish faction was actuated, did not become extinct with the family which had so long been the object of their devotion; and while they transferred their allegiance to the house of Hanover, they retained those principles which had incited them repeatedly to attempt its expulsion from the throne. The alarm produced by that revolution which of late has shaken the thrones of so many of the princes of Europe, has greatly increased this party; and with the view of preserving the present constitution of Britain, principles have been widely disseminated, which, if they had been generally received in the sixteenth century, would have perpetuated the reign of popery and arbitrary power in Scotland. From persons of such principles, nothing favourable to our Reformer can be expected. But the greatest torrent of abuse, poured upon his character, has proceeded from those literary champions who have come forward to avenge the wrongs, and vindicate the innocence, of the peerless and immaculate Mary, queen of Scots! Having conjured up in their imagination the image of an ideal goddess, they have sacrificed to the object of their adoration all the characters, which, in that age, were most estimable for learning, patriotism, integrity, and religion. As if the quarrel which they had espoused exempted them {247} from the ordinary laws of controversial warfare, and conferred on them the absolute and undefeasible privilege of calumniating and defaming at pleasure, they have pronounced every person who spoke, wrote, or acted against that queen, to be a hypocrite or a villain. In the raving style of these writers, Knox was “a fanatical incendiary――a holy savage――the son of violence and barbarism――the religious Sachem of religious Mohawks.”[318]

I cannot do justice to the subject without adverting here to the influence of the popular histories of those transactions written by two distinguished individuals of our own country. The political prejudices and sceptical opinions of Mr Hume are well known, and appear prominently in every part of his History of England. Regarding the various systems of religious belief and worship as distinguished from one another merely by different shades of falsehood and superstition, he has been led, by a strange but not inexplicable bias, almost uniformly to show the most marked partiality to the grosser and more corrupt forms of religion; has spoken with greater contempt of the protestants than of the Roman catholics, and treated the Scottish with greater severity than the English reformers. Forgetting what was due to the character of a philosopher, which he was so ambitious {248} to maintain in his other writings, he has acted as the partisan and advocate of a particular family; and, in vindicating some of the worst measures of the Stuarts, has done signal injustice to the memory of the most illustrious patriots of both kingdoms. Though convinced that the queen of Scotland was guilty of the crimes laid to her charge, he has laboured to screen her from the infamy to which a fair and unvarnished statement of facts must have exposed her character, by fixing the attention of his readers on an untrue and exaggerated representation of the rudeness of Knox and the other reformers by whom she was surrounded, and by absurdly imputing to their treatment of her the faults into which she was betrayed. No person who is acquainted with the writings of Dr Robertson will accuse him of being actuated by such improper motives. But the warmest admirers of his History of Scotland cannot deny, that he has been misled by the temptation of making Mary the heroine of his story, and of thus interesting his readers deeply in his narrative, by blending the tender and romantic with the more dry and uninteresting detail of public transactions. By a studious exhibition of the personal charms and accomplishments of the queen, by representing her faults as arising from the unfortunate circumstances in which she was placed, by touching gently on the errors of her conduct, while he dwells on the cruelty and the dissimulation of her rival, and by describing her sufferings as exceeding the tragical distresses which fancy has feigned to excite sorrow and commiseration, {249} he throws a veil over those vices which he could not deny; while the sympathy which his pathetic account of her death naturally awakens in the minds of his readers, effaces the impressions of her guilt which his preceding narrative had produced. However amiable the feelings of the author might be, the tendency of such a representation is evident. The Dissertation on the murder of king Henry has, no doubt, convinced many of Mary’s accession to the perpetration of that deed; but the History of Scotland has done more to prepossess the public mind in favour of that princess, than all the defences of her most zealous and ingenious advocates, and consequently to excite prejudice against her opponents, who, on the supposition of her guilt, acted a most meritorious part, and are entitled, in other respects, to the gratitude and veneration of posterity.

The increase of infidelity and indifference to religion in modern times, especially among the learned, has contributed, in no small degree, to swell the tide of prejudice against our Reformer. Whatever satisfaction persons of this description may express or feel at the reformation from popery, as the means of emancipating the world from superstition and priestcraft, they naturally despise and dislike men who were inspired with the love of religion, and in whose plans of reform the acquisition of civil liberty, and the advancement of literature, held a subordinate place to the revival of primitive Christianity.

Nor can it escape observation, that prejudices against the characters and proceedings of our reformers {250} are now far more general than they formerly were among those who still profess to adhere to their doctrine and system of church government. Impressed with a high idea of the illumination of the present age, and entertaining a low estimate of the attainments of those which preceded it; imperfectly acquainted with the enormity and extent of the corrupt system of religion which existed in this country at the era of the reformation; inattentive to the spirit and principles of the adversaries with whom our reformers were obliged to contend, and to the dangers and difficulties with which they had to struggle,――they have too easily lent an ear to the calumnies which have been circulated to their prejudice, and rashly condemned measures which will be found, on examination, to have been necessary to secure and to transmit the invaluable blessings which we now enjoy.

Having given this account of the opinions entertained respecting our Reformer, I shall endeavour to sketch, with as much truth as I can, the leading features of his character.

That he possessed strong natural talents is unquestionable. Inquisitive, ardent, acute; vigorous and bold in his conceptions, he entered into all the subtilties of the scholastic science then in vogue; yet, disgusted with its barren results, sought out a new course of study, which gradually led to a complete revolution in his sentiments. In his early years he had not access to that finished education which many of his contemporaries obtained in foreign {251} universities, and he was afterwards prevented, by his unsettled and active mode of life, from prosecuting his studies with leisure; but his abilities and application enabled him in a great measure to surmount these disadvantages, and he remained a stranger to none of the branches of learning which in that age were cultivated by persons of his profession. He united in a high degree the love of study with a disposition to active employment. The truths which he discovered, he felt an irresistible impulse to impart to others, for which he was qualified by a bold, fervid, and impetuous eloquence, singularly adapted to arrest the attention, and govern the passions, of a fierce and unpolished people.

From the time that he embraced the reformed doctrine, the desire of propagating it, and of delivering his countrymen from the delusions and thraldom of popery, became his ruling passion, to which he was always ready to sacrifice his ease, his interest, his reputation, and his life. An ardent attachment to civil liberty held the next place in his breast to love of the reformed religion. That the zeal with which he laboured to advance these objects, was of the most disinterested kind, no candid person who has paid attention to his life can doubt for a moment, whatever opinion may be entertained of some of the means which he employed for that purpose. He thought only of advancing the glory of God, and promoting the welfare of his country. Intrepidity, independence and elevation of mind, indefatigable activity, and constancy which no disappointments {252} could shake, eminently qualified him for the hazardous and difficult post which he occupied. His integrity was above the suspicion of corruption; his firmness proof equally against the solicitations of friends and the threats of enemies. Though his impetuosity and courage led him frequently to expose himself to danger, we never find him neglecting to take prudent precautions for his safety. The confidence reposed in him by his countrymen, shows the high opinion which they entertained of his sagacity as well as of his honesty. The measures taken for advancing the Reformation, were either adopted at his suggestion, or sanctioned by his advice; and we must pronounce them to have been as wisely planned as they were boldly executed.

His ministerial functions were discharged with the greatest assiduity, fidelity, and fervour. No avocation or infirmity prevented him from appearing in the pulpit. Preaching was an employment in which he delighted, and for which he was qualified, by an extensive acquaintance with the scriptures, and by the happy art of applying them, in the most striking manner, to the existing circumstances of the church and of his hearers. His powers of alarming the conscience, and arousing the passions, have been frequently celebrated; but he excelled also in unfolding the consolations of the gospel, and in calming the breasts of those who were agitated by a sense of guilt, or suffering under the ordinary afflictions of life. When he discoursed of the griefs and joys, the conflicts and triumphs, of genuine christians, he described {253} what he had himself known and experienced. The letters which he wrote to his familiar acquaintances breathe the most ardent piety. The religious meditations in which he spent his last sickness, were not confined to that period of his life; they had been his habitual employment from the time that he was brought to the knowledge of the truth, and his solace amidst all the hardships and perils through which he had passed.

With his brethren in the ministry he lived in the utmost cordiality. We never read of the slightest variance between him and any of his colleagues. While he was dreaded and hated by the licentious and profane, whose vices he never spared, the religious and sober part of his countrymen felt a veneration for him, which was founded on his unblemished reputation, as well as his popular talents as a preacher. In private life, he was beloved and revered by his friends and domestics. He was subject to the illapses of melancholy and depression of spirits, arising partly from natural constitution, and partly from the maladies which had long preyed upon his health; which made him (to use his own expression) churlish, and less capable of pleasing and gratifying his friends than he was otherwise disposed to be. This he confessed, and requested them to excuse;[319] but his friendship was sincere, affectionate, and steady. When free from this morose affection, he relished the pleasures {254} of society, and, among his acquaintances, was accustomed to unbend his mind, by indulging in innocent recreation, and in the sallies of wit and humour, to which he had a strong propensity, notwithstanding the graveness of his general deportment. In the course of his public life, the severer virtues of his character were more frequently called into action; but we have met with repeated instances of his acute sensibility; and the unaffected tenderness which occasionally breaks forth in his private letters, shows that he was no stranger to any of the charities of human life, and that he could “rejoice with them that rejoiced, and weep with them that wept.”

Most of his faults may be traced to his natural temperament, and to the character of the age and country in which he lived. His passions were strong; he felt with the utmost keenness on every subject which interested him; and as he felt he expressed himself, without disguise and without affectation. The warmth of his zeal was apt to betray him into intemperate language; his inflexible adherence to his opinions inclined to obstinacy; and his independence of mind occasionally assumed the appearance of haughtiness and disdain. In one solitary instance, the anxiety which he felt for the preservation of the great cause in which he was so deeply interested, betrayed him into an advice which was not more inconsistent with the laws of strict morality, than it was contrary to the stern uprightness, and undisguised sincerity, which characterised the rest of his conduct. A stranger to complimentary or smooth {255} language, little concerned about the manner in which his reproofs were received, provided they were merited, too much impressed with the evil of the offence to think of the rank or character of the offender, he often “uttered his admonitions with an acrimony and vehemence more apt to irritate than to reclaim.” But he protested, at a time when persons are least in danger of deception, and in a manner which should banish every suspicion of the purity of his motives, that, in his sharpest rebukes, he was influenced by hatred of vice, not of the vicious; that his great aim was to reclaim the guilty, and that in using those means which were necessary for this end, he frequently did violence to his own feelings.

Those who have charged him with insensibility and inhumanity, have fallen into a mistake very common with superficial thinkers, who, in judging of the character of persons who lived in a state of society very different from their own, have pronounced upon their moral qualities from the mere aspect of their exterior manners. He was austere, not unfeeling; stern, not savage; vehement, not vindictive. There is not an instance of his employing his influence to revenge any personal injury which he had received. Rigid as his maxims respecting the execution of justice were, there are numerous instances on record of his interceding for the pardon of criminals; and, unless when crimes were atrocious, or when the welfare of the state was in the most imminent danger, he never exhorted the executive government to the exercise of severity. The boldness {256} and ardour of his mind, called forth by the peculiar circumstances of the times, led him to push his sentiments on some subjects to an extreme, and no consideration could induce him to retract an opinion of which he continued to be persuaded; but his behaviour after his publication against female government, proves that he satisfied himself with declaring his own views, without seeking to disturb the public peace by urging their adoption. His conduct at Frankfort evinced his moderation in religious differences among brethren of the same faith, and his disposition to make all reasonable allowances for those who could not go the same length with him in reformation, provided they abstained from imposing upon the consciences of others. The liberties which he took in censuring from the pulpit the actions of individuals of the highest rank and station, appear the more strange and intolerable to us, when contrasted with the reserve and timidity of modern times; but we should recollect that they were then common, and that they were not without their utility, in an age when the licentiousness and oppression of the great and powerful often set at defiance the ordinary restraints of law.

In contemplating such a character as that of Knox, it is not the _man_ so much as the _reformer_, that ought to engage our attention. The talents which are suited to one age and station would be altogether unsuitable to another; and the wisdom displayed by Providence, in raising up persons endowed with qualities singularly adapted to the work which they {257} have to perform for the benefit of mankind, demands our particular consideration. We must admire the austere and rough reformer, whose voice once cried in the wilderness, who was clothed with camel’s hair, and girt about the loins with a leathern girdle, who came neither eating nor drinking, but laying the axe to the root of every tree, warned a generation of vipers to flee from the wrath to come, saying even to the tyrant upon the throne, “It is not lawful for thee.” And we must consider him as fitted for “serving the will of God in his generation,” according to his rank and place, as well as his Divine Master, whose advent he announced, who “did not strive, nor cry, nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets, nor break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax.” To those who complain, that they are disappointed at not finding, in our national Reformer, courteous manners, and a winning address, we may say, in the language of our Lord to the Jews concerning the Baptist: “What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? A reed shaken with the wind? What went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings’ courts. But what went ye out for to see? A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet.” To the men of this generation, as well as to the Jews of old, may be applied the parable of the children sitting in the market‑place, and calling one to another, and saying, “We have piped unto you, and ye {258} have not danced; we have mourned unto you, and ye have not wept.” Disaffection to the work often lurks under cavils against the instruments by which it is carried on; and had Knox been softer and more yielding in his temper, he would have been pronounced unfit for his office by the very persons who now censure his harshness and severity. “But wisdom is justified of all her children.” Before the Reformation, superstition, shielded by ignorance, and armed with power, governed with gigantic sway. Men of mild spirits, and of gentle manners, would have been as unfit for taking the field against this enemy, as a dwarf or a child for encountering a giant. What did Erasmus in the days of Luther? What would Lowth have done in the days of Wickliffe, or Blair in those of Knox? It has been justly observed concerning our Reformer, that “those very qualities which now render his character less amiable, fitted him to be the instrument of providence for advancing the Reformation among a fierce people, and enabled him to face danger, and surmount opposition, from which a person of a more gentle spirit would have been apt to shrink back.”[320] Viewing his character in this light, those who cannot regard him as an amiable man, may, without hesitation, pronounce him a Great Reformer.

The most disinterested of the nobility, who were embarked with him in the same cause, sacrificed on some occasions the public good to their private interests, {259} and disappointed the hopes which he had formed of them. The most upright of his associates in the ministry relaxed their exertions, or suffered themselves at times to be drawn into measures that were unsuitable to their station, and hurtful to the reformed religion. Goodman, after being adopted by the church of Scotland, and ranked among her reformers, yielded so far to the love of country as to desert a people who were warmly attached to him, and return to the bosom of a less pure church, which received him with coldness and distrust. Willock, after acquitting himself honourably from the commencement of the interesting conflict, withdrew before the victory was completely secured, and, wearied out with the successive troubles in which his native country was involved, sought a retreat for himself in England. Craig, being left without the assistance of his colleague, and placed between two conflicting parties, betrayed his fears by having recourse to temporizing measures. Douglas, in his old age, became the dupe of persons whose rapacity impoverished the protestant church. And each of the superintendents was, at one time or another, complained of for neglect or for partiality, in the discharge of his functions. But from the time that the standard of truth was first raised by him in his native country, till it dropped from his hands at death, Knox never shrunk from danger――never consulted his own ease or advantage――never entered into any compromise with the enemy――never was bribed or frightened into cowardly silence; but keeping {260} his eye singly and steadily fixed on the advancement of religion and of liberty, supported throughout the character of the Reformer of Scotland.

Knox bore a striking resemblance to Luther in personal intrepidity and in popular eloquence. He approached nearest to Calvin in his religious sentiments, in the severity of his manners, and in a certain impressive air of melancholy which pervaded his character. And he resembled Zuinglius in his ardent attachment to the principles of civil liberty, and in combining his exertions for the reformation of the church with uniform endeavours to improve the political state of the people. Not that I would place our Reformer on a level with this illustrious triumvirate. There is a splendour which surrounds the great German reformer, partly arising from the intrinsic heroism of his character, and partly reflected from the interesting situation in which his long and doubtful struggle with the court of Rome placed him in the eyes of Europe, which removes him at a distance from all who started in the same glorious career. The Genevese reformer surpassed Knox in the extent of his theological learning, and in the unrivalled solidity and clearness of his judgment. And the reformer of Switzerland, though inferior to him in masculine elocution, and in daring courage, excelled him in self‑command, in prudence, and in that species of eloquence which steals into the heart, convinces without irritating, and governs without assuming the tone of authority. But although “he attained not to the first three,” I know not, among {261} all the eminent men who appeared at that period, any name which is so well entitled to be placed next to theirs as that of Knox, whether we consider the talents with which he was endowed, or the important services which he performed.

There are perhaps few who have attended to the active and laborious exertions of our Reformer, who have not been insensibly led to form the opinion that he was of a robust constitution. This is however a mistake. He was of small stature, and of a weakly habit of body;[321] a circumstance which serves to give us a higher idea of the vigour of his mind. His portrait seems to have been taken more than once during his life, and has been frequently engraved.[322] It continues still to frown in the antechamber of queen Mary, to whom he was often an ungracious visitor. We discern in it the traits of his characteristic intrepidity, austerity, and keen penetration. Nor can we overlook his beard, which, according to the custom of the times, he wore long, and reaching to his middle; a circumstance which I mention the rather, because some writers have gravely assured us, that it was the chief thing which procured him reverence among his countrymen.[323] A popish author {262} has informed us, that he was gratified with having his picture drawn, and has expressed much horror at this, seeing he had caused all the images of the saints to be broken.[324]

One charge against him has not yet been noticed. He has been accused of setting up himself for a prophet, of presuming to intrude into the secret counsel of God, and of enthusiastically confounding the suggestions of his own imagination, and the effusions of his own spirit, with the dictates of inspiration, and immediate communications from heaven. Let us examine this accusation a little. It is proper, in the first place, to hear his own statement of the grounds on which he proceeded in many of those warnings which have been denominated predictions. Having, in one of his treatises, denounced the judgments to which the inhabitants of England exposed themselves, by renouncing the gospel, and returning to idolatry, he gives the following explication of the {263} warrant which he had for his threatenings. “Ye would know the groundis of my certitude. God grant that, hearing thame, ye may understand, and stedfastlie believe the same. My assurances are not the mervalles of Merlin, nor yit the dark sentences of prophane prophesies; but the plane treuth of Godis word, the invincibill justice of the everlasting God, and the ordinarie course of his punismentis and plagis frome the beginning, are my assurance and groundis. Godis word threatneth destructioun to all inobedient; his immutabill justice must requyre the same; the ordinarie punishments and plaguis schaw exempillis. What man then can ceise to prophesie?”[325] We find him expressing himself in a similar way, in his defence of the threatenings which he uttered against those who had been guilty of the murder of king Henry, and the regent Murray. He denies that he had spoken “as one that entered into the secret counsel of God,” and insists that he had merely declared the judgment which was pronounced in the divine law against murderers, and which had often been exemplified in the vengeance which overtook them, even in this life.[326] In so far then his threatenings, or predictions, (for so he repeatedly calls them,) do not stand in need of an apology. Though sometimes expressed in absolute or indefinite language, it is but fair and reasonable to understand {264} them, like similar declarations in scripture, as implying a tacit condition.

There are, however, several of his sayings which, perhaps, cannot be vindicated upon these principles, and which he himself seems to have rested upon different grounds.[327] Of this kind are the assurances which he expressed, from the beginning of the Scottish troubles, that the cause of the congregation would ultimately prevail; his confident hope of again preaching in his native country and at St Andrews, avowed by him during his imprisonment on board the French galleys, and frequently repeated during his exile; with the intimations which he gave respecting the death of Thomas Maitland, and Kircaldy of Grange. It cannot be denied that his contemporaries considered these as proceeding from a prophetic spirit, and have attested that they received an exact accomplishment. Without entering on a particular examination of these instances, or venturing to give a decisive opinion respecting any of them, I shall confine myself to a few general observations.

The most easy way of getting rid of this delicate subject is to dismiss it at once, and summarily to pronounce that all pretensions to extraordinary premonitions, since the completing of the canon of inspiration, are unwarranted, and that they ought, without examination, to be discarded and treated as fanciful and visionary. Nor would this fix any {265} peculiar imputation on the character or talents of our Reformer, when it is considered that the most learned persons of that age were under the influence of a still greater weakness, and strongly addicted to the belief of judicial astrology. But I doubt much if this method of determining the question would be doing justice to the subject. _Est periculum, ne, aut neglectis his impia fraude, aut susceptis, anili superstitione, obligemur._[328] On the one hand, the disposition which mankind discover to pry into the secrets of futurity, has been always accompanied with much credulity and superstition; and it cannot be denied, that the age in which Knox lived was prone to credit the marvellous, especially as to the infliction of divine judgments on individuals. A judicious person, who is aware of this, will not be disposed to acknowledge as preternatural whatever was formerly regarded in this light, and will be on his guard against the illusions of imagination as to impressions which may be made on his own mind.

Nor would it be difficult to produce instances in which writers of a subsequent age, through mistake or under the influence of prepossession, have given a prophetical meaning to words, which originally were not intended to convey any such idea. But, on the other hand, is there not a danger of running into scepticism, and of laying down general principles which may lead us obstinately to contest the truth of the best authenticated facts, if not also to limit the {266} operations of divine providence? This is the extreme to which the present age inclines. That there are instances of persons having had presentiments as to events which afterwards did happen to themselves and others, there is, I think, the best reason to believe. Those who laugh at vulgar credulity, and exert their ingenuity in accounting for such phenomena on ordinary principles, have been exceedingly puzzled with some of these facts――a great deal more puzzled than they have confessed; and the solutions which they have given are, in some cases, as mysterious as any thing included in the intervention of superior spirits, or in preternatural and divine intimations.[329] The canon of our faith, as Christians, is contained in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments; we must not look to impressions or new revelations as the rule of our duty; but that God may, on particular occasions, forewarn persons of some things which shall happen, to testify his approbation of them, to encourage them to confide in him in circumstances of peculiar difficulty, or to serve other important purposes, is not, I think, inconsistent with {267} the principles of either natural or revealed religion. If to believe this be enthusiasm, it is an enthusiasm into which some of the most enlightened and sober men, in modern as well as ancient times, have fallen.[330] The reformers were men of singular piety; they were exposed to uncommon opposition, and had uncommon services to perform; they were endued with extraordinary gifts, and why may we not suppose that they were occasionally favoured with extraordinary premonitions, with respect to certain events which concerned themselves, other individuals, or the church in general? But whatever intimations of this kind they received, they never proposed them as a rule of action to themselves or others, nor rested the authority of their mission upon these, nor appealed to them as constituting any part of the evidence of those doctrines which they preached to the world.

Our Reformer left behind him a widow and five children. His two sons were born to him by his {268} first wife, Marjory Bowes. We have already seen, that, about the year 1566, they went to England, where their mother’s relations resided. They received their education at St John’s college, in the university of Cambridge; their names being enrolled in the matriculation‑book only eight days after the death of their father. Nathanael, the eldest of them, after obtaining the degrees of bachelor and master of arts, and being admitted fellow of the college, died in 1580. Eleazar, the youngest son, in addition to the honours attained by his brother, was created bachelor of divinity, ordained one of the preachers of the university, and admitted to the vicarage of Clacton‑Magna. He died in 1591, and was buried in the chapel of St John’s college.[331] It appears that both sons died without issue, and the family of the Reformer became extinct in the male line. His other children were daughters by his second wife. The General Assembly testified their respect for his memory by assigning his stipend, for the year after his death, to his widow and three daughters, and this appears to have been continued for some time by the regent Morton, who, though charged with avarice during his administration, treated them with uniform attention and kindness.[332] Margaret Stewart, his widow, was afterwards married to Sir Andrew Ker of Fadounside, a strenuous supporter {269} of the Reformation.[333] The names of his daughters were Martha, Margaret, and Elizabeth.[334] The first was married to James Fleming, a minister of the church of Scotland;[335] the second, to Zachary, son of the celebrated Robert Pont;[336] and the third to John Welch, minister of Ayr.

Mrs Welch seems to have inherited no inconsiderable portion of her father’s spirit, and she had her share of similar hardships. Her husband was one of those patriotic ministers who resisted the arbitrary measures pursued by James VI. for overturning the government and liberties of the presbyterian church of Scotland. Being determined to abolish the General Assembly, James had, for a considerable time, prevented the meetings of that court by successive prorogations. Perceiving the design of the court, a number of the delegates from synods resolved to keep the diet which had been appointed to be held at Aberdeen in July 1605. They merely constituted the Assembly and appointed a day for its next meeting, and being charged by Laurieston, the king’s commissioner, to dissolve, immediately obeyed; but the commissioner, having ante‑dated the charge, several of the leading members were thrown into prison. {270} Welch and five of his brethren, when called before the privy council, declined that court, as incompetent to judge the offence of which they were accused, according to the laws of the kingdom; on which account they were indicted to stand trial for treason at Linlithgow. Their trial was conducted in the most illegal and unjust manner. The king’s advocate told the jury that the only thing which came under their cognizance was the fact of the declinature, the judges having already found that it was treasonable; and threatened them with an “azize of error,” if they did not proceed as he directed them. After the jury were empannelled, the justice‑clerk went in and threatened them with his majesty’s displeasure, if they acquitted the prisoners. The greater part of the jurors being still reluctant, the chancellor went out and consulted with the other judges, who promised that no punishment should be inflicted on the prisoners, provided the jury brought in a verdict agreeable to the court. By such disgraceful methods, they were induced, at midnight, to find, by a majority of three, that the prisoners were guilty, upon which, they were condemned to suffer the death of traitors.[337]

Leaving her children at Ayr, Mrs Welch attended {271} her husband in prison, and was present at Linlithgow, with the wives of the other prisoners, on the day of trial. When informed of the sentence, these heroines, instead of lamenting their fate, praised God who had given their husbands courage to stand to the cause of their Master, adding, that, like him, they had been judged and condemned under the covert of night.[338]

The sentence of death having been changed into banishment, she accompanied her husband to France, where they remained for sixteen years. Mr Welch applied himself with such assiduity to the acquisition of the language of the country, that he was able, in the course of fourteen weeks, to preach in French, and was chosen minister to a protestant congregation at Nerac, from which he was translated to St Jean d’Angely, a fortified town in Lower Charente. War having broken out between Lewis XIII. and his protestant subjects, St Jean d’Angely was besieged by the king in person. On this occasion, Welch not only animated the inhabitants of the town to a vigorous resistance by his exhortations, but he appeared on the walls, and gave his assistance to the garrison. The king was at last admitted into the town in consequence of a treaty, and being displeased that Welch preached during his residence in it, sent the duke d’Espernon, with a company of soldiers, to take him from the pulpit. When the preacher saw the duke enter the church, he ordered his hearers to make {272} room for the marshal of France, and desired him to sit down and hear the word of God. He spoke with such an air of authority that the duke involuntarily took a seat, and listened to the sermon with great gravity and attention. He then brought Welch to the king, who asked him, how he durst preach there, since it was contrary to the laws of the kingdom for any of the pretended reformed to officiate in places where the court resided. “Sir,” replied Welch, “if your majesty knew what I preached, you would not only come and hear it yourself, but make all France hear it; for I preach not as those men you use to hear. First, I preach that you must be saved by the merits of Jesus Christ, and not your own; and I am sure your conscience tells you that your good works will never merit heaven. Next, I preach, that, as you are king of France, there is no man on earth above you; but these men whom you hear, subject you to the pope of Rome, which I will never do.” Pleased with this reply, Lewis said to him, “_Hé bien, vous seriez mon ministre_;”[339] and addressing him by the title of Father, assured him of his protection. And he was as good as his word; for St Jean d’Angely being reduced by the royal forces in 1621, the king gave directions to De Vitry, one of his generals, to take care of his minister; in consequence of which, Welch and his family were conveyed, at his majesty’s expense, to Rochelle.[340]

{273} Having lost his health, and the physicians informing him that the only prospect which he had of recovering it, was by returning to his native country, Mr Welch ventured, in the year 1622, to come to London. But his own sovereign was incapable of treating him with that generosity which he had experienced from the French monarch; and, dreading the influence of a man who was far gone with a consumption, he absolutely refused to give him permission to return to Scotland. Mrs Welch, by means of some of her mother’s relations at court, obtained access to James, and petitioned him to grant this liberty to her husband. The following singular conversation took place on that occasion. His majesty asked her, who was her father. She replied, “John Knox.”――“Knox and Welch!” exclaimed he, “the devil never made such a match as that.”――“It’s right like, sir,” said she, “for we never speired[341] his advice.” He asked her how many children her father had left, and if they were lads or lasses. She said three, and they were all lasses. “God be thanked!” cried the {274} king, lifting up both his hands; “for an they had been three lads, I had never bruiked[342] my three kingdoms in peace.” She again urged her request, that he would give her husband his native air. “Give him his native air!” replied the king, “give him the devil!”――“Give that to your hungry courtiers,” said she, offended at his profaneness. He told her at last, that if she would persuade her husband to submit to the bishops, he would allow him to return to Scotland. Mrs Welch, lifting up her apron, and holding it towards the king, replied, in the true spirit of her father, “Please your majesty, I’d rather kep[343] his head there.”[344]

Welch was soon after released from the power of the despot, and from his own sufferings. “This month of May, 1622,” says one of his intimate friends, “we received intelligence of the death of that holy servant of God, Mr Welch, one of the fathers and pillars of {275} that church, and the light of his age, who died at London, an exile from his native country, on account of his opposition to the re‑establishment of episcopal government, and his firm support of the presbyterian and synodical discipline, received and established among us; and that after eighteen years’ banishment――a man full of the Holy Spirit zeal, charity, and incredible diligence in the duties of his office.” The death of his wife is recorded by the same pen. “This month of January, 1625, died at Ayr, my cousin, Mrs Welch, daughter of that great servant of God, the late John Knox, and wife of that holy man of God, Mr Welch, above‑mentioned; a spouse and daughter worthy of such a husband, and such a father.”[345]