Heroes and Reformers of History … No. 8

JOHN KNOX: THE THUNDERING SCOT

When they laid the body of John Knox to rest in his native Scottish soil a nobleman was heard to say, “Here lies one who neither flattered nor feared any flesh.” It was a fitting epitaph for “the thundering Scot,” as he came to be called. As Scotland’s greatest churchman and one of the most colorful figures in the history of the Reformation, he cried out against the sins of both church and state with rare courage. It is a wonder that he escaped martyrdom and lived to die a natural death in 1572 at age 60, which was an advanced age back in the those days.

His courage was matched only by the woman who ruled Scotland in those days, and who at last was executed in “the Tower” in London for supposedly plotting against Queen Elizabeth. It is said that Mary Queen of Scots feared no one - no one that is except John Knox, who showed no respect of persons in his thunderbolts against pride, injustice, and idolatry. To him the Roman Catholic mass was idolatry. In its place he sought to put the simple serving of the Lord’s supper in every Scottish church on every Lord’s day. He led the fight against the pope and his Scottish bishops in the struggle that finally made Scotland Protestant. That small nation today has a Protestant state church (Presbyterian) due largely to the work of Knox.

In the early years of his reform efforts the French Catholics, who at the time ruled Scotland, forced him to serve as a galley slave. He was chained to his bench where he ate, slept, and worked the oars under the threat of the lash, and where many died under intolerable conditions. The guards added to the misery by pushing pictures of the Virgin Mary into the faces of the slaves, calling for mocked kisses.

On one occasion Knox stripped the picture from its pole, tore it to bits, and threw it into the sea. The guards could do no more than to marvel at such uncommon courage.

His life as a galley slave must have been providential, for it not only stirred his righteous anger but disciplined him for the tortuous life that lay before him as a reformer. It also made him wiser. He learned how to survive. On one occasion when Knox was crying out against “the Paip’s” (pope’s) corruption and idolatry, the Catholic bishops plotted to do him in. Knox showed up at the appointed place, but he had with him a large company of influential noblemen!

John Knox started out as a priest in the Roman church, but as the winds of reform blew over Scotland he was affected by its influence. The winds blew from England (Henry VIII had broken with the pope), Germany (Luther’s reformation was spreading over much of Europe), and Switzerland (Calvin and Zwingli had launched the “Reform” Protestant tradition). While Knox was influenced by Luther’s writings, it was John Calvin who gave him his reformation theology. That is why Scotland is today Presbyterian (Reformed) rather than Lutheran. Calvin was Knox’s mentor. He was with Calvin in Geneva for a time, where Calvin built his theocratic city.

But it was gut level stuff more than theology that made Knox the impassioned reformer that he became, such as when some of Scotland’s most exemplary young princes of the church were burned at the stack for certain anti-Catholic sentiments. One such was Patrick Hamilton, now enshrined as one of the great martyrs in the history of the Church of Scotland. While Hamilton was studying in Paris he was influenced by Erasmus and read Luther’s disputation with Eck over the selling of indulgences. He returned to Scotland and taught at the university at St. Andrews. He continued as an exemplary Catholic for some years, writing music for a Mass in the cathedral and himself acting as precentor. But he quietly passed along some of the things he had learned from Luther.

Cardinal Beaton, eager to show loyalty to the pope, carefully devised a plot to entrap the popular young professor. Spies gathered information which enabled the cardinal to condemn Hamilton as a heretic. Lest powerful forces come to his rescue the cardinal had a stake erected so that Hamilton could be burned immediately upon being condemned.

When young Hamilton stood before the stake he was given a chance to recant. What he said on the occasion has lived on as one of the Reformation’s most shining moments. “For aye for your fire,” he said, “I prefer to burn in your fire for obeying my conscience than to burn in the fire of hell for disobeying it.”

Knox grew up hearing that story, and it especially influenced him when one of his own colaborers, George Wishart, met a similar fate, as did a number of Scottish reformers. Wishart cried out against the evils of Romanism in the streets of Scotland, and Knox, with sword in hand, stood as his body guard. It was a grave time for Scotland with all the political and religious unrest. The Protestant party demanded change, but Roman Catholicism still had the political advantage. In an effort to hold back the tide of reform the likes of Wishart had to be eliminated. One of his heresies was reading the New Testament in Greek to his students. Even though he was scholarly, humble, lovable, and anything but a dangerous man, Wishart had to die because he was a reformer. The swordsman who served as his executioner deplored killing such a holy man, and he bowed down before Wishart asking his forgiveness. The condemned man kissed the executioner on the cheek as a token that he was forgiven and enjoined him to do his duty.

This is the stuff that made the Reformation in Scotland the dramatic story that it was. Knox was now a marked man. While it was his fate to be sentenced as a galley slave, he was able to return to Scotland and take up where Hamilton and Wishart left off, eventually overpowering the evils of Romanism and making Scotland Protestant and free. And he managed to escape both the stake and the sword, partly by winning rich and influential young noblemen to his side. He had such undaunted courage that the powers that be hesitated to lay hands on him. It is understandable that the symbol of Scotland’s pride is the crouched lion. Knox, the thundering Scot, was like that crouched lion.

And yet, inspired by Wishart’s lamb-like character, Knox’s boldness was tempered by humility. One of the secrets of his influence was in persuading his fellow Scots to make every home in the realm an altar of God. He urged every father to be a priest in his own family by reading the Bible to and praying with his children. He was partly responsible for family worship becoming a longstanding tradition in Old Scotia.

Robert Bums, Scotland’s noble bard who like Knox was born a peasant, captures the spirit of the tradition of family worship in his The Cotter’s Saturday Night, part of which reads:

Then kneeling down, to heaven’s eternal King

The saint, the father, and the husband prays:

Hope “springs exulting on trimphant wing,”

That thus they all shall meet in future days:

There ever bask in uncreated rays,

No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear.

Compared with this, how poor Religion’s pride,

In all the pomp of method and of art,

When men display to congregations wide

Devotion’s every grace, except the heart!

From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs,

that makes her loved at home, revered abroad;

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,

“An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”

                                                                         — the Editor