It was a salient feature of Knox's ministry in England, as afterwards in Scotland (though he was far from standing alone in this respect, for it was the practice of all the greatest preachers of the age), that he was so often constrained by an irresistible pressure of conscience, to utter such plain-spoken warnings of coming retribution for national sins, or for the crimes of parties or high-placed individuals in Church or State. It is impossible to doubt the perfect sincerity of his convictions on all these occasions; or the thorough purity of the motives which impelled him to hold that kind of language in which his admonitions so often passed into the prophetic style, and his warnings into seer-like sentences of doom. How, then, did he come by such forecastings of the future, near or remote? Does he throw any light himself upon this interesting question? Not seldom he does so-as, for example, in immediate sequence to the passage which we have just now cited, where he continues his discourse in the following remarkable terms: "But ye would know the grounds of my certitude. God grant that, hearing them, ye may understand and steadfastly believe the same. My assurances are not the marvels of Merlin, nor yet the dark sentences of profane prophecies; but (1) the plain truth of God's word, (2) the invincible justice of the everlasting God, and (3) the ordinary course of his punishments and plagues from the beginning, are my assurance and grounds.

"God's word threateneth destruction to all inobedient; his immutable justice must require the same. The ordinary punishments and plagues show examples. What man, then, can cease to prophesy? The word of God plainly speaks, that if a man shall hear the curses of God's law, and yet, in his heart, shall promise to himself felicity and good luck, thinking that he shall have peace, albeit he walk after the imaginations of his own will and heart; to such a man the Lord will not be merciful, but his wrath shall be kindled against him, and He shall destroy his name from under heaven. How the Lord threateneth plague after plague, and even the last to be sorest, until finally He will consume realms and nations, if they repent not, read the 26th chapter of Leviticus, which chapter oft have I willed you to mark, and yet I do unfeignedly. And think not it appertaineth to the Jews only. No, brethren, the Prophets are the interpreters of the law, and they make the plagues of God common to all offenders. The punishment ever beginneth at the household of God."

This passage of the Reformer's writings is of primary authority as a standard of interpretation for all those places—and they are numerous where he speaks in what, in an accommodated sense, may be called a prophetic tone and manner; and in which it has sometimes been thought that he spoke not without some endowment of supernatural insight and foreknowledge. We have indeed, for our part, no à priori difficulties or objections to urge against even such a mode of explanation. But we behove to guard carefully against the danger that such a freedom from undue preoccupation of mind on one side of the question may insensibly slide into a too great facility of belief on the other; and to guard us on this side such an explanation of the "grounds of his certitude," deliberately volunteered by the Reformer himself, ought surely to be sufficient. Now among these grounds there is no place whatever assigned to any supernatural communication, save "the plain truth of God's word." All the bases of Knox's "assurance," in such cases, were the same which are open and accessible to every believing man as much as to him, viz.: "God's word threatening destruction to all inobedient; his immutable justice requiring the same, as it must; and the ordinary punishments and plagues showing examples before the eyes of all; what man, then, can cease to prophesy?"

Such a power and manner of prophecy was no marvel or puzzle in any man. It called for no special explanation in Knox. It was simply the utterance of his strong faith in the immutable word of the Eternal-a faith however of the very strongest that mortal man ever possessed-a faith of the miracle-making kind, that can remove mountains. As Thomas Carlyle expresses it, "In heartfelt instinctive adherence to truth, in sincerity, as we say, he has no superior. Nay, we might ask, what equal he has? The heart of him is of the true prophet cast. He resembles more than any of the moderns an old Hebrew prophet-the same inflexibility, intolerance, rigid, narrow-looking adherence to God's truth; stern rebuke in the name of God to all that forsake truth—an old Hebrew prophet in the guise of an Edinburgh minister of the sixteenth century-we are to take him for that, nor require him to be other."*

The visit before referred to which the Duke of Northumberland made to the border counties in the summer of 1552, in his capacity

* "Lectures on Heroes, Hero-worship, and the Heroic in History," p. 137,

772.

as "General Warden of all the Marches towards Scotland," was not without important influence upon the chapter of Knox's life which we shall have next to narrate. He came accompanied by the Earls of Huntingdon and Pembroke and a brilliant retinue, and spent several weeks in the province, inspecting the fortifications of Berwick and other border strengths, giving orders for new military works, and making new dispositions of the March-wardenries, including the appointment of Lord Wharton to be his Deputy Warden General. Knox tells us that he preached before him “in Newcastle, and in other places moe," from which we may probably gather that he accompanied him as the representative of the King (for the Duke was Lord Lieutenant, as well as Lord Warden) in the capacity of royal chaplain throughout the province. The powerful statesman and the great preacher had thus an opportunity of observing and studying one another, which would appear to have been not unimproved on either side. Dudley would seem to have been deeply impressed with Knox's character and powers, and with the value of his services in the cause of the Reformation; for from that time he became his good friend and patron. What Knox thought of Dudley, as the result of his observations made at this time and soon after at Court, we shall see by-and-by. But, meanwhile, they would appear to have been so closely associated together in their movements through the country for several months, that Knox began to be spoken of in London as the chaplain of the great and all-powerful Duke.

SUPPLEMENT TO CHAPTER II.

"THE REASONING BETWIXT KNOX AND THE ABBOTT of CrossrAGWELL."

IN 1563 Knox published in Edinburgh an extremely curious and interesting tract, entitled "Heir followeth the coppie of the ressoning which was betwix the Abbote of Crossragwell and John Knox, in Mayboill, concerning the Masse, in the yeare of God, a thousand five hundredth thre scoir and two yeares." It will be found in the sixth volume of Dr. Laing's edition of "Knox's Works." A considerable extract from it, containing the argument of the Abbot against Knox's syllogism against the Mass, was included by Dr. M'Crie among the many curious articles of his Appendix to the Reformer's "Life."

In 1561 an Oration by Master Quintine Kennedy, Commendator of Crossragwell, had been published, in which he exhorted "all thais of the Congregation* to espy how wonderfully they are abusit by their dissaitful preachers," and Knox had been singled out to bear almost the whole brunt of this clever but by no means successful attack.

A copy of the Reformer's "Vindication of the Doctrine that the Mass is Idolatry," had come into the Abbot's hand, along with his letter to the Queen Regent of Scotland, both of which had been published in 1556; and Kennedy had quickness enough to perceive what advantage Knox had given to his opponents by that ambiguity in the use of the term idolatry in his first syllogism, on which we have commented above. He resolved therefore to make this very syllogism the starting point of his Oration, and he introduced his critique upon it in the following extremely well-put exordium :

"The Congregation," and "the Lords of the Congregation," were the names assumed by the Scottish Protestants and those of the nobility who joined them.

"Movit and constrainit, not only by natural affection through tenderness of blood whilk is betwix me and divers noblemen of the Congregation, but rather compellit in my conscience, I have thought expedient to bestow and apply the talent and grace whilk God has given me (if there be ony) in such manner as may be to the glory of God, true setting forth of his word to those whilkis are abusit with false, wicked, and ungodly doctrine; specially in this maist dangerous time, whereinto all heresies appear to be assembled and gathered together as an arrayed host to invade, oppress, and utterly downthrow the true faith and religion of Christian men, so dearly coft [bought] with the precious blood and death of Jesus Christ our Saviour. And to the effect that we may, by God's grace and favour, fulfil this our godly pretence [proposal] and purpose, shortly will we call to remembrance ane notable syllogism or argument set forth by ane famous preacher, callit John Knox, in his sermon against the Mess, in manner as after follows:

"All worshipping, honouring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God," &c., &c.

"Have patience, beloved brethren in Jesus Christ, and suffer me to decipher and declare this disguisit syllogism, and, God willing, I shall make you clearly to understand if the same be godly, properly, and learnedly applied for confirmation of his purpose to prove the Mess idolatry."

The clever Abbot shuts his eyes, of course, to all the evidence which Knox himself supplies of his use of the word idolatry in its widest sense, ethical as well as theological. He takes care to

understand him as referring only to idolatry in its narrowest sense, as the worship of an idol instead of God, and has no difficulty therefore in showing that one at least of the examples adduced by Knox from the Old Testament (for he is careful also to refer to no more than one of them), that of Saul's offering sacrifice to the Lord without a divine warrant, is inadequate to prove that this invention of Saul's own brain was an act of idolatry. "For why," says he, "idolatry is to ascribe God's glory to any other save to God himself, or to worship any other as God, which Saul did not, because he made his sacrifice and oblation to the living God, wherethrough he committed no idolatry; wherefore it is manifest that this testimony of Scripture is improperly applied for probation of idolatry." . . "And to be assured of the sam