John Knox: His Ideas and Ideals

JOHN KNOX was born at Haddington In the year 1505. Neither place nor date is, indeed, absolutely beyond dispute; and the slight uncertainty has afforded ample room for the conflicts of antiquarians. The place may have been the village of Gifford, two or three miles from Haddington, but was more probably Gififord-gate, a portion of Haddington itself; and the date may have been a few years later, even as much as ten years, as one keen investigator in such matters has recently suggested; but the variations from the received date are less likely to have been due to exceptional knowledge and care than to carelessness, which in regard to such points was common in those days. Some people even in our day do not know the exact date of their own birth.

In the sixteenth century Haddington appears to have occupied a more outstanding position than it now does among the towns of Scotland, and, lying on the route of armies advancing from England, it had suffered much in the wars with which during the preceding centuries that part of the country was incessantly harassed. In Knox’s time it contained two monasteries and an abbey; so that he had constantly before his eyes, in the years when impressions penetrate most deeply, the system of religion which he was destined to destroy; and, besides, there were several chapels and churches, one of which, on account of its prominence in the landscape, bore the title of the Lamp of Lothian. The town also possessed a school of note, in which, it may be presumed, the future reformer received the elements of education, as no fewer than three other Scottish worthies had done before him — Bower, Wyntoun and Major.

The name of Knox was not scarce in Scotland in that age, or confined to one district of the country; so that it is impossible to infer with any degree of certainty a connection with him every time it turns up in the records of the period. The most prominent Knoxes in the country were those of Ranfurly in Renfrewshire, but no connection between them and the Reformer has been established. In an interview with the Earl of Bothwell, who had estates in Haddingtonshire, Knox said, as he has himself recorded in his History of the Reformation in Scotland: “My grandfathers, paternal and maternal, and my father have served your, lordship’s predecessors, and some of them have died under their standards “; which appears to indicate that he was a farmer’s son with an attachment to the soil and to the feudal superior. His father’s name was William, as was also that of his brother, who figures here and there in his writings as a substantial merchant, trading in his own ship with England, and as a sincere adherent of the Reformed faith. His mother was a Sinclair — a name which he himself sometimes employed in signing his letters, when it was dangerous to make use of his own. Thus it will be seen that he belonged, by birth and upbringing, to the lower order of the middle class, which he was to do so much to educate and elevate; although he was destined to be associated in a remarkable degree with the nobility of his native country; while for the masses of the community, which in our day bulk so largely in the thoughts of religious leaders, he had, apart from his faith in the uplifting influences of the Gospel, very little of the sympathy of the democrat, his commonest name for this class being “the rascal multitude.” 1 History, ii. 343.

Of how Knox came to be set apart for the priesthood, whether by his own choice or by the desire of his parents, we have received no information. But, after being educated at the high-school of his native town, he entered the University of Glasgow in 1522, when he was seventeen years of age. As Haddington lay in the diocese of St. Andrews, it might have been expected that he would have connected himself with the university of that place; but he may have been attracted to the city of the West by the fame of John Major, a Haddingtonshire man like himself and at that date the most renowned professor in the country. It is generally believed that Knox owed not a little to this teacher, especially in the formation of his political views, as did also George Buchanan, who was a student under the same professor a little later at St. Andrews, to which Major had been transferred. Although a bold and progressive thinker. Major never severed himself from the old Church. Buchanan became the foremost Humanist of his age in Scotland and won a European celebrity for the elegance of his Latinity. In this direction Knox achieved no special distinction. His scholary. ship never was worn as an ornament. But it was ample for the needs of the day, for which he employed it. He could refer with facility to the writings of the Fathers and to the incidents of Church History, so far as he needed them. He had of course the mastery of Latin, this being the language in which the intercourse of the learned was carried on and the instructions of universities delivered. Circumstances led to his familiar use of the French language. But, above all, he threw himself on the study of the Holy Bible, which he read in the original tongues, having acquired Hebrew when he was over forty. He was concerned in the translation of the Bible into English which goes by the name of the Geneva Version; and it is from this that his own quotations are generally made; these having for the modern reader, on this account, an odd and uncouth sound. It is in the use of his native tongue, however, that he is a master, his words being, in comparison with those of ordinary writers, like hail to rain, or like bullets in comparison with arrows. His spelling, which is very arbitrary, gives to his writings a foreign and repulsive look; but, in reality, it is quite easy to read them; and it is useless to continue printing them in the old orthography.

As has been remarked, it was in the year 1522, when he was seventeen years of age, that he entered the University of Glasgow. Thereafter he lived fifty years, dying in 1572. But for exactly the half of this period — namely, from 1522 to 1546 — we have next to no information about him; except that a document has been discovered in which he signs himself, in Latin, “John Knox, minister of the Sacred Altar, of the diocese of St. Andrews, notary by Papal Authority,” which betokens that he had become a priest and employed himself, either occasionally or regularly, in notarial business, which would in our day be done by lawyers but in those days was included among the multifarious employments of the priesthood. When again he emerges into visibility, he is engaged in the work of tuition in a. noble family in the neighbourhood of his birthplace. Such employment has always been among those in which men educated for the sacred office might be found engaged; but it is extraordinary to find Knox still occupied with it at the age of two-and-forty. This gives colour to the idea that the date of his birth is too early. But of course there may have been other reasons for the anomaly, such, for example, as scruples about engaging in the regular work of the priesthood. From the time when, in 1547, he comes clearly into view as a public character, we can follow him with full intelligence to the close of his life.

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