There was in that town a young man who was already acquainted with the great facts of salvation announced in this book, and who was well qualified to circulate and explain it. Patrick Hamilton, gifted with keen intelligence and a Christian heart, knew how to set forth in a concise and natural manner the truths of which he was convinced. He knew that there is in the Scriptures a wisdom superior to the human understanding, and that in order to comprehend them there is need of the illumination of the Holy Spirit. He believed that with the written it is necessary to combine oral teaching; and that as Testaments were come from the Netherlands, Scotland needed the spoken word which should call restless and degenerate souls to seek in them the living water which springs up unto life eternal. God was then preparing His witnesses in Scotland, and the first was Patrick Hamilton. He laid open the New Testament; he set forth the facts and the doctrines contained in it; he defended the evangelical principles. His father, the foremost of Scottish knights, had not broken so many lances in the tournament as Patrick now broke in his college, at the university, with the canons, and with all who set themselves against the truth.[34] At the beginning of Lent 1527, he publicly preached in the cathedral and elsewhere the doctrines (heresies, said his sentence) taught by Martin Luther.[35] We have no further particulars of his preaching; but these are sufficient to show us that at this period the people who gathered together in the ancient churches of Scotland heard this faithful minister announce that ‘it is not the law, that terrible tyrant, as Luther said, that is to reign in the conscience, but the Son of God, the king of justice and of peace, who, like a fruitful rain, descends from heaven and fertilizes the most barren soil.’[36]