The same night Wishart was arrested by the Earl of Bothwell, and
afterwards handed over to the Cardinal Archbishop, tried by him as a
heretic, and on 1st March 1546 burned in front of his castle of St
Andrews. Ere long this stronghold was stormed, and the Cardinal murdered
in his own chamber by a number of the gentlemen of Fife, whose raid was
partly in revenge for Wishart's death. They shut themselves up in the
castle for protection, and we hear no more of John Knox till the
following year. Then we are told that, 'wearied of removing from place
to place, by reason of the persecution that came upon him by the Bishop
of St Andrews,' he joined Leslie's band in their hold in St Andrews, in
consequence of the desire of his pupils' parents 'that himself might
have the benefit of the castle, and their children the benefit of his
doctrine [teaching].' It is plain that by this time what Knox taught was
the doctrine of Wishart. Indeed he had not been long in St Andrews when,
urged by the congregation there, he consented to become its preacher.
And his very first sermon in this capacity rang out the full note of the
coming reform or rather revolution in the religion of Scotland.
Now, this is a startlingly sudden transition. The change from the
position of a nameless notary under Papal authority, who is in addition
a minister of the altar of the Catholic Church, to that of a preacher in
the whole armour of the Puritan Reformation, is great. Was the
transition a public and official one only? Was it a change merely
ecclesiastical or political? Or was it preceded by a more private change
and a personal crisis? And was that private and personal crisis merely
intellectual? Was it, that is, the adoption of a new dogma only, or
perhaps the acceptance of a new system? Or if there was something
besides these, was it nothing more than the resolve of a very powerful
will--such a will as we must all ascribe to Knox? Was this all? Or was
there here rather, perhaps, the sort of change which determines the will
instead of being determined by it--a personal change, in the sense of
being emotional and inward as well as deep and permanent--a new _set_ of
the whole man, and so the beginning of an inner as well as of an outer
and public life?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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