Knox, John, approximately 1514-1572; Reformation -- Scotland
Stationary ministers are to receive less sustenance than the migratory
Superintendents; the sons of the preachers must be educated, the
daughters "honestly dowered." The payment is mainly in "bolls" of meal
and malt. The state of the poor, "fearful and horrible" to say, is one
of universal contempt. Provision must be made for the aged and weak.
Superintendents, after election, are to be examined by all the ministers
of the province, and by three or more Superintendents. Other ceremonies
"we cannot allow." In 1581, a Scottish Catholic, Burne, averred that
Willock objected to ceremonies of Ordination, because people would say,
if these are necessary, what minister ordained _you_? The query was hard
to answer, so ceremonies of Ordination could not be allowed. The story
was told to Burne, he says, by an eyewitness, who heard Willock.
Every church must have a schoolmaster, who ought to be able to teach
grammar and Latin. Education should be universal: poor children of
ability must be enabled to pass on to the universities, through secondary
schools. At St. Andrews the three colleges were to have separate
functions, not clashing, and culminating in Divinity.
Whence are the funds to be obtained? Here the authors bid "your Honours"
"have respect to your poor brethren, the labourers of the ground, who by
these cruel beasts, the papists, have been so oppressed . . . " They
ought only to pay "reasonable teinds, that they may feel some benefit of
Christ Jesus, now preached unto them. With grief of heart we hear that
some gentlemen are now as cruel over their tenants as ever were the
papists, requiring of them whatsoever they paid to the Church, so that
the papistical tyranny shall only be changed into the tyranny of the
landlord or laird." Every man should have his own teinds, or tithes;
whereas, in fact, the great lay holders of tithes took them off other
men's lands, a practice leading to many blood-feuds. The attempt of
Charles I. to let "every man have his own tithes," and to provide the
preachers with a living wage, was one of the causes of the distrust of
the King which culminated in the great Civil War. But Knox could not
"recover for the Church her liberty and freedom, and that only for relief
of the poor." "_We speak not for ourselves_" the Book says, "but in
favour of the poor, and the labourers defrauded . . . The Church is only
bound to sustain and nourish her charges . . . to wit the Ministers of
the Kirk, the Poor, and the teachers of youth." The funds must be taken
out of the tithes, the chantries, colleges, chaplainries, and the
temporalities of Bishops, Deans, and cathedrals generally.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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