Knox, John, approximately 1514-1572; Reformation -- Scotland
Hearing, at Dieppe, then, in October 1557, of the troubles, and of the
faint war with England, and moved, perhaps, he suggests, by Satan, {77a}
Knox "began to dispute with himself, as followeth, 'Shall Christ, the
author of peace, concord, and quietness, be preached where war is
proclaimed, and tumults appear to rise? What comfort canst thou have to
see the one part of the people rise up against the other,'" and so forth.
These truly Christian reflections, as we may think them, "yet do trouble
and move my wicked heart," says Knox. He adds, hypothetically, that
perhaps the letters received at Dieppe "did somewhat discourage me."
{77b} He was only certain that the devil was at the bottom of the whole
affair.
The "tumults that appear to arise" are probably the dissensions between
the Regent and the mutinous nobles who refused to invade England at her
command. D'Oysel needed a bodyguard; and he feared that the Lords would
seize and carry off the Regent. Arran, in 1564, speaks of a plot to
capture her in Holyrood. Here were promises of tumults. There were also
signs of a renewed feud between the house of Hamilton and the Stewart
Earl of Lennox, the rival claimant of the crown. There seems, moreover,
to have been some tumultuary image-breaking. {78}
Knox may have been merely timid: he is not certain, but his delay passed
in consulting the learned, for the satisfaction of his conscience, and
his confessed doubts as to whether Christianity should be pushed by civil
war, seem to indicate that he was not always the prophet patron of modern
Jehus, that he did, occasionally, consult the Gospel as well as the
records of pre-Christian Israel.
The general result was that, from October 1557 to March 1558, Knox stayed
in Dieppe, preaching with great success, raising up a Protestant church,
and writing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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