Originally dictated by Knox to amanuenses at intervals, between 1559 and 1571, this "History" existed only in manuscript for many years. Copied and recopied by scribes of differing abilities and of varying bias, the traditional text became overlaid with emendations in some copies, and enfeebled by excisions and suppressions in others, while of clerical errors there is no small crop in almost every one of the extant versions. Several times in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one or other of these versions was printed and put forth as Knox's work. But it was only in 1846 that, as a result of the painstaking research of the notable Scottish antiquarian scholar, Dr. David Laing, a really authentic and complete version of the "History" was issued by the Wodrow Society. So far as scholarly research is concerned, Dr. Laing put the copestone upon the task of securing an authentic text, and his will probably be the definitive edition. In it the historians of succeeding generations may win the ore of historic fact and contemporary sentiment. But the work of Knox has a far wider appeal. Its author had his eye upon posterity when he wrote: he had a message for it. Time and again, he makes occasion to say so. As thus:-- "This we write, that the posterity to come may understand how potently God wrought in preserving and delivering those that had but a small knowledge of His truth, and for the love of the same hazarded all. We or our posterity may see a fearful dispersion of such as oppose themselves to impiety, or take upon them to punish the same otherwise than laws of men will permit: we may see them forsaken by men, and, as it were, despised and punished by God. But, if we do, let us not damn the persons that punish vice for just causes, nor yet despair that the same God that casts down, for causes unknown to us, will again raise up the persons dejected, to His glory and their comfort." Or again:--"This we put in memory, that the posterities to come may know that God once made His truth to triumph; but, because some of ourselves delighted more in darkness than in light, He hath restrained our freedom, and put the whole body in bondage."