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1561), "the hearts of all the godly," he says, " began to be bolden; and men began openly to speak, shall that idol be suffered again to take place within this realm? It shall not.'" It was proposed that the "idolater priest should die the death according to God's law." But Murray guarded the chapel door" that none should have entrance to trouble the priest." Murray's excuse was, however, "that he would stop all Scotsmen to enter the mass.' After a little while, the Protestant lords, out of respect to the Queen's declaration that her conscience. bound her to adhere to the obnoxious rite, were disposed to permit her to do so. They were bewitched, as Knox thought, by the enchantress; and he inveighed in his pulpit against idolatry, declaring that one mass was 66 more fearful unto him than if ten thousand armed enemies were landed in any part of the realm, of purpose to suppress the holy religion." The Queen resolved to try the effect of a personal interview, and of her skill in reasoning, upon this most intractable and powerful of all the professors of the new faith. None were present, within hearing, but Murray. It was the first of the memorable conferences or debates which Knox had with the Queen. We follow his own narrative. "The Queen," he says, "accused him, that he had raised a part of her subjects against her mother and against herself; that he had written a book against her just authority — she meant the Treatise against the Regimen of Women which she had and should cause the most learned in Europe to write against it; that he was the cause of great sedition and great slaughter in England; and that it was said to her that all that he did was by necromancy. To which the said John answered, Madam, it may please your majesty patiently to hear my simple answers. And first,' said he, if to teach the truth of God in sincerity, if to rebuke idolatry, and to will a people to worship God

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1 Knox, History, etc. (Glasgow, 1832), p. 247.

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according to His Word, be to raise subjects against their . princes, then cannot I be excused; for it has pleased God of His mercy to make me one, among many, to disclose unto this realm the vanity of the papistical religion, and the deceit, pride, and tyranny of that Roman Antichrist."" He began with this perspicuous statement of his position. He went on to say that the true knowledge of God promotes obedience to rulers, and that Mary had received as unfeigned obedience from "such as profess Christ Jesus, as ever her ancestors had received from their bishops. As to his book, he was ready to retract if he could be confuted, but he felt able to sustain its doctrines against any ten who might attempt to impugn them. Knox had an unbounded confidence in his cause, and no distrust of his own prowess in the defense of it. "You think," said Mary, "that I have no just authority?" To this direct inquiry, he replied by referring to Plato's "Republic,” in which the philosopher "damned many things that then were maintained in the world; " yet this did not prevent him from living quietly under the systems of government which he found existing. "I have communicated," he added, “my judgment to the world; if the realm finds no inconveniency in the regimen of a woman, that which they approve I shall not further disallow, than within my own heart, but shall be as well content to live under your grace, as Paul was to live under Nero. And my hope is that as long as that ye defile not your hands with the blood of the saints of God, that neither I nor that book shall either hurt you or your authority; for, in very deed, madam, that book was written most especially against that wicked Jezebel of England." "But," said the Queen, "ye speak of women in general." To this Knox responded that he could be charged with making no disturbance, but that his preaching in England and elsewhere had promoted quietness. As to the charge of necromancy, he could endure that, seeing that his Master

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was accused of being "possessed with Beelzebub." Leaving Knox's offensive book, Mary reminded him that God commands subjects to obey their princes, and asked him how he reconciled his conduct in persuading the people "to receive another religion than their princes can allow," with that precept. Knox replied that subjects are not "bound to frame their religion according to the appetite of their princes," and appealed to the example of the Israelites in Egypt, and to the example of Daniel, on which he dilated at some length. "Yea," said she; "none of them raised the sword against their princes." Knox answered that still they denied obedience to their mandates. Mary was not to be driven from her point, and replied: "But yet they resisted not by the sword." "God," said he, "Madam, had not given them the power and the means.' "Think ye," said she, "that subjects having power may resist their princes?" "If their princes exceed their bounds," said he, "Madam, and do against that wherefore they should be obeyed, it is no doubt but they may be resisted, even by power;" and he compared this resistance to the restraint imposed by children upon a frenzied father. "At these words, the Queen stood, as it were, amazed, more than a quarter of an hour; her countenance altered, so that Lord James began to entreat her, and to demand, What has offended you, Madam?' At length she said, 'Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you, and not me; and shall do what they list, and not what I command: and so must I be subject to them, and not they to me."" Knox demurred to this conclusion. "My travail is that both princes and subjects obey God." Kings and queens were to be fosterfathers and nurses to the Kirk. Excited by the debate, Mary went, perhaps, further than she had designed. "But ye are not the Kirk that I will nurse. I will defend the Kirk of Rome, for it is, I think, the true Kirk of God." "Your will," said he, "Madam, is no reason,

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neither doth your thought make that Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ. And wonder not, Madam, that I call Rome a harlot; for that Kirk is altogether polluted with all kind of spiritual fornication, as well in doctrine as in manners." He offered to prove that the "Kirk of the Jews," when it crucified Jesus, was not so far removed from true religion "as that Kirk of Rome is declined." 66 My conscience," said Mary, "is not so." Conscience, he answered, requires knowledge; and he proceeded to say that she had enjoyed no true teaching. Descending to particulars, he pronounced the mass "the invention of man," and therefore"an abomination before God." To his harangue, Mary said: "If they were here whom I have heard, they would answer you." Knox expressed the wish that the "most learned Papist in Europe" were present, that she might learn" the vanity of the papistical religion," and how little ground it had in the Word of God. Knox departed, wishing that she might be as great a blessing to Scotland" as ever Deborah was in the commonwealth of Israel." He remarks that she "continued in her massing; and despised and quietly mocked all exhortation." Being asked by his friends at the time what he thought of her, he said: "If there be not in her a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an indurate heart against God and his truth, my judgment faileth me." In Knox, as he appears in these interviews, one may behold the incarnation of the democratic spirit of Calvinism.

On another occasion he was summoned to the presence of the Queen, in consequence of his preaching about the dancing at Holyrood. Knox said that in the presence of her Council she was grave, but "how soon soever the French fillocks, fiddlers, and others of that band gat into the house alone, then might be seen skipping not very comely for honest women." It must be remarked that the dances in vogue then would not now be deemed very

comely, even by liberal critics.1 "He was called and accused, as one that had irreverently spoken of the Queen, and that travailed to bring her into hatred and contempt of the people." "The Queen," he says, "made a long harangue," to which he replied by repeating exactly what he had said in the pulpit. In the course of the conversation he freely expressed his opinion of her uncles, whom he styled "enemies to God and unto his Son Jesus Christ," and declined her request that he would come and make what criticisms he had to make upon her conduct, to her personally. He could not wait upon individuals, but it was his function "to rebuke the sins and vices of all" in his sermons, which he invited her to come and hear. He was too shrewd to consent to be silent in public for the sake of the privilege of conversing with her in private. She showed her displeasure. But "the said John departed with a reasonable merry countenance; whereat some Papists, offended, said, ' He is not afraid;' which heard of him, he answered, Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman fear me? I have looked in the faces of many angry men, and yet have not been afraid above measure.'

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The mass and auricular confession were not wholly given up, especially in the western districts south of the Clyde. "The brethren," says Knox, "determined to put to their own hands," and no longer wait for King or Council, but "execute the punishment that God had appointed to idolaters in his law, by such means as they might, wherever they should be apprehended." The brethren had begun this work of executing the law for themselves, when the Queen, who was at Lochleven, sent for Knox. He defended the proceeding. Where kings neglect their duty of executing the laws, the people may do it for them, and even restrain kings, he added, in case they spare the wicked and oppress the innocent. "The

1 Burton, iv. 209.

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