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A laudatory biography from the Encyclopedia of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America by Alfred Nevin, 1884.
He was born in 1505 at Gifford, in East Lothian, and was educated at Haddington and St. Andrew's. After he was created Master of Arts, he taught philosophy, most probably as a regent in one of the colleges of the University. His class became celebrated, and he was considered as equaling if not excelling, his master, in the subtleties of the dialectic art. About the same time (1530), although he had no interest [support from influential men] but what was procured by his won merit, he was advanced to clerical orders, and ordained a priest before he reached the age fixed by the canons of the Church. At this time, the fathers of the Early Church, Jerome and Augustine, attracted his particular attention. By the writings of Jerome, he was led to the Scriptures as the only pure fountain of divine truth [revelation] and to believe the utility of studying scripture in their original languages instead of Latin in the opposite to those taught in the Romish Church, who while she retained his name as a saint in her calendar, had banished his doctrine as heretical. From this time Knox renounced the study of Scholastic Theology.
Knox first betrayed his change of sentiment in certain lectures in the University at St. Andrew's where his youthful and noble countryman, Patrick Hamilton, for his advocacy of the doctrines of redemption, had perished in the fire. His defection aroused the clergy to denounce him as a traitor, and deprive him of his priesthood. He escaped death only by timely flight from the vengeance of Cardinal Beaton, who had engaged his emissaries to lay hold of him. Knox found protection under Douglas, of Langniddrie, and employment as a Tutor. Knox next appears in the company of George Wishart, the Scottish schoolmaster, who, having received the doctrines of the Reformation, began to preach them, probably about 1536. The sword which was carried before the preacher after the attempt to assassinate him in Dundee was borne by Knox. On the night when the noble martyr was arrested, at the Cardinal's command, he ordered that the sword be taken from his zealous attendant. Knox begged for leave to follow him, but Wishart answered: "Nay, return to your bairnes" (meaning his pupils), "and God bliss you; ane is sufficient for a sacrifice."
The cruel martyrdom of him whom Knox revered as his spiritual father, and whom, for his endearing qualities, he cherished as a brother, made a powerful impression on the ardent soul of the Reformer. Knox himself was in constant peril from the bloody foe. We find him, after the murder of the Romanist Beaton, seeking a refuge in St. Andrew's Castle, which the Cardinal's slayers held as a safe resort from the persecution of the Papists. There an event befell him which had the most serious bearings upon all his future. Until now, Knox's utterances in favor of Reformed doctrines had been private, consisting in Bible expositions to his pupils and his neighbors. He had never undertaken the place of public preacher, nor did he consider his office as priest enough to justify him in doing so, without a call from a Christian congregation. He received this call in the most unlooked for manner. Among the Protestants taking refuge in St. Andrew's Castle were Sir David Lindsay, of the Mount, the poet, and the scourger of the priesthood, Henry Balnaves, one of those stout barons who lent aid, by pen and sword, to the Scotch Reformation. These men quickly recognized in Knox's ability and skill in giving popular instruction to his pupils the germs of an energy and popular eloquence that were destined to earn him renown. They urged him to undertake the preacher's work. Knox, distrusting his own ability, and entertaining a lofty idea of the importance of the office steadfastly declined. At length, a call to preach having been given him, in such a solemn and unexpected way as to assure him that it came from God, though he feared and trembled, he accepted the office laid upon him. On the day appointed he appeared in the pulpit, and took his text from Daniel vii, 25; "And he shall speak great words against the Most High, and shall wear out the saints of the Most High, and think to change times and laws;" a choice which reveals directly his view of the Papacy, and the confidence with which he anticipated its overthrow. It was a memorable day in Scottish history when Knox first preached in the parish church at St. Andrew's. Brave men held their breath as they listened to his bold and sweeping utterances. Such preaching had not been heard in Scotland for ages. "Others hewed the branches of the Papistry, but he struck at the root." Some rejoiced and took courage, some doubted, some hoped, some feared, many were furious, but all felt that there was a new power in the world; while a few chosen spirits recognized John Knox as the ordained champion and leader of the revolution then beginning in Scotland.
Notwithstanding the opposition Knox met with from the clergy, he every day grew bolder in the cause, until the castle of St. Andrew's surrendered to the French, in July, 1547, when he was carried with the garrison into France, and remained a prisoner on board the galleys, until the latter end of 1549. Being then set at liberty, he passed over to England, and arriving in London, was licensed and appointed preacher, first at Berwick, and afterwards at Newcastle. In 1552 he was appointed Chaplain to Edward VI, and preached before the king at Westminster, who recommended Crnmer to give him the living of All-hallows, in London, which Knox declined, not choosing to conform to the English liturgy. On the accession of Queen Mary he went to Geneva, and next to Frankfort, where he took part with the English exiles, who apposed the use of the liturgy, but the other side prevailing. Knox returned to Geneva, and soon after went to Scotland. While engaged in the ministry, he received an invitation to return to Geneva, with which he complied, and in his absence, the bishops passed sentence of death upon him for heresy, against which he drew up an energetic appeal. In 1558 he published his treatise, entitled "The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women," chiefly aimed at the cruel government of Queen Mary, of England, and at the attempt of the Queen Regent of Scotland to rule without a parliament. In April, 1559, he would have visited England, but was prevented by the resentment felt by Elizabeth at his late treatise. He therefore proceeded directly to Scotland, where he found a persecution of the Protestants just ready to commence at Stirling.
"His appearance at Edinburgh," says Prof. S.J. Wilson, "as sudden and unexpected as the appearance of Elijah at Samaria, created among his enemies as great a panic as though it had been the invasion of a hostile army. Although under sentence of outlawry, and liable at any hour to be arrested and executed, Knox resolved to stand with his brethren at Stirling, and share their dangers and their fate; "by life, by death, or else by both, to glorify God." But from this threatened danger the Lord preserved both him and them. Amidst the throes of incipient civil war, and in verification of his own prediction while a galley slave, he returned to St. Andrew's. The archbishop peremptorily forbade his preaching in the cathedral, and threatened that in case he should dare to do so he would be shot down in the pulpit, by the soldiers. In defiance of the archbishop's threat, and in spite of the remonstrances of his friends, he yet preached.
The effects and results of Knox's preaching at this time were marvelous. In the three days at St. Andrew's--the primal See of Scotland--Popery was utterly overthrown, the Reformed worship was set up, images and pictures were torn from the churches and monasteries were demolished. Knox's doctrine was as fatal to Popish superstition as the fire which ran along the ground, in the plague of the hail, was fatal to the vegetable gods of Egypt. Wheresoever that doctrine went, and it ran very swiftly, Popish power and Popish idolatry, with all the paraphernalia thereof, melted before it. In less than a month after his triumphal appearance at St. Andrew's, Knox's voice was ringing among the rafters of St. Giles and of the Abbey Church at Edinburgh. Chosen at once as pastor of St. Giles, he entered upon his labors in that church, which his name has made historic throughout the world, and where so often "his voice, in an hour, put more life into men than six hundred trumpets could."
By the arrival of Queen Mary Stuart at Edinburgh (August, 1561), our Reformer was engaged in a new conflict. The young and beautiful Queen was received by her subjects with harrahs. But she brought from France a spirit steeped in the prejudices of the Romish Church, and a resolution, formed in concert with the House of Lorraine, to resote the old religion in her dominions. Knox was summoned to an interview with the Queen. She charged him, says Dr. MacCrie, "with stirring up her subjects against her, and among other things, upbraided him with sedition, by reason of his book on women's government." He vindicated himself from the charge of disloyalty. The conversation then turned on the nice point of popular resistance to civil power. Knox maintained that a ruler might be resisted, illustrating by the case of a father, who, through madness, tried to slay his children.
"Now, Madame, if the children arise, join together, apprehend the father, take the sword from him, bind his hands and keep him in prison till the frenzy be over, think you, Madame, that the children do any wrong? Even so, Madame, is it with the princes that would murder the children of God that are subject unto them."
Dazed by the boldness of this answer, the Queen sat some time in silent stupor, and then said, "Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you, and not me, and will do what they please, and not what I command."
"God forbid," replied the Reformer, " "That ever I take upon me to command any to obey me, or to set subjects at liberty to do whatever pleases them. But my travail is that both princes and subjects may obey God. Queens should be nursing mothers to the Church."
"But you are not the Church that I will nourish," said the Queen. "I will defend the Church of Rome, for it is, I think, the true Church of God."
"Your will, Madame, is no reason, neither doth your thought make the Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ."
"My conscience is not so," said the Queen. "Conscience, Madame, requires knowledge, and I fear that right knowledge you have none."
"But I have both heard and read."
"So, Madame, did the Jews who crucified Christ. Have you heard any teach but such as the Pope and the Cardinals have allowed? You may be assured that such will speak nothing to offend their own estate."
"You interpret the Scriptures in one was, "said the Queen, evasively, "and they in another; whom shall I believe, and who shall be judge?"
"You shall believe God," replied Knox, "who plainly speaketh in his Word, above your Majesty and the most learned Papists of all Europe." He offered to show that Papal doctrine had no foundation in God's Word.
"Well," said she, "you may perchance have opportunity therefor sooner than you think."
"Assuredly," said Knox, "if ever I get that in my life, I shall get it sooner than I believe, for the ignorant Papist cannot patiently reason, and the learned and crafty Papist will never come in your audience, Madame, to have the ground of his religion searched out."
During this interview with the Queen and her attendant lords, on being questioned concerning his contumacy, Knox answered that he preached nothing but truth, and he dared not preach less. "But," answered one of the lords, "our commands must be obeyed, on pain of death; silence, or the gallows is the alternative." The spirit of Knox was roused by the dastardly insinuation that any human punishment could make him desert the banner of his Saviour, and with that fearless, indescribable courage which disdains the pomp of language or of action, he firmly replied,
"My lords, you are mistaken if you think you can intimidate me to do by threats what conscience and God tell me I never shall do, for be it known unto you that it is a matter of no importance to me, when I have finished my work, whether my bones shall bleach in the winds of heaven or rot in the bosom of the earth." Knox having retired, one of the lords said to the Queen, "We may let him alone, for we cannot punish that man."
Knox was twice married. His first wife, who died in her twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth year, was Marjory Bowes, the daughter of Richard Bowes, a Captain of Norman Castle, and a scion of a family of distinction in Northumberland. His second marriage (1563) was to a lady considerably younger than himself, Margaret Stewart, daughter of Andrew Lord Stewart of Ochiltree.
During his ministry at Edinburgh our Reformer lived not only a very laborious life, being much engrossed with the public affairs of the nascent Church and at the same time devoted to his work as a parish minister, to say nothing of his continual and perhaps in his position unavoidable controversies, more or less personal with the ecclesiastical and political factions of the day, whom he regarded as his own and his country's enemies; but a life not without its social and family enjoyments. He had a fair stipend of four hundred merks Scots, equal to about forty-four pounds of English money of that day, and the value of which may be computed, when it is stated that the amount was considerable higher than that of the salaries of the Judges of the Sourt of Session in Scotland, and not much lower than those of the English Judges of the same times. Then he had a good house, which was provided and kept in repair by the municipality; a house previously occupied by the Abbot of Dunfermline. The house is still preserved, with little change, and forms a memorial, hitherto the only memorial of the great Reformer in the scene of so many of his labors. Nor was he, with all his severity of temper, a man indisposed in those days, to exchange friendly and kindly relations with his neighbors, many of whom in ever rank were among his intimate friends, or to give way, when the occasion fitted (perhaps even sometimes when it did not fit), to mirth and humor, of which, as of other traits of his character, whi writings furnish abundant evidence.
An interesting description of Knox's appearance, and especially of his style as a preacher in his later years, is furnished in the Diary of James Melville Melville was at the time a student in St. Andrew's and the period he refers to is the year 1571, when Knox, of his personal security, had, not for the first time in his life, taken refuge in that city. "Of all the benefits I had that year, was the coming of that most notable prophet and apostle of our nation, Mr. John Knox, to St. Andrew's who, by the faction of the Queen occupying the castle and town of Edinburgh, was compelled to removed therefrom, with a number of the best, and chose to come to St. Andrew's.. . . Mr. Knox would sometimes come in and repose him in our college-yards, and call us scholars unto him, and bless us, and exhort us to know God and his work in our country, and stand by the good cause; to use our time well and learn the good instructions and follow the good example of our masters. . . He was very weak. I saw him every day of his doctrine go hulic and fear, with a furring of martriks about his neck, a staff in the one hand, and good, godly Richard Balantyne, his servant, holding up the other oxtar, from the abbey to the parish church, and by the said Richards and another servant lifted up to the pulpit, where he behooved to lean at his first entry, but as he had done with his sermon, he was so active and vigorous that he was like to ding that pulpit in blads and fly out of it."
John Knox died November 24th, 1572. He was buried in St. Giles Churchyard, Edinburgh, several lords attending the funeral services. By reason of changes which have since occurred, in the middle of the paved street in that city, the passerby now reads, upon a square stone, this inscription:
J.K.
1572
Beneath that spot over which now trundles the commerce of a great city,
were once laid the remains of him who
"never feared the face of man"
Knox left many writings behind, some of them polemic, others practical, the majority suggested by occurrences in his life. His principal work was "History of the Reformation of Religion within the Realm of Scotland," etc., to the fourth edition of which are appended all his other works.