Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/143

 N O X 131 who was strongly attached to the old faith. Having been accused of asserting that the sacrifice of the mass is idolatrous, the preacher was cited to appear before the bishop, and to give an account of his preaching. Accord ingly, on the 4th of April 1550, Knox entered into a full defence of his opinions, and with the utmost boldness proceeded to argue that the mass is a superstitious and idolatrous substitute for the sacrament of the Lord s Supper. The bishop did not venture to pronounce any ecclesiastical censure ; and the fame of the obnoxious preacher was extended by this feeble attempt to restrain the boldness of his attacks on the doctrines of Rome. The confession or vindication of his doctrine made by Knox on this occasion will be found in vol. iii. of his collected Works &quot; A Vindication of the Doctrine that the Sacrifice of the Mass is Idolatry,&quot; 1550. Upon Knox s reforming work while a preacher at Berwick some interesting light has recently been thrown by the late Dr Lorimer s John Knox and tlie Clmrcli of England, 1875. When looking through the &quot; Morrice &quot; collection of manuscripts in Dr Williams s library, London, Dr Lorimer came upon four papers never before published. One of these is a letter from &quot;Johne Knokks to the Congregatioun of Bervik,&quot; and another is &quot; The practice of the Lord s Supper used in Berwick by John Knox, 1550.&quot; With this &quot; practice,&quot; which is nothing more than a fragment, Dr Lorimer associates &quot; A Summary, according to the Holy Scriptures, of the Sacrament of the Lord s Supper &quot; to be found in the third volume of the Works, and to which Dr Laing has assigned the date 1550. Founding upon these documents, Dr Lorimer maintains that the very beginning of Puritan practice in the Church of England in the administration of the Lord s Supper is to be found in the order followed by Knox at Berwick, inasmuch as he not only substituted common bread for &quot; wafer-breads,&quot; thus anticipating by several years the substitution as authorized by Edward s second Prayer- Book, published in 1552, but gave the first example of the substitution of sitting instead of kneeling in the act of communion, which has ever since continued to be a char acteristic Puritan practice. At the close of 1550, or early in 1551, Knox was transferred to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, where he remained, with occasional absences in London, till the spring of 1553. In the closing month of 1551 he was appointed one of six chaplains to Edward VI., and in virtue of this appointment he was consulted in the preparation of the formularies of the Church of England. A book of forty -five articles of religion, forming the basis of the thirty-nine articles of the Anglican Church, drawn up by Cranmer, was submitted to the royal chaplains for their opinion. An original copy of these articles is preserved in H.M. State Paper Office with the autographs of the chaplains, the sixth being Jo. Knox.&quot; Shortly after this the duke of Northumberland originated a proposal to make Knox a bishop. The letters bearing upon the proposal, not known to Dr M Crie, were discovered by the late Mr Tytler, and published by him in his England under the Reigns of Edward and Mary, vol. ii. The duke s wish was that the king would &quot;appoint Mr Knocks to the office of Rochester Bishoprick.&quot; When, however, the Scotch chaplain was informed of what was in contemplation, and was instructed to wait upon Northumberland, the latter did not find the man he thought to benefit eager to grasp at promotion, and the matter ultimately came to nothing by default of Knox himself. The last year of work in England was spent mainly in London and the southern counties. As royal chaplain Knox preached in turn before the court, and found favour with his royal hearer ; but he was twice summoned before the privy council, first to answer complaints made by his would-be ducal patron, and then to vindicate his declinature of the vacant living of All Hallows in London. Edward VI. having died in July 1553, and, the Marian persecutions having shortly afterwards broken out, Knox was persuaded to withdraw from England, and sailed for Dieppe, landing at that town in January 1554. The en forced leisure of exile gave the refugee an opportunity of completing and publishing several treatises during two sojourns in the same year at Dieppe. &quot;An Exposition upon the Sixth Psalm of David,&quot; addressed to Mrs Bowes, &quot;A Godly Letter of Warning or Admonition to the Faithful in London, Newcastle, and Berwick,&quot; &quot;Two Comfortable Epistles to his afflicted Brethren in England,&quot; and &quot;A Faithful Admonition to the Professors of God s Truth in England,&quot; all belong to the year 1554. After visiting the churches of France and Switzerland, Knox accepted an invitation to become one of the pastors of the English congregation at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and repaired thither in November of the same year. Soon after his settlement dissensions arose in the congregation in regard to the use of the surplice, the omission of the litany, the audible responses, and kneeling at the com munion (see the letters and extracts from the &quot; Brief Discourse of the Troubles at Frankfort&quot; given by Dr Laing in vol. iv. of Knox s Works). A party in the congregation, clamorous for a strict adherence to the English Book of Prayer, lodged information with the magistrates that Knox, in his &quot; Faithful Admonition,&quot; had used treasonable language in speaking of the emperor, the queen of England, and her husband Philip II. Not wishing to increase the troubles, the maligned preacher relinquished his charge on the 26th March 1555, and re tired to Geneva. The closing months of that year and the opening ones of the year following form an important period in the public labours and the private life of the Reformer; for he then visited his native country, preached in Edinburgh, in West Lothian, and in Ayrshire, and dis pensed the communion privately in several places. Before his visit came to a close he addressed a letter to the queen regent, in the hope that she might be persuaded to extend her protection to the Reformed preachers, or at least listen favourably to their doctrine. This letter, &quot; augmented and explained by the author,&quot; and reprinted in 1558, &quot;An Exposition upon Matthew iv., concerning the temptation of Christ in the wilderness,&quot; and &quot; A letter of wholesome counsel, addressed to his Brethren in Scotland,&quot; belong to the year 1556. In visiting Scotland at that time, however, Knox was influenced by other considerations than those I Berwick ministry he had become acquainted with the family of Richard Bowes, and formed an attachment for the fifth daughter, Marjory. Dr M Crie represents the marriage as j having taken place in 1553 before Knox left England ; and in support of his view it falls to be said that after that date I Knox addresses Mrs Bowes as &quot;Dearly Beloved Mother,&quot; and that he speaks of Marjory as his &quot; wife,&quot; his &quot;dearest spouse.&quot; But, considering the strong opposition to the union on the part of Richard Bowes and other relatives, as also the very uncertain and precarious position of the reformer at the time, there is good reason to think, with Dr Laing, that then the parties had only formally pledged themselves to one another &quot;before witnesses,&quot; and that the actual marriage took place when Knox visited Scotland in 1555. At the urgent solicitation of the English congregation at Geneva, consisting largely of those who had withdrawn from Frankfort, Knox left Scotland in the summer of 1556 ; and in the &quot; Livre des Anglois a Geneve,&quot; on the 13th September of that year, the names of &quot;John Knox, Marjory, his wife, Elizabeth, her mother, James (blank),
 * bearing simply on the public weal. For as far back as his