RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Knox
There appears to have been no regular ordination. Of course, he had been already ordained as a priest in the Church of Rome.
3. Ministry But imposition of hands and other at St. forms were not regarded by Knox as
Andrews, of more than secondary importance. A graphic account of the whole proceedings connected with his call to the ministry, together with a report of the first sermon he delivered in St. Andrews, will be found in his History of the Reformation.
At this time he was residing in the castle of St. Andrews. After Beaton's death, this stronghold became a place of refuge for many of the
4. Confine- Protestants. Along with his pupils, ment in the sons of the lairds of Longniddry
the French and Ormiston, already mentioned, Galleys. Knox passed there some comparatively peaceful months. His repose was rudely interrupted by the investiture and capitulation of the castle in the end of July, 1547, succeeded, as regarded Knox and some of the rest of the refugees, by confinement in the French galleys. He spent nineteen months as a galley-slave, amid hardships and miseries which are said to have permanently injured his health. " How long I continued prisoner," he said at St. Andrews, in 1559, " what torments I sustained in the galleys, and what were the sobs of my heart, is now no time to recite." He adds, however, that he always continued to hope for a return to his native country. In the History (vol. i., p. 228), the same confidence of a return is referred to as never having forsaken him; and he gives a curious testimony to the fact, by mentioning how, on one occasion, " lying betwixt Dundee and St. Andrews, the second time that the galleys returned to Scotland, the said John [Knox] being so extremely sick that few hoped his life, Maister [afterwards Sir] James [Balfour, one of his fellow prisoners] willed him to look to the land, and asked if he knew it. Who answered, ' Yes, I know it well; for I see the steeple of that place where God first in public opened my mouth to his glory; and I am fully persuaded, how weak soever I now appear, that I shall not depart this life, till that my tongue shall glorify his godly name in the same place.' "
On his release, which took place early in 1549, through the intervention, apparently, of the English government, Knox found that, in the existing state of the country, he could be of little use in his beloved Scotland. For nearly ten years, accordingly, he submitted to voluntary exile, like many of the worthiest of his countrymen in those troublous times. All these years, however, he devoted himself to ministerial labors in connection with the Reformed Church. His first sphere of duty was provided for him in England, for the
5. Ministry space of about five years as a minister in England, of the English Church. It is to be
1 S49_54- remembered that, during the whole reign of Edward VI., the Church of England was in a transition state; some of its most marked peculiarities (to which Knox himself and others in Scotland and abroad afterward objected) were then in abeyance, or at least not
insisted upon as terms of communion. Thus the use of the prayer-book was not enforced, neither was kneeling at the communion. Episcopal government was of course acknowledged; but Knox held his commission, as a Reformed preacher, directly from the privy council, and was virtually independent of diocesan jurisdiction. Moreover, he seems to have had no strong objection to episcopacy itself, although he disapproved of " your proud prelates' great dominions and charge, impossible by one man to be discharged;" and on this, along with other grounds, he declined the bishopric of Rochester in 1552. The offices he held in the Church of England are briefly indicated in the History, which says, " He was first appointed preacher to Berwick, then to Newcastle; and last he was called to London and to the southern parts of England, where he remained till the death of Edward VI." (Works, i., p. 280). From other sources it appears that in 1551 he was appointed one of the six chaplains in ordinary to the king; and in this capacity there was submitted to him, and, after revisal, he joined the other chaplains in sanctioning, The Articles concerning an Uniformity in Religion of 1552, which became the basis of the Thirty-nine Articles (q. v.) of the Church of England.
From England, after the death of Edward, Knox proceeded to the continent, traveling for a time from place to place in some uncertainty. In Sept. 1554, while living at Geneva, he accepted in accordance with Calvin's counsel a call to 6. On the the English Church at Frankfort. Continent, Here controversies in connection with
1554-59. vestments, ceremonies, and the use of the English prayer-book met him, and, notwithstanding the great moderation which he showed from first to last, led, in Mar., 1555, to his resignation of his charge (cf. his treatise, A Brief Narrative of the Troubles which Arose at Frankfurt, reprinted in Laing's edition of his works). He returned to Geneva, where he was invited to become minister of the refugee English congregation. In August, however, he was induced to set out for Scotland, where he remained for nine months, preaching Evangelical doctrine in various parts of the country, and persuading those who favored the Reformation to cease from attendance at mass, and to join with himself in the celebration of the Lord's Supper according to a Reformed ritual. In May, 1556, he was cited to appear before the hierarchy in Edinburgh, and he boldly responded to the summons; but the bishops found it expedient not to proceed with the trial. In July an urgent call from his congregation at Geneva, along, probably, with the desire to prevent the renewal of persecution in Scotland, caused him to resume his Genevan ministry. His marriage to Marjorie Bowes, daughter of Richard Bowes, captain of Norham Castle, had meanwhile taken place, and his wife along with her mother accompanied him to Geneva, where they arrived in September. The church in which he preached there (called the Eglise de Notre Dame la Neuve) had been granted, at Calvin's solicitation, for the use of the English and Italian congregations by the municipal authorities. Knox's life in Geneva was no idle one. To preaching and clerical work
Knox Knox-Little