John Knox

c. 1514–1572

John Knox has been called a Hebrew Jeremiah set down on Scottish soil. After witnessing the martyrdom of Patrick Hamilton, a young nobleman returned from Germany with the Gospel, Knox was soon, in heart devotion, standing on the same side as the martyr. Knox boldly embraced the Reformation in a dangerously anti-Reformation realm. Though he was quite reluctant to accept a call to preach, almost immediately he was considered one of the most powerful preachers of his day. Knox strongly believed that the Roman Catholic Church was beyond repair and nothing less than a complete restart was necessary. That restart, he believed, could only come through a knowledge of the Word of God. Through a marvelous providence, not excepting persecution, Knox sought refuge in Geneva, under John Calvin. After some tutelage, Calvin encouraged Knox to return to Scotland because of its great turmoil, urging that he should be present to influence his nation for God. That he did, fearlessly. A noble said of him: "Here lies a man who in his life never feared nor flattered any flesh: who has been often threatened with pistol and dagger, but has ended his days in peace and honor." He demonstrated a fierceness for the freedom of the free gospel of the only Lord, Jesus the Christ and Savior.

Haddington and St. Andrews

Knox was born at or near Haddington in East Lothian, probably in 1514. He called his beginnings “base.” His father, William, and both grandfathers had served the Earls of Bothwell, and he was proud rather than ashamed of his humble birth.1, 2 About 1529 he entered the University of St. Andrews, where he studied theology under John Major. He was ordained a priest, worked as a notary under papal authority in the diocese of St. Andrews, and became tutor to the sons of East Lothian gentlemen.1, 2

Wishart’s Bodyguard

Only in 1546 did Knox come into the light. He joined the band that guarded the preacher George Wishart, and armed himself with a two-handed sword. When Wishart knew his arrest was near, he sent Knox back to his pupils with the words, “One is sufficient for a sacrifice.” Wishart was strangled and burned at St. Andrews by order of Cardinal David Beaton.3 Three months later Beaton himself was murdered in his castle by a band of Protestant lairds, who held the castle against the government.2

The Call at St. Andrews and the Galleys

In 1547 Knox and his pupils took refuge in the castle. One Sunday the preacher John Rough, preaching on the election of ministers, turned and publicly called Knox to the office of preacher, and the congregation endorsed the call with acclamation. Knox was overwhelmed and wept. In a few days he concluded that the call of a congregation was as valid as any.1 He had preached only a few months when the castle surrendered to a French fleet in July 1547. Knox was sent to the French galleys, where he rowed as a slave under the lash for nineteen months.2

England and Geneva

Freed early in 1549, he spent five years in England, preaching at Berwick, Newcastle, and London and serving as one of the chaplains of Edward VI.2 When the Second Prayer Book of 1552 required kneeling at Communion, Knox insisted on the note, later called the “black rubric,” declaring that kneeling implied no adoration of a bodily presence of Christ in the bread and wine.4 The accession of Mary Tudor drove him abroad early in 1554. He went by way of Dieppe to Geneva and became Calvin’s friend, then served the English exiles at Frankfurt until the quarrels over the Prayer Book forced him out, and returned to pastor the English congregation in Geneva.2 He called Calvin’s city “the most perfect school of Christ that was ever on earth since the days of the apostles.”5 In 1558 he published The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, aimed at Mary Tudor, though Calvin would not support it.6

The Reformation of Scotland

Mary Tudor died in 1558, and in May 1559 Knox landed in Scotland. Within days he preached at Perth against idolatry, and when the sermon was over a mob demolished the altars and images and destroyed the religious houses.2, 7 In August 1560 the Scottish Parliament heard Knox preach in St. Giles’, adopted the Scots Confession that he and five colleagues had drawn up in four days, abolished the Mass, and repudiated the authority of the pope. Knox and his colleagues also prepared the First Book of Discipline, with its far-seeing plans for the education of every child, for the universities, and for the relief of the poor.7 An admirer said of his preaching, “The voice of one man is able in one hour to put more life in us than 500 trumpets continually blustering in our ears.”8

When the young Mary, Queen of Scots, returned from France in 1561, Knox met her in a series of tense interviews. He would not soften his words for a queen. When she interrupted his argument with her secretary, he told her, “I began, Madam, to reason with the Secretary, whom I take to be a far better dialectician than your Grace is.” She wept, and he did not relent.9

The Last Anchor

His last years were dark. His friend the Regent Moray was assassinated early in 1570, Scotland fell into civil war, and in the autumn a stroke left him so weak that he signed his letters “with my dead hand.” “As the world is weary of me,” he said, “so am I of it.” Yet he never lost his confidence in Christ.10 On the evening of November 24, 1572, he asked to hear 1 Corinthians 15 and the seventeenth chapter of John:

Where I cast my first anchor.10 John Knoxon his deathbed, November 24, 1572

Near eleven o’clock he said, “Now it is come.” Asked to give a sign that he died in peace, he lifted his hand toward heaven and died.10 At his burial the Earl of Morton spoke the tribute quoted above.11

Major contributions include:

  • The authority of Scripture over the church and tradition (sola scriptura)
  • A high view of Holy Scripture and its authority (sola scriptura)
  • A high view of God as specifically sovereign
  • A high view of God's providence
  • A deep commitment to prayer
  • Strongly opposed idolatry
  • Establishment of education throughout the realm
  • Formalization of a Reformed doctrine of the church

Notes

  1. Christian History, “John Knox & the Scottish Reformation” 46 (1995), on Knox’s birth, schooling, and call to preach. Summarized. ↩
  2. C. G. M’Crie, ed., Beza’s “Icones”: Contemporary Portraits of Reformers of Religion and Letters (London: Religious Tract Society, 1906), “John Knox.” The biographical sketches in this edition are the editor’s; the portraits and epigrams are Beza’s. ↩
  3. Christian History, “John Knox & the Scottish Reformation” 46 (1995), on Knox and George Wishart, quoting Wishart. ↩
  4. Christian History, “John Knox & the Scottish Reformation” 46 (1995), on the Second Prayer Book and the “black rubric.” Summarized. ↩
  5. Christian History, “John Knox & the Scottish Reformation” 46 (1995), on Calvin and Knox, quoting Knox on Geneva. ↩
  6. Christian History, “John Knox & the Scottish Reformation” 46 (1995), on The First Blast of the Trumpet. Summarized, with Knox’s words as quoted there. ↩
  7. Christian History, “John Knox & the Scottish Reformation” 46 (1995), on Perth, the Parliament of 1560, the Scots Confession, and the First Book of Discipline. Summarized. ↩
  8. Christian History, “John Knox & the Scottish Reformation” 46 (1995), caption to the illustration of Knox preaching at St. Giles’. ↩
  9. Christian History, “John Knox & the Scottish Reformation” 46 (1995), on Knox’s interviews with Mary, Queen of Scots, quoting Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland. ↩
  10. C. G. M’Crie, ed., Beza’s “Icones”: Contemporary Portraits of Reformers of Religion and Letters (London: Religious Tract Society, 1906), “John Knox,” on his last years and death. ↩
  11. Joel R. Beeke and Diana Kleyn, Reformation Heroes (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2007), chap. 16, “John Knox,” on his funeral. Summarized. ↩