him at the moment; but it is not necessary for us, while admitting the full truth of the narrative, to accept any such explanation. If his anticipation had not been verified, his words might have been entirely forgotten; and the probability is that his conviction rested rather upon his general apprehension of the principles of the Divine administration, than upon any supernatural communication of a special sort. The Psalmist writes that "the secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him;" and this gracious illumination, which is the heritage of all in the proportion in which they possess the character with which it is associated, is sufficient to account for the correctness of his impression, without having recourse to the theory of prophetic inspiration. That even Knox himself would have thus regarded this matter, seems clear from a passage in his "Faithful Admonition to the Professors of God's Truth in England," which Dr. Lorimer thinks is of standard authority as giving the principle of interpretation for all those places in which he speaks in what may be called a prophetic tone and manner; and in which it has sometimes been thought that he spoke not without some endowment of supernatural insight and foreknowledge. We quote the following sentences: "But ye would know the grounds of my certitude. God grant that hearing them, ye may understand and steadfastly believe the same. My assurances are not marvels of Merlin, nor yet the dark sentences of profane prophecies; but (1) the plain truth of God's word, (2) the invincible justice of the everlasting God, and (3) the ordinary course of His punishments and plagues from the beginning, are my assurances and grounds" (p. 85).

But however we may account for the assurance which he felt, his forecast of the future was certainly remarkably fulfilled; and there are few contrasts in history more striking and suggestive than that between the weak and apparently dying galley-slave looking longingly on the shores of his native land; and the energetic Reformer of a later date, of whom the English ambassador wrote to Cecil saying: "I assure you the voice of one man is able in an hour to put more life in us than six hundred trumpets continually blustering in our ears."

CHAPTER III.

MINISTRY IN BERWICK-ON-TWEED, 1549-1550.

By what means Knox obtained his release from the galling servitude in which he had been held by the French, we have not been able to discover; but it is believed that he was indebted for it to the intercession of England, and it is certain that in the early part of the year 1549, he was employed by the Privy Council of that country as one of the ministers whom its members commissioned to preach the doctrines of the Reformation throughout the kingdom. The probability is that he arrived in London about the month of February, and it is conjectured that as Henry Balnaves was in that city as a commissioner from the besieged in St. Andrews, at the time of the death of Henry VIII., Knox, who had just then entered upon his ministry, may have been beholden to his friend for bringing his name to the favourable notice of the English Reformers. But however that may have been, we come upon authentic and reliable information, when we find in the register of the Privy Council, under date April 7th, 1549, an entry authorizing the payment of five pounds "to John Knox, preacher, by way of reward." Besides this, his name occurs as the sixty-fourth in a list of eighty who obtained licence to preach in England during the reign of Edward the Sixth. He himself informs us in his History, that "he was first appointed preacher to Berwick, then to Newcastle; last he was called to London and to the southern parts of England, where he remained till the death of Edward the Sixth." This is all that he has said directly in that work concerning his residence in England; but so much new light has been shed on this part of the Reformer's career by the painstaking and elaborate monogram of Dr. Lorimer, that we are now able to follow his steps with something like minuteness.

He was settled first at the border town of Berwick-on-Tweed, which in those days was "the focus of a long and bloody war between the two kingdoms, which had begun with the tremendous slaughter of the Scots at Pinkey in the autumn of 1547, and in which the Scots, having received large assistance from France, were still able to maintain so vigorous a defence that there was no near prospect of a return of peace."[1] Thus it happened that its garrison was larger than ordinary, and everything about the place was volcanic. Quarrels among the soldiers were common, and the civilians themselves were not over peaceful, so that the chronic state of the town was one of disorder. John Brende, "master of the musters," reports to the Protector Somerset concerning it: "There is better order among the Tartars than in this town; the whole picture of the place is one of social disorder and the worst police."[2] Besides all this, the great majority of the people were as yet probably papists, for the doctrines of the Reformation had made little progress thus far in the northern counties, and matters ecclesiastical were very unsettled. In March of that year the first Prayer-Book of Edward VI. was sanctioned by Parliament and published for the use of the Church. The new liturgy still retained much of the leaven of sacerdotalism and sacramentarianism, but it was decidedly in advance of anything which could have been issued in the days of Henry VIII. It was thoroughly approved by but a portion of the bishops, and there were several counties in the remoter parts of the kingdom where it was never introduced at all. Tunstall, then Bishop of Durham, who was no friend to the cause of reform, was in no haste to give effect to the new legislation; and the council of the north, to which was committed the care of public affairs in that then distant corner of the realm, probably thought it advisable to refrain from enforcing it upon the people, until they were prepared, by the instructions of some eminent preacher, for receiving and obeying it. Thus we account for the fact that, all the time he was in Berwick, Knox was left very much to his own discretion as to the doctrines which he preached, and the methods which he adopted for the conduct of Divine service and the administration of the sacraments.

Already in his preface to Balnaves's treatise on Justification, the first of his printed productions so far as can be traced, he had written a summary of his belief on that great central doctrine; and in his disputation with Arbuckle in St. Andrews, he had been truly charged with holding the following opinions—viz. first, man may neither make nor devise a religion that is acceptable to God, but is bound to observe and keep the religion that from God is received without chopping or changing thereof; second, the sacraments of the New Testament ought to be ministered as they were instituted by Christ Jesus and practised by the apostles, nothing ought to be added to them, nothing ought to be diminished from them; third, the mass is abominable idolatry, blasphemous to the death of Christ, and a profanation of the Lord's Supper. When therefore he began his labours at Berwick he set himself to the proclamation of the great truths which radiate from the priesthood of Christ; and in his dispensation of the supper he followed an order of