[13] 'The end and intent of the Scripture,' according to the translation by George Wishart, Knox's earliest master, of the First Helvetic or Swiss Confession, is, 'to declare that God is benevolent and friendly-minded to mankind; and that he hath declared that kindness in and through Jesu Christ, his only Son; the which kindness is received by faith; but this faith is effectuous through charity, and expressed in an innocent life.' And even more strikingly, the very first question of the famous Palatinate Catechism for Churches and Schools, though that catechism is Calvinistic in its conception rather than Lutheran, and came out so late as 1563, bursts out as follows:—
'What is thy only comfort in life and death?
'Ans. That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong to my faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ, who with his precious blood has fully satisfied for all my sins, and redeemed me from all the power of the Devil.'
[14] 'Works,' i. 187.
[15] On his death-bed. The Regent Morton's famous epitaph spoken by Knox's grave, is an imperfect echo of what the Reformer ten days before, in bidding farewell to the Kirk (Session) of Edinburgh, had said of his own past career:—'In respect that he bore God's message, to whom he must make account for the same, he (albeit he was weak and an unworthy creature, and a fearful man) feared not the faces of men.'—'Works,' vi. 637.
[16] One of the most eloquent documents of the time is the address in 1565 to the half-starved ministers of the Kirk (inspired and perhaps written by Knox), urging that having put their hands to the plough, they could not look back:—
'God hath honoured us so, that men have judged us the messengers of the Everlasting. By us hath He disclosed idolatry, by us are the Wicked of the world rebuked, and by us hath our God comforted the consciences of many.... And shall we for poverty leave the flock of Jesus Christ before that it utterly refuse us?... The price of Jesus Christ, his death and passion, is committed to our charge, the eyes of men are bent upon us, and we must answer before that Judge.... He preserved us in the darkness of our mothers' bosom, He provided our food in their breasts, and instructed us to use the same, when we knew Him not, He hath nourished us in the time of blindness and of impiety; and will He now despise us, when we call upon Him, and preach the glorious Gospel of His dear Son our Lord Jesus?'—'Works,' vi. 425.
[17] Seven years after this time, Knox, writing from abroad to 'his sisters in Edinburgh,' tells of the 'cogitations' which God permitted Satan even at that late date to put into his mind—
'Shall Christ, the author of peace, concord, and quietness, be preached where war is proclaimed, sedition engendered, and tumults appear to rise? Shall not His Evangel be accused as the cause of all calamity which is like to follow? What comfort canst thou have to see the one-half of the people rise up against the other; yea, to jeopard the one to murder and destroy the other? But above all, what joy shall it be to thy heart to behold with thine eyes thy native country betrayed into the hands of strangers, which to no man's judgment can be avoided, because they who ought to defend it and the liberties thereof are so blind, dull, and obstinate that they will not see their own destruction?'—'Works,' iv. 251.
[18] The two sources which, next to his own report of this sermon, best indicate his earliest standpoint, are (1) the (second) Basel Confession—better known as the First Confession of Helvetia—which Wishart had brought with him from the Continent, and before his death had translated into English, and which Knox, therefore, must have known and may have used; and (2) the treatise of his friend, the layman and lawyer, Balnaves, written two years later, and which Knox then sent from Rouen to St Andrews with his own approval and abridgement. The former is distinctly 'Reformed' and Puritan, and lays down that all ceremonies, other than the two instituted sacraments and preaching, 'as vessels, garments, wax-lights, altars,' are unprofitable, and 'serve to subvert the true religion'; while Balnaves repeats the more fundamental principle of Knox's sermon (that all religion which is 'not commanded,' or which is 'invented' with the best motives, is wrong). And both treatises shew that Knox must have had also before him from the first the thorny question of the relation of the Church and the private Christian to the civil magistrate—for both solve it, like Knox himself (but unlike Luther in his original Confession of Augsburg), by giving the Magistrate sweeping and intolerant powers of reforming alike the religion and the Church.