During the ensuing year, 1557, everything was peaceful and hopeful. The Protestants kept their worship private, but it spread from town to town, and from the land of one friendly baron to his neighbours' territory. Knox had been formally condemned, but those he left behind were not molested, and in March four of the Lords wrote him to Geneva asking him to return to Scotland. They accompanied this with assurances that though 'the Magistrates in this country' were in the same state as before, the Churchmen there were daily in less estimation. After consulting Calvin, Knox said farewell to his congregation, and had got as far homewards as Dieppe, where he was much disappointed to receive 'contrary letters.' His reply, indignantly acquiescing, indicates the plan which by this time he had formed in order to solve the combined difficulties in theory and practice which beset Scotland. He reminded his correspondents—Glencairn, Lorne, Erskine, and James Stewart—in very memorable words, that they were themselves magistrates, or at least representatives of the people, and had duties accordingly.
'Your subjects, yea, your brethren, are oppressed, their bodies and souls holden in bondage; and God speaketh to your consciences (unless ye be dead with the blind world) that you ought to hazard your own lives (be it against kings and emperors) for their deliverance. For only for that cause are ye called Princes of the people, and ye receive of your brethren honour, tribute and homage at God's commandment; not by reason of your birth and progeny (as the most part of men falsely do suppose), but by reason of your office and duty, which is to vindicate and deliver your subjects and brethren from all violence and oppression, to the utmost of your power.'[68]
The effect of this and other encouragements was to bring matters to a point in Scotland. The Protestant party, which had now been joined by Argyll and Morton, entered into the kind of engagement which was then called a 'Band,' and afterwards became widely known in Scotland as a 'Covenant.' This document, dated 3rd December 1557, bound the signatories to 'apply our whole power, substance, and our very lives, to maintain, set forward, and establish the most blessed Word of God and his congregation ... unto which holy word and congregation we do join us, and also do forsake and renounce the congregation of Satan.' This important step, which seems to have been represented by rumour in Dieppe as something like rebellion in Scotland, apparently startled Knox. A fortnight after it took place he writes the 'Lords of the Congregation,' as they were henceforth called, a letter of caution, urging them to
'seek the favour of the Authority, that by it, if possible be, the cause in which ye labour may be promoted, or at the least not persecuted, which thing after all humble request if ye can not attain, then, with open and solemn protestation of your obedience to be given to the Authority in all things not plainly repugning to God, ye lawfully may attempt the extremity, which is to provide, whether the Authority will consent or no, that Christ's Evangel may be duly preached, and his holy Sacraments rightly ministered unto you, and to your brethren the subjects of that realm.'
The Lords of the Congregation were disposed to be at least as cautious as Knox, and during the following year, 1558, there was a remarkable approximation to a possible settlement in Scotland on the basis of toleration. The 'Band' of the congregation does not at all suggest that the Barons who joined in it, and thereby bound themselves to defend their religion against the pressure and tyranny of outsiders, would think it right themselves to exercise a counter pressure and tyranny upon their own vassals within their own lands. And Knox's intimation that the Authority—i.e., the Regent and Parliament—though refusing to promote the Evangel, ought to be asked at least not to persecute it, was most timely. He held, indeed, at this time, that such a concession, if granted, ought to bar not only insurrection, but even a partial and divided establishment of religion. The state of matters was reflected in two resolutions which the Congregation came to immediately after the Band. By the first, common prayers were to be read on Sundays in the churches—which must mean in the churches where the innovators had influence—by the curates, 'if qualified,' and, if not, by those of the parishioners who were. But the second provided that preaching be, in the meantime, 'had and used privately in quiet houses,' great conventions being avoided 'till God move the Prince to grant public preaching.' And another influence now entered into the history. Knox had initiated an aristocratic revolution. But the Burghs of Scotland had been there, as in every other country of Europe, fortresses of freedom and the advance-guard of constitutional civilisation. And it was now resolved, that the brethren in every town 'should assemble together. And this our weak beginning did God so bless, that within few months the hearts of many were so strengthened, that we sought to have the face of a church among us.'... And the town of Dundee in particular 'began to erect the face of a public church reformed.'[69] Henceforward the great towns became more and more prepared to be the centres of the future struggle. Meantime, however, early in 1558, the 'First Petition of the Protestants of Scotland' was presented to the Regent. It protested against the existing tyranny, and craved, in general and cautious terms, a 'public Reformation,' laying stress on church services in the vulgar tongue, and offering to submit differences to be publicly decided, not only by the New Testament, but by the writings of the Fathers and the laws of Justinian. The offer seems to have been at once accepted. But, according to the account of Knox, who, of course, was still abroad, the proposed public discussion came to nothing, because both parties fell back upon other conditions of arbitration; the Protestants now demanding that the Scriptures alone should decide all controversy, the Catholics insisting on Councils and Canon Law. The next step was a proposal by the Bishops of 'Articles of Reconciliation,' according to which the Old Church was to remain publicly established, while the Protestants might privately pray and baptise in the vulgar tongue. This the innovating party declined, and pressed for 'reformation.' And now the Regent, whom Knox afterwards came to regard as 'crafty and dissimulate,' and who, no doubt, even now desired to please and 'make her profit of both parties,' announced to the Congregation her decision. 'She gave to us permission to use ourselves godly, according to our desires, provided that we should not make public assemblies in Edinburgh or Leith'—i.e., in the capital. The Queen went so far as to promise positive 'assistance to our preachers,' the assistance no doubt being rather private and personal, and the whole arrangement being an interim one, 'until some uniform order might be established by a Parliament.' It was a great step in advance; indeed, Knox says, 'we departed fully contented with her answer;'[70] and it is impossible not to speculate on what the result might have been had the order finally established by Parliament been that both parties should permanently 'use themselves godly according to their desires,' with a publicly acknowledged right of proselytism or persuasion.
But from both sides there still came some things hostile to the advent in Scotland of that toleration which the modern conscience has approved. In April 1558 Walter Myln, a priest eighty-two years of age, was seized by order of the Archbishop of St Andrews, condemned for heresy, and burned there amid the general but ineffectual resentment of the people. The sentence was quite legal under the laws which still enforced membership of the Catholic Church upon all Scotchmen. But the last man who had been so condemned was Knox; and he no longer delayed to publish in Geneva an Appellation or appeal against his sentence, directed to the nobles, the estates and the commonalty of Scotland. His demand for a return to the primitive Gospel under the Divine authority is powerful and eloquent. His reasons, on the other hand, for 'appeal from the sentence and judgment of the visible Church to the knowledge of the temporal magistrate' are difficult to reconcile with the position which Knox afterwards took up when that Church was on his own side; and they are indeed chiefly drawn from the Old Testament. It is not until we observe from his re-statement of the case farther on, that his was an appeal 'against a sentence of death,' that the argument once more straightens itself out so as to suit the lips even of Paul. But Knox declines now to remain on the defensive. He accuses his accusers of heresy and idolatry, and calls upon the nobles of Scotland to decide against them according to God's Word. Here, again, the appeal, so long as it is made to the conscience of all men and of nobles alike, is very cogent. Nor is it less so as addressed specially to the most representative and intelligent Scotchmen of the time, for such the Lords of the Congregation undoubtedly were. It becomes doubtful only when it insists on the right of these temporal 'Princes of the people' to reform the Church—apparently even without the consent of its majority; and it becomes worse than doubtful when he urges their duty as magistrates to repress false religion and to punish idolatry with death. Along with this, however, was published a shorter letter 'To his Beloved Brethren the Commonalty of Scotland.' To these subjects born within the same, their brother John Knox wishes in it 'the spirit of righteous judgment;' and that in a tone of independence which must have sounded to Scottish peasants and burghers like a call to a new life. For in this treatise, unlike the last, each private Scottish man is urged to judge of what claimed to be the original truth, even against an admittedly ancient system. And 'If that system was an error in the beginning, so it is in the end, and the longer that it be followed, and the more that do receive it, it is the more pestilent, and more to be avoided.'
'Neither would I that ye should esteem the Reformation and care of religion less to appertain to you, because ye are no kings, rulers, judges, nobles, nor in authority. Beloved brethren, ye are God's creatures, created and formed to His own image and similitude, for whose redemption was shed the most precious blood of the only beloved Son of God.... For albeit God hath put and ordained distinction and difference between the king and subjects, between the rulers and the common people, in the regimen and administration of civil policies, yet in the hope of the life to come He hath made all equal.... And this is the equality which is between the king and subjects, the most rich or noble, and between the poorest and men of lowest estate; to wit, that as the one is obliged to believe in heart, and with mouth to confess, the Lord Jesus to be the only Saviour of the world, so also is the other.'
And by this time Knox has reasoned out for himself the right of the people to maintain the true Church, and to band in defence of it—though that right he even now recognises only when they cannot do better.
'And if in this point your superiors be negligent, or yet pretend to maintain tyrants in their tyranny, most justly ye may provide true teachers for yourselves, be it in your cities, towns, or villages: them ye may maintain and defend against all that shall persecute them, and by that means shall labour to defraud you of that most comfortable food of your souls, Christ's evangel truly preached. Ye may, moreover, withhold the fruits and profits which your false Bishops and clergy most unjustly receive of you, unto such time as they be compelled faithfully to do their charge and duties.'
These appeals by Knox can only have made their way in Scotland gradually and privately. But as the year 1558 went on, the prospect of union became more hopeful. The Queen Regent acted as if 'the duty of the Magistrate' were to prevent majorities and minorities from laying hands on each other. And, then at least, this was not an easy work. The Bishops tyrannised in details in localities where the barons were still on their side; but Myln was the last Protestant martyr in Scotland. On the other hand, the adherents of the congregation became so bold, especially in the towns, that (as Knox tells us) 'the images were stolen away in all parts of the country, and in Edinburgh was that great idol called St Gile first drowned in the North Loch, and after burned.'[71] This was too much, and the Regent allowed the Bishops to summon the iconoclast preachers for the 19th of July. But a party of Western lairds heard of it on their way from the army of the Border, and insisted on interviewing the Queen. Knox's vivid account of what followed must be quoted. It includes a delicious phonograph of the Scots speech of Mary of Lorraine, who, to the desire to please all men which was common to her with her more famous daughter, seems to have added real good nature and kindliness of heart. James Chalmers of Gadgirth, a rough Ayrshireman, burst out against the Bishops—