Persecution pushed him on into unseemly speech, and Cardinal Beaton set the sure machinery in motion that ended in the death of this strong, earnest and simple man who had not yet reached the height of his powers.
The fires that consumed the body of George Wishart fired the heart of
John Knox, and from that hour he was the avowed foe of the papacy.
Two years later, Cardinal Beaton was assassinated by "parties unknown." But Knox, having often cheerfully referred to Beaton as "a son of Beelzebub," was accused of hatching the plot, even though he did not personally take a hand in executing it.
Shortly after the death of Beaton, Knox, believing the atmosphere had cleared, came back to Edinburgh and preached at the Castle. Soon he had quite a following, but of people who he himself says, in his "History of the Reformation," were "gluttons, wantons and licentious revelers, but who yet regularly and meekly partook of the sacrament." Knox saw plainly this peculiar paradox, that every reformer is followed and professed by lawbreakers who consider themselves just like him. These rogues who took the sacrament regularly were the cause of much annoyance to Knox, and gave excuse for many accusations against him.
Knox preached a sermon entitled, "Killing No Murder," attempting to show how, when men used their power to subjugate other men, their death becomes a blessing to every one.
The Castle was stormed by Catholics, in which a brigade of French took part. Knox and various others were taken to France, and there set to work as galley-slaves. Escaping through connivance he made his way to Geneva, attracted by the fame of Calvin.
But his heart was in Scotland, and in a year he was back once more on the heather calling upon the papal heathen to repent.
John Knox was in Geneva three different times. He was a heretic, too, and his heresy was of the same kind as that of Calvin. And as two negatives make an affirmative, so do two heretics, if they are strong enough, transform heresy into orthodoxy. To be a heretic you have to be in the minority and stand alone.
Calvin had a high regard for Knox, but they were too much alike to work together in peace. Calvin was never in England, and in fact never learned to speak English; but Knox spoke French like a native, having improved the time while in prison in France by studying the language. There were several hundred English refugees in Geneva, and Calvin appointed Knox pastor of the English church. This was in Fifteen Hundred Fifty-four, the year following the death of Servetus. Knox deprecated the death of the Papal Delegate, but looked upon it lightly, a mere necessity of the times, and "a due and just warning to the Pope and the followers of the Babylonish harlot."
When Luther was forty-two he married "Catherine the Nun," a most noble and excellent woman of about his own age, who encouraged him in his very trying position and sustained him in time of peril.