‘Before I will recant,’ he replied, laying his hand on his breast, ‘this body shall be burnt and the wind shall scatter its ashes.’ The abbot, anxious to be rid of this innovator, gave him the parish of Dollar.
Forrest was one of those men who receive the grace which is offered them not only lovingly but with a vehement impetuosity. While many lay sleeping he was vigorously going forward to take the kingdom of God. There were in him those marvellous impulses, that grand earnestness, which the Gospel denotes in the saying, ‘the violent take it by force.’ He used to study from six in the morning till midday: he learnt every day three chapters of the Bible: in the afternoon visited families, instructed his parishioners, and endeavored to bring souls to God. When he returned in the evening to his vicarage, wearied with his labors, he used to say to his servant, ‘Come, Andrew,’ and making him sit down beside him, piously recited the three chapters of the Word of God which he had learnt in the morning, hoping thus to fix them in his own memory and to impress them on the soul of his servant.[191] A party of monks having invaded his parish to sell indulgences there, Forrest went into the pulpit and said, like Luther, ‘You cannot receive pardon for your sins either from the pope or from any created being in the world, but only by the blood of Jesus Christ.’
FORREST AND THE BISHOP.
His enemies hastened to denounce him to the bishop of Dunkeld, calling upon him to put a stop to conduct so strange. ‘My joy dean Thomas,’ said the bishop to him, ‘I am told that you preach every Sunday. That is too much. Take my advice, and don’t preach unless you find any good gospel or any good epistle that setteth forth the liberty of Holy Church.’—‘My lord,’ replied Forrest, ‘I would wish that your lordship preach also every Sunday.’ ‘Nay, nay, dean Thomas,’ said the bishop, alarmed, ‘let that be.’—‘Whereas your lordship biddeth me preach,’ continued Forrest, ‘when I find any good epistle, or a good gospel, truly, my lord, I have read the New Testament and the Old, all the gospels, all the epistles, and among them all I could never find an evil epistle or an evil gospel; but if your lordship will shew me the good and the evil ones, I will preach the former and pass over the latter.’ The bishop, more and more affrighted, exclaimed with all his might,[192] ‘Thank God, I never knew what the Old and New Testament was, and I will to know nothing but my portuese[193] and my pontifical!’
For the moment Forrest escaped death. The bishop’s saying got abroad in Scotland, and people used for a long time to say to any ignorant person, ‘Ye are like the bishop of Dunkeldene that knew neither new nor old law.’[194]
The discontent of the people with the clergy went on increasing, and at a provincial council which met at Edinburgh in March, 1536, Sir James Hamilton, in the king’s name, demanded various reforms. The men of the kirk were indignant. ‘Never had they been so ill content,’ said Angus.[195]
The monks, in alarm, began to attack the Reformation from their pulpits.
Bishop Barlow, the English envoy, thought the moment a favorable one for reform in Scotland. ‘If I may obtain the king’s license,’ he wrote to Cromwell, then first secretary of state to Henry VIII., ‘otherwise shall I not be suffered to preach, I will not spare for no bodily peril, boldly to publish the truth of God’s Word among them. Whereat though the clergy shall repine, yet many of the lay people will gladly give hearing. And until the Word of God be planted among them, I suppose their feigned promises shall be finally found frustrate without any faithful effect.’[196]
It seemed as if the hopes of the Anglican bishop were beginning to be realized. It was rumored that the King of Scotland, offended at the reception which his demands had met in the council, was going to have a conference with his uncle. The prelates thought that if that project were carried out they were undone. ‘Pray do not allow,’ they said to the king, ‘a single word to be spoken by the King of England to induce you to adopt his new constitutions of the Scripture.’[197] James was willing and unwilling: but he yielded, and the interview with the terrible Tudor was given up. But the bishops were not yet freed from their alarm; they dreaded the influence of the English ambassadors, and that of the queen-mother, and they feared that they might not be strong enough another time. In order to confirm the prince in his resolution, they conceived the plan of getting him to request a brief from the pope to forbid his holding intercourse with Henry VIII. Thompson, the apostolic prothonotary, was secretly charged with this strange mission, and the priests thought it a capital stroke to ask the King of England to grant this agent a passport, taking good care to conceal from him the object of the mission. Henry, not at all suspicious, agreed to their request, and these cunning clerks could laugh together at their paltry trick. But the queen-mother, when she became acquainted with all these intrigues, sharply rebuked her son. Sensitive and violent, as weak men frequently are, James forgot all respect, and accused his mother of accepting gifts from the king her brother to betray the king her son. Margaret indignantly declared that she would return to London,[198] and the two English envoys hastened their departure from Scotland. The Scottish clergy had been very much alarmed at the project formed by Henry VIII. of giving his daughter Mary to his nephew; but the daughter of Catherine of Aragon would not have been wanting in submissiveness to the pope. The clerical party, having succeeded in stirring up quarrels in the royal family, between the mother and the son and between the uncle and the nephew, and anxious to make the proposed union forever impossible, hinted to the young prince that the eldest daughter of the King of France, the sister-in-law of Catherine de’ Medici, would be for him a far more glorious and advantageous alliance. This scheme pleased James, and when the rumor ran that the emperor was on the point of invading France, the King of Scotland, in order to win the favor of the father of the bride whom he desired, offered to him the aid of his army.[199] Then he set sail, September 1, with six vessels, accompanied by a suite of five hundred persons, all of noble or gentle birth. In ten days he reached Dieppe,[200] and without consulting the opinion of his uncle, he asked for and obtained the hand of Madame Madeleine, who had been very tenderly brought up by her aunt, Margaret of Valois.[201] The Scottish priests were in high glee, because in their view this alliance with France tended to strengthen the papacy in Scotland; but their joy was premature. The kings of France were beginning to assume an air of superiority towards Scotland, which was offensive to a nation proud though small. It was far worse afterwards, when Henry II., king of France, marrying his son to Mary Stuart, required that princess to sign contracts which were humiliating to ancient Caledonia.