Two periods are to be noted in the Scottish Reformation, that of Hamilton and that of Knox. It is of the first of these only that we are now to treat. The study of the beginnings of things attracts and interests the mind in the highest degree. Faithful to our plan, we shall ascend to the generative epoch of Caledonian reform, an epoch which Scotland herself has perhaps too much slighted, and we shall exhibit its simple beauty.
Before the days of the Reformation, Scotland received three great impulses in succession from the Christian countries of the south.
The persecutions which at the close of the second century, during the course of the third, and at the beginning of the fourth, fell on the disciples of the Gospel who dwelt in the southern part of Great Britain, drove a great number of them to take refuge in the country of the Scots. These pious men built for themselves humble and solitary hermitages, in green meadows or on steep mountains, and in narrow valleys of the glens; and there, devoting themselves to the service of God, they shed a soft gleam of light in the midst of the fogs of every kind which encompassed them, teaching the ignorant and strengthening the weak. They were called in the Gaelic tongue gille De, servants of God, in Latin cultores Dei; and in these phrases we find the origin of the name by which they are still known—Culdees. Such was the respect which they inspired that, after their death, their cells were often transformed into churches.[1] From them came the first impulse.
THE CULDEES.
Several centuries passed away; the feudal system was established in Scotland. The mountainous nature of the country, which made of every domain a sort of fortress, the fewness of the large towns, the absence of any influential body of citizens, the institution of clans, the limited number of the nobles,—all these circumstances combined to make the power of the feudal lords greater than in any other European country; and this power at a later period protected the Reformation from the despotism of the kings. But the influence of the Culdees, though really perceptible in the Middle Ages, was very feeble. It may be said of the things of grace in Scotland as of the works of Creation, that the sun did not come to scatter the mists which brooded over a nature melancholy and monotonous, and that the influence of the winds which, rushing forth from the neighboring seas, roared and raged over the barren heaths or over the fertile plains of Caledonia, was not softened by the breath divine which comes from heaven.
But in the days of the revival a sweet and subtile sound was heard, and the surface of the lochs seemed to become animated. Wickliffe, having given to England the Word of God, some of his followers, and particularly John Resby, came into Scotland. ‘The pope is nothing,’ said Resby in 1407,[2] and he taught at the same time that Christ is everything. He was burnt at Perth.... Thus it was from the disciples of Wickliffe, the Lollards, that the second impulse came.
The reveillé of Wickliffe was echoed in Eastern Europe by that of John Huss. In 1421, a Bohemian, one Paul Crawar, arriving from Prague, expounded at St. Andrews the Word of God, which he cited with a readiness and accuracy that astonished his hearers.[3] When led away to execution and bound to the stake, the bold Bohemian said to the priests who stood round him, ‘Generation of Satan, you, like your fathers, are enemies of the truth.’ The priests, not relishing such speeches in the presence of the crowd, had a ball of brass put into his mouth,[4] and the martyr thus silenced was burnt alive without any further protest on his part.
However, Patrick Graham, archbishop of St. Andrews and primate of Scotland, nephew of James I., and a man distinguished for his abilities and his virtues, had heard Crawar. If the heart of the priest had been hard as a stone the heart of the archbishop was like a fertile field. The Word of the Lord took deep root in him. He formed the project of reformation of the Church; but the clergy were indignant; the primate was deprived, was condemned to imprisonment for life, and died in prison.
Then began that struggle between royalty and the nobility which was afterwards to become one of the characteristic features of the time of reform. Kings, instigated by ambitious priests, sought to humble the nobles; the latter were thus predisposed to promote the Reformation. James II. (1437–1460) fought against the nobles both with the sword and by severe laws. James III. (1460–1488) removed them with contempt from his Court and gave himself up to unworthy favorites. James IV. (1488–1503), a man of a nobler spirit, esteemed the aristocracy the ornament of his Court and the strength of his kingdom. During the reign of this prince appeared the first glimmerings of the Reformation. Some pious men, dwellers most of them in the districts of Hill and Cunningham, were enlightened by the Gospel, and, confronting the Roman papacy, boldly declared that all true Christians receive every day spiritually the body of Jesus Christ by faith; that the bread remains bread after consecration, and that the natural body of Christ is not present; that there is a universal priesthood, of which every man and woman who believes in the Saviour is a member; that the pope, who exalts himself above God, is against God; that it is not permissible to take up arms for the things of faith; and that priests may marry.
JOHN CAMPBELL, LAIRD OF CESSNOCK.