John Knox denounces the Roman Kirk: his Challenge.
Another necessity caused him to enter the public place, besides the vocation foresaid. Dean John Annan, a rotten Papist, had long troubled John Rough in his preaching: and the said John Knox had fortified the doctrine of the preacher by his pen, and had beaten the said Dean John from all defences, so that he was compelled to fly to his last refuge, that is, to the authority of the Church, "which authority," said he, "damned all Lutherans and heretics; and therefore he needed no further disputation." John Knox answered, "Before we hold ourselves convicted, or ye can sufficiently prove us so, we must define the Church, by the right notes of the true Church given to us in God's Scriptures. We must discern the immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ from the Mother of Confusion, spiritual Babylon, lest imprudently we embrace a harlot instead of the chaste spouse; yea, to speak it in plain words, lest we submit ourselves to Satan, thinking that we submit ourselves to Jesus Christ. For, as for your Roman Kirk, as it is now corrupted, and the authority thereof, wherein stands the hope of your victory, I no more doubt that it is the synagogue of Satan, and the head thereof, called the Pope, that man of sin of whom the Apostle speaks, than do I doubt that Jesus Christ suffered by the procurement of the visible Kirk of Jerusalem. Yea, I offer myself to prove, by word or writing, that the Roman Church is this day further degenerate from the purity which was in the days of the Apostles than was the Church of the Jews from the ordinance given by Moses, when it consented to the innocent death of Christ."
These words were spoken in open audience, in the parish Kirk of Saint Andrews, after the said Dean John Annan had spoken as it pleased him, and had refused to dispute. The people, hearing the offer, cried with one consent, "We cannot all read your writings, but we may all hear your preaching; therefore we require you, in the name of God, that ye let us hear the probation of that which ye have affirmed; for if it be true, we have been miserably deceived." And so, the next Sunday was appointed to the said John to express his mind in the public preaching place.
The first Public Sermon of John Knox is made in the Parish Kirk of St. Andrews.
The day approaching, the said John took the text written in Daniel, the seventh chapter, beginning thus: "And another King shall rise after them, and he shall be unlike unto the first, and he shall subdue three kings, and shall speak words against the Most High, and shall consume the saints of the Most High, and think that he may change times and laws. And they shall be given into his hands until a time, and times, and dividing of times."
1. In the beginning of his sermon, he shewed the great love of God towards His Church, whom it pleaseth Him to forewarn of dangers to come, many years before they come to pass. 2. He briefly treated of the state of the Israelites, who then were in bondage in Babylon for the most part; and made a short discourse concerning the four Empires, the Babylonian, the Persian, that of the Greeks, and that of the Romans; in the destruction whereof rose up that last Beast, which he affirmed to be the Roman Church,—for all the notes that God hath shewn to the prophet do appertain to none other power than has ever yet been, except to it alone, and unto it they do so properly appertain, that such as are not more than blind may clearly see them. 3. But before he began to open the corruptions of the Papistry, he defined the true Kirk, shewed the true notes of it, whereupon it was builded, why it was the pillar of truth, and why it could not err, to wit, "Because it heard the voice of its own pastor, Jesus Christ, would not hear a stranger, neither yet would be carried about with every kind of doctrine."
Every one of these heads sufficiently declared, he entered on the contrary proposition; and, upon the notes given in his text, he shewed that the Spirit of God in the New Testament gave to this king other names, to wit, "The Man of Sin," "The Anti-Christ," "The Whore of Babylon." He shewed that this man of sin, or Anti-Christ, was not to be restricted to the person of any one man only, no more than by the fourth beast was to be understood the person of any one Emperor. But by such means the Spirit of God sought to forewarn His chosen of a body and a multitude having a wicked head, who should not only be sinful himself, but should be occasion of sin to all that should be subject unto him,—as Christ Jesus, is cause of justice to all the members of His body. He is called the Anti-Christ, that is to say, one contrary to Christ, because he is contrary to Him in life, doctrine, laws, and subjects.
Then began he to decipher the lives of divers Popes, and the lives of all the shavelings for the most part; their doctrine and laws he plainly proved to be directly repugnant to the doctrine and laws of God the Father and of Christ Jesus, His Son. This he proved by comparing the doctrine of justification expressed in the Scriptures, which teach that man is "justified by faith only," and "that the blood of Jesus Christ purges us from all our sins;" and the doctrine of the Papists, which attributeth justification to the works of the law, yea, to such works of man's invention as pilgrimage, pardons, and other such baggage. That the papistical laws were repugnant to the laws of the Evangel, he proved by the laws made concerning observation of days, abstaining from meats, and from marriage which Christ Jesus made free, and the forbidding whereof Saint Paul called "the doctrine of devils."
In handling the notes of that Beast, given in the text, he willed men to consider if these notes, "There shall one arise unlike to the other, having a mouth speaking great things and blasphemous," could be applied to any other but the Pope and his Kingdom; for "if these," said he, "be not great words and blasphemous, 'the Successor of Peter,' 'the Vicar of Christ,' 'the Head of the Kirk,' 'Most Holy,' 'Most Blessed,' 'that cannot err;' that 'may make right of wrong, and wrong of right;' that 'of nothing, may make somewhat;' that 'hath all truth in the shrine of his breast;' yea, 'that has power over all, and none power over him;' nay, 'not to say that he does wrong, although he draw ten thousand million of souls with himself to hell:' if these," said he, "and many other, able to be shown in his own canon law, be not grave and blasphemous words, and such as never mortal man spake before, let the world judge.
"And yet," said he, "there is one note most evident of all. John, in his Revelation, says that 'the merchandise of that Babylonian harlot, among other things, shall be the bodies and souls of men.' Now, let the very Papists themselves judge if ever any before them took upon them power to relax the pains of them that were in purgatory, as they affirm to the people that they do by the merits of their Mass and of their other trifles, daily." In the end, he said, "If any here"—and there were present Master John Major, the University, the Sub-prior, and many Canons, with some Friars of both the Orders—"will say that I have alleged Scripture, teaching, or history, otherwise than it is written, let them come unto me with sufficient witness, and by conference I shall let them see not only the original where my testimonies are written, but I shall prove that the writers meant what I have spoken."