It was not long, however, till his studies received a new direction, which led to a complete revolution in his religious sentiments, and had an important influence on the whole of his future life. Not satisfied with the excerpts from ancient authors, which he found in the writings of the scholastic divines and canonists, he resolved to have recourse to the original works. In them he found a method of investigating and communicating truth, to which he had hitherto been a stranger, and the simplicity of which recommended itself to his mind, in spite of the prejudices of education, and the pride of superior attainments in his own favourite art. Among the fathers of the Christian Church, Jerom and Augustine attracted his particular attention. By the writings of the former, he was led to the Scriptures as the only pure fountain of Divine truth, and instructed in the utility of studying them in the original languages. In the works of the latter, he found religious sentiments very opposite to those taught in the Romish church, who, while she retained his name as a saint in her calendar, had banished his doctrine, as heretical, from her pulpits. From this time, he renounced the study of scholastic theology; and although not yet completely emancipated from superstition, his mind was fitted for improving the means which Providence had prepared, for leading him to a fuller and more comprehensive view of the system of evangelical religion. It was about the year 1535, when thisfavourable change commenced;[22] but, it does not appear that he professed himself a protestant before the year 1542.
As I am now to enter upon that period of Knox’s life at which he renounced the Roman Catholic communion, and commenced Reformer, it may not be improper to take a survey of the state of religion in Scotland at that time. Without an adequate knowledge of this, it is impossible to form a just estimate of the necessity and importance of that reformation, in the advancement of which he laboured with so great zeal; and nothing has contributed so much to give currency, among Protestants, to prejudices against his character, as ignorance, or a superficial consideration of the enormous and almost incredible abuses which then prevailed in the church. This must be my apology for a digression which might otherwise be deemed superfluous or disproportionate.
The corruptions by which the Christian religion was universally disfigured, before the Reformation, had grown to a greater height in Scotland, than in any other nation within the pale of the Western Church. Superstition and religious imposture, in their grossest forms, gained an easy admission among a rude and ignorant people. By means of these, the clergy attained to an exorbitant degree of opulence and power; which were accompanied, as they always have been,with the corruption of their order, and of the whole system of religion.
The full half of the wealth of the nation belonged to the clergy; and the greater part of this was in the hands of a few individuals, who had the command of the whole body. Avarice, ambition, and the love of secular pomp, reigned among the superior orders. Bishops and abbots rivalled the first nobility in magnificence, and preceded them in honours: they were Privy‑Councillors, and Lords of Session, as well as of Parliament, and had long engrossed the principal offices of state.A vacant bishopric or abbacy called forth powerful competitors, who contended for it as for a principality or petty kingdom; it was obtained by similar arts, and not unfrequently taken possession of by the same weapons.[23] Inferior benefices were openly put to sale, or bestowed on the illiterate and unworthy minions of courtiers; on dice‑players, strolling bards, and the bastards of bishops.[24] Pluralities were multiplied without bounds, and benefices, given in commendam, were kept vacant, during thelife of the commendator, nay, sometimes during several lives;[25] so that extensive parishes were frequently deprived for a long course of years, of all religious service,—if a deprivation it could be called, at a time when the cure of souls was no longer regarded as attached to livings originally endowed for that purpose. The bishops never, on any occasion, condescended to preach;indeed, I scarcely recollect an instance of it, mentioned in history, from the erection of the regular Scottish Episcopacy, down to the era of the Reformation.[26] The practice had even gone into desuetude among all the secular clergy, and waswholly devolved on the mendicant monks, who employed it for the most mercenary purposes.[27]
The lives of the clergy, exempted from secular jurisdiction, and corrupted by wealth and idleness, were become a scandal to religion, and an outrage on decency.While they professed chastity, and prohibited, under the severest penalties, any of the ecclesiastical order from contracting lawful wedlock, the bishops set an example of the most shameless profligacy before the inferior clergy; avowedly kept their harlots; provided their natural sons with benefices; and gave their daughters in marriage to the sons of the nobility and principal gentry, many of whom were so mean as to contaminate the blood of their families by such base alliances, for the sake of the rich doweries which they brought.[28]
Through the blind devotion and munificence of princes and nobles, monasteries, those nurseries ofsuperstition and idleness, had greatly multiplied in the nation; and though they had universally degenerated, and were notoriously become the haunts of lewdness and debauchery, it was deemed impious and sacrilegious to reduce their number, abridge their privileges, or alienate their funds.[29] The kingdom swarmed with ignorant, idle, luxurious monks, who, like locusts, devoured the fruits of the earth, and filled the air with pestilential infection; with friars, white, black, and grey; canons regular, and of St Anthony, Carmelites, Carthusians, Cordeliers, Dominicans, Franciscan Conventuals and Observantines, Jacobins, Premonstratensians, monks of Tyrone, and of Vallis Caulium, and Hospitallers, or Holy Knights of St John of Jerusalem; nuns of St Austin, St Clair, St Scholastica, and St Catherine of Sienna, with canonesses of various clans.[30]
The ignorance of the clergy respecting religion was as gross as the dissoluteness of their morals. Even bishops were not ashamed to confess that they wereunacquainted with the canon of their faith, and had never read any part of the sacred scriptures, except what they met with in their missals.[31] Under such pastors the people perished for lack of knowledge. That book, which was able to make them wise unto salvation, and intended to be equally accessible to “Jew and Greek, Barbarian and Scythian, bond and free,” was locked up from them, and the use of it, in their own tongue, prohibited under the heaviest penalties. The religious service was mumbled over in a dead language, which many of the priests did not understand, and some of them could scarcely read; and the greatest care was taken to prevent even catechisms,composed and approved by the clergy, from coming into the hands of the laity.[32]
Scotland, from her local situation, had been less exposed to disturbance from the encroaching ambition, the vexatious exactions, and fulminating anathemas of the Vatican court, than the countries in the immediate vicinity of Rome.But, from the same cause, it was more easy for the domestic clergy to keep up on the minds of the people that excessive veneration for the Holy See, which could not be long felt by those who had the opportunity of witnessing its vices and worldly politics.[33] The burdens which attended a state of dependence upon a remote foreign jurisdiction were severely felt. Though the popes did not enjoy the power of presenting to the Scottish prelacies, they wanted not numerous pretexts for interfering with them. The most important causes of a civil nature, which the ecclesiastical courts had contrived to bring within their jurisdiction, were frequently carried to Rome. Large sums of money were annually exported out of the kingdom, for the confirmation of benefices, the conducting of appeals,and many other purposes; in exchange for which, were received leaden bulls, woollen palls, wooden images, old bones, and similar articles of precious consecrated mummery.[34]
Of the doctrine of Christianity almost nothing remained but the name. Instead of being directed to offer up their adorations to one God, the people were taught to divide them among an innumerable company of inferior divinities. A plurality of mediators shared the honour of procuring the divine favour with the “One Mediator between God and man;” and more petitions were presented to the Virgin Mary and other saints, than to “Him whom the Father heareth always.” The sacrifice of the mass was represented as procuring forgiveness of sins to the living and the dead, to the infinite disparagement of the sacrifice by which Jesus Christ expiated sin and procured everlasting redemption; and the consciences of men were withdrawn from faith in the merits of their Saviour, to a delusive reliance upon priestlyabsolutions, papal pardons, and voluntary penances. Instead of being instructed to demonstrate the sincerity of their faith and repentance, by forsaking their sins, and to testify their love to God and man, by practising the duties of morality, and observing the ordinances of worship authorized by scripture, they were taught, that, if they regularly said their aves and credos, confessed themselves to a priest, punctually paid their tithes and church‑offerings, purchased a mass, went in pilgrimage to the shrine of some celebrated saint, refrained from flesh on Fridays, or performed some other prescribed act of bodily mortification, their salvation was infallibly secured in due time: while those who were so rich and so pious as to build a chapel or an altar, and to endow it for the support of a priest, to perform masses, obits, and diriges, procured a relaxation of the pains of purgatory for themselves or their relations, in proportion to the extent of their liberality. It is difficult for us to conceive how empty, ridiculous, and wretched, those harangues were which the monks delivered for sermons. Legendary tales concerning the founder of some religious order, his wonderful sanctity, the miracles which he performed, his combats with the devil, his watchings, fastings, flagellations; the virtues of holy water, chrism, crossing, and exorcism; the horrors of purgatory, and the numbers released from it by the intercession of some powerful saint; these, with low jests, table‑talk, and fireside scandal, formed the favourite topics of the preachers, and wereserved up to the people instead of the pure, salutary, and sublime doctrines of the Bible.[35]