In the following February (1553) Knox was offered the Vicarage of All Hallows in Bread Street (London); but that also he declined, and we have from the pen of Calderwood an account of what occurred in connection with that.[[9]] "In a letter, dated the 14th of April, 1553, and written with his own hand, I find," says that author, "that he was called before the Council of England for kneeling, who demanded of him three questions. First, why he refused the benefice provided for him? secondly, whether he thought that no Christian might serve in the ecclesiastical ministration according to the rites and laws of the realm of England? thirdly, if kneeling at the Lord's Table was not indifferent? To the first he answered, that his conscience did witness that he might profit more in some other place than in London; and therefore had no pleasure to accept any office in the same. Howbeit, he might have answered otherwise, that he refused that parsonage because of my Lord of Northumberland's command. To the second, that many things were worthy of reformation in the ministry of England, without the reformation whereof no minister did discharge, or could discharge, his conscience before God; for no minister in England had authority to divide and separate the lepers from the whole, which was a chief point of his office; yet did he not refuse such office as might appear to promote God's glory in utterance of Christ's gospel in a mean degree, where more he might edify by preaching of the true word than hinder by sufferance of manifest iniquity, seeing that reformation of manners did not appertain to all ministers. To the third he answered, that Christ's action in itself was most perfect, and Christ's action was done without kneeling; that kneeling was man's addition or imagination; that it was most sure to follow the example of Christ, whose action was done sitting and not kneeling. In this last question there was great contention betwixt the whole table of the lords and him. There were present there the Bishops of Canterbury and Ely, my Lord Treasurer, the Marquis of Northampton, the Earl of Bedford, the Earl of Shrewsbury, Master Comptroller, my Lord Chamberlain, both the Secretaries, and other inferior lords. After long reasoning, it was said unto him that he was not called of any evil mind; that they were sorry to know him of a contrary mind to the common Order. He answered that he was more sorry that a common Order should be contrary to Christ's institution. With some gentle speeches he was dismissed, and willed to advise with himself if he would communicate after that Order." But, unlike Hooper, who, after a long controversy about vestments and a brief imprisonment for his refusal to wear them, accepted the bishopric of Gloucester, vestments and all, only however to suffer martyrdom at last under Queen Mary, Knox remained steadfast to the position which he had taken up; and, refusing a permanent charge, which would have required him to give his assent and consent to the Articles, and to conform to the common Order, he was sent in June, 1553, as one of the itinerary preachers into Buckinghamshire, where he laboured with great zeal and assiduity for some weeks.
In the interval between October, 1552, and March, 1553, we find that Knox had been back at Newcastle, where he was bitterly opposed by Sir Robert Brandling, the Mayor, whose zeal was checked, however, by the agency of Lord Wharton, then Lord Warden of the North, at the suggestion of Northumberland; and there are some interesting letters belonging to this portion of his life which give us delightful glimpses into his heart and habits. In one we see him "sitting at his book," and contemplating Matthew's Gospel by the help of "some most godly expositions, and among the rest Chrysostom." In another he writes, "This day ye know to be the day of my study and prayer to God." And in a third, written to Mrs. Bowes from London, whither he had been summoned in haste before the Privy Council, we have this record: "The very instant hour that your letters were presented unto me was I talking of you, by reason that three honest poor women were come to me, and were complaining their great infirmity, and were showing unto me the great assaults of the enemy, and I was opening the causes and commodities thereof, whereby all our eyes wept at once; and I was praying unto God that you and some others had been there with me for the space of two hours, and even at that instant came your letters to my hands, whereof the part I read unto them; and one of them said, 'Oh would to God I might speak with that person, for I perceive there be more tempted than I.'" Thus amid the multiplicity and weight of his public labours he did not neglect either the study or the closet; and the weeping Knox, seeking to comfort those that were cast down, is a picture that must seem strange to many who know little more about him than that his fortitude made Mary Stuart shed tears of wounded pride and disappointed ambition.
In April he preached in the Chapel Royal before the young king, and inveighed in the strongest terms against Northumberland and Paulet, finishing one of his scathing passages in this way: "Was David and Hezekiah, princes of great and godly gifts and experience, abused by crafty counsellors and dissembling hypocrites? What wonder is it, then, that a young and innocent king be deceived by crafty, covetous, wicked, and ungodly counsellors? I am greatly afraid that Ahithophel be councillor, that Judas bear the purse, and that Shebna be scribe, comptroller and treasurer." The pulpit in those days had to discharge the duties of public criticism on politics and morals, which are now much more appropriately performed by the press; and so, as Froude remarks, "since discipline could not be restored, Knox, and those who felt with him the enormities of the times, established, by their own authority, this second form of excommunication." It was then perhaps a necessity, but it is always, more or less, a dangerous thing for a minister to do; and it must be admitted that Knox was not always just in such philippics. But he was always conscientious, and he was always brave; and he well knew at the moment the risk which he was running. In the present case, if little good came out of it to the country, no harm resulted from it to himself; for, as we have seen, he was shortly afterwards engaged to preach in Buckinghamshire. And there he laboured on, like another Jeremiah, forecasting evils which none of his hearers would believe could happen, until at the death of Edward the Sixth, on the 6th of July, 1553, they were rudely awakened from their sleep of security.
Such was Knox's share in the working out of the English Reformation; and we have dwelt thus long upon it because the facts which we have stated have only recently been brought to light; and because we wished to set forth with as much clearness as condensation would allow the opinions which were held, and the mode of worship which was observed, by him, even at this early stage in his history. If Knox did something for England, England did much also for him. If he was instrumental in keeping the Church of that country from greater affinity with Romanism than it might otherwise have shown, there can be no doubt that the evil effects of compromise as witnessed by him there helped to make him more thorough in his later work in Scotland; while it is also most true that during his residence there his contact with the Christian people whom he met did something to soften and sweeten his piety, and to make it more inward and sympathising. Most of all, God was preparing him by it for the great work which he was afterwards to perform in his native land; and his years of service in England were blessed in securing for him the friendship and confidence of her ablest statesmen, without whose assistance, humanly speaking, Scotland might have been lost to Protestantism in the very crisis of her history.
[[1]] Lorimer, p. 73.
[[2]] Ibid., p. 74.
[[3]] Dr. Lorimer has said (p. 31) that "in both the formularies recently set forth," the Order of Communion in 1548 and the "Book of Common Prayer" in 1549, the practice of kneeling in the Lord's Supper had been retained; and on a subsequent page (112) that "in the Second Prayer-Book of King Edward VI. a rubric had for the first time been inserted appointing the Lord's Supper to be administered to the communicants in a kneeling posture." But these statements are not made with that author's usual accuracy. For the "Order of Communion" reads thus: "Then shall the priest rise, the people still reverently kneeling, and the priest shall deliver the communion, first to the ministers, if any be there present, that they may help the chief minister, and after to the others." But in the "Book" of 1549, the rubric is as we give it in the text. What the motive was for the omission of kneeling in the Book of 1549 it is not easy to say, but the fact of its omission is undoubted. (See "The Two Liturgies," by Rev. Joseph Kelley, p. 92.)
[[4]] Lorimer, p. 98.
[[5]] Lorimer, p. 109.
[[6]] For the full discussion of this subject we refer to Dr. Lorimer's monograph, "John Knox and the Church of England," a most valuable and original contribution to English Ecclesiastical history, though the absence of an index makes it less serviceable to the student than such a work should be.