e him in the front rank of expositors of
Scripture.

JOHN KNOX

By P. HUME BROWN

(1505-1572)

[Illustration: John Knox. [TN]]

John Knox, the great Scottish Reformer, was born at Giffordgate, a
suburb of the town of Haddington, in 1505, the year preceding the birth
of his famous countryman, George Buchanan. Knox has himself told us in a
single sentence all that is definitely known of his family connections:
"My lord," he represents himself as saying to the notorious Earl of
Bothwell, "my grandfather, grandsire (maternal grandfather), and father
have served under your lordship's predecessors, and some of them have
died under their standards." He received the elements of his education
in the grammar school of his native town, and in 1522 was sent to the
University of Glasgow. St. Andrews was nearer his home, and possessed
the more famous university; but he was probably drawn to Glasgow by the
fame of the most distinguished literary Scotchman of his
generation--John Major, the schoolman. For this reason, at least,
Buchanan was sent to St. Andrews, though Glasgow was nearer his native
place, when Major had migrated to the former university. At Glasgow,
under Major, Knox could have been subjected to none of the influences of
the great intellectual revolution which substituted for the studies and
methods of mediaevalism the ideas of the Revival of Letters. Like all his
educated contemporaries, he learned to speak and write Latin with
perfect fluency; but it was always with an idiom that showed he had none
of the humanist's scruples regarding purity of language. What he learned
from Major was the art for which that scholar was renowned throughout
Europe--the art of logical exercitation; and Knox's writings everywhere
show that all through life he had a natural delight in the play of
dialectic. He left the university without taking the degree of master of
arts, thus by the conditions of all the mediaeval universities precluding
himself from the career of an academic teacher.

During the eighteen years that follow his leaving the university, Knox
passes completely out of sight. All that is known of him during this
period is that, from 1540 to 1543, he acted as notary in his native town
of Haddington. As in the documents that establish this fact his name
appears with the addition of "Sir," the title of priests who were not
Masters of Arts, Knox must have been in orders in the Church of Rome
till as late as 1543.