d in Major's own time its fitting result and
reward. The despotic King and despotic Pope found it convenient for
their interests to partition between them the 'liberties' of the
Gallican Church; and by the Concordat of Bologna in 1516, Leo gained a
huge revenue from the ecclesiastical endowments of France, while Francis
usurped the right of nominating all its bishops. The University, as well
as the Parliaments, resisted, and Major, who now lectured in the
Sorbonne as Doctor in Theology, and had become famous as a
representative of the anti-Papal school of Occam, took his share in the
work. He was preparing for publication a Commentary on the Gospel of
Matthew, and he now added to it four Disputations against the arbitrary
powers of Popes and Bishops, and especially against the authority of
Popes in temporal matters over Kings, and in spiritual matters over
Councils. It was all in vain. In 1517 the University was forced by the
Crown to submit, after a protest of the broadest kind;[4] and in 1518
Major returned to his native country a famous teacher, but a defeated
churchman. Yet the grave fact for Scotland was that Major and his old
University, and the Western hierarchy everywhere, henceforward
practically acquiesced in their own defeat. A greater question had
arisen, and one which they were unwilling to face. On the other side of
the Rhine, Luther and his friends now claimed for the individual
Christian the same kind of freedom against Councils and Bishops which
the previous century had claimed for Councils and Bishops against Popes.
Paris took the lead in opposition to the new Evangel by its Academic
decrees of 1521. And when Major, in 1530, republished his Commentary, he
not only omitted from it his Disputations against Papal absolutism, but
dedicated it to Archbishop James Beaton as the 'supplanter' and
'exterminator' of Lutheranism, and, above all, as the judge who, amid
the murmurings of many, had recently[5] and righteously condemned the
nobly-born Patrick Hamilton.

It may be well thus to represent to ourselves what must have been the
outlook into the Western Church of Major, or of any one who looked
through Major's eyes, in that year 1523. But I think it very unlikely
that Knox could have derived from such an outlook, or from Major in any
aspect, a serious impulse to his career as Reformer. Knox no doubt
learned from him scholastic logic, and turned it in later days with much
vigour to his own purposes. Major, t