e of the injunctions of authority--not until the
heresy thus threatened to be internal schism, or repudiation of that
authority--was the secular power usually invoked. Unfortunately Western
Europe as a whole, ever since its intellectual awakening three or more
centuries ago, was moving on to precisely this crisis; and the very
existence of the Church, in the sense of a body of which all citizens
were compulsorily members, was now felt to be at stake. The Scottish
sovereign had long since been taken bound, by his coronation oath, to
interpose his authority; and the present King, delivered in 1528 from
the tutory of the Douglases by the Beatons, had thrown himself into the
side of those powerful ecclesiastics. A statute, the first against
heresy for nearly a century, was passed two years after Knox went to
college. When he was twenty-three years old, England was preparing to
reject the Pope's supremacy; but Scotland was so far from it that this
year Patrick Hamilton was burned at St Andrews. When he was thirty-four
years old, the English revolution had been accomplished by the despotic
Henry; but his Scottish nephew had refused to follow the lead, and in
that year five other heretics were burned on the Castle-hill of
Edinburgh, the popular 'Commons King' looking on. On James V.'s death
there was a slight reaction under the Regent, and Parliament even
sanctioned the publication of the Scriptures. But Arran made his peace
with the Church in 1543, and Beaton, the able but worldly Archbishop of
St Andrews, and as such Knox's diocesan, became once more the leader of
Scotland. He had already instituted the Inquisition throughout his see;
he was now advanced to be Papal Legate; and he was fully prepared to
press into execution the Acts which a few years before he and the King
had persuaded the Parliament to pass. Not to be a member of the Church
had always meant death. But now it was death by statute to argue against
the Pope's authority; it was made unlawful even to enter into discussion
on matters of religion; and those in Scotland who were merely
_suspected_ of heresy were pronounced incapable of any office there.
And, lastly, those who left the country to avoid the fatal censure of
its Church on such crimes as these, were held by law to be already
condemned. The illustrious Buchanan was one of those who thus fled. Knox
remained, and suddenly becomes visible.

[1] Knox's later biographer, Dr Hume Brown, has given to the world