eing the style by which secular priests were
known, unless they had taken not only the bachelor's but also the
master's degree at the University.[2] Knox in after years never alluded
to his priesthood, though his adversaries did; but so late as 27th March
1543 he describes himself in a notarial deed in his own handwriting as
'John Knox, minister of the sacred altar, of the Diocese of St Andrews,
notary by Apostolical authority.' Apostolical means Papal, the notarial
authority being transmitted through the St Andrews Archbishop; and Knox
at this time does not shrink from dating his notarial act as in such a
year 'of the pontificate of our most holy Father and Lord in Christ, the
Lord Paul, Pope by the Providence of God.' Only three years later, in
1546, he was carrying a two-handed sword before Wishart, then in danger
of arrest and condemnation to the stake at the hands of the same
Archbishop Beaton under whom Knox held his orders. And in the following
year, 1547, Knox is standing in the Church of St Andrews, and denouncing
the Pope (not as an individual, though the Pope of that day was a
Borgia, but) as the official head of an Anti-Christian system.

This early blank in the biography raises questions, some of which will
never be answered. We do not know at all when Knox took priest's orders.
It was almost certainly not before 1530, for it was only in that year
that he became eligible as being twenty-five years old. It may possibly
have been as late as 1540, when his name is first found in a deed. In
that and the two following years he seems to have resided at Samuelston
near Haddington, and may have officiated in the little chapel there. But
he was also at this time acting as 'Maister' or tutor to the sons of
several gentlemen of East Lothian, and he continued this down to 1547,
the time of his own 'call' to preach the Evangel. Nor do we know whether
the change in his views, which in 1547 was so complete, had been sudden
on the one hand or gradual and long prepared on the other. Knox's own
silence on this is very remarkable. A man of his fearless egoism and
honesty might have been expected to leave, if not an autobiography like
those of Augustine and Bunyan, at least a narrative of change like the
_Force of Truth_ of Thomas Scott, or the _Apologia_ of John Henry
Newman. He has not done so; indeed, the author who preserved for us so
much of that age, and of his own later history in it, seems for some
reason to have judged