"It is really a loss to English and even to universal literature that Knox's hasty and strangely interesting, impressive, and peculiar Book, called The History of the Reformation in Scotland, has not been rendered far more extensively legible to serious mankind at large than is hitherto the case. There is in it, ... a really singular degree of clearness, sharp just insight and perspicacity, now and then of picturesqueness and visuality, as if the thing was set before your eyes; and everywhere a feeling of the most perfect credibility and veracity: that is to say altogether, of Knox's high qualities as an observer and narrator.... This man, you can discern, has seized the essential elements of the phenomenon, and done a right portrait of it; a man with an actually seeing eye....

"Besides this perfect clearness, naïveté, and almost unintentional picturesqueness, there are to be found in Knox's swift flowing History many other kinds of 'geniality,' and indeed of far higher excellences than are wont to be included under that designation. The grand Italian Dante is not more in earnest about this inscrutable Immensity than Knox is. There is in Knox throughout the spirit of an old Hebrew Prophet, such as may have been in Moses in the Desert at sight of the Burning Bush; spirit almost altogether unique among modern men; and along with all this, in singular neighbourhood to it, a sympathy, a veiled tenderness of heart, veiled, but deep and of piercing vehemence, and withal even an inward gaiety of soul, alive to the ridicule that dwells in whatever is ridiculous, in fact a fine vein of humour, which is wanting in Dante....

"The story of this great epoch is nowhere to be found so impressively narrated as in this Book of Knox's; a hasty loose production, but grounded on the completest knowledge, and with visible intention of setting down faithfully both the imperfections of poor fallible men, and the unspeakable mercies of God to this poor realm of Scotland."

Carlyle.

v

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

Knox's "History" has all the essential qualities of a classic. It makes appeal with perennial freshness to the heart of man. It depicts a struggle for religious freedom which never had an equal, either before or since, and yet has a counterpart in the experience of every age. It is the honest and truthful record of one of the most highly energised men that ever crossed the stage of life—a record, withal, so masterly that the reader's mind and heart attain the writer's meaning and point of view, at a bound. Its humanity is as broad as human nature; its grasp of the eternal verities is childlike yet strong; its imagination is sane yet soaring.

The literary and historical value of the "History" has been adequately estimated for us by Carlyle, in his "Essay on the Portraits of John Knox;" and here we would only emphasise its manifestation of the intellectual quality and patriotic spirit of the men who were, under God, responsible for the great reformation of religion within the realm of Scotland. Above all, we would mark the noble conception of God which possessed the hearts of the Reformers. For them, the Eternal, our God, as Knox is fond of calling Him, was a living reality; and, with holy boldness, they withstood the enemies of God, whatever the worldly position and seeming authority of these might be. God's will was supreme, and they were there to see to its execution. The sap of the Old Testament is in all their utterances.

The document known as Knox's Confession of Faith, and The Book of Discipline throw further light upon thevi high intellectual endowments and virile faith of the Reformers. The "Confession" is of historic value. It was the recognised creed of the Reformed Church in Scotland, from 1560 until 1647, when it was unfortunately discarded for the Westminster Confession. Passages in The Book of Discipline touch the sublime. The work, as a whole, contains a complete and statesmanlike scheme for the ecclesiastical administration of the realm of Scotland, for the conduct of its schools and colleges, for the relief of its poor, and for the control of its social relations. This ideal constitution was tinkered and modified, in parts, before it secured the approval of those who had great possessions, snatched from the dispossessed "Papistical Kirk." But upon its broad framework there rest the Scotland and the Presbyterianism of which Scotsmen are justly proud to-day.

Originally dictated by Knox to amanuenses at intervals, between 1559 and 1571, this "History" existed only in manuscript for many years. Copied and recopied by scribes of differing abilities and of varying bias, the traditional text became overlaid with emendations in some copies, and enfeebled by excisions and suppressions in others, while of clerical errors there is no small crop in almost every one of the extant versions. Several times in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, one or other of these versions was printed and put forth as Knox's work. But it was only in 1846 that, as a result of the painstaking research of the notable Scottish antiquarian scholar, Dr. David Laing, a really authentic and complete version of the "History" was issued by the Wodrow Society.

So far as scholarly research is concerned, Dr. Laing put the copestone upon the task of securing an authentic text, and his will probably be the definitive edition. In it the historians of succeeding generations may win the ore of historic fact and contemporary sentiment. But the work of Knox has a far wider appeal. Its author had his eye upon posterity when he wrote: he had a message for it. Time and again, he makes occasion to say so. As thus:—

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"This we write, that the posterity to come may understand how potently God wrought in preserving and delivering those that had but a small knowledge of His truth, and for the love of the same hazarded all. We or our posterity may see a fearful dispersion of such as oppose themselves to impiety, or take upon them to punish the same otherwise than laws of men will permit: we may see them forsaken by men, and, as it were, despised and punished by God. But, if we do, let us not damn the persons that punish vice for just causes, nor yet despair that the same God that casts down, for causes unknown to us, will again raise up the persons dejected, to His glory and their comfort."

Or again:—"This we put in memory, that the posterities to come may know that God once made His truth to triumph; but, because some of ourselves delighted more in darkness than in light, He hath restrained our freedom, and put the whole body in bondage."

Note the obstacles which have checked the wider currency of the book. Knox wrote in the "Engliss tongue," with a liberal admixture of good Scots words. But English prose was then only in its birth. Knox's spelling is now hopelessly archaic, if not anarchic; his punctuation is no help, and almost a hindrance; and his style of composition, in his more sustained periods, is ponderous and involved. Nor is this all. Knox's original conception of his task seems to have been that of an exact record or chronicle of the occurrences between 1558 and 1561 of which he had personal knowledge, or documentary or other credible evidence. He has, therefore, conscientiously transcribed complete copies of letters, treaties, bonds, instructions to deputies ("credits" he calls them), and even of such lengthy documents as The Confession of Faith and The Book of Discipline, as well as of sermons preached on sundry occasions. To the historian, all these records are invaluable; but they only serve to distract the ordinary reader's attention from the main current of the narrative. They blunt his interest, instead of whetting it.

The present edition is a serious attempt to remove the obstacles to which we have just referred. The editor has not bound himself to reproduce the ipsissima verba of Knoxviii at every point; although quotations from documents have been transliterated with some exactness. His main object has been to make Knox's book utterly readable, and it may be claimed that the complete historical narrative is now given to the English reader. Here and there a parenthesis has been dropped, here and there a "meary tale" which carries the illustration of the argument a little further than modern ideas of decorum permit. Essential clauses of letters and other documents have been retained: nothing is omitted that will substantially further the high purpose of the history. The Confession of Faith, commonly known as Knox's, and The Book of Discipline were reckoned too important for abridgment. These have been transferred bodily to the Appendix, to avert a serious block in the narrative.

Every effort has been made to preserve Knox's vigorous phraseology intact. Obsolete and Scots words are glossed at the foot of the page on which they first occur; and a full Glossary is appended to the work. For the rest, the editor has sought to bring the mind and heart of Knox into touch with those of the reader, without unessential distractions. Footnotes are a manner of impertinence when a wonderful story is forward, and such an one is Knox's. He himself tells us to go to "universal histories of the time," if we want exact information. Here is no dry-as-dust chronicle of days and dates. Here we have an inspired record of the dealings of God with men. Here we read of their sinning, their shortcoming, and their struggling, of their faith and its victory, in a narrative that can be likened to nothing else in literature than the books of the Old Testament. This is a book for the heart, a human book, written by "one who neither flattered nor feared any flesh."

CUTHBERT LENNOX.

February 1905.