THE next Lord’s Day John Knox had his sermon in public, in the parish Kirk of St. Andrews, upon the seventh of Daniel. When he had made a short discourse of the four empires, he proved that the Roman Church was the last beast which was raised up in the destruction of the fourth, that is, the Roman Empire; for to no other power that ever yet has been do all the notes there set down by the prophet there appertain, and to it they do so properly pertain, that they are more than blind that cannot clearly see it. He shewed that the Spirit of God, in the New Testament, gave to this king spoken of in Daniel other new names, to wit, the man of sin, the anti-Christ the whore of Babylon; and this man of sin, the anti-Christ, was not to be restrained to the person of one man only, no more than the fourth beast was to be understood of the person of one emperor; that by such names, the Spirit of God would forewarn His chosen of a body and multitude having a wicked head, which should not only be sinful himself, but also the occasion of sin to all that should be subject unto him; that he was called anti-Christ, that is to say, one contrary to Christ, because he is contrary to Him in life, doctrines, laws, and subjects. He deciphered the lives of divers popes, and of all the shavelings for the most part. He proved the doctrines and laws to be repugnant to the doctrine and laws of Christ. He proved the doctrine contrary, by conferring justification by faith alone, with justification by the works of the law, or the works of man’s invention, as pilgrimages, pardons, and other such baggage! He proved the pope’s laws to be repugnant to the laws of the gospel, by the laws made of observation of days, abstinence from meat, and from marriage. He proved that the mouth speaking great and blasphemous things was the pope’s mouth, for that he called himself the Successor of Peter, the Vicar of Christ, the Head of the Church, Most Holy, Most Blessed; that he said that he cannot err; that he may make right of wrong, and wrong of right; and of nothing he may make somewhat; that he had a virtue in the shrine of his breast; that he had power over all, and none over him, not as much as to say to him that he did wrong, althoug he drew ten thousand millions of souls with himself to hell! These words, said he, were extant in his own canon law, and they were never ascribed to any mortal man before.
That he made merchandise of the souls of men, he proved, because he took upon him power to relax the pains of them that were in purgatory, and that the priests affirm that they can do the like daily, by the merits of their mass, and other trifles. In the end Knox said “if any here (there were present Mr. John Major, the University, the sub-prioror, and many canons, with some friers of both the orders) that will say, I have alleged Scripture, doctors, or history, otherwise than it is written, let them come to me with sufficient witnesses, and by conference I shall let them see not only the original wherein the testimonies are written, but that also the writers meant as I have spoken.”—Calderwood’s History. Vol. I. p. 229.