5. Alexander Alesius
J H Merle d’Aubigné
That saying of Christian antiquity, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,” was perhaps never more strikingly verified than in the case of Patrick Hamilton. The report of his death ran over the whole land. Nobles and common people – even priests and monks – were on the point of being aroused by his martyrdom. For God’s work, a long and laborious life would have been of less service than were his trial, condemnation and execution, all accomplished on one day. By giving up his earthly life for one which is imperishable, he announced the end of the religion of the senses in Scotland and began worship in spirit and in truth. People everywhere wanted to know what was the cause for which this young noble had given his life, and everyone took the side of the victim.
“Just at the time”, said Knox, “when those cruel wolves had, as they supposed, clean devoured their prey, a great crowd surrounded them and demanded of them an account for the blood which they had shed.” “The faith for which Hamilton was burnt”, said many, “is that which we will have.” In vain did the guilty men, convicted by their own consciences and inflamed with wrath, utter proud threats; for the abuses and errors which up to that time had been venerated were everywhere called in question.
As the news spread, however, in foreign lands, very different feelings were aroused. The scholars of Louvain, wrote to the clergy of Scotland: “We are equally delighted with the work which you have done and with the way in which you have done it”. But a Christian man in England wrote to the Scottish nobles: “Hamilton is now living with Christ, whom he confessed before the
1Abridged from The History of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, vol 6. Last month’s chapter gave an account of the martyrdom of Patrick Hamilton.
princes of this world, and the voice of his blood, like the blood of Abel, cries to heaven”.
Persecution attacked the evangelical Christians; men who might have helped their country perished on the scaffold. But the course pursued by the priests tended to defeat their own end. The nobles, exasperated by the tyranny of the bishops, began to feel the aversion for the Church of Rome which they felt for its leading men. It was not indeed from the Romish religion that they at first broke off, but only from an ambitious and merciless hierarchy. But before long we shall find the nobles, ever more and more provoked by the clergy, beginning to listen to the evangelical doctrine of those who opposed the clergy.
Before that moment arrived, the conquests of the Reformation in Scotland had begun. It counted already many humble but devout adherents in convents, parsonage houses and cottages. At the head of the canons of St Augustine at St Andrews was an immoral man, an enemy of the gospel, Prior Hepburn; nevertheless, it was among the canons that the awakening began. One of them, Alesius, had been confirmed in the faith of the gospel by the testimony which Hamilton had borne to the truth during his trial, and by the simple and heroic beauty of his death, which he had witnessed.
On returning to his priory he had felt more deeply the need of reformation. “How wretched”, he said, “is the state of the Church! Destitute of teachers competent to teach her, she finds herself kept far away from the Holy Scriptures, which would lead her into all truth.” Alesius gave utterance at the same time to the love which he felt even for the persecutors. “I do not hate the bishops,” he said; “I do not hate any of the religious orders; but I tremble to see Christ’s doctrine buried under thick darkness and pious folk subjected to horrible tortures. May all learn what power religion displays in men’s souls, by examining with care its divine sources.” The death of Hamilton was day after day the subject of the canons’ conversation, and Alesius steadily refused to condemn him.
The worthless Hepburn and his followers could not endure this. They denounced Alesius to the Archbishop as a man who had embraced the faith for which Hamilton had been burnt, and they added that other canons seemed likely to take the same path. In order to ascertain the sentiments of the young man, the primate resolved to lay a snare for him; when a provincial synod met at St Andrews, he appointed Alesius to preach the opening sermon. Alesius entered the pulpit, and, while avoiding anything which might uselessly offend his hearers, he brought forward the doctrines of the truth and boldly urged the clergy to give an example of holy living and not to be stumbling-blocks to the faithful by scandalous licentiousness.
As they went out of the church, many expressed approval. The Archbishop was grave and did not say a word. A proud, domineering and violent man whose shameless connections were known to everybody, he thought that Alesius meant to point him out and to excite his superiors against him, and he resolved to take vengeance on him. His fears were not unfounded. The discourse of Alesius had impressed the best men among the canons; convinced of the necessity of putting an end to public scandals, they joined together and decided to complain to the King about the Prior.
Hepburn was immediately informed of their purpose. Being constitutionally more fit to be a soldier than a churchman, he took some armed men and suddenly entered the hall in which the conference was held. “Seize that man!” said he to his soldiers, pointing to Alesius. The young canon begged the prior to keep his temper; but at these words the proud Hepburn, no longer master of himself, drew his sword, advanced towards Alesius and was going to attack him when two canons thrust themselves in front of their chief and turned the blow aside. The impetuous prelate, however, was not pacified. He called his men to help him and followed Alesius. The latter, in confusion and terror, finding himself within an inch of death, fell at the prior’s feet and implored him not to shed innocent blood. Hepburn in contempt kicked him with such force that the poor canon fainted away and lay on the floor before his enemy. When he came to himself, the Prior ordered the soldiers to take Alesius and other canons to prison, and they were all cast into a foul dungeon.
These deeds of violence were reported throughout the town, and men’s feelings were divided between contempt and horror. However, some of the nobles who had esteemed Hamilton were profoundly indignant, and they implored the King to check the intolerable tyranny of the Prior. When the King ordered all the canons to be set at liberty, the Prior obeyed but only in part; he had Alesius thrust into a place fouler still. Now that he was alone, Alesius saw only hostile faces. He knew that God was with him, but the sufferings inflicted on him by the cruel Prior – the filth, the bad smells, the vermin that began to prey on him, the perpetual night which filled that frightful sink – endangered his life. It was known in the city that he was ill; it was even reported one day that he was dead.
James V had the prior of St Augustine’s called before him, and commanded him to liberate Alesius. The hypocritical Prior swore by the saints that the canon was free; and returning immediately to the priory, he gave orders to bring out of the frightful dungeon the wretched man, who had languished there for 20 days. It was some comfort to Alesius to see the light of day once more. Some of the servants took off his filthy garments, washed him carefully and then put on him clean and even elegant clothes. Thus attired, the
victim was led before Hepburn, who forbade him to tell anyone how he had been treated. The Prior then summoned the city magistrates and, with an air of triumph, showed them Alesius, clean and well dressed. He said, “There is the man who is reported to be kept in prison by me, and even to be dead. Go, sirs, and give the lie to these calumnies.” To his cruelty, the wretch added falsehood, stratagem and shamelessness.
The magistrates then turned with kind looks to the prisoner and required him in the King’s name to tell the whole truth. When Alesius related the shameful treatment he had suffered, the embarrassed Prior could not deny the fact but assured the Provost and his colleagues that from then on the prisoner would remain free. The door had hardly closed behind the council before the enraged Prior reproached Alesius severely and ordered him back to prison. A year passed, and neither king nor magistrate had snatched from that savage beast the prey on which he set his mind. In vain was it that Alesius had his complaint laid before the Archbishop, who replied that he had noticed in his discourse a leaning to Lutheranism and that he deserved the penalty which had fallen on him. Deliverance seemed impossible.
One day, however, it became known in the monastery that the Prior would be away for several days. The canons immediately brought their friend out of the prison. By degrees his strength was restored; he took courage and one day [still making his way to the full light of Scripture truth] he undertook to perform the service at the altar. But this act of devotion was suddenly interrupted. The Prior came back sooner than he was expected; he entered the church and saw Alesius officiating, and the chapter around him. The blood rose to his face and, without the slightest hesitation about interrupting divine service, he ordered the prisoner to be again cast into his foul dungeon. The canons, scandalised at this order, rose from their stalls, and represented to their superior that it was not lawful to interrupt the worship. Hepburn then allowed Alesius to go on with the service; but as soon as it was finished, he had him confined again.
To prevent the canons taking such liberties again, the prior appointed as keeper of the prison one John Hay, a cruel, fanatical priest who would severely carry out his master’s orders. The canons – friends of Alesius – told one another that, if he did not escape immediately, his life would be taken. The same day, before dusk, a few of them made their way secretly to the dungeon. They succeeded, with difficulty, in reaching the prisoner and told him that Hay had been named his keeper and that consequently he had nothing to look for but horrible torture and certain death. He could therefore only save his life by taking flight and quitting Scotland. Alesius was amazed: to forsake his country and friends seemed to him an extreme course. “Leave the
country immediately, without a word to anybody,” the canons told him, “for as soon as the Prior finds that you are no longer in your dungeon, he will send horsemen to seize you.”
Alesius could not make up his mind to follow this advice. The thought of bidding adieu to Scotland, perhaps for ever, filled him with the keenest sorrow. His dream had been to consecrate all his energies to the salvation of his fellow-citizens and to do good even to those who wronged him; and now he was to be condemned never again to see Edinburgh, its lofty houses, its narrow streets, its castle, the fertile plains of Scotland or its hills. “What is there”, he asked, “more dear to souls happily born than their native land?” But soon he corrected himself: “Assuredly the name of one’s native land is very dear, but that of the Church is dearer still”. He perceived that if he did not go away, it was all over with him; and that if he did go away, he might contribute, even from afar, towards the triumph of the truth in the land of his fathers, and might possibly return at a later day. “Go!” repeated the canons, who would fain save at any cost a life so precious; “all honest people desire it.” “Well,” said Alesius, “I bend to the yoke of necessity; I will go.”
The canons immediately got him secretly out of the priory, conducted him beyond the town, and gave him the money he need for his voyage. Though less advanced than their friend in the knowledge of the Scriptures, these generous men perceived that by his departure they would lose an inestimable treasure; but they thought rather of him than of themselves. They strove to dissipate his gloom and reminded him of the saints who had been compelled to flee, like him, far from the wrath of tyrants. At length the solemn moment of farewell came, and all of them burst into tears, deeply affected at the thought that perhaps they would never meet again. As Calvin says, “the perfection of the faithful does not lie in throwing off every affection, but in cherishing them for worthy causes”.
It was midnight. Alesius had to go to Dundee, where a ship was on the point of sailing. He set out alone, and travelled on in the thick darkness. He directed his steps towards the Firth of Tay and arrived at Newport, opposite Dundee, where he had to take a boat to cross the Firth. During this night journey he was beset with the saddest thoughts: “What a life full of bitterness is offered me, to forsake one’s kinsfolk and one’s country; to be exposed to the greatest dangers till I reach the vessel; to flee into foreign lands where no hospitable roof is ready to receive me; to have in prospect all the ills of exile, where I have not a single friend!” His soul sank; but having lifted up his eyes to Christ with full trust, he was suddenly consoled and came victorious out of the trial.
His fears, however, were only too well founded. No sooner had the violent
Hepburn learned of the flight of the prisoner than he assembled some horsemen, set off in pursuit and reached Dundee, from where he knew that a vessel was sailing for Germany. Alesius was expecting every moment to see him appear. “How shameful in a dignitary of the Church,” said he, “is this man’s cruelty! What rage moved him when he drew his sword against me!” In the morning Alesius entered Dundee. Fearing that he would be arrested and fall into the hands of the Prior, he went immediately on board the ship, which was about to sail. The captain, who was a German and probably a Protestant, received him very kindly.
The Prior and the horsemen arrived a little later in Dundee and began to search for Alesius. He was nowhere to be found; the vessel had already cleared the port. The Prior, enraged to find that his prey had escaped him, must needs vent his wrath on someone. He told a citizen well known for his attachment to the Reformation: “It is you who furnished the canon with the means of escape”. This man denied the charge, and then the Provost, Sir James Scrymgeour, declared to the Prior that with all his heart he would have provided a vessel for Alesius. And he added: “I would have given him the necessary funds for the purpose of rescuing him from the perils to which your cruelty exposed him”. The Provost of Dundee was chief among the Scrymgeours, who formed a powerful family, connected with several other noble houses of the realm. Several distinguished families had from the first welcomed the Reformation. The Prior had not expected such a challenge and returned, annoyed and furious, to St Andrews.
While the ship on which Alesius had embarked sailed towards Europe, the refugee felt his own weakness, and found strength in the Lord. “O God,” he said, “Thou dost put the oil of Thy compassion only into the vessel of a steadfast and filial trust. I must assuredly have gone down to the gates of hell unless all my hope had been in Thy mercy alone.” The ship had not long been on her way when a westerly wind, blowing violently, carried her eastward, drove her towards Sweden and made it necessary to go ashore at Malmo for a refit. Alesius was lovingly welcomed there by the Scots who had settled in the town. At length he betook himself to Cologne, where he was received by Archbishop Hermann, Count of Wied.
You value grace above the gold of Ophir. How could you see the worth and lustre of this jewel if God’s Spirit had not opened your eyes? You desire to believe, and mourn that you cannot believe. Are these tears not the beginnings of faith? You desire Christ and cannot be satisfied without Him. This beating of the pulse evidences life. The iron could not move upwards if the lodestone [magnet] did not draw it. The heart could not ascend in holy desires for God if some heavenly lodestone had not been drawing it.
Thomas Watson
Cornelius (1)1
James Buchanan
At the time of Christ’s advent, there was the same diversity of opinion and character among the Jews as there is among ourselves at the present day, and the men to whom He preached were very differently prepared for the gospel of the kingdom. There were Sadducees then, as there are sceptics now, who doubted or disbelieved the truth revealed by Moses and the prophets; there were Pharisees then, as there are formalists now, who rested in the form of godliness while they denied its power; there were Pilates, who asked, “What is truth?” and Gallios, who “cared for none of these things”.
But there were others whose hearts the Lord had touched and who waited, in faith and hope, for “the consolation of Israel”. Among the Jews we read of Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth, “who were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless”; and Mary the mother of Jesus, whose song breathes the spirit of genuine piety, when she exclaimed, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour”; and Simeon, of whom it is said that “the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him”; and Anna the prophetess, “a widow of about four score and four years, who departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day, and spake of [Christ] to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem”; and Nathaniel, of whom our Lord Himself said, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!”
Among the Gentiles, we read of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, “a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, who gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway”. In him we have a precious example of the spiritual life which still existed in the bosom of the Jewish Church, and of the blessed fruits which had sprung from the faith of the Old Testament. Even when their national character had sadly deteriorated and the scribes and Pharisees had made the commandment of God of none effect by their traditions, there was still among them a blessed remnant who cherished the faith and walked in the footsteps of faithful Abraham.
As their spiritual acquaintance with the truth revealed in the Old Testament had prepared them to receive any other revelation which God might yet be pleased to make, so God manifested the utmost care for them and gave them the earliest and best opportunities of acquiring a knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. Thus He fulfilled the law of His spiritual administration: “Who-
1This is the first part of a chapter, reprinted with editing, from the “Illustrative Cases of Conversion” in The Office and Work of the Holy Spirit. It is based on Acts 10.
soever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have”.
We have a remarkable instance of this in the narrative of the experience of Cornelius when he was made acquainted with the full truth of the gospel. A change was wrought upon him which cannot, I think, be considered as a case of conversion, for he was already a devout believer, but as a case of advancement, of translation from the lower form of the Jewish faith to the higher form of the Christian – yet still in the same school and under the same Teacher. This will become apparent, if we consider:
1. The state and character of Cornelius before this change occurred. He was by birth a Gentile and by profession a soldier. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, he had become a proselyte to the Jewish faith; he believed in and worshipped the one living and true God. His character is thus described: “a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway”; and again: “a just man, and one that feareth God, and of good report among all the nations of the Jews”. Such language is never applied in Scripture to any idolater or heathen. That his religion was not merely natural appears from the incidental point that “at the ninth hour of the day, he was praying in his house,” the hour of evening sacrifice among the Jews, when such as were not present at the temple prayed at home.
It is evident also that his prayers were addressed to the God of Israel. Not only so, they were accepted by Him, for the angel said to him: “Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God”. Thus we infer that he must have been a genuine believer and a justified man, for “without faith it is impossible to please [God]; for he that cometh to God, must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him”. Cornelius was acquainted, then, with God’s revealed truth and had embraced it with a lively faith which led him to fast and pray and to care for the religious instruction of his family. Loving God, he loved his neighbour also, for he gave much alms to the people. Indeed it would seem that he was not altogether ignorant of the gospel itself, although he had not been firmly established in it; for Peter said to him: “The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ (He is Lord of all): that word, ye know, which was published throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached”.
We are to consider him, I apprehend, as a Gentile proselyte to the Jewish faith who, without submitting to the rite of circumcision, embraced the faith of the Jewish Church and worshipped the God of Israel (we learn that he was uncircumcised from the later objection to Peter’s conduct, founded on this
consideration). In doing so, he was doubtless encouraged by the gracious provision for admitting strangers to the Church’s privileges (1 Ki 8:41, Is 56:6). As a devout and conscientious man, he acted up to the light he had and waited for more, listening to the reports which had reached him of the miracles and preaching of Jesus, but without yet arriving at a clear apprehension of the gospel.
On the whole, he may be regarded as a believer in the sense in which Abraham was a believer, or the cloud of witnesses mentioned in Hebrews 11, who “all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth”. Being a believer, he was justified and accepted, as they were, by faith in God’s covenant promise – and many others who, like himself, were sinners of the Gentiles – for a promise was given before the law: that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head.
That promise, with the accompanying rite of sacrifice, which prefigured “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”, afforded a sufficient object of faith and a solid ground of hope to many who had no natural connection with Abraham and his family. By this faith Melchizedek was justified; Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses; Rahab, in Jericho; indeed Abraham himself before he was circumcised; for, the Apostle says, “faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. How was it then reckoned? When he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised, that righteousness might be imputed unto them also: and the father of circumcision to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised.”
But here a question may arise: If Cornelius was already a justified man, why were such extraordinary means used for his instruction? Some have supposed that, had he died in his present state, he must have perished – founding mainly on an expression in the following chapter, where Peter quotes the words of the angel to Cornelius: “Send men to Joppa, and call for Simon, whose surname is Peter, who shall tell thee words, whereby thou and all thy house shall be saved”. They have inferred that he had not yet acquired a saving knowledge of divine truth, but I believe that the whole description given of his character seems very plainly to imply the reverse.
The centurion was at that time in a state of transition from the Jewish faith to the Christian. He underwent precisely the same change as was wrought
on all the devout Jews who “looked for redemption in Jerusalem” and “waited for the consolation of Israel”; after long expecting the promised Messiah, they were led to believe that Jesus was He. The subject of their faith as Jews was that God would send a deliverer; that “Jesus was the Christ” became the subject of their faith as Christians. Before he knew Christ and while he was yet under the influence of prejudice, Nathaniel was asking, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” He was “an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile”; but when Jesus spoke to him and convinced him of His omniscient knowledge by a few simple words, he believed and exclaimed, “Rabbi, Thou art the Son of God; Thou art the king of Israel”.
Just such was the change which was wrought on Cornelius, the devout Gentile believer. And such a change was necessary for two reasons, one of which was personal to himself, the other of a more public nature.
(1) He must now believe the truth as it is in Jesus. It was no longer true that God would send a deliverer – the Deliverer had already come; and it was now necessary to acknowledge that “Jesus is the Christ”. Had Cornelius died before Christ’s coming, or even before he had sufficient information on the subject, he might have been saved as Abraham and all the faithful children of Abraham were, by the faith of what God had promised to the fathers. To refuse to believe in Christ, when fully informed of all that He had done and taught, would have been fatal, not only because it rejected the Saviour, but also because it indicated the absence of that spirit of faith in the true meaning of the Old Testament itself, a faith which invariably embraced the gospel when it was first proclaimed. There was an affinity between the faith of a spiritual Jew or proselyte and the faith of the New Testament, in virtue of which the one led on to the other and found in it, not a new creed, but the completion of the old one.
(2) The events recorded in this chapter were not designed exclusively for the personal benefit of Cornelius and his family; they were designed, with reference to the Church at large, to make it manifest that the “middle wall of partition”, which had long divided the Jews from the Gentiles, had been taken down; that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcision nor uncircumcision, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all; and that the Christian Church was to be truly catholic, comprehending all nations and peoples and tongues. The Gentiles were admitted, on an equal footing with the Jews, to participate in its holiest privileges and share in its highest hopes.
O believer, though the arms of thy faith be small and weak, yet they embrace a great Christ and receive the richest gift that ever God bestowed upon the world; no sooner art thou become a believer but Christ is in thee the hope of glory and thou hast authority to become a son or daughter of God.
John Flavel