10. The Scriptures in the Common Tongue
J H Merle d’Aubigné
Abridged from The History of the Reformation in the Time of Calvin, vol 6. Last month’s chapter gave an account of a period during which the Reformation made slow progress. Then, in December 1542, James V died.
Cardinal Beaton and the bishops had given themselves up without restraint to their passion for dominion; now they were going to take advantage of James’ death to bring the people into subjection. To maintain order in the country, there was a Queen just eight days old. The next heir to the crown after her, the Earl of Arran, was not fitted by his virtues, his intelligence or his courage to rule the people. Many destructive agencies were at work in Scotland. Only one thing could save the country – the gospel.
It appeared to Beaton that the public troubles offered him a favourable opportunity to become master, to secure the triumph of the French party, to abolish the Reformation and establish the supremacy of the clergy. Since Scotland was abased, he was to be exalted. It was necessary to act quickly. The nobles who had recently been made prisoners, and those who had for a long time lived in exile in England, were about to return. The Cardinal knew well that they detested his ambition, arrogance and subservience to the Pope, and he had no doubt that they would vigorously oppose him.
But he assumed that the Earl of Arran lacked ambition and energy, and that his only wish was to have nothing to do. Besides, Arran was his near relation. The King had scarcely breathed his last when the Cardinal went boldly to the Queen Mother at Linlithgow, fortified with the document on which he would found his pretensions. It nominated a regency composed of the Cardinal and the Earls of Argyle, Huntly and Murray, the first of these to be President of the Council and guardian of the royal infant. This document was generally considered to have been extorted from the dying King. Many Scots were indignant, and said openly that both the regency and the guardianship of the infant Mary belonged to Arran. The general hatred of the Cardinal, and the horror of living under the government of a priest, impelled a large number of people to support Arran’s cause.
It was at last decided to call together the nobility of the realm to decide who should govern during the minority. The Cardinal and his partisans resisted with all their might the proposal to appoint Arran. But all cried out that, unless the fear of God and His righteousness were trampled under foot, Arran’s claim could not be rejected. He was therefore proclaimed governor of Scotland, in spite of Beaton.
One of Arran’s first acts was to appoint, as his chaplains, two ministers who preached the pure gospel. A former Dominican, Thomas Guillaume, had been eminent in his order but had thrown off his cowl after being converted by the Word of God. He was called to preach at Edinburgh. The soundness of his judgment, the purity of his doctrine, the force of his eloquence, and the clarity of his exposition of Scripture, together with a certain moderation in controversy, attracted crowds to his preaching. The Regent associated with him another evangelical minister, John Rough. He had entered a convent at 17 and had twice visited Rome. Having been painfully shocked by what he had seen there, he embraced the Reformation. Less of a scholar than Guillaume, he was more ardent against superstition and the authority of the Pope. Arran, urged on by his evangelical friends, sent his faithful ministers into various parts of the kingdom. Among their numerous hearers was Knox; it was while listening to Guillaume that the great Reformer first became acquainted with the beauty of evangelical truth.
But while those whose hearts had been opened to the truth received with joy the words of the two chaplains, the monks, the priests and all the friends of the papacy attacked them vehemently. “Heresy! heresy!” cried a Franciscan named Scot, “Guillaume and Rough will carry the governor unto the devil.” And all the monks took up the cry, “Heresy!” A man named Watson, of the household of the Bishop of Dunkeld, composed a satirical ballad against the chaplains and the Regent which had a great vogue. The Cardinal badgered Arran to silence the two preachers. “All these men,” says Knox, “roupit [croaked] as they had been ravens; yea, rather they yelled and roared as devils in hell.” For the moment, these cries were futile. The divine Word prevailed.
James’ death had startled Henry VIII, and his first thought had been that the succession must fall to him. He would unite the two kingdoms, and it would be an immense advantage to Great Britain to be all under one government – his own. To this end a marriage should be concluded between his son Edward, aged five years, and the young Queen of Scotland, aged a few days. He lost no time in sending for the most notable of the Scots whom he was holding captive. Agreement was made that Queen Mary should marry prince Edward when she was 10. After this conference, the noble prisoners set out for Scotland on 29 December 1542 to secure the success of their scheme.
The Earl of Arran and the great majority of the Council appeared favourable, as the proposal was debated; but the Cardinal, supported by the Queen Mother, strenuously opposed it. In their judgement nothing was more dangerous for Scotland; nothing could be more offensive to France and to Rome. Beaton constantly interrupted the debate and made a vote impossible. At last he was excluded from the assembly and imprisoned in Dalkeith. The vote was in favour of the marriage and of the union with England; it only remained for Parliament to confirm it.
As soon as they heard of it, the bishops and the priests were beside themselves. All the clergy at once acted as if Scotland had been laid under an interdict by the Pope. The churches were closed, religious services were suspended, and the priests refused to discharge any of their functions. The Romish clergy accused those who laid hands on the Cardinal not only of injustice but of sacrilege. On 1 February 1543, Lord Lisle wrote to London: “Since the Cardinal was seized, no one in Scotland can get a priest to sing masse, to christen or bury”.
When the Scottish Parliament approached, there were, so to speak, two parliaments. The party of the opposition – a very great number of nobles, knights, bishops and abbots – met at Perth a week before the convocation. They drew up certain articles and sent them to the Regent and Council. Let the Cardinal, they said, be set at liberty; let the New Testament be interdicted; let the Regent confer with us on all affairs of the realm, and let other ambassadors be sent to the King of England, charged with a quite different mission from that which has been decided. The Regent by the advice of his Council declined to accede to “demands so unreasonable”. Parliament opened on March 12. Its first resolution approved the marriage of Edward and Mary. The second resolution confirmed the Earl of Arran as Regent.
Lord Maxwell was generally known as “a man of good intentions with respect to the Word of God”. As long as the Cardinal possessed supreme power Maxwell did not openly profess evangelical doctrine, but his sojourn in England, though short, had induced him to take a more decisive course. Maxwell rose and introduced a bill providing “that all the subjects of the kingdom might read the Holy Scriptures in their mother tongue”.
The debate began immediately. Archbishop Dunbar of Glasgow, who had become Chancellor of the realm since the imprisonment of the Cardinal, declared that he would oppose the motion in his own name and in the name of all the prelates, at least until a provincial council of all the Scottish clergy had decided the question. “Wherefore”, answered the friends of the Scriptures, “should it not be as lawful to men that understood no Latin to use this word of their salvation, in the tongue they understand, as it was for Latin men to have it in Latin, and Greeks and Hebrews to have it in their tongues?” “The kirk,” replied their priests, “had forbidden all kind of tongues but these three.” “When was that inhibition given?” retorted the friends of the gospel; “Christ has commanded His Word to be preached to all nations. Now if it ought to be preached to all nations, it must be preached in the tongue they understand. Now if it be lawful to preach it in all tongues, why shall it not be lawful to read it and to hear it read in all tongues, to the end that the people may try the spirits according to the commandment of the Apostle?”
The prelates, finding themselves beaten, admitted that Holy Scripture might indeed be read in the common tongue, provided the translation were accurate. Some members of the assembly then handed the priests copies of the Holy Scriptures, which they drew from their pockets, and begged them to point out any faults they could find. The prelates, in great embarrassment, began to search; they turned over the leaves of the book; they opened it at the beginning, at the end and everywhere, taking infinite pains to find some mistake. But nothing could be found. At last one of them said, “Here is a passage to be criticised: love is put in the place of charity”. “What difference is there,” it was replied, “between the one and the other? It seems you do not understand the Greek term agape. Before the Greek word the priests stood dumb.
The deputies of the burgesses and some of the nobles then required that the reading asked for should be permitted, as well as the reading of Christian treatises, until such time as the clergy should give a better translation of the Bible. The prelates still held out, but at length they were reduced to silence and they submitted. It was enacted by Act of Parliament that “all men and women should be free to read the Holy Scriptures in their own tongue or in the English tongue, and that all acts passed to the contrary should be abolished”. This Bill was passed on March 15 and sent into all parts of the kingdom by order of the Regent. The priests immediately began to cry out with one voice against him as the promoter of heresy.
This was the first public Act passed in Scotland in favour of religious liberty. The victory, says Knox, which Christ Jesus then won over the enemies of His truth was of no little importance. The trumpet of the gospel gave at once a certain sound, from south to north. No small comfort was given to families who till then did not dare read the Lord’s Prayer or the Ten Commandments in English through fear of being accused of heresy. The Bible, which had lain hidden in some corner, was now openly placed on the tables of pious and well-informed men. The New Testament had indeed been widely circulated already, but many of those who possessed it had shown themselves unworthy of it, never having read ten sentences in it through fear of men. Now they brought out their New Testaments.
Others, on the contrary, exclaimed with joy: “Often have I been in danger for this book! How secretly have I stolen away from my wife at midnight to read it in that silent hour!” Some, who were minded to turn everything to account, made a great parade of their joy, on purpose to pay court to the Regent, who was then esteemed the most fervent Protestant in all Europe. “But in general,” add the historians, “the knowledge of God was wonderfully increased by the perusal of the sacred writings, and the Holy Spirit was given in great abundance to simple men.” Many works were also published at the same time in Scotland which were intended to disclose the abuses of the Romish Church, and others of the same character were brought from England. That important Act of the Scottish Parliament was never repealed.
While these wholesome measures were being adopted, friendship with England appeared to be growing stronger; and even if a pure evangelical reformation was not to be looked for, the ties which bound Scotland to Rome must certainly be broken. An alliance between the two countries was concluded at Greenwich on July 1. This treaty was approved by the Regent and the nobles on August 25 in Holyrood Abbey and, to confirm the alliance, a consecrated wafer was, according to a Romish usage, broken between the Regent and the English envoy. Each of them ate half of it as a pledge of their fidelity – a strange method of cementing an alliance which had for its end the destruction of Romish superstitions.
If God be thine, all that is contained in the covenant, and all the comforts of the Bible, are thine. If God be thine, all that is in Christ is thine. His intercession is thine; His Spirit is thine. All God’s attributes are thine: His mercy is thine to pardon all thy offences; His goodness is thine to supply all thy wants and necessities; His wisdom is thine to direct and counsel thee in all doubtful and difficult cases; His power is thine to secure thee from dangers and to preserve thee to salvation; His love is thine to bestow on thee both grace and glory; His justice is thine to fulfill all His promises to thee. To the godly, death is an advantage; it is a going from the place of their pilgrimage towards their Father’s house.
Andrew Gray