Rev D W B Somerset
^1^The previous article provided an introduction to the subject.
(1.) The Lollards of Kyle.
Kyle is a district of Ayrshire, and the Lollards of Kyle were flourishing in 1494, 30 years before Patrick Hamilton. The name Lollard shows that they derived, ultimately, from John Wycliffe, who had died in 1384. Thirty of them, including Adam Reid of Barskimming, were summoned before James IV at the instigation of Robert Blackadar, Archbishop of Glasgow; and 34 articles of accusation were brought against them. These articles are listed in John Knox’s History (Archbishop Spottiswoode’s History gives a shorter list). Being articles of accusation, they must be treated with caution because there is always a likelihood of misrepresentation and exaggeration. Assuming, however, that the articles reasonably reflect their views, they were very much followers of Wycliffe’s doctrine.
The articles make interesting reading: “(1) They said that it was wrong to have or to worship images. (2) It was wrong to worship relics of saints. (7) That after the consecration in the mass there remains bread, and there is not the natural body of Christ. (12) That the Pope is not the successor of Peter except where Christ said, ‘Go behind Me, Satan’. (13) The Pope deceives people by his bulls and indulgences. (14) That the mass profiteth not the souls that are in purgatory. (17) That the Pope exalts himself against God and above God. (19) That the blessings of bishops [of dumb dogs, they should have been styled, says Knox] are of no value. (22) That priests might have wives, according to the constitution of the law. (32) That the Pope is the head of the kirk of Antichrist. (28) That we should not pray to the glorious Virgin Mary but to God only. (31) That such as worships the sacrament of the kirk [that is, the bread and wine] commits idolatry. (33) That the Pope and his ministers are murderers.”
The articles are against images, the mass, the worship of the Virgin Mary, and especially the Pope. They rejected images, presumably because of the Ten Commandments. They almost certainly did not have the Old Testament in English – though they probably had it in Latin – but they might well have had the Ten Commandments in English. They rejected prayer to the Virgin Mary because they found in the New Testament that God is the only object of worship and that Christ is the only Mediator. Their rejection of the mass was fairly comprehensive: they rejected transubstantiation, the sacrifice for the dead in purgatory (though they seem to have accepted purgatory itself), and the worship of the elements, but they did not see the mass as essentially blasphemous. It does not appear that they separated from the Church although they were withholding their tithes.
Perhaps the most surprising thing is the strength of their opposition to the Pope. They regarded him as an imposter and a wicked man, and it is remarkable that people in their position should have had such views. The Pope was a long way away and one wonders why they were even thinking about him. Probably this indicates a legacy from the writings and teachings of Wycliffe 120 years earlier. Wycliffe moved in high political circles in which the Pope was a major figure. The point here is that people’s view of the Church and of Romanism will depend not only on having the Bible but also on the teaching that they have received. These people had received good teaching through Wycliffe but there were other early Protestants who did not have such advantages.
One other thing to notice is that there is nothing in the articles about the doctrine of justification by faith. Possibly this is because the articles were drawn up by an ignorant enemy who was trying to blacken them. If they had drawn up their own articles there might have been a very different emphasis.
Before moving on to Patrick Hamilton, we mention in passing that Lutheran books were coming into Scotland by July 1525. These were in Latin, but they were being read in monasteries and universities; and, after 1526, copies of Tyndale’s New Testament were coming into Scotland. This was in English, so the Word of God was becoming generally available so long as there was someone around who could read English.
(2.) Patrick Hamilton and his successors.
Patrick Hamilton (1504-1528) was possibly born at Stonehouse, near Glasgow. He studied at Paris and St Andrews and was converted, probably through the imported Lutheran books that we have mentioned. He became an open Protestant in 1526. In 1527 Archbishop James Beaton cited him to answer for his heretical beliefs, and Hamilton escaped from this by fleeing to Germany. After six months he deliberately returned to Scotland knowing what the cost was likely to be. He was apprehended and tried by Archbishop Beaton and others, and put to death on 29 February 1528. The two main sources for his theological beliefs are the articles that were alleged against him at his trial and his short book usually known as Patrick’s Places. This was a Latin composition translated into English by John Frith, and published in London about 1532 with the title, Divers Fruitful Gatherings of Scripture. It is mainly an exposition of the doctrine of justification by faith.
As far as his view of Rome is concerned, we get more from the articles alleged against him at his trial. Here are some of them, as given in Spottiswoode’s History: “(1) That the corruption of sin remains in children after their baptism. (3) That no man is without sin as long as he lives. (4) That good works make not a good man, but that a good man doeth good works, and that an ill man doeth ill works; yet the same ill works truly repented of make not an ill man. (5) That a man is not justified by works but by faith only. (9) That it is a devilish doctrine to teach that, by any actual penance, remission of sins is purchased. (10) That auricular confession is not essential to salvation. (11) That there is no purgatory. (13) That the Pope is Antichrist, and that every priest hath as much power as the Pope.”
These articles are more doctrinal, and more closely related to the way of salvation, than those against the Lollards of Kyle. To these articles, Hamilton replied that “he held the first seven to be undoubtedly true; the rest were disputable points, but such as he could not condemn, unless he saw better reasons than yet he had heard.” This reply is puzzling. One would have expected him to accept articles 9-11 above as undoubtedly true. Article 9 relates to the atonement, and whether human works add anything to it. Article 10 touches on the place of the Church in salvation (perhaps a statement like, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mk 16:16), was confusing him).
But there is some uncertainty over the articles – John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments gives a rather different list and significantly alters article 9 (“It is a devilish doctrine to enjoin any sinner actual penance, for sin”) – so we cannot make too much of this point. Foxe’s list contains several articles on the Pope’s spiritual and temporal authority which Spottiswoode omitted. Like the Lollards before him, Hamilton was strongly inclined to identify the Papacy with the Antichrist: at the very least he regarded the Pope as exceedingly wicked. It is interesting to note his essentially Presbyterian doctrine in article 13: that all priests (ministers) are equal. In Foxe’s list, it was also charged against Hamilton that he maintained that “Master Patrick Hamilton was a bishop” – one can see why the Episcopalian Spottiswoode might have omitted this article.
One other source of information about Hamilton is Archbishop Beaton’s “Citation” against him in 1527. This mentions some of the usual Romish beliefs and practices which Hamilton rejected – worshipping of images, salvation through good works, prayers for the dead – and also charges him with teaching that “the sacraments of the Church were not to be believed” and “that those who trusted in them had died in an evil and wicked belief and been buried in hell”. This was a repudiation of the sacrifice of the mass, and possibly also of transubstantiation, which was not otherwise mentioned. He was also allegedly teaching that “churches are not to be frequented”. If this charge was correct, then already the idea of separation from the Church of Rome was receiving prominence.
One of Hamilton’s followers was John Gau (died c1553), who studied at St Andrews and lived as an exile in Copenhagen in the 1530s. Little is known about his life. In 1533 he published The Right Way to the Kingdom of Heaven, which was printed at Malmo in Sweden on October 16. The book is about 100 pages long, and gives an exposition of the Ten Commandments, the Apostles’ Creed and the Lord’s Prayer. It is largely a translation of a Danish work by Christian Pedersen, which itself was a translation of a work by the German reformer Urbanus Rhegius (1489-1541).
Gau follows the Roman (and Lutheran) practice of combining the First and Second Commandments and breaking the Tenth into two, with the result that the Second Commandment is effectively buried (by contrast, Patrick Hamilton in Patrick’s Places gives the usual division of the Ten Commandments, and the Lollards of Kyle were evidently familiar with the Second Commandment). Gau has a Lutheran view of the Lord’s Supper: “We trow that the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is contained verily in the sacrament of the altar under the form of bread and wine”. But he speaks of communion in both kinds: “We which eats of one bread and drinks of one cup”. He also goes through the Ave Maria (“Hail thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women” (Lk 1:28)), which he expounds briefly in a Protestant sense.
According to Professor James Kirk, Gau’s book “stressed the supremacy of Scripture as the rule of faith and the right of the laity to read the vernacular Bible . . . justification by faith alone. Headship of the Church belonged to no mortal: Christ gave the keys of the kingdom to all Christians and not to Peter alone . . . ministers of the Word should be chosen by Christian congregations . . . instead of intercessory prayer to Mary and the saints, Christ alone should be worshipped.”
Another of Hamilton’s followers was John Johnstone, presumably a student at St Andrews, who had been an eye-witness of Hamilton’s martyrdom. Going abroad, Johnstone published Ane comfortable exhortation of our most holy Christian faith and her fruits, probably in Antwerp, in 1536. This is mainly on practical aspects of Christianity and says little directly against Romanism.
Two other followers of Hamilton, who showed somewhat different attitudes towards Rome, were John Macdowell and Alexander Alesius. Macdowell was the Dominican prior of Wigton but was converted and fled to England in 1534. He came under the protection of Thomas Cromwell and became chaplain to Nicholas Shaxton, the Bishop of Salisbury. In 1537 he gained fame as the first preacher in Salisbury Cathedral to assail the supremacy of the Pope, for which he was violently handled by partisans of the Pope. He subsequently fled to the Continent during the Marian persecution.
Alesius, on the other hand, was converted through the instrumentality of Patrick Hamilton, shortly before the latter’s martyrdom, when Alesius tried to reason him out of his “heresy”. Alesius shows less wisdom than Macdowell. He too fled to the Continent about 1531, and in 1540 (perhaps reluctantly) he participated in a conference at Worms seeking to reconcile Romanists and Lutherans. It was even proposed that he might attend the Council of Trent for that purpose. He seems to have been more of the spirit of Melancthon, and was slow to realise the impossibility of reforming the Church of Rome. The fact that the Roman Church is beyond reformation is closely connected with the doctrine that the Papacy is the Antichrist.
Another early Scottish Reformer whose doctrinal views are recorded is John Borthwick (died in 1569), a soldier and a member of the nobility, who fled to England in 1540. He was condemned in his absence on 13 charges: he rejected indulgences; he believed that priests might marry; he believed that the “heresies” of England and the new liturgy were commendable; that the orders of friars and monks should be abolished as they had been in England; and that the Pope was guilty of simony in selling spiritual things; he read the New Testament in English and heretical books by Melancthon, Erasmus and others, and passed these on to other people; and, above all, he refused to acknowledge the authority of the Roman See or be subject to it.
Before moving on to George Wishart, we should notice the six months of Protestantism in 1543 while the Earl of Arran was Governor. In particular, an Act was forced through Parliament, against the will of the Bishops, giving permission for the reading of the Bible in English. Up to this point, there had been private meetings of Protestants, and also public preaching. This was especially so for the six months under Arran, but there was no permanent, separate Protestant Church in Scotland.
(3.) George Wishart.
George Wishart (1513-1546), from near Montrose, studied at the University of Louvain (which sent a congratulatory letter to Archbishop Beaton for the burning of Hamilton) in 1532, and then taught New Testament Greek in Montrose. He had to flee the country in 1538. He returned to Scotland in 1543 during the “blink” of Protestantism.
He had a “Calvinistic” background rather than a Lutheran one, and an indication of his theological position is given by his translation of the First Helvetic Confession of 1536 into English. This was compiled by Henry Bullinger and others and is a brief but standard Protestant Confession. Wishart’s translation was published in London in 1548, after his death, and was in fact the first published edition of the Confession. It is mainly positive, affirming points rather than rejecting them. In affirming that Christ is the Head of the Church, however, it does explicitly reject the authority of the Pope; and in affirming marriage it rejects priestly celibacy and vows of monasticism.
With regard to the sacraments it is possibly somewhat Zwinglian – the sacraments are signs and tokens but there is no mention of their being seals – although there is perhaps a hint of something more: “And this holy meat do we use oft for this cause, for when through the monition and remembrance of it, we behold with the eye of our faith the death and blood of Him that was crucified, and remember our salvation and health, not without a taste of heavenly life, and very true feeling of eternal life: when we do this we are wonderfully refreshed through this spiritual, living and eternal food”. Transubstantiation is certainly rejected; but Wishart went beyond that and maintained that “the ministry of the mass is the mystery of iniquity”. Here is a rejection not only of transubstantiation and trusting in the mass (as with Hamilton) but the mass itself is now seen as idolatrous, with the implication that one should not even be present. So this undoubtedly requires a separation from the Church of Rome.
Wishart’s views of the true Church are (presumably) those set out in the Confession. The main mark is the faithful preaching of the Word, to which is added the power of the keys in Church discipline. The sacraments are “badges and tokens of this society”. So in Wishart we find a clearer view of the Church, and of what was being aimed at, than we have had before. Furthermore, he put his ideas into practice in that he was the first of the Scottish Reformers to administer the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. He did this, in both kinds, at the House of Dun in 1544 and again on the day of his execution in 1546. It is not recorded that he baptized anybody, but one of his followers, Adam Wallace, who was martyred 1550, was charged with having baptized his own child, which he had done because he rejected the baptism of the Church of Rome.
Little family conventicles must have been held since Lollard times, but with the exception of Patrick Hamilton’s brief ministry, and the parish ministry of Thomas Forret, vicar of Dollar, who was martyred in 1539, there does not seem to have been public preaching until the 1540s. The six months of Protestantism led to public preaching in several places (including Aberdeen), so people were accustomed to this idea by the time of Wishart. Wishart advanced beyond this, as we have said, in that he not only preached publicly to mixed or Protestant congregations but he also administered the Lord’s Supper. Wishart’s prayer at his death was that God would “conserve, defend and help Thy Congregation, which Thou hast chosen before the beginning of the world”, and this idea of “the Congregation” marks an important transition.
One other early Protestant at this time was Henry Balnaves, who was besieged with John Knox in the Castle at St Andrews. His Confession of Faith or Treatise on Justification by Faith was composed in Rouen and revised by Knox in the galleys. It was not published until 1584. It is an account of “how the troubled man should seek refuge at his God”, and after expounding the doctrine of justification he goes on to practical considerations. Knox provided some chapter descriptions and one of these is: “The devilish doctrine of pestilent Papistical priests”. In one chapter there is a fairly full denunciation of Romanism, including “the superstitious worshipping of saints; going on pilgrimage; purging in purgatory; hallowing of water or other elements; foundation of masses to public or private idolatry . . . forbidding of marriage in the Church of God; and abominable abuses of the whole Christian religion by the shaven, oincted or smeared priests, bishops, monks and friars, having only their vocation of man and by man”. Again, it was evidently separation rather than reform from within that was in mind. The whole Roman system was seen to be rotten.