The Word of God exerted a marvellous power in Scotland also, even over many who were personally unable to read it. The keenness of some of these illiterates was exemplified in Robert Maule of Panmure,2 who became “very penitent of his former life and embraced the Reformed religion”, and who died on 3 May 1560, aged 62. “He could neither read nor write”, but one of his sons, “a godly person given to reading the Scripture”, did each night instruct him in “the chief points of religion”. Although many of the common people were less ignorant than many of their clergy, it does not follow that all or most of the miners, carters and cooks, to whom Sir David Lyndsay directed a poem, were able to read. Lyndsay wrote in the vernacular that they might understand what he wrote, and they could understand it when read aloud to them, though they could not read themselves.
To him it appeared utterly absurd that nuns should both sing psalms and say prayers, in Latin night and day. When the unlearned heard the gospel solemnly sung, it was, he thought, no better to them than the ringing of a bell; therefore they ought to know in their own tongue the life of Christ Jesus. “In our language let us pray and read the Lord’s Prayer . . . and our Creed.” Moses on Mount Sinai did not give the law in Greek or Latin, but in Hebrew, the “common language” of “the Children of Israel”. Jerome had translated the law of God from Hebrew and Greek into Latin, “his own tongue”; and if he had been born in Argyleshire, he would have written his books in Gaelic. Moreover, had not Paul said that there was more edification in five words which people understood than in ten thousand in a strange language? Such mumbling, Lyndsay thought, was not worth two pins. Even he may well have been surprised at the power which in Scotland underlay a translation of the Scriptures, not in his own tongue but in English, which in those days, as in ours, was not the same as Lowland Scots.
While Quintin Kennedy3 admitted in 1558 that it was expedient that those should read the Scriptures who did so “temperately”, he contended that God had provided a better way than burdening every private man to read His Word in order to find out all its secrets that were necessary for salvation. Private men, he said, ought not to pry into such mysteries as “the sacraments, predestination, free will and justification”. They should not seek any other understanding of them than those that were already taught by general councils, who, “in declaration of doubtful matters – necessary or expedient to be known for all Christian men’s salvation – have assuredly never erred”.
In all such matters above their knowledge, Kennedy went on, the people should stick to the judgement of their pastors “without curious reasoning”. It was necessary to lean on “the judgement of the Kirk in all matters concerning both faith and religion”, for there were things which faithful Christians ought to believe, although “they cannot be proved by express testimonies of Scripture”. For example, “Is he not to be estimated as a heretic, who would deny the blessed mother of Jesus Christ our Saviour to be a perpetual virgin? The authority of the Church extended to more than was expressly contained in Scripture, yet “the Scripture and Kirk are both alike true, equal of strength, power and dignity, governed ever by the same Spirit of God”.4
This doctrine might continue to hold the field at Rome; it was rapidly ceasing to hold it in Scotland, where this year, the year of Walter Mill’s martyrdom, the ultimate triumph of the Reformed doctrines was already assured to the eye of faith. To the Parliament which met in November, the Protestants formally protested that, as they had not been able to obtain a “just Reformation according to God’s Word”, it should be lawful to them to act in matters of religion and conscience as they must answer to God, until their adversaries proved themselves to be true ministers of Christ’s Church and purged themselves of the crimes laid to their charge.
On the first of the following January, the notice known as The Beggars’ Summons was posted on the gates of the friaries. This summons, much briefer than Simon Fish’s famous Supplication for the Beggars and, unlike it, made no attack on the shameless immorality of the ecclesiastical “beggars and vagabonds”; but it vigorously denounced the feigned holiness and selfish craft by which the friars, though strong and sturdy, had acquired the alms which ought to have been given to the diseased and feeble poor. In it the friars were warned in the name of God to quit the hospitals before Whitsunday next, so that possession might be taken by the only lawful owners – the blind, crooked, bedridden, widows, orphans and other poor unable to work. These wretched poor intimated that, failing compliance with their demands, they would, with God’s help and the assistance of His saints on earth, take possession of their patrimony at Whitsunday, and eject the friars “utterly forth of the same”. The provincial council which met in March (the last which Archbishop Hamilton was to hold) failed to deal with the pressing matters of doctrine and ritual, and held out no hope of toleration to those who wished to be ruled by the Bible, not by theologians and councils.
When Knox returned to Scotland (2 May 1559) the realm was in the very throes of Reformation. The thirst for the gospel he found to be wondrously great. By the beginning of September, though troubled with fever, he travelled through most of the country and found men of all sorts and conditions embracing the truth. A few weeks later he was still so engrossed that he did not have four hours out of 24 for natural rest. The French held Dunbar and Leith, and were strong enough to be aggressive, but so far as the body of the Scottish people was concerned, the battle of the Reformation was won.
1The final part of a chapter in Hay Fleming’s The Reformation in Scotland: Causes, Characteristics, Consequences (1910). It has been edited. The original title of the chapter was: “Primary Causes – the Word of God”, and the title of last month’s extract was “Progress and Regress”. The author was a noted church historian, writing from a Reformed standpoint.
2Near Carnoustie, on the east coast of Scotland.
3Abbot of Crossraguel (1521-1564), Maybole, in Ayrshire.
4Tradition is here being given the same authority as Scripture, according to Roman Catholic teaching.