ak, as well
deliverance to the afflicted, as destruction to certain
inobedient, the performance whereof, not I alone, but the very
blind world has already seen. But above all, O Lord, Thou, by
the power of Thy Holy Spirit, hast sealed unto my heart
remission of my sins, which I acknowledge and confess myself to
have received by the precious blood of Jesus Christ once shed;
in whose perfect obedience I am assured my manifold rebellions
are defaced, my grievous sins purged, and my soul made the
tabernacle of Thy Godly Majesty--Thou, O Father of mercies, Thy
Son our Lord Jesus, my only Saviour, Mediator, and Advocate, and
Thy Holy Spirit, remaining in the same by true faith, which is
the only victory that overcometh the world.'[12]

This window into the heart of a great man is not less transparent
because it opens upwards. Its revelation of an inner life, with the
alternations proper to it of struggle and victory, will receive
confirmation as we go on. As we go on too we shall be arrested by the
intense personal sympathy which Knox showed in helping those around him
who were still weaker and more tempted than himself--a sympathy in which
many will find a surer proof of the existence of a life within, than
even in this record of his deliberate and devotional mind. What this
record now suggests to us is that the personal life which it reveals had
a foundation in some personal and moral crisis. The truth and light came
to him when he was 'drowned in ignorance,' and the change cannot have
_originated_ in any fancy as to his own predestination, or in any
foresight by himself of his own public services. The foundation, as it
is put by Knox, was deeper, and was, in his view, common to him with all
Christian men. It is a transaction of the individual with the Divine, in
which the man comes to God by 'true faith.' And this faith is, or ought
to be, absolute and assured, simply because it is faith in the offer
and promise of God himself in his Evangel. This was the teaching of
Wishart, as it had been of Patrick Hamilton before him. It was the
teaching which Hamilton had derived from Luther, and Wishart from both
Luther and the Reformers of Switzerland. Later on, when the minor
differences between the two schools of Protestantism had declared
themselves, it might fairly be said that Knox, and with him Scotland,
founded their religion not so much (with Luther) on the central doctrine
of