The Project Gutenberg eBook, John Knox and the Reformation, by Andrew Lang

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Title: John Knox and the Reformation

Author: Andrew Lang

Release Date: November 10, 2004 [eBook #14016]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN KNOX AND THE REFORMATION***

Transcribed from the 1905 Longmans, Green and Co. edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

John Knox and the Reformation

[John Knox. From a Posthumous Portrait. Beza's Icones, 1850: knox1.jpg]

To Maurice Hewlett

PREFACE

In this brief Life of Knox I have tried, as much as I may, to get behind
Tradition, which has so deeply affected even modern histories of the
Scottish Reformation, and even recent Biographies of the Reformer. The
tradition is based, to a great extent, on Knox's own "History," which I
am therefore obliged to criticise as carefully as I can. In his valuable
John Knox, a Biography, Professor Hume Brown says that in the "History"
"we have convincing proof alike of the writer's good faith, and of his
perception of the conditions of historic truth." My reasons for
dissenting from this favourable view will be found in the following
pages. If I am right, if Knox, both as a politician and an historian,
resembled Charles I. in "sailing as near the wind" as he could, the
circumstance (as another of his biographers remarks) "only makes him more
human and interesting."

Opinion about Knox and the religious Revolution in which he took so great
a part, has passed through several variations in the last century. In
the Edinburgh Review of 1816 (No. liii. pp. 163-180), is an article with
which the present biographer can agree. Several passages from Knox's
works are cited, and the reader is expected to be "shocked at their
principles." They are certainly shocking, but they are not, as a rule,
set before the public by biographers of the Reformer.

Mr. Carlyle introduced a style of thinking about Knox which may be called
platonically Puritan. Sweet enthusiasts glide swiftly over all in the
Reformer that is specially distasteful to us. I find myself more in
harmony with the outspoken