JOHN KNOX.
The only authentic Portrait. Engraved for a book by Theodore Beza,published at Geneva in 1580.
THE HISTORY
OF THE
REFORMATION OF RELIGION
IN SCOTLAND
BY
JOHN KNOX
WITH WHICH ARE INCLUDED
KNOX'S CONFESSION AND
THE BOOK OF DISCIPLINE
A Twentieth Century Edition
REVISED AND EDITED BY
CUTHBERT LENNOX
LONDON:
ANDREW MELROSE
16 Pilgrim Street, E.C.
MCMV
"It is really a loss to English and even to universal literaturethat Knox's hasty and strangely interesting, impressive, andpeculiar Book, called The History of the Reformation in Scotland,has not been rendered far more extensively legible to seriousmankind at large than is hitherto the case. There is in it,... a really singular degree of clearness, sharp just insightand perspicacity, now and then of picturesqueness and visuality,as if the thing was set before your eyes; and everywhere afeeling of the most perfect credibility and veracity: that is tosay altogether, of Knox's high qualities as an observer andnarrator.... This man, you can discern, has seized theessential elements of the phenomenon, and done a right portraitof it; a man with an actually seeing eye....
"Besides this perfect clearness, naïveté, and almost unintentionalpicturesqueness, there are to be found in Knox'sswift flowing History many other kinds of 'geniality,' andindeed of far higher excellences than are wont to be includedunder that designation. The grand Italian Dante is not morein earnest about this inscrutable Immensity than Knox is.There is in Knox throughout the spirit of an old HebrewProphet, such as may have been in Moses in the Desert at sightof the Burning Bush; spirit almost altogether unique amongmodern men; and along with all this, in singular neighbourhoodto it, a sympathy, a veiled tenderness of heart, veiled,but deep and of piercing vehemence, and withal even an inwardgaiety of soul, alive to the ridicule that dwells in whatever isridiculous, in fact a fine vein of humour, which is wanting inDante....
"The story of this great epoch is nowhere to be found soimpressively narrated as in this Book of Knox's; a hastyloose production, but grounded on the completest knowledge,and with visible intention of setting down faithfully both theimperfections of poor fallible men, and the unspeakable merciesof God to this poor realm of Scotland."
Carlyle.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
Knox's "History" has all the essential qualities of a classic.It makes appeal with perennial freshness to the heart of man.It depicts a struggle for religious freedom which never had anequal, either before or since, and yet has a counterpart inthe experience of every age. It is the honest and truthfulrecord of one of the most highly energised men that evercrossed the stage of life—a record, withal, so m