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- Reformer and Founder of the Scottish Presbyterian Movement -
The 16th Century Reformation was the greatest event in the history of the Church since Pentecost.  The Church owes much to the leaders of the Reformation who boldly risked their lives to uphold the truths of the Bible.  Many were martyred for their fearless stand against the false teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. 

Among those who played a pivotal role in the Reformation was John Knox, the greatest Reformer in the history of Scotland. 

Early Years

Little is known of the Reformer’s early life.  The exact place and date of his birth is not known with certainty, but it is generally accepted to be a suburb of Haddington called Giffordgate, 16 miles east of Edinburgh, in 1505.   Knox came from an old and respectable family, the Knoxes of Ranfurly, in Renfrewshire.  His father was William Knox, who fought at the Battle of Flodden, and his mother was an educated woman named Sinclair (Knox used the name John Sinclair as an incognito in times of danger).

Education

John Knox received his early education at the grammar school of Haddington.  In 1521, he went to the University at Glasgow, Scotland.  Some believed Knox did not even finish his basic degree, whilst others say that he did not take a master’s degree.  However, he ended his University education “with a mind imbued with that delight in abstract thought and dialectical disputation which, even in that age, was recognized throughout Europe as typical of Scottish scholarship.” 

Priesthood

Knox trained for the priesthood under the scholar John Major, at the University of St. Andrews, just at the time when reformed Christian theology was starting to penetrate the institution.  It was at St. Andrews that he probably became acquainted with Protestant doctrines. 

He entered the Roman Catholic priesthood, however, and from 1540 to 1544, was engaged as an ecclesiastical notary and as a private tutor to the sons of two gentlemen of Lothian who were deeply involved in the intrigues of political Protestantism.

Influence of George Wishart

Under their protection, George Wishart, a Scottish Reformer who was to become an early martyr for the cause, began a preaching tour in the Lothians at the end of 1545.   Knox was much in the preacher’s company and his conversion to the Reformed faith dates from his contact with Wishart, whose memory he deeply cherished.

In March 1546, George Wishart was martyred for his faith, burnt at stake for heresy by Cardinal David Beaton, Archbishop of St Andrews.

Wishart’s execution began a chain of events that profoundly affected Knox’s life. Three months later, the Cardinal was murdered by Protestant conspirators as revenge for Wishart’s life.  These assassins seized the castle and eventually their families and friends took refuge with them, about a hundred and fifty men in all.

Divine call

Meanwhile, Knox, accompanied by his pupils, was moving from place to place to escape persecution and arrest. His desire was to go to Germany to study there at the Protestant seats of learning, but his employers sent word to him to take their sons to St Andrews and continue their reformed education under the protection of the castle. Thus, in April 1547, less than a year after the cardinal’s murder and against his own desire, Knox sought refuge in the castle - still an unknown man.

The three months that he spent there transformed him, against his own will, into the acknowledged spokesman and protagonist of the Reformation movement in Scotland. Knox was all geared up “for the quiet of the study and the schoolroom, not for the responsibilities and perils of the life of a preacher of a proscribed and persecuted faith.”  But the Protestants in the castle who were involved in a controversy with the university, became aware that they were in the company of “a man of uncommon gifts” and pressed upon him the call to take up the ministerial office and charge of preaching.   It was said that he “resisted the call with tears” and “only after great hesitation was he persuaded to preach a sermon that convinced friend and foe alike that the great spokesman of Scottish Protestantism had been found.”

Here, Knox’s great gifts as a preacher were first discovered.  Soon the parish church at St Andrews resounded with his indignant voice, denouncing the errors of the Roman church. This was the turning point of the Reformer’s life; from this time onward, he regarded himself as called to preaching by God, and “he was the more certain of the divine origin and compulsion of the call in that it ran counter to every inclination of his own.”  (… to be continued)