"A sure stronghold our God is He,A trusty shield and weapon;Our help He'll be, and set us freeWhatever ill may happen.. . . . . . . . . .Through our own force we nothing can,Straight were we lost for ever,But for us fights the proper Man,By God sent to deliver.Ask ye who this may be?Christ Jesus named is He,Of Sabaoth the LordSole God to be adored,'Tis He must win the battle."[2]"If God were not upon our sideWhen foes around us rage,Were not Himself our help and guideWhen bitter war they wage,Were He not Israel's mighty shield,To whom their utmost crafts must yield,We surely must have perished."[3]
"A sure stronghold our God is He,A trusty shield and weapon;Our help He'll be, and set us freeWhatever ill may happen.
. . . . . . . . . .
Through our own force we nothing can,Straight were we lost for ever,But for us fights the proper Man,By God sent to deliver.Ask ye who this may be?Christ Jesus named is He,Of Sabaoth the LordSole God to be adored,'Tis He must win the battle."[2]
"If God were not upon our sideWhen foes around us rage,Were not Himself our help and guideWhen bitter war they wage,Were He not Israel's mighty shield,To whom their utmost crafts must yield,We surely must have perished."[3]
Decay of the Medieval Church.
By the time at which reforming influences began manifestly to show themselves in Scotland, that grand medieval organisation, which had supplanted the simpler arrangements of the old Celtic church, had in its turn exhausted its life powers, and shown unmistakable signs of deep-seated corruption and hopeless decay. Whatever good it may have been honoured to do in times past,—in keeping alive the knowledge of God and of things divine in the midst of "a darkness which might be felt," in promoting a higher civilisation than the Celtic, in alleviating the evils of the feudalism which Anglo-Norman settlershad brought in, in founding parishes and universities and some other institutions which, with a purified church and revived Christian life, were to be a source of blessing after it was swept away,—yet now at last it had grossly failed to keep alive among the common people true devotion, or to give access to the sources at which the flame might have been rekindled; it had failed to provide educated men for its ordinary cures, to raise the masses from the rudeness and ignorance in which they were still involved, and even to maintain that hearty sympathy with them and that kindly interest in their temporal welfare which its best men in its earlier days had shown. It continued to have its services in a language which had for ages been unintelligible to the bulk of the laity, and was but partially intelligible to not a few of its ordinary priests. It had no catechisms or hymn books bringing down to the capacities of the unlettered the truths of religion, and freely circulated among them.[4]It did not, when the invention of printing put it in its power, make any effort to circulate among them the Holy Book, that they might read therein, in their own tongue, the message of God's love. No doubt it had its pictures and images, its mystery plays andceremonies, which it deemed fit books for children and the unlearned. But it forgot that these children were growing in capacity, even if allowed to grow up untrained; that "to credulous simplicity was succeeding a spirit of eager curiosity, an impatience of mere authority, and a determination to search into the foundation of things"; and that, if it was to maintain its place, it must not only keep abreast but ahead of advancing intelligence and morality. But the old church began greatly to decline just as the laity began to rise. Bishop Kennedy, I suppose, was almost its last preaching bishop; and the character of the preaching, so far as preaching was still continued by the friars and some of the inferior clergy, was not generally fitted to supply the lack of Bibles and catechisms, and other vernacular books of instruction. It never grappled, as it ought, with the problem of lightening the burdens it had long exacted of the peasantry; but refused almost to the last moment to ease even the most galling of them. It never grappled, as it ought, with the problem of the education of the masses; and what was done for those of the community in more fortunate circumstances was done more by the efforts of a few noble-minded individuals than by any corporate action of Church or State. There is not among all its codes of canons anything approaching to the clear ringing utterancesof our First Book of Discipline concerning the necessity and advantages of education.[5]
Lethargy of the Medieval Church.
Not only had the life powers of the medieval church been exhausted and decay set in, but corruption, positive and gross corruption, had reached an alarming height. There were the indolence and neglect of duty which wealth too often brings in its train; the covert secularising of that wealth, just as in the old Celtic church, by various devices, to get it into the hands of unqualified men and minors; luxury, avarice, oppression, simony, shameless pluralities, and crass ignorance; and above all that celibate system, which nothing would persuade them honestly to abandon, though it had proved to be a yoke they could not bear, and was producing only too generally results humiliating and disastrous to themselves and to all who came under their influence. The proof of this does not rest merely or even mainly on the statements of Knox, Alesius, and Spottiswood, nor on the representations of Lindsay and the Wedderburns. The fact, as both the late Dr David Laing and Dr Joseph Robertson have shown, and the late Bishop Forbes has sorrowfully acknowledged, is confessed and deplored in the canons of their councils, in the Acts of the Scottish Parliament,and in the writings of their own best men.[6]The harsh measures to which men themselves so vulnerable had recourse to maintain their position, the relentless cruelties they perpetrated on men of unblemished character, amiable disposition, deep-seated conviction and thorough Christian earnestness, could not fail in the end to turn the tide against them, and arouse feelings of indignation which on any favourable opportunity would induce the nation to sweep them away.
Corruption of the Medieval Church.
The corruptions in the doctrine of the church were hardly less notable than those in the lives of its clergy. The sufficiency and supremacy ofthe written Word of God were denied, and co-ordinate authority was claimed for tradition. The Virgin Mary and the saints departed were asserted to share the office which Scripture reserves for the one Mediator between God and man. Penances and other external acts of work-righteousness were alleged to co-operate in the pardon of sin with the "one obedience" by which "many are made righteous." The sacraments were asserted to produce their effectex opere operato,—not by the working of the Spirit in them that by faith receive them. Belief in the literal transubstantiation of the bread and wine in the Lord's Supper was rigidly enforced and substituted for that spiritual presence and spiritual manducation which the earlier church had maintained. The doctrine of a purgatory after this life was invented, and the virtue of masses for the dead therein detained was persistently taught and required to be believed. The Roman church was affirmed to be the mother and mistress of the churches, and its head to be the successor of St Peter and the Vicar of Christ.
The Reforming Priests.
Yet it must never be forgotten that, even in these degenerate days, there were those among the ministers of the church who wept in secret over the abominations that were done, who longed for the dawn of a better day, and, in their parishes or cloisters or colleges, sought to prepare the way for it, and who succeeded indoing so with many of their younger comrades, and only made up their minds in the end to abandon the old church when all their efforts for its revival proved vain. Nay, the men who initiated and carried to a successful issue the struggle for a more thorough reformation than the others desired, the martyrs, confessors, and exiles, were almost all from the ranks of the priesthood of the old church—from the regular as well as from the secular priesthood; from the Dominican and Franciscan monasteries as well as from the Augustinian abbeys; and from none more largely than the Augustinian Priory of St Andrews, and the College of St Leonard founded in connection with it, notwithstanding that its prior for the time being was so far from what he ought to have been. At least twenty priests joined the reformed congregation of St Andrews in 1559-60, and among them more than one who had sat in judgment on the martyrs and assisted in their condemnation.[7]A much larger number were ultimately admitted as readers in the Reformed Church.
Precursors of the Reformation.
How was the great revolution which was to bring the church back from these corruptions of life and doctrine prepared for? Ebrard supposes that witnesses for holy living and simple faith, but partially connected with the dominant church, were never from Celtic times entirely wanting in Britain; and it may have been that, through Richard Rolle and a few other hermits, the feeble spark in the smoking wick continued to smoulder on till it was blown into a flame by Wycliffe. At any rate it was blown into a flame by him and his poor priests; and from their time witness after witness arose to contend for the right of the laity to read the Word of God, and to maintain that men were saved by the merits of Christ and should pray to Him alone, that there was no purgatory in the popish sense, and that the pope was not the Vicar of Christ. Wycliffe's poorpriests, when persecuted in the south, naturally sought shelter among the moors and mosses of the north. The district of Kyle and Cunningham was "a receptakle of Goddis servandis of old," where their doctrines were cherished till the dawn of the Reformation. In 1406 or 1407 James Resby, one of these priests, is found teaching as far north as Perth, and for his teaching he was accused and condemned to a martyr's death. A similar fate is said to have befallen another in Glasgow about 1422, in all probability the Scottish Wycliffite whose letter to his bishop has recently been unearthed in a Hussite MS. at Vienna; and in 1433 Paul Craw or Crawar, a Bohemian, for disseminating similar opinions, was burned at the market cross in St Andrews. These were not in all probability the only grim triumphs of Laurence, Abbot of Lindores, one of the first rectors in the University of St Andrews, who during so many years "gave no rest to heretics," but they are all of whom records have been preserved to our time. The fact that every Master of Arts in the University of St Andrews had to take an oath to defend the church against the Lollards,[8]and the other fact that the Scottish Parliament in 1425 enjoined that every bishop should make inquiry anent heretics and Lollards,and that where any such were found, they should be punished as the law of holy church requires,[9]speak more significantly of the alarm they had occasioned than these sporadic martyrdoms. Still more, perhaps, does the abuse Fordun, or rather his continuator, heaps on them, bear witness to the alarm they had caused. Yet at the very close of the century, and in the old haunt, we find no fewer than thirty processed, and through the kindness of the king more gently dealt with than the ecclesiastical authorities wished; three of the most resolute—namely, Campbell of Cessnock, his noble wife, and a priest who officiated as their chaplain and read the New Testament to them—being released when at the stake.
Reforming tendencies in the sixteenth century, it has been said, first showed themselves in Scotland in the reassertion of "those principles, catholic but anti-papal," which had been maintained in the preceding century in the Councils of Constance and Basle. The decisions of the former were received in Scotland in 1418, and allegiance to Benedict XIII. was finally renounced.[10]A Scottish doctor[11]had taken a rather prominentpart in the proceedings of the latter, though the Scottish Church, like the others, ultimately fell away from that council and the pope elected by it, and under Bishop Kennedy was reconciled to the Roman See and to Pope Eugenius.[12]Scotland had had no Grosteste, no Anselm or Bradwardine among its prelates in the middle ages, no Wycliffe among its priests. Duns Scotus, the one theologian before the sixteenth century who claimed Scottish birth and European fame, never seems to have taught in his native land.John Major.Chief among its doctors in the beginning of the sixteenth century stood John Major, a native of East Lothian, who taught with distinguished success, first in Paris, then in Glasgow, after that in St Andrews, then once more in Paris, and finally in St Andrews again. Melanchthon, while ridiculing his scholastic ways, places him at the head of the doctors of the Sorbonne. The remembrance of his early labours in Montaigu College had not died out when Calvin entered it, and probably he had returned to it before Calvin left. Patrick Hamilton and Buchanan may possibly have been brought into contact with him while there, as they, Alesius, and JohnWedderburn afterwards were in St Andrews, and John Hamilton and Knox in Glasgow. He was a true disciple of D'Ailly and Gerson, but like them was warmly attached to the dominant church and opposed to the heretics of his time. He taught, as they had done, that the church, assembled in general council, may judge and even depose a pope and reform abuses in the church; that papal excommunications have no force unless conformed to justice, and do not necessarily prevent a man who dies under them from going to heaven. He sharply censured the vices of the Roman court, and of the bishops and clergy of his time, particularly those of his native land. He is especially severe in censuring their immorality and ignorance; and, like Wycliffe, condemns the monks and friars for inveigling into their order young novices who had no vocation for a celibate life, and ought rather to have been encouraged to enter into honest wedlock. But he was a stern opponent of heresy—Lutheran as well as Wycliffite—a subtle defender of Roman doctrine; and in dedicating to Archbishop Betoun his Commentary on St Matthew's Gospel, he congratulated him on the success of his cruel measures against Hamilton and the heretics.[13]
It has not been very clearly ascertained how or when the opinions and writings of Luther were first introduced into Scotland. M. de la Tour, who in 1527 suffered in Paris for heresy, was accused of having vented various Lutheran opinions while in Edinburgh in attendance on the Duke of Albany. This, of course, must have been before 1523. On the 9th June 1523, the same day that John Major was received as Principal of the Pædagogium, or St Mary's College,[14]Patrick Hamilton was incorporated into the University of St Andrews;[15]and on 3rd October 1524 hewas admitted as a member of the Faculty of Arts. If he did not from the latter date act as a regent in the University, he probably took charge of some of the young noblemen or gentlemen attending the classes. At that date he was probably more Erasmian than Lutheran, though of that more earnest school who were ultimately to outgrow their teacher, and find their congenial home in a new church.
Patrick Hamilton was born in 1503 or 1504 at Stonehouse in Lanarkshire, or at Kincavel near Linlithgow. His father, a natural son of the first Lord Hamilton, had been knighted for his bravery, and rewarded by his sovereign with the above lands and barony. His mother was a daughter of Alexander, Duke of Albany, the second son of James II., so that he had in his veins the noblest blood in the land. His cousins, John and James Hamilton, were in due time raised to episcopal rank in the unreformed church of Scotland, and several others of his relations received high ecclesiastical promotion. Marked out for a similar destiny, Patrick was carefully educated, and, according to the corrupt custom of the time, was in his fourteenth year appointed to the Abbacy of Ferne in Ross-shire,His Studies.to enable him to maintain himself in comfort while continuing his studies abroad. Like many of his aristocratic countrymen he went first to the University of Paris, and probably to the College of Montaigu, where Major, the great Scottish scholastic doctor, was then teaching with mucheclat, and gathering round him there, as afterwards at St Andrews, an ardent band of youthful admirers, several of whom in the end were to advance beyond their preceptor, and to lend the influence of their learning and piety to the side of Luther and the reformers. Before the close of 1520 he took the degree of M.A. at the University of Paris, and soon after left Paris for Louvain, to avail himself of the facilities for linguistic studies provided there, or to enjoy personal intercourse with Erasmus, the patron of the new learning. He is said while there to have made great progress in the languages and in philosophy, and to have been specially attracted towards the philosophy of Plato. With the Sophists of Louvain, as Luther terms them, he could have had no sympathy. But there were some there, as well as at Paris, whose hearts God had touched, to whom he could not fail to be drawn. He may even have met with those Augustinian monks of Antwerp whom these Sophists so soon after his departure sent to heaven in a chariot of fire, and whose martyrdom unsealed in Luther's breast the fount of sacred song. In the autumn of 1522, or the spring of 1523, he returned to Scotland, and, after a brief visit to his relatives in Linlithgowshire, appears to have come on to St Andrews. Probably, along with Alesius, Buchanan, and John Wedderburn, he there heard those lectures on the Gospels which Major afterwards published in Paris and dedicated to the Archbishop of St Andrews and other prominent churchmen in Scotland. But his sympathies were more with the young canons of the Augustinian priory than with the Old Scholastic; and probably it was that he might take a place among the teachers of their daughter college of St Leonard's that he was received as a member of the Faculty of Arts. Skilled in the art of sacred music, which thealumniof that college were bound specially to cultivate, he composed what the musicians call a mass, arranged in parts for nine voices, and acted himself as leader of the choir when it was sung in the cathedral. He is said to have taken on him the priesthood about this time, that he might be formally admitted "to preach the word of God." But he was not then of age for priests' orders, and Dr David Laing is doubtful if he was in orders at all, and certainly no mention is made of his degradation from orders before his martyrdom, and the final summons of Betounseems to imply that he had never been authorised to preach at all.
Parliament and Heresy.
The years 1525 and 1526 were very unquiet years in Scotland, various factions contending with varying success for the possession of the person of the young king. It was on the 17th July of the former year that his Parliament passed its first Act against the new opinions, in which, after asserting that the realm had ever been clean "of all sic filth and vice," it enacted, "that na maner of persoun strangear that hapnis to arrife with their schippis within ony part of this realm bring with thaim ony bukis or werkis of the said Lutheris his discipillis or servandis, desputt or rehers his heresyis or opunyeouns bot geif [i.e., unless] it be to the confusioun therof, and that be clerkis in the sculis alanerlie, under the pane of escheting of ther schippis and gudis and putting of ther persouns in presoun."[16]In consequence of a letter from the pope, urging the young king to keep his realm free from stain of heresy, the scope of the Act was extended in 1527 by the chancellor and Lords of Council so that it might apply to natives of the kingdom as well as to strangers resorting to it for purposes of commerce.[17]
In 1526 the primate, Archbishop James Betoun, uncle of the cardinal, having taken a keen part in the political contentions of the day with the faction which lost, had to escape for a time from St Andrews, and, disguised as a shepherd, to tend a flock of sheep for three months on the hills of Fife, on the high grounds of Kennoway, immediately to the east of where the railway now reaches its summit level.[18]It was at this juncture that copies of the New Testament of Tyndale's translation were brought over from the Low Countries by the Scottish traders to the seaports of Aberdeen, Montrose, St Andrews, and Leith. Most of them are said to have been taken to St Andrews and put in circulation there in the absence of the archbishop. One was present there at that time who had long treasured the precious saying of Erasmus, "Let us eagerly read the Gospel, but let us not only read, but live the Gospel"; and who seized the golden opportunity to impress the saying on others, and invite longing souls to quench their thirst at those wells of living water which had so marvellously been opened to them for a season. During the months when the primate was in concealment, and in those which followed his return, Patrick Hamilton came out more earnestly than he had done before as an evangelist and an advocate of the greatJames Betoun's Motives.truths, for which ultimately he was to be called to lay down his life. His conduct could not long escape the notice of the returned archbishop. I do not suppose that he was naturally cruel, nor after his recent misfortunes likely, without consideration, to embroil himself with the Hamiltons, with whom in the tortuous politics of the times he had often acted. But he had those about him who were less timid and more cruel, especially his nephew, the future cardinal. He was himself ambitious and crafty, and about this very time was exerting all his influence to obtain special favours from the pope without the sanction of the king.[19]He knew that the holy father had written the sovereign requiring him to keep his realm free from heresy, and no doubt he and his scheming nephew thought that by their zeal in this matter they would discredit the opposition of the king and his advisers to their ambitious schemes at the papal court. Still, he was anxious to perform the ungrateful task in the way least offensive to the Hamiltons. So while issuing his summons against the reformer to appear and answer the charges which had been brought against him, he did not attempt at once to restrain his personal liberty; he would rather, if he could, rid the kingdom of his presence without imbruing his hands in his blood. And that was the result actually attained.
Some of Hamilton's opponents even, touched by his youth, his illustrious descent, his engaging manners and noble character, joined with his friends in urging him to avoid by flight the danger which impended. He yielded to their counsels, and, along with two friends and a servant, made his escape to the Continent. The story of his residence there has been graphically told by Principal Lorimer and Dr Merle D'Aubigné; and the latter has the merit of explaining why Hamilton did not carry out his original intention of visiting Luther and Melanchthon at Wittenberg, as well as Frith, Tyndale, and Lambert at Marbourg. At the very time he arrived on the Continent, the plague was raging in Wittenberg. "Two persons died of it in Melanchthon's house." Luther himself was suddenly taken ill. "All who could do so, and especially the students, quitted the town."[20]Thus the absence of documents bearing on his alleged sojourn at the Saxon university is naturally explained. He went to the younger University of Marbourg in Hesse, and prepared there, andFinal Return to Scotland.publicly disputed, those theses that most fully and systematically set forth the doctrines which he mainly taught, and for which at last he suffered. He was warmly beloved by Lambert of Avignon, who was then the most distinguished theological professor in the infant university, as well as by others with whom he was brought into contact; and he would have been gladly retained by them, could he have been persuaded to remain in Germany: but his heart yearned to return to his native land, and once more proclaim there the truths which had now become to him more precious and engrossing than before. His faith had been confirmed, and his spirit quickened, by living for a time among earnest and decided Christians; and in the autumn of 1527 he set out once more for Scotland, prepared for any fate that might await him, not counting even life dear unto him if he might finish his course with joy, and bear faithful witness to his Master's truth, where before he had shrunk back from an ordeal so terrible. He appears first to have resorted to his native district, and made known to relatives, friends, and neighbours about Linlithgow that Gospel of the grace of God which gave strength and peace to his own spirit. In his discourses and conversations he dwelt chiefly on the great and fundamental truths which had been brought into prominence by thereformers, and avoided subjects of doubtful disputation. His own gentle bearing gained favour for his opinions and success in his labours, and it won for him the heart of a young lady of noble birth, to whom he united himself in marriage, following in this the example of Luther and others of the German reformers.
In St Andrews.
Archbishop Betoun being then on the other side of the Forth, in the neighbouring abbey of Dunfermline, could not fail to hear of his doings or to desire to silence him. But neither could he fail, in the state of the political parties in Scotland at the time, to recognise "that a heretic with the power of the Hamiltons at his back was more to be dreaded than Luther himself," and must be dealt with very cautiously. It was long supposed that, if not at the king's express desire, as Bishop Lesley seems to suggest,[21]then certainly from his own wariness, the archbishop did not at first venture formally to renew his old summons, but invited the reformer to St Andrews to a friendly conference with himself and otherchiefs of the church on such points as might seem to stand in need of reform, and that Hamilton accepted the invitation. At first, it has been said, he was well received: "All of them displayed a conciliatory spirit; all appeared to recognise the evils in the church; some of them seemed even to share on some points the sentiments of Hamilton."[22]He left the conference not without hope of some other than the sad issue he had at first anticipated. He was permitted for nearly a month to move about with freedom in the city, to dispute in the schools of the university, and privately to confer with all who chose to resort to him at the lodging which had been provided for him. It was evidently the intention of those who were deepest in the plot against him, that he should have ample time allowed him to express his sentiments fully and unmistakably, and even should be tempted by dissemblers, like Friar Campbell, to unbosom himself in private on matters as to which he refrained from saying much in public—the many alterations required in doctrine and in the administration of the sacraments and accustomed rites.
It is said that the archbishop still desired that he should again save himself by flight, and there is nothing in the summons flatly inconsistentwith this;[23]but he and his friends took the credit of the terrible deed as promptly as if they had planned and intended it from the first. They also assembled their armed retainers, that when the days of truce had expired they might be able to hold their prisoner against all attempts to rescue him. The reformer refused to flee, affirming that he had come to the city for the very purpose of confirming, if need be, by the sacrifice of his life, the doctrines he had taught. He even anticipated the time fixed for his appearance, and had one more conference with the archbishop and his doctors, who even then had come to a formal decision that the articles charged against him were heretical. The same evening he was seized and imprisoned in the castle, and next day was brought out for public trial and condemnation in the Abbey Church or cathedral of St Andrews.
His Martyrdom.
Among the articles with which he was charged, and the truth of which he admitted and maintained, the most important were: "That a man is not justified by works, but by faith alone;" "That faith, hope, and charity are so linked together, that he who hath one of them hath all, and he that lacketh one lacketh all;" and "That good works make not a good man, but that a good man doth good works."[24]On being challenged by his accuser with having avowed other heretical opinions, he affirmed it was not lawful to worship images or to pray to the saints; and maintained that "it is reason and leisome to all men that have a soul to read the Word of God, and that they may understand the same, and in special the latter-will and testament of Christ Jesus."[25]These truths, which have been the source of life and strength to many, were to him the cause of condemnation and death; and on the last day of February 1527-28, the same day the sentence was passed, it was remorselessly executed before the gates of St Salvator's College. "Nobly," as I have said elsewhere, "did the martyr confirm the minds of the many godly youths he had gathered round him, by his resolute bearing, his gentleness and patience, his steadfast adherence to the truths he had taught, and his heroic endurance of the fiery ordeal through which he had to pass to his rest and reward." The harrowing details of his six long hours of torture have been preserved for us by his friend Alesius, himself a sorrowing witness of the fearful tragedy. "He was rather roasted than burned," he tells us. It may be that his persecutors had not deliberately planned thus horribly to protract his sufferings—though such cruelty was not unknown in France, either then or in much later times. They were as yet but novices at such revolting work, and all things seemed to conspire against them. The execution had been hurried on before a sufficiency of dry wood had been provided for the fire. The fury of the storm, which had prevented the martyr's brother from crossing the Forth with troops to rescue him, was not yet spent. With a fierce wind from the east sweeping up North Street, it would be a difficult matter in such a spot to kindle the pile and keep it burning, or to prevent the flames, when fierce, from being so blown aside as to be almost as dangerous to the surrounding crowd as to the tortured victim. They did so endanger his accuser, the traitor Campbell, and "set fire to his cowl, and put him in such a fray, that he never came to his right mind." But, through all his excruciating sufferings, the martyr held fast his confidence in God and in his Saviour, and the faith of many in theEffects of his Constancy.truths he taught was only the more confirmed by witnessing their mighty power on him.[26]
Archbishop Betoun thought that by Patrick Hamilton's death he had extinguished Lutheranism in Scotland. The University of Louvain applauded his deed; and so also, I regret to say, did John Major, the old Scottish Gallican, then resident at Paris, and preparing for the press his Commentary on the Gospels, the first part of which was to be dedicated to his old patron in Scotland, and was emphatically to express his approval of what that patron had done to root out the tares of Lutheranism.[27]But, according to the well-known saying, "the reek of Patrick Hamilton infected all on whom it did blow."[28]His martyr death riveted for ever in the hearts of his friendsthe truths he had taught in his life. This wasHenry Forrest.especially the case with the youngeralumniin the colleges, and the less ignorant and dissolute inmates of the priory and other monastic establishments in the city. As at a later period it was felt certain that a stern Covenanter had been detected when a suspected one refused to own that the killing of Archbishop Sharp was to be regarded as murder, so in these earlier days it was thought a sufficient mark of an incipient Lutheran if he could not be got to acknowledge that Hamilton had deserved his fate. On the charge that he had a copy of the English New Testament, and had been heard to say that Hamilton was no heretic, Henry Forrest was subjected to a rigorous imprisonment and a violent death. Forrest was a native of the county of Linlithgow, and had associated with Hamilton in St Andrews, and was the first to share his bloody baptism there. He was burned at the north kirk-style of the Abbey Church, that the heretics of Angus might see the fire and take warning from his fate.[29]One for simply touching in his sermons with a firm hand on the corruptions of the clergy had to escape for his life.[30]Another, whose history after being long forgotten has been again brought tolight in our own day, for a similar offence was subjected to cruel imprisonment, and at last forced to flee from his native land.
The name of this confessor was Alexander Alane, and it is so entered in the Registers of St Andrews University; but it is by the name of Alexander Alesius, imposed on him by Melanchthon, that he has been chiefly known to posterity. It may admit of some doubt whether he was absolutely the first after the death of Hamilton to abandon his country[31]and all he held dear, rather than renounce the faith the martyr had taught him, or crouch before the lecherous tyrant who had destined him to a filthy dungeon and a lingering death. But it admits of no doubt that he was the most notable of all the band of young Scottish exiles who had to leave their native country between the martyrdom of Hamilton and that of Wishart, and who were honoured to do faithful service in the cause of the Reformation in England and on the Continent. The story of Alesius, of the shameless cruelties which drove him from his native land, of the hardships he had to bear in the earlier years of his exile, of the high place he gained in the affections of Melanchthon and Beza, and the great work he was to do by his writings and prelections for the Protestant churches of Germany, is one of the most interesting in theAlesius and the Scriptures.great movement of the age. But to be appreciated it must be told in detail, and as most of his work was done out of Scotland, I have decided to reserve it for a supplementary lecture. I must not, however, omit to mention here one special service which he was honoured to do for the cause in his native land soon after he left it, as it casts fresh light on the origin of the Reformation in Scotland. His first publication, printed in 1533, was entitled 'Alexandri Alesii Epistola contra decretum quoddam episcoporum in Scotia, quod prohibet legere Novi Testamenti libros lingua vernacula.' It brought into bold relief, and set high above all minor issues, what had been taught by Wycliffe in the fourteenth century, and maintained by the Lollards of Kyle in the fifteenth, and what had actually been urged as an additional charge against Patrick Hamilton. Save for this epistle of Alesius, and the controversy it occasioned, we might not have known that even in ignorant Scotland the bishops had been so far left to themselves as to issue such a decree.[32]Itis still more melancholy to think that even among the better informed controversialists of Germany one was found to champion their cause, and to maintain that there was nothing at variance with sound doctrine in the decree; that nothing but harm could come from the practice of allowing laymen to read the Scriptures in their own tongue; and that it could not fail to make them bad Christians and bad subjects, as Luther's translation had done in Germany.
From the time that Alesius fled from Scotland down to the death of James V. in the end of 1542, there was almost continual inquisition made for those who were suspected of having in their possession heretical books, including the New Testament in the vernacular, or who otherwise betrayed a leaning towards the new opinions. In 1532, we are told, "there was ane greit objuratioun of the favouraris of Mertene Lutar in the Abbay of Halyrudhous;"[33]and of course their goods were forfeited to the crown. In 1534 a second great assize against heretics was held inNorman Gourlay and David Stratoun.the same place. The king, as the great Justiciar of the realm, was present in his scarlet robe, and took a prominent part in the proceedings. Betoun was also present and taking part. About sixteen are said to have been convicted and to have had their goods forfeited. James Hamilton, brother of the martyr, had been ordered by the king to flee the country, as he could not otherwise save him. His sister was persuaded to submit to the church. Two were reserved for a fiery death—Norman Gourlay and David Stratoun. Gourlay was a priest in secular orders, and "a man of reassonable eruditioun,"[34]who had been abroad, and there imbibed the new opinions. These he abjured,[35]and was, it seems, really burned for the greater crime of having married a wife.[36]Stratoun was the brother of the Laird of Laureston in theMearns, and had been reclaimed from his former godless life by his neighbour, Erskine of Dun, but by some free speeches had incurred the resentment of the notorious Prior Hepburn. They were burned at the Rood of Greenside, on the northern side of the Calton Hill.Fugitives and Martyrs.In the same year, Willock, M'Alpine, and M'Dowal had to escape into England. In 1536, when the king and Betoun were abroad, there was comparative peace. In 1537 several were convicted at Ayr, and had their goods forfeited, among whom was Walter Steward,[37]son of Lord Ochiltree. In 1538-39 many were accused and convicted in various burghs in which by that time reformed opinions were spreading, and many had to seek safety in flight. Among these last were Gavin Logie, principal regent in St Leonard's College,[38]who for a number of years had been exercising a marked influence on the students under him; John Fyfe, who under the designation of Joannes Faithus matriculated at Wittenberg in 1539, and under that of Joannes Fidelis was incorporated into the University of Frankfort on the Oder, and appointed Professor of Divinity there in 1547; George Buchanan, whoat the king's command had exposed the hypocrisy of the friars; and George Wishart, who had taught the Greek New Testament in Montrose; also Andrew Charters, John Lyne, and Thomas Cocklaw, John and Robert Richardson and Robert Logic, canons of the Augustinian Abbey of Cambuskenneth. Nearly all of these fugitives took refuge in England. Cocklaw, Calderwood tells us, for marrying a wife had been mewed up within stone walls, but his brother came with crowbars and released him. His goods, as well as those of his wife, were forfeited to the Crown. Large numbers of the wealthy burgesses, even after they had consented to abjure their opinions, were stripped of their possessions, among whom the burgesses of Dundee were conspicuous. "Nor was the good town of Stirling far behind Dundee in the same race of Christian glory. She had less wealth to resign, ... but she brought to the altar a larger offering of saintly blood."[39]On 1st March 1538-39, no fewer than four of her citizens were burned at one pile on the Castle Hill of Edinburgh. On the same day with them, and in the same place, perished one of the most sainted and interesting of Scotland's martyrs—Thomas Forret, canon of the Augustinian Abbey of Inchcolm, and thereafter vicar of Dollar, who was universally admired for his attractive character.He taught his parishioners the ten commandments, penned a little catechism for their instruction, and caused a child to commit it to memory and to repeat it publicly, that it might be impressed on the hearts of his parishioners who could not read. He succeeded in leading several of the younger monks in the abbey to more evangelical views; but the old bottles, he said, would not take in the new wine. He preached every Sunday to his people on the epistle or gospel for the day, and showed them, in opposition to the teaching of the friars, that pardon for sin could only be obtained through the blood of Christ.