On 4th September 1561, an extraordinary discussion was going on at Holyrood House in Edinburgh. Some scholars have said that this was the beginning of Scotland’s democratic process when a man could speak his mind and not be killed for it. The conversation between John Knox and Mary, Queen of Scots, as recorded by Knox himself in his Reformation in Scotland, has gone down in history as being a watershed moment in the development of our culture. After some initial debate, Queen Mary brought the question that was troubling her most.
‘Think ye that subjects, having the power, may resist their princes?’ she asked Knox.
Knox, expecting this question, was well prepared. ‘If their princes exceed their bounds, Madam, no doubt they may be resisted, even by power,’ he boldly reasoned. ‘For there is neither greater honour, nor greater obedience, to be given to kings or princes, than God has commanded to be given unto father and mother. But the father may be stricken with a frenzy, in which he would slay his children. If the children arise, join themselves together, apprehend the father, take the sword from him, bind his hands, and keep him in prison till his frenzy be overpast – think ye, Madam, that the children do any wrong?’
When Knox then applied this analogy to what the kings under the Roman Catholic authorities had been doing to those who wished to obey Christ, Queen Mary rose to her feet, her facial expression changed, and she stood unspeaking for about fifteen minutes. Lord James Stewart was so concerned for her that he asked what had offended her so much. Mary, recovering from the shock, spoke to Knox:
‘Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you, and not me. They shall do what they list [want], and not what I command; and so must I be subject to them, and not they to me.’
Straightaway Knox corrected the Queen’s misunderstanding, saying that ‘God craves of Kings that they be foster-fathers to His Church, and commands Queens to be nurses to his people.’ This now brought up the heart of the issue: the tyranny of Romanism.
‘Yea, but ye are not the Kirk that I will nourish’, Queen Mary replied. ‘I will defend the Kirk of Rome, for it is, I think, the true Kirk of God.’
Gathering himself for his second volley, Knox answered. ‘Your will, Madam, is no reason; neither doth your thought make that Roman harlot to be the true and immaculate spouse of Jesus Christ. Wonder not, Madam, that I call Rome an harlot; for that Church is altogether polluted with all kind of spiritual fornication, as well in doctrine as in manners… the Church of the Jews which crucified Christ Jesus, was not so far degenerate…’
Ultimately the debate between them hinged on the authority of God’s word, the Bible, which Knox espoused, and the authority of Rome’s papal system, for which Queen Mary resolutely stood. The Queen once exclaimed about Knox, ‘I fear his prayers more than the combined armies of Europe’. Whereas Knox’s fear was expressed differently in that period because of Queen Mary’s subtle plan of reintroducing Romanism through the back door: ‘One Mass is more fearful to me,’ he wrote, ‘than if ten thousand armed enemies were landed in any part of the Realm of purpose to suppress the whole Religion.’ Ultimately Knox’s Scotland would prevail, and Queen Mary would be the victim of the axe at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587.
‘And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s”’ (Mark 12:17, NKJV).
Image: Two actors performing the above scene between John Knox and Mary, Queen of Scots