The Reformation

One day as I was addressing a tour group outside St Giles’ in Edinburgh, a tall man joined at the back. After giving my usual information about the Scottish Reformation and John Knox, we moved on. The tall man sidled up to me as we left and said, ‘It’s a pity you did...

During the Reformation the watchword was Sola Scriptura – Scripture Alone, as the authority for belief and practice. If the reformers were active in denouncing the pope of the Vatican, they were also vigorous in challenging ‘the pope of philosophy’, Aristotle. For the...

Most people today believe that our modern democratic system came from the Greeks in Athens. It is true that the Athenians pioneered an early form of democratic government centuries before Christ, but it was only semi-democratic: women and slaves were not allowed to...

As far back as the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 the bishops discussed the vision ‘of the hospital to be established in every city’. Right from the beginning Jesus sent out his disciples to heal people through prayer, and the apostle Paul also took the Greek medical...

Part 3: Welfare When the Jewish people were thrust into exile in Babylon, God spoke to them through the prophet Jeremiah, that they should ‘seek the welfare of the city’ where he had sent them. The church had sought to do this before the Reformation, particularly...

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...

In November 1558 two unexpected friends from Scotland came knocking on John Knox’s door. They had travelled far to deliver a letter from the Earl of Glencairn, John Erskine of Dun, and Lord James Stewart, requesting that Knox should return home to preach and lead the...

During Mary Tudor’s reign of terror, in which almost 300 reformers were rounded up and burnt at the stake, Knox fled to Dieppe in France. From there he travelled to Geneva in Switzerland seeking the counsel of John Calvin. He had questions and needed answers: can...

After John Knox had been freed from French slavery he ended up in London in 1549. The Reformation was already under way in England and Knox’s reputation had already gone before him. His mentor, George Wishart, had brought back a copy of the First Helvetic Confession,...

When John Knox cried out to God in passionate prayer, ‘Give me Scotland, else I die’, he was revealing his heart to us. Here was a man whose soul loved God, the church, and his nation. Unswerving and relentless he pursued the righteousness of God, walking through a...

‘Among the martyrs of Scotland, the constancy of Walter Mille is not to be passed over with silence,’ wrote John Foxe in his Book of Martyrs. Mill was the last reformer to die for his faith in Scotland during this period in which several dozen have been recorded. ‘Out...