In addition to public catechising he publicly expounded, and lectured on the Fourth Gospel, in the chapel of the castle.  He doubted if he had “a lawful vocation” to preach.  The castle pulpit was then occupied by an ex-friar named Rough.  This divine, later burned in England, preached a sermon declaring a doctrine accepted by Knox, namely, that any congregation could call on any man in whom they “espied the gifts of God” to be their preacher; he offered Knox the post, and all present agreed.  Knox wept, and for days his gloom declared his sense of his responsibility:  such was “his holy vocation.”  The garrison was, confessedly, brutal, licentious, and rapacious, but they “all” partook of the holy Communion. {28}

In controversy, Knox declared the Church to be “the synagogue of Satan,” and in the Pope he detected and denounced “the Man of Sin.”  On the following Sunday he proved, from Daniel, that the Roman Church is “that last Beast.”  The Church is also anti-Christ, and “the Hoore of Babylon,” and Knox dilated on the personal misconduct of Popes and “all shavelings for the most part.”  He contrasted Justification by Faith with the customs of pardons and pilgrimages.

After these remarks, a controversy was held between Knox and the sub-prior, Wynram, the Scottish Vicar of Bray, Knox being understood to maintain that no bishop who did not preach was really a bishop; that the Mass is “abominable idolatry”; that Purgatory does not exist; and that the tithes are not necessarily the property of churchmen—­a doctrine very welcome to the hungry nobles of Scotland.  Knox, of course, easily overcame an ignorant opponent, a friar, who joined in the fray.  His own arguments he later found time to write out fully in the French galleys, in which he was a prisoner, after the fall of the castle.  If he “wrate in the galleys,” as he says, they cannot have been always such floating hells as they are usually reckoned.

That Knox, and other captives from the castle, were placed in the galleys after their surrender, was an abominable stretch of French power.  They were not subjects of France.  The terms on which they surrendered are not exactly known.  Knox avers that they were to be free to live in France, and that, if they wished to leave, they were to be conveyed, at French expense, to any country except Scotland.  Buchanan declares that only the lives of the garrison and their friends were secured by the terms of surrender.  Lesley supports Knox, {30a} who is probably accurate.

To account for the French severity, Knox tells us that the Pope insisted on it, appealing to both the Scottish and French Governments; and Scotland sent an envoy to France to beg “that those of the castle should be sharply handled.”  Men of birth were imprisoned, the rest went to the galleys.  Knox’s life cannot have been so bad as that of the Huguenot galley slaves under Louis xiv.  He was allowed to receive letters; he read and commented