The Catholic opponents of Knox naturally told scandalous anecdotes concerning his youth.  These are destitute of evidence:  about his youth we know nothing.  It is a characteristic trait in him, and a fact much to his credit, that, though he is fond of expatiating about himself, he never makes confessions as to his earlier adventures.  On his own years of the wild oat St. Augustine dilates in a style which still has charm:  but Knox, if he sowed wild oats, is silent as the tomb.  If he has anything to repent, it is not to the world that he confesses.  About the days when he was “one of Baal’s shaven sort,” in his own phrase; when he was himself an “idolater,” and a priest of the altar:  about the details of his conversion, Knox is mute.  It is probable that, as a priest, he examined Lutheran books which were brought in with other merchandise from Holland; read the Bible for himself; and failed to find Purgatory, the Mass, the intercession of Saints, pardons, pilgrimages, and other accessories of mediaeval religion in the Scriptures. {7} Knox had only to keep his eyes and ears open, to observe the clerical ignorance and corruption which resulted in great part from the Scottish habit of securing wealthy Church offices for ignorant, brutal, and licentious younger sons and bastards of noble families.  This practice in Scotland was as odious to good Catholics, like Quentin Kennedy, Ninian Winzet, and, rather earlier, to Ferrerius, as to Knox himself.  The prevalent anarchy caused by the long minorities of the Stuart kings, and by the interminable wars with England, and the difficulty of communications with Rome, had enabled the nobles thus to rob and deprave the Church, and so to provide themselves with moral reasons good for robbing her again; as a punishment for the iniquities which they had themselves introduced!

The almost incredible ignorance and profligacy of the higher Scottish clergy (with notable exceptions) in Knox’s youth, are not matter of controversy.  They are as frankly recognised by contemporary Catholic as by Protestant authors.  In the very year of the destruction of the monasteries (1559) the abuses are officially stated, as will be told later, by the last Scottish Provincial Council.  Though three of the four Scottish universities were founded by Catholics, and the fourth, Edinburgh, had an endowment bequeathed by a Catholic, the clerical ignorance, in Knox’s time, was such that many priests could hardly read.

If more evidence is needed as to the debauched estate of the Scottish clergy, we obtain it from Mary of Guise, widow of James V., the Regent then governing Scotland for her child, Mary Stuart.  The Queen, in December 1555, begged Pius iv. to permit her to levy a tax on her clergy, and to listen to what Cardinal Sermoneta would tell him about their need of reformation.  The Cardinal drew a terrible sketch of the nefarious lives of “every kind of religious women” in Scotland.  They go