It was not long, however, till his studies received a new direction, which led to a complete revolution in his religious sentiments, and had an important influence on the whole of his future life. Not satisfied with the excerpts from ancient authors, which he found in the writings of the scholastic divines and canonists, he resolved to have recourse to the original works. In them he found a method of investigating and communicating truth, to which he had hitherto been a stranger, and the simplicity of which recommended itself to his mind, in spite of the prejudices of education, and the pride of superior attainments in his own favourite art. Among the fathers of the Christian Church, Jerom and Augustine attracted his particular attention. By the writings of the former, he was led to the Scriptures as the only pure fountain of Divine truth, and instructed in the utility of studying them in the original languages. In the works of the latter, he found religious sentiments very opposite to those taught in the Romish church, who, while she retained his name as a saint in her calendar, had banished his doctrine, as heretical, from her pulpits. From this time, he renounced the study of scholastic theology; and although not yet completely emancipated from superstition, his mind was fitted for improving the means which Providence had prepared, for leading him to a fuller and more comprehensive view of the system of evangelical religion. It was about the year 1535, when this { 14} favourable change commenced;[22] but, it does not appear that he professed himself a protestant before the year 1542.
As I am now to enter upon that period of Knox’s life at which he renounced the Roman Catholic communion, and commenced Reformer, it may not be improper to take a survey of the state of religion in Scotland at that time. Without an adequate knowledge of this, it is impossible to form a just estimate of the necessity and importance of that reformation, in the advancement of which he laboured with so great zeal; and nothing has contributed so much to give currency, among Protestants, to prejudices against his character, as ignorance, or a superficial consideration of the enormous and almost incredible abuses which then prevailed in the church. This must be my apology for a digression which might otherwise be deemed superfluous or disproportionate.