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REIGN OF HENRY THE EIGHTH.
[ch. 18.
bishop Beton; 1528.and on the last of February, in front of the old college of St Andrew's, he was brought out to be burnt.[1] He bore himself with a courage worthy of the cause of which he was the protomartyr. 'At the place of execution,' says Knox,[2] 'he gave to his servant, who had been chamberchield to him of a long time, his gown, his coat, and his bonnet. They will not profit in the fire; they will profit thee; I have no more to give now but the example of my death. Think well on that. It seems to be dreadful; but it is the gate of eternal life.'
The bishops killed him, hoping that they had done service both to God and to themselves. It seemed that they had failed. From each drop of his blood sprung up a fresh heretic. But as in England, so in Scotland, it was rare that men of the rank of Patrick Hamilton went astray after his example. Among the poorer commons chiefly 'the new learning' found a home. It was they who came in contact with superstition in its grossest form, and who suffered at once from the vices of the clergy and their avarice. Their understandings were too direct to sublimate absurdities into mysteries; and they had plain tongues, which spoke their feelings without disguise. There was little or nothing transcendental in the first religious confessors of Scotland; little or nothing doctrinal; the Calvinist gloom was of later birth; and Knox, a man pre-eminently of facts, and