From the Easy Chair

J. Knox, J. Calvin & the U.S.

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 128-214

Genre: Speech

Track:

Dictation Name: RR161CP170

Year: 1980s and 1990s

Dr. R. J. Rushdoony, RR161CP170, J. Knox, J. Calvin & the U.S., from the Easy Chair, excellent colloquies on various subjects.

[ Rushdoony ] This is R. J. Rushdoony, Easy Chair number 280, December the seventh, 1992.

This evening Douglas Murray, Otto Scott, Mark Rushdoony and I are going to discuss Knox, Calvin and the United States.

One of our problems is that not only is our news media, but our educators so heavily tilted towards Humanism and antagonism to Christianity that we get a false perspective on what we are and what our past was like, our origins, the roots of our particular character as an American people.

Shortly after World War II one American historian whose name escapes me at the moment said that he felt that the United States was not understandable without going back not only to Calvin and Knox, but to John Wycliffe, because, he said, the first Englishman who came to this country came from areas where the Lollards had been quite strong and that there were hints of Lollard influences among them, a sub rosa group, strongly given to a belief in the Bible as the source of law and government and for the foundations of society. On top of that, we have two infrequently had our attentions called to the fact that at the time of he war of independence, a war that was called by an English secret service agent, a Scotch Irish Presbyterian rebellion, there were more than two Scots for every Englishman. So while we were a British country, if you look at the component of that British element, the Scots were clearly in the majority. And the Scots were strongly influenced by both Calvin and Knox.

The uniqueness of these two centers, Geneva and Scotland, was that they not only constituted the most thorough going of reformation, but also when it came to dealing with heretics or witches or anything else, with one or two exceptions theirs was the most tolerant environment of their day. And yet both are painted as very rigid persecuting men.

Their influence on the United States was considerable. And it used to be that we were regarded as the child of Knox in particular and also of Calvin. We never hear anything about that anymore. And it indicates that there has been a revolution in our society in the past 50 years whereby we have remade our past history, recast it to eliminate the religious aspect and are striving to do more so now than ever.

It is interesting that figures revealed just within the past week indicate that the fastest growing group in the world today is the Christian community. And yet if you listen to the media we are simply the voice of the past, they dying group who will have no part in the future.

So I think it is important or us to understand something about the role of these men, especially the role of Scotland in the founding and the development of this country.

Let me throw in one more fact. Up to World War I 75 percent of all the colleges and the universities in the United States were established by Scots, the greatest believers in education in all of history.

Otto, would you like to comment? Your name makes you a good choice as the man to develop this.

[ Scott ] Well, I have... I believe that this is Knox’ work, the United States. But now that you bring up Wycliffe I think that is very important, too. Wycliffe was ... he is a neglected scholar.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] A neglected figure. He translated the Bible into English. And what is not taught today is that when he was young the Bible was forbidden to the congregation. Men were not allowed to read it. And there was a good reason, because there was lots of things in the Bible that the rulers didn’t want them to know and that the church didn’t want them to know, especially about their rights and about what was proper in terms of government.

So I think that ... I think when... when I look at all the dissertations on William James and Henry James and people like that, I think of the lack of dissertations on people like Wycliffe, I think we are really being starved. I am ... I was surprised to hear that Christianity is growing as rapidly as you say, because it seems to me that most Christians don’t know anything about the history of Christianity, nothing. Nothing. Less than nothing. And what they do get, unfortunately, is highly tilted.

I think the relationship between Calvin and Knox was one of the most interesting in history. Calvin was Knox’ ... you might say Knox was Calvin’s protégé. He ... he went to Geneva after he left Scotland and they had some differences of opinion, mainly about authority. Calvin was, of course, a much more polished. He was a graduate of the university of Paris, an elegant sort of man. And he thought that you could out maneuver a tyrannical regime. And he came, after all, the King of France in those days was absolute. And... but he had around him some very clever individuals and especially some very clever Protestants, to use the term, who maneuvered him. And, therefore, the Huguenots in France, although they were persecuted, were nevertheless surviving and flourishing and Knox was, you might say, the distant leader of that revolution. He set up special schools and encouraged them and set up his institutes which went far beyond Wycliffe in explaining the Bible. And Knox went along with him and drank this up on every area excepting the area that you shouldn’t rebel. And on that area Knox simply could not swallow it. He really felt that it was a mortal sin for a Christian to live under the rule of an un... non Christians.

He was a man of the Old Testament, I would say. He felt that a house divided against itself wouldn’t stand. And history, by the way, proves that he was right. With all they say today about tolerance and toleration, we have yet to see any civilization endure that has dissimilar religions.

[ Rushdoony ] Douglas, would you like to comment now?

[ Murray ] Well, my perspective, having been going to a public school, it seemed to me that the roots that we have been effectively severed from the roots of the past. And I think if you were to make a man on the street poll today and you walked down the street and interviewed 100 people, I doubt it you would find one that even knows these men’s name. I mean, outside of the Church if they happen to stumble across the names and then, if they did, they wouldn’t... you know, who they were or what they stood for or what they contributed. And I wonder... I guess I would have a question. Would it be possible for John Knox to start a ... to... to lead a reformation in this country if he were alive today?

[ Scott ] Well, Scotland in his day was not a gentle place. And neither is this country. And he would have done quite well. He would have done quite well.

[ Rushdoony ] Mark, would you like to share any thoughts not his subject?

[ M Rushdoony ] Well, I am no expert to Calvin or Knox, but just to {?} what was just said I think we are going to see changes and people are going not have to realize that we are heading into an era of changes. It is not just the economic problems we are headed for. But AIDS is going to play... has wreaked havoc with our... our cultures throughout the world. So the world, we... we were talking in our last tape about how technology has changed the world the last 100 years or so. And the changes that take place in the next few years, the next few generations are going not be dramatic, too, as the opportunity for Christian movement of some kind is there.

And, of course, we can talk about Christian ideas and Christian reconstruction, but ultimately what change comes is going to come with the Spirit of God. And when God wants the change made, he is going to make the change. It is not because you have a leader who happens to be a great man, because we have had great Christian leaders in the past who have often been ignored. But when the Spirit of God is ready to move, God will have the man there that he wants. So there is possibility for another Calvin or another Knox in the future.

[ Rushdoony ] There is something about the Reformation era that is rarely discussed. What had happened to men. Men had become wimps in the generation before Luther began his work. The classic example of that was Erasmus. And it think it is very interesting that Erasmus in this century has had so much attention and has been so admired.

[ Scott ] Well, sure. He is admired for his weakness.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Erasmus was a man who called attention to more evils in the Catholic Church than Luther or Calvin ever did, but he did not call attention to them with any eye towards reform. He always played safe. He made fun of the Church and of its leaders. He irked them, but he never went beyond the line so that he could be prosecuted as a heretic although certainly his beliefs were questionable. And after Luther came he couldn’t wait to attack Luther for his ideas and to put himself in the clear and he won himself, I believe it was a cardinal’s hat. And he ended up his career in the height of respectability. But in an age of a great many wimps and some of them murderous wimps, let me say, because I think violence and wimpishness go hand in hand.

[ Scott ] That is interestingly. Could you develop that a little?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. It is the weak man who is going to resort to killing or violence because he cannot stand up to the real men around him. He has got to knife them or else kill them. And a tremendous amount of violence resulted with the Renaissance.

It was just an explosion...

[ Scott ] Well, it was an ideological age. It is the closest to the 20th century that it is possible to be.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] The 16th century and the 20th century are very much alike where ideas became so important that men died for them. And they didn’t do it before. They wouldn’t do it during the Renaissance, now certainly not for an idea. In fact, for most centuries men did not. England had its only religious real struggles in that ... well, a little later. So in that sense they are both the ... if you understand the ideology of Communism—and Communism is a faith. It is a religion. Socialism is a religion. The liberals are religious people. They really and truly believe that they are helping the poor.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And look at them out there. There is more homeless than we have ever had in the history of the United States. And we have had more liberals running us than ever before.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] So, you see the people and the results. No. I would say that any of the figures—Knox, Calvin, Wycliffe or, for that matter any of the other important figures of the Reformation—would fit our times today like a hand in a glove.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, you know that in some Latin cultures cross word and you are dead.

[ Scott ] Oh, sure, yes.

[ Rushdoony ] And the men who are ready to resort to that kind of violence are the men who have a very fearful view of themselves, are afraid if they don’t kill they will be exposed as a weakling.

[ Scott ] Well, this is the ghetto here.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] You could get killed on the street today for bumping into somebody.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, at any rate, a good example of that is one of the ostensibly great plays of the Elizabethan era, {?}. {?} was a swordsman who was slashing right and left and began to feel like a good Renaissance man, that he was almost god like, so that when he gets knifed at the end he is upset. He is bleeding. He is going to die. And he had felt that he was like a god. No one could stand up to him.

Well, at any rate these were the men of that era. And here were two men Knox and Calvin who were very much unlike the rest because even churchmen were not above carrying knives. And yet they commanded respect. Men and women gravitated to them so that when Knox fled and went to Geneva women, including at least one noble woman went there also out of disgust with her husband, a Lord, because she felt this man John Knox, this young man is a real man. And so when Knox would go to church to hear Calvin preach—and I have seen a wood cut of it—there would be a procession behind him of these women, because they felt his strength.

[ Scott ] Well, the clergy do attract women and so I... I wouldn’t... I wouldn’t put too much on that.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, the other clergymen did not. It was because these two men represented strength.

[ Scott ] Well, strength is interesting. It is... it is really not definable or not easily defined. To some extent, courage is ... well, I guess, to a complete extent, courage is a lack of fear. And a weak fellow will pull a knife. I a strong man won’t pull a knife... he... he... he can handle himself better than that. I think that Knox was the most interesting, the most interesting man. When he was a galley slave and that was a terrible condition...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] ... and his companions came to him and said, “We have a plan to get out. We are going not kill the guard,” he... he wouldn’t join that and he talked them out of killing the guard. Now to do that when you are in that situation as a slave means a self control and a character that is really, truly remarkable. They escaped. He remained. Later he was traded, as you know, for ... as a prisoner.

When he became, you might say, the spiritual leader of Scotland, the political leader of Scotland there were no purges. Nobody was burned alive for becoming a member of the new reformed faith. Whereas the old church burned them alive by the hundreds. And it is amazing that the old church now is presented as the picture of elegance and tolerance and the man who had no purges at all is portrayed as a fanatic.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. You mentioned Knox as a galley slave. A galley slave was chained to his oar. He ate there. He urinated. He defecated there. You could smell a galley ship six miles out at sea. Only the dregs could be hired to work on a galley ship. These were naval vessels.

I have an old volume which is quite valuable Torments of Protestant Galley Slaves on French Naval Ships. It is a number of accounts of people who survived their term on a galley ship, horrifying accounts. It is interesting that Knox’ account is not there.

[ Scott ] Didn’t give it.

[ Rushdoony ] Didn’t give it. Never once did he indicate any self pity or talk about the horror of it. Never once.

[ Scott ] No psychiatrist either.

[ Rushdoony ] No. In fact, he was so bold there that he drove the French chaplain of the ship because he couldn’t stand Knox’ challenges to him or answer Knox. And it was considered a chore to serve on the same ship as Knox. He was the strong man on the ship.

[ Scott ] Well, I think I... of all the things that Knox did, it was his destruction of Mary Stuart that ranks as the most important in my mind. Mary Stuart had connived at the murder of her husband. And Knox immediately called for her arrest and trial for murder and would have put her on trial for murder if she had not escaped to England. Now that was the blow that killed the divine right of kings, but he put the monarch under the law at a time when the monarch was considered the law.

[ Rushdoony ] And that is the inheritance the United States gained from John Knox.

[ Scott ] That was the... that was the center.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] That was the center, that the government had to be limited by law. That was the point which in the end was transported over here by the refugees from Charles I. And America swallowed that down without ever knowing where it came from, grew up with it and today has forgotten it.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Well, you and I were in the church yard there at Grayfriars where the Solemn League and Covenant were signed. And we saw the stone for the Duke of Argyle commemorating also the 17,000 martyrs of the covenanters. In 89 when Dorothy and I were there again, Pamela Johnston, Clinton Johnston’s wife called the care taker and he opened up the Grayfriars Church where the Solemn League and Covenant was signed. It was a very moving experience. There was only one flag in the church, the American flag.

It was because they felt that this country was the heir of that church and its faith. And thy caretaker pointed to the vaulted ceiling and he said, “We had to re-timber that some few years ago. And we went to California for red wood to do it.”

So they have seen the kinship that our scholars are unwilling to call attention to, a very, very marvelous woman. And I might add, because I think this was a powerful and a moving thing. We saw in the back of the church yard—and we did not see it in 87—because it is off by itself, the prison where the covenanters were held before trial. Stone walls almost as thick as this table, iron bars over the... the doors were just iron bars. No roof. And the guards would walk around on the walls. There was no roof because it would save money for a trial. They would in those cold snow bound winters freeze to death and it was a good way to get rid of them.

These were the men who had iron in their blood because of John Knox. And we inherited that and we have lost it and we need to recapture it, because John Knox was one of the most remarkable men in all of history.

There is an aspect to Knox which is rarely mentioned today. The reformed and protestant community generally does not like it and the charismatics are not aware of it. But he had, as even Jasper Ridley admitted, a gift for prophesy. More than once he declared that certain things were going to happen that were totally unlikely and they did.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] And they never were able to cope with that fact or to explain John Knox. He was a man of one of the most amazing characters in all of history.

[ Scott ] Well, it is interesting you talk about the prison, because that sort of thing came back with the gulags.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] The breakdown of Christianity, it is interesting. Each backwards step is marked by a restoration of some horror that Christianity had originally eliminated from Paganism. So as Christianity declined, as the quality of Christianity declines as opposed to the numbers who call themselves Christians Paganism appears. And that sort of treatment of prisoners fits this century and it is interesting that cruelty is always placed or recently... let’s say since about 1900 the purge of American historical work dates from about 1900.

The American Historical Association—and I don’t really know why that particular year, but right around that year first there was this purge of the universities in the 1890s which Andrew White wrote about, which they got rid of the clergymen who from being administrators of colleges that their denominations had created. And once they had... the centrists had control and they were deliberately and openly anti Christian in this campaign, because they considered Christianity nothing but superstition. They had no acceptance of the idea that Christianity was responsible for all their liberties.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. One of the things that I have enjoyed over the years has been reading books about the national inheritance of the United States from the English, from the Irish, from the French, especially the Huguenots, the Germans are very important, an interesting story. And perhaps one has been written about our Scottish inheritance, but I don’t know of it. And it is a very, very important one, because the Scots not only were the ones who were important and education but they were the uncompromising—and the word used again and again was—firebrands who ignited events. One of the most notable is a man who in many text books today is missing, Patrick Henry.

When we went to school Patrick Henry was a very important figure.

[ Scott ] He certainly was.

[ Rushdoony ] And his speech culminating in the statement he... that he did not care what other men might choose, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death, put people on the spot. That speech went through the colonies like wildfire and it was typical of the Scottish mentality here in this country, uncompromising. Choose ye this day whom ye shall serve. But as for me and my house, we will seven the Lord. It was that mentality that made the Scots so determinative. And yet that element is being carefully culled out of our history. Patrick Henry in the newer textbooks is gone.

On the university level he is ridiculed and held up as a lot of hot air and worthless talk. You hear nothing about the fact that as governor of Virginia he called together a Virginia regiment and sent them to the Midwest to clean out the English and it culminated in the battle of Vincennes which European scholars call one of the most decisive battles in all of world history, because if it had not been for that, the United States would have been permanently a little colony, a group of states or along the Atlantic. And Canada would have extended down to the Gulf. It was a great victory and Patrick Henry knew what he was doing.

Well, we had a whole host of men in the early years of this country with the same kind of background that John Knox, of course, and Patrick Henry and others did, an uncompromising dedication to what they believed.

[ Scott ] Well, if Henry was interesting also, one of the reasons probably they don’t teach him is that he was against the present structure of the United States.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] He pointed out that they had set up a structure that would lead to a centralized despotism.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes he was...

[ Scott ] And...

[ Rushdoony ] He was prophetic.

[ Scott ] And he was absolutely on target.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Now to discuss Henry at all, you have to bring that up.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And there is a reason for all these individuals to be dropped from history, because to acquaint the people with them would be to make what they are trying to do today impossible. The only ... you know, they have convinced. I say they. I am talking now about our ruling class. Our ruling class has been convinced and convinces others that history doesn’t make any sense. Don’t waste your time with that. And it has developed into a series of monographs and splinters and little pieces of fragments, how many punctuation, how many commas are there in Shakespeare’s plays and all this sort of nonsense. And there is a reason for this, because if you know history as it really was, you know the difference between success and failure and virtue and vice and everything else.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And you have writers like Fukuyama, The End of History. Amazing. That book is creating ripple waves around the world as one country after another reads it and acts as though it were the new gospel.

[ Scott ] Well, they are looking at our movies, too.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] I mean, the... our street culture. Now our scholarship is merging into our street culture and we are exporting the worst.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] I mean I... I wonder how many Americans actually know who Knox was.

[ Rushdoony ] Well...

[ Scott ] Not very many. Not very many Protestants.

[ Rushdoony ] Today a woman told me at the other end of the country that her husband, because he felt it was important to know about it, went to see the movie Malcolm X and he came home and told his wife, “Get out your hand gun and make sure you haven’t forgotten how to use it, because this film is a declaration of white... of war against white Americans.”

[ Scott ] Well, this is the way the young people of America are getting their history.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] The book... the movie JFK was accepted as truthful.

[ Rushdoony ] Douglas, did you want to say something?

[ Murray ] Well, I just wanted to toss in that when I went .... came back out of the army and went to... back to school during the 1950s I remember university professors complaining that students were intellectually flaccid and too materialistic and self absorbed that they didn't stand for anything. They had no revolutionary zeal. And I... I wondered what they had in mind. And we found out during the 1960s that they had planned and the, you know, the... they didn’t... they didn't mind firebrands then as long as they were Marxist firebrands.

[ Scott ] It is... it is interesting. Socialism is ... is almost a ... it is religious. It is just as virulent here as it was when Stalin was in office. They knew what he was doing and they liked it. They can’t say they didn’t know. Everybody knew.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And ... and in Knox’ day the tyrannies were equally horrible. And he wrote a book The Monstrous Regiment of Women.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Against Mary guise and bloody Mary of England and was it Mary Stuart III and that has been held up ever since as an anti Feminist diatribe. It happens that they were all three impossible.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. And were taking advantage of their status. I had a woman tell me some years ago that I must never, never say a good word for John Knox.

[ Scott ] For that reason?

[ Rushdoony ] He was unkind to Queen Mary of Scotland... of the Scots. Well, I have read the account of that dialogue and the dialogue, the exchange. He was very courteous, but unwavering about the truth.

[ Scott ] Well, it was interesting, because she was six foot tall. She was the first cousin of Elizabeth England. She was the former Queen of France. She was an absolute sovereign, as absolute as you could be at least in part of Scotland. She had all the ... the money and the learning and the position and the beauty and everything else. And this is a small fellow who didn’t have any money. He didn’t even own a home, I don’t believe, at the time. He was too poor. And he is held up as a bully.

[multiple voices]

[ Scott ] I mean, this is going to happen to you if you run into ... into what somebody called Hill the Hun.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, what we do need is, indeed, a revival of the kind of faith John Knox had, because first of all we have taken a part of Knox’ program without the heart of it. We have today a very, very misplaced faith in education. But it is an education that is meaningless. It is an education in anti Christianity. It is one that depreciates the past, that depreciates learning where the testing for anything is not based on a knowledge, say, of history, but attitudes, attitudes towards black people, towards women, towards birth control and so on, social positions.

So our faith in education has become dangerous, because it has been separated from the faith that John Knox had.

[ Scott ] And the truth.

[ Rushdoony ] And the truth.

[ Scott ] Really. An education that isn’t truthful is a crime against the people.

[ Murray ] Well, they say now that they are going to try to teach morals in the public school system.

[ Scott ] With condoms?

[ Murray ] Well, yeah, but who are they going to find, you know?

[ Scott ] To teach them.

[ Murray ] To teach morality.

[ Scott ] Have you seen...? Well, I won’t go off into that.

The... but if... I.... I think the religious community should do more on the history of Christianity.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes, they should and hopefully we, if someone provides us with the funds can begin to do something there. There is so much that needs to be done and the ignorance is appalling. But I do wish someone who has any contact with some Scottish American society—and there are groups across the country—would talk them into underwriting a history of the Scottish influence in the United States.

[ Scott ] Well, I would like to see a book on George Buchanan.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Yes.

[ Scott ] That is a great figure. It would get them away from this damn bagpipes and those dances and do something sensible.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, we will make you our Scottish delegate to the Scottish societies.

[ Murray ] There are people going to bag pipe festivals who never got within 100 miles of...

[ Scott ] Oh, you know...

[ Murray ] A Scotch person or ...

[ Scott ] You know it.

[ Rushdoony ] Dorothy and I went to a Scottish festival in southern California in the early 70s and there was ... it was in a football stadium. And there were 28 bands of pipers.

[ Scott ] Gosh.

[ Rushdoony ] And they marched all the way around and it was magnificent. Oh, they were good, really superb. However, you knew that some of them never came from Scotland because there were several blacks in the piper’s bands.

[ Murray ] Well, it is interesting, you know. There is a lot of... now that you bring that up, there are a lot of people that are out there searching for... for an identity.

[ Scott ] That is true.

[ Murray ] You know, they are... I remember Rose and I were driving through Hayward one day and we noticed this big crowd of people. We went over there and it was... it was an Indian pow wow. And there was a whole bunch of people there, white people in Indian get up. I mean these were, you know, mature people with headdresses and all this stuff on and so I went over and I found some guy that looked like he was in some position of authority and I said, “How much Indian to you have to be to get into this club?”

And he says, “We will take as little as a eighth.”

[ Rushdoony ] I will bet he meant a 64th, because some Indian tribes will count you in with one 64th.

[ Scott ] Boy, that is going back quite a way.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Well, you... you... you... you know you see people now with these license plate frames that... proud to be an Italian or Italian power or Hungarian power, whatever it is. You know there are people that are proclaiming, you know...

[ Scott ] There is one of us...

[ Murray ] ...reclaim their identity.

[ Scott ] It is because they have stopped telling us that we are Americans.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] And native American is not you and me. We were born here, but we are not native. It is an interesting distinction. And the American identity is being destroyed.

[ M Rushdoony ] Are there good... any good biographies available on Knox?

[ Scott ] Jasper Ridley’s is a pretty good one.

[ Rushdoony ] It is the best modern one. The best old biography is by M’Crie, capital M, apostrophe, capital C R I E. I can loan you both of those, Mark. They are tremendous.

[ Scott ] I think you will find... I think you will find Ridley the easiest to read. M’Crie is very good. But he goes more into the theology.

[ Rushdoony ] I may have told this story before, but I love it. So bear with me. About John Knox in his old age. He had grown so feeble and the years as a galley slave, as well as a very hard life were taking there toll and he was so crippled he could not stand without help or walk without help. So every Sunday two young men would go to his house with a carriage and his house is not too far on the royal mile from St. Giles cathedral. They would help him into the carriage and help him out of it and up to the pulpit of St. Giles cathedral. And when it was time for him to preach he would get up and he would begin to read the Scripture and they could barely hear him the first row or two because his voice was so feeble. But as one of the eye witness accounts reads, as he read the holy writ you would feel the mantel of the Spirit descend upon him. And before he was through, his voice would roll against the back walls of the cathedral. And as he preached he would pound the pulpit until the eye witness said you felt that he would ding it to pieces. Then, as he finished his sermon and turned around to go back to the chair, with each step his feebleness would return and the two young men would catch him and help him to his chair.

That was John Knox, an amazing man. And his whole life’s story is such a remarkable one and yet the Church is ignorant of it. People don’t write about him and it is a tremendous story.

One aspect of it when the ... he started the first Presbyterian gathering presbytery of a small number, a handful of men meeting in one room at a house to transact that business, Knox brought in a keg of wine and he said, “We will not adjourn until it is finished.”

And they finished it and every man was as sober as when he began. They were men.

[ Murray ] Well, you need a review and an exposition of American heroes book before and after the advent of the United States, because kids, young people today are looking for role models and the media, our media gives them the worst.

[ Scott ] Well, it... it in... it... it tarnishes, darkens the reputation of Jefferson and of Washington. They great historians of the 19th century, Abbott and others are no longer in print.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] I mean the best histories of Spain by Van Croft or... or...

[ Rushdoony ] No... or Robertson.

[ Scott ] No. No.

[ Rushdoony ] And Prescott.

[ Scott ] Prescott are out of print. I have a set of Prescott, but I am sure you couldn’t find one...

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] ...practically anywhere. And on all this stuff about Columbus, for instance, they never once quoted Prescott and he is the one who went over Madrid and blew the dust off the manuscripts and wrote about Ferdinand, Isabella, Pissarro, Cortez, Columbus and the rest. Just tremendous how they have actually... there has been an actual campaign to destroy and distort American history.

[ Rushdoony ] There was a marvelous biography, a huge one written early in the century by William Walsh, a devout Catholic on Isabella. It is a powerful story. It is one of the most moving ...

[ Scott ] Isabella the queen?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Is that the name of it?

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Yes.

[ Rushdoony ] That is gone.

[ Scott ] That is gone.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. Very hard to locate a copy. A paper condensation of it appeared, I think, about.... somewhere in the 1950s and that is gone.

[ Scott ] Well, I was in a second hand book store in San Diego when somebody came in looking for, I believe it was Tragedy in Hope before it was pirated and reprinted. And the ... the two men that came in, obviously were not readers. I don’t know how you can tell these things, but you can tell. They offered 150 dollars for a copy. And you know they were sent out to destroy that book. There is what Sam Blumenfeld calls the dumbing down of America.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] Now in England, just recently, an order went out to return to the traditional method of reading, the use of phonetics and the emphasis on grammar and the reintroduction of the classics. England has wiped out the progressive method of reading because it didn’t work.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, it has taken a step to wipe it out. The Marxist school groups and count... the local councils are hostile to this.

[ Scott ] Well, of course they are hostile to it.

[ Rushdoony ] So there is a battle underway. But the first step has been taken and we need to take that step here.

[ Scott ] Well, what could we... what would require? I guess guns. What could you do, shoot the teachers here?

[ Rushdoony ] That wouldn’t work either.

[ Murray ] And people don't listen to reason...

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Murray ] Sometimes violence is the only {P} left.

[ Rushdoony ] It is a religious issue with them and they are devout Humanists, Otto.

[ Scott ] Oh, they can’t... the kids can’t read.

[ Rushdoony ] No.

[ Scott ] It is... it is...

[ Rushdoony ] That doesn't bother them.

[ Murray ] It is kind of a ... a backward testimony to the fact that the early history of this country was so Christian in that you can’t destroy just part of it. You have to destroy all of it, because simply to take Christianity out of the history would leave nothing there.

[ Scott ] Well, that is what they have done. It has... it has left a vacuum. And I remember as a boy American history, I thought, was the most boring {?}. They made it sound so absolutely lifeless and ... and stupid. Now it think it is worse because now they are giving it an anti racial twist. Without reference to the state of the world at the time or, for that matter, the condition of the blacks, for instance, when they came over here.

[ Murray ] Spin doctors.

[ Scott ] They really are. They really are, but the problem there, of course, is that a tyranny in the end tyrannizes everybody. If you read the lives of the people who lived under Henry VIII, no matter who they were, they never were able to sleep at night.

[ Rushdoony ] I just picked up a book about the reign of Henry VIII and the title is, The Rule of the King versus the Rule of the Law.

[ Scott ] Oh, that must be a new book. I hadn't heard of that. Is it a new book?

[ Rushdoony ] I don’t know I just picked it up and I haven’t had a chance to open it yet.

[ Scott ] He was the most autocratic and successful autocrat the English ever had. And it is very interesting about power of that sort. When Stalin was in the Kremlin and {?} and Molotov both were working with him every single day helping him assign murder warrants, arrest warrants and all kinds of things, both their wives were in the gulag. Both their wives were in the gulag. And I have often wondered about why didn’t they shoot him? How could they have worked with him every day when he had them under such condition and yet he died in bed.

Well, Mr. Knox would not have endured that.

[ Rushdoony ] Well, it is a remarkable history we have. And too little appreciated. Our spiritual fathers have been remarkable men. One aspect, by the way, that does need to mention is Wycliffe’s idea that men can have power but they lack very often valid authority, that authority is a religious fact.

And this idea had far reaching repercussions in the English speaking world unlike anywhere else in the world, because it created a feeling that power can be invalid, because it lacks true authority, a moral authority, a godly authority.

And so the English speaking peoples have had an edge on the rest of the world because of that. And no where else has that inheritance been stronger than in the United States. It has made us to an extent an unruly people, because Wycliffe’s idea has been inherited without his faith.

[ Scott ] Without an understanding.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes. So you have a lot of the young, the hippie generation, the radicals all challenging the groups in power but without recognizing we don’t have the authority. Where is true authority and what is the character of it?

[ Scott ] Well, this is the distortion of the rule of law. You pass so many laws.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

[ Scott ] You lock everybody up by law.

[ Rushdoony ] Yes.

Well, our time is up. Thank you all for listening and God bless you. I

[ Voice ] Authorized by the Chalcedon Foundation. Archived by the Mount Olive Tape Library. Digitized by ChristRules.com.