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THE

WORKS

OF

AUGUSTUS M. TOPLADY, A. B.

LATE VICAR OF BROAD HEMBURY, Devon.

NEW EDITION,

WITH AN ENLARGED MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.

IN SIX VOLUMES.

VOL. IV.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR WILLIAM BAYNES AND SON,

PATERNOSTER ROW;

AND H. S. BAYNES, EDINBURGH.

1825.

W. GRACIE, PRINTER.

ть

4

BIOGRAPHY.

SOME ACCOUNT OF MR. JOHN KNOX,

TRANSLATED CHIEFLY FROM THE LATIN OF MELCHIOR ADAMUS.

SCOTLAND had the honour of producing this great and eminent luminary; who became the principal instrument in God's hand, of effecting the reforma-. tion in that kingdom, at a time when papal darkness, ignorance, and superstition, had involved the whole nation in shades of deeper than Egyptian night. He was born at Gaffard, near Haddington, in the county of east Lothian, A. D. 1505; and received his academical education in the university of St. Andrew's, under the tutorage of the celebrated John Mair, or Major: and soon gave proof of the astonishing genius with which providence had endued him, by his swift and profound advances in all the walks of scholastic science. Having mastered these, he studied with great diligence, the writings of Austin, and of Jerom: which, running in a more simple and easy channel, moved him to forego the needless intricacies of the philosophic theology he had formerly imbibed; and to embrace that simplicity, with which both Christ and his apostles were content, and which they commended to their disciples. He soon perceived that these scholastic niceties when pushed to excess, are directly opposite to the genius of the gospel; and open the way, not to Christian knowledge, but to the endless mazes of sophistry and strife of words.

VOL. IV.

B

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