As early as the year 1526, the doctrines of the Reformation had made considerable progress in Scotland. Vessels from the continent were arriving at Aberdeen, Montrose, Dundee, and Leith, bringing fresh tidings of the progress of Protestantism, and secretly discharging packages of pamphlets and sermons of the Reformers. In this way the shores of the Frith of Forth were broad cast with the seeds of Lutheranism. When Tyndale had translated the New Testament into English, large numbers were imported from Flanders, and industriously circulated among the people. The Reformation on a divine basis now began. The darkness that had so long brooded over that country was being rolled away by the light of heaven. Almost every person had a New Testament in his hand, and God was using it in much blessing.
This was God's great mercy to Scotland, for the clergy had become so violent, that the living voice would have been instantly suppressed, though this too was needed for the great work, but the people must first be prepared by the teaching of the word of God. The Bible was Scotland's only missionary and Reformer at that moment. "With silent foot," says one, "it began to traverse the land; it came to the castle gates of the primate, yet he heard not its steps; it preached in cities, but its voice fell not on the ear of bishops; it passed along the highways and byways unobserved by the spy. To the churchman's eye all seemed calm... but in the stillness of the midnight hour, men welcomed this new instructor, and opened their hearts to its comforting and beneficent teaching. The Bible was emphatically the nation's one great teacher. It was stamping its own ineffaceable character upon the Scottish Reformation; and the place the Bible thus early made for itself in the people's affections, and the authority it acquired over their judgments, it was destined never to lose." But however sacredly and firmly we believe this noble testimony of a most reliable witness, the living voice, the confessor and martyr, were all needed to arouse the nation from the deadly sleep of popery in which it had been so long and so fatally sunk.