worth, to whom several of his most interesting letters are addressed. George Schoales, J. S. Harford, and Adam Clarke were among his frequent correspondents in his later years.
Knox was universally admitted to be an admirable conversationalist; and people used to visit him in Dawson Street, much in the same way as people used to visit S. T. Coleridge at Highgate. Unfortunately no records of his talk have been preserved. Coleridge and Knox resemble each other as having done much to stimulate thought by unsystematic methods, and to influence the succeeding generation. But, as Cardinal Newman points out, Knox differed from Coleridge in that ‘he realises his own position, and is an instance in rudiment of those restorations which he foresaw in development’ (British Critic for April 1839).
Knox published a volume of ‘Essays on the Political Circumstances of Ireland during the Administration of Lord Camden; with an Appendix containing Thoughts on the Will of the People’ (1799). This is merely a collection of ‘papers intended in almost every instance for insertion in newspapers, or for circulation in the form of handbills.’ They were written at intervals between 1795 and 1797, in a bright, lively, popular style. In 1802 he published a pamphlet in defence of Wesley against a Calvinistic clergyman, James Walker, fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, who had published an ‘Expostulatory Address to the Members of the Methodist Society in Ireland.’ Knox's ‘Remarks’ on this address called forth a ‘Defence’ from Walker. A little later he wrote two articles for the ‘Eclectic Review.’ In 1820 he issued a short tract ‘On the Doctrine respecting Baptism held by the Church of England,’ in which he shows the doctrine of baptismal regeneration in the case of infants to be that of the church of England. In 1822 he contributed some short but interesting ‘Remarks,’ which were inserted at the end of the second edition of Southey's ‘Life of Wesley.’ In 1824 he published ‘An Enquiry on Grounds of Scripture and Reason into the Use and Import of the Eucharistic Symbols.’ He also published prefaces to Jebb's two editions of Burnet's ‘Lives.’
‘The Remains of Alexander Knox,’ edited by Mr. Hornby of Winwick, appeared in 4 vols. 8vo in 1834–7, and in 1834 appeared ‘Thirty Years' Correspondence between Bishop Jebb and Alexander Knox,’ edited by the Rev. C. L. Forster, Bishop Jebb's biographer. These letters show his close agreement in many points with the leaders of the Oxford movement, then beginning. In an article in the ‘Contemporary Review,’ August 1887, Professor Stokes traced the movement of thought from Wesley to Knox, from Knox to Jebb, and from Jebb to Hugh James Rose, Newman, and Pusey. The theory was impugned by Dr. Church, dean of St. Paul's, and defended by Professor Stokes in the ‘Guardian’ (7, 14, 21, and 28 Sept. 1887); but both agree that Knox anticipated much of what was afterwards insisted upon by the leaders of the revival. Keble, while admiring Knox, thought him an eclectic, looking down upon all schools with an air of superiority (Coleridge, Memoir, p. 241).
Knox contends that ‘the church of England is neither Calvinian nor Augustinian, but eminently and strictly catholic, and catholic only;’ that ‘our vitality as a church is in our identity of organisation with the church catholic;’ that the church of England is not protestant, but a reformed branch of the church catholic; that the English church is the only representative of the spirit of the Greek fathers, and that we ought to aim at union with the Greek church. He dislikes Calvinism in every form; and he argues that our justification is an imparted, not an imputed, righteousness. This last view was specially obnoxious to the evangelicals, and was opposed, among others, by G. S. Faber [q. v.] in ‘The Primitive Doctrine of Justification investigated’ (1837). Knox laments the general deadness of the services as conducted in his day; he rebels against the identification of churchmanship with toryism, and takes the primitive church in ancient times, and the seventeenth century in modern, as his models. Like Wesley, he admired mystical writers like à Kempis, De Sales, and De Renty. He had no tendency to Rome, although he was a steady advocate of catholic emancipation and a supporter of Maynooth.
He exercised a great influence through his friend Bishop Jebb. The appendix to Jebb's sermons in 1815 (not quite accurately described as the first publication that recalled men's attention to Anglo-catholic principles) was avowedly the joint production of Knox and Jebb, and it is plain that Knox was really the inspirer of the thought expounded by Jebb.
[Remains of Alexander Knox, Esq., 4 vols.; Thirty Years' Correspondence between John Jebb and Alexander Knox, 2 vols.; Alexander Knox, by the late Mrs. Alexander Leeper, an article in the Churchman, July 1889; Alexander Knox and the Oxford Movement, an article by Professor G. T. Stokes in the Contemporary Review, August 1887; Guardian, 7, 14, 21, and 28 Sept. 1887; Wesley's Journals; Forster's Life of Bishop Jebb; letters from Knox in the Castlereagh Correspondence, vols. i. and iv.]
