This letter to the Berwick flock must be prior to the autumn of 1552, in which, as we shall see, Knox obtained his terms as to kneeling.  He went on, in his epistle to the Berwickians, to speak in “a tone of moderation and modesty,” for which, says Dr. Lorimer, not many readers will be prepared. {33b} In this modest passage, Knox says that, as to “the chief points of religion,” he, with God’s help, “will give place to neither man nor angel teaching the contrary” of his preaching.  Yet an angel might be supposed to be well informed on points of doctrine!  “But as to ceremonies or rites, things of smaller weight, I was not minded to move contention. . . .”  The one point which—­“because I am but one, having in my contrary magistrates, common order, and judgments, and many learned”—­he is prepared to yield, and that for a time, is the practice of kneeling, but only on three conditions.  These being granted, “with patience will I bear that one thing, daily thirsting and calling unto God for reformation of that and others.” {33c} But he did not bear that one thing; he would not kneel even after his terms were granted!  This is the sum of Knox’s “moderation and modesty”!

Though he is not averse from talking about himself, Knox, in his “History,” spares but three lines to his five years’ residence in England (1549-54).  His first charge was Berwick (1549-51), where we have seen he celebrated holy Communion by the Swiss rite, all meekly sitting.  The Second Prayer Book, of 1552, when Knox ministered in Newcastle, bears marks of his hand.  He opposed, as has been said, the rubric bidding the communicants kneel; the attitude savoured of “idolatry.”

The circumstances in which Knox carried his point on this question are most curious.  Just before October 12, 1552, a foreign Protestant, Johannes Utenhovius, wrote to the Zurich Protestant, Bullinger, to the effect that a certain vir bonus, Scotus natione (a good man and a Scot), a preacher (concionator), of the Duke of Northumberland, had delivered a sermon before the King and Council, “in which he freely inveighed against the Anglican custom of kneeling at the Lord’s Supper.”  Many listeners were greatly moved, and Utenhovius prayed that the sermon might be of blessed effect.  Knox was certainly in London at this date, and was almost certainly the excellent Scot referred to by Utenhovius.  The Second Prayer Book of Edward vi. was then in such forwardness that Parliament had appointed it to be used in churches, beginning on November 1.  The book included the command to kneel at the Lord’s Supper, and any agitation against the practice might seem to be too late.  Cranmer, the Primate, was in favour of the rubric as it stood, and on October 7, 1552, addressed the Privy Council in a letter which, without naming Knox, clearly shows his opinion of our Reformer.  The book, as it stood, said Cranmer, had the assent of King and Parliament—­now it was to be altered, apparently, “without Parliament.”  The Council ought not to be thus influenced by “glorious and unquiet spirits.”  Cranmer calls Knox, as Throckmorton later called Queen Mary’s Bothwell, “glorious” in the sense of the Latin gloriosus, “swaggering,” or “arrogant.”