disorder which about the Holy Communion might else have ensued; in this answer, most strong to our judgments, which we teach our posterity to give to their adversaries, have we not ministered a weapon to wound-yea, utterly to kill-ourselves and posterity? For these shall be their darts: Your kneeling, which you have of us,' shall the Papists say, 'hath no more firmament [foundation] in God's word than our ceremonies that ye have abolished. The profit that cometh of your kneeling is nowhere in God's Word expressed, but only in the imagination of your own brains. Like damages, and more, are annexed with your kneeling in that action than with the rest of our ceremonies. Wherefore our ceremonies ought equally to remain with your kneeling." Affections laid aside, let indifferent [impartial] men judge how these darts can be avoided. By God's Scriptures assuredly we are not able to decline them. But if our Religion were builded upon that only which Jesus Christ did and commanded to be done in his remembrance, then might not the gates of hell prevail against the same."

The rest of the "Confession" is occupied with the question, "Why the sitting in the action of the Lord's Table is preferred to kneeling?" and will well repay perusal, by the rich and high sacramental doctrine which it contains; "high," that is to say, not in the Romish, but the Protestant and Evangelical sense of the word. It is enough to read this single effusion of Knox's pen to see that he was no Zwinglian in the sense (an incorrect one) in which that epithet is often understood, i.e., as a Sacramentarian of the lowest type-in the sense in which the Sacramental elements are regarded as signs and nothing more or higher-nuda signa. He was in truth a theologian of the Helvetic School, without being a Zwinglian, in so far as Zwingli was supposed (though erroneously) to be an imperfect example of the Helvetic type. He was already a Calvinist, before having made the personal acquaintance of Calvin. His doctrine of the Eucharist was the doctrine of the Zurich Consensus, which expressed not more the doctrine of Calvin than the judgment of Zwingli as understood and exhibited by Bullinger, Zwingli's successor and true interpreter.

This portion of the Confession opens with the following remarkable paragraphs: "As kneeling is no gesture meet at the Table, so doth it obscure the joyful significations of that holy mystery. Kneeling is the gesture most commonly of suppliants, of beggars, or such men as, greatly troubled by knowledge of misery or

offence committed, seek help or remission, doubting whether they shall obtain the same or not. But in the Lord's Supper, chiefly in the action of eating and drinking, neither should appear in dolour, poverty, nor sign of any misery. But, commanded to eat and drink by the Lord Jesus, in remembrance of Him, with glad countenance we ought to obey; and so, calling to our mind things that be past, present, and to come, all sign and fear of servitude and thraldom ought to be removed; to wit, that we sometimes by nature were the sons of God's wrath, but [are] now by grace recounted and chosen in the number of the sons of God through the faith which is in Jesus our Lord-heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Jesus Christ our Lord, in whom we rest, and by whom the Father of Mercy hath caused us to sit amongst heavenly things, and with whom at the end we shall eat and drink at his own Table prepared for us in the Kingdom of that Everlasting Father. Of which things the Lord's Table is, as it were, our assurance and seal, in using whereof all signs of dolour ought to be removed. . . . .

"Dejected in our own sight, and yet erected and raised up through God's free promise, and so commanded by his Son to eat and drink, not as beggars (for by grace we are made rich in Christ), but as sons and inheritors whom that victorious King hath placed at his Table,-ought we not most gladly to receive the honour and dignity that is offered to us, seeing that we cannot do more honour to God than to obey his voice, and so to prepare ourselves to that holy action that we appear not betrayers of our own faith and hope, which is, that thraldom and servitude is taken away, and that we are the children of God-yea, priests and kings united by Christ's blood? And therefore, without doubting or wavering, at Christ's commandment pass we to the Table not as slaves or servants, but as children of the King and the redeemed people, praising the goodness of Him that hath called us to that honour and estate; and therefore, taught by Christ's example at his holy Table, we sit, as men placed in quietness and in full possession of our Kingdom."

After further argument of a very ingenious and interesting if not very convincing kind, founded upon the resemblances and differences between the Passover and the Eucharist, and which has all the appearance of having been traced by a different pen from that of Knox-the pen, it seems highly probable, of the excellent Thomas Becon, then minister of St. Stephen's, Walbrook-the

Confession closes with the following strong appeal to the Lords of the Council*:—

"Thus have we given unto your Honours, most Honourable, our plain confession why, in the Lord's Table, we cannot admit kneeling. Yet again taking God to record in our conscience . . . that in this case we only seek the glory of God and the advancement of Christ's truth; and albeit some withstand us, of zeal also, as we suppose, towards the truth, yet when they shall consider the necessity that kneeling be avoided at the Lord's Table in these perilous days, we doubt not that then shall they, according to their excellent gifts and solid judgment, more earnestly and more profoundly persuade unto the King's Majesty's Highness, and to your Honours, that in Christ's religion, and chiefly in so high a mystery, ye bind not that thing under a law whereof you neither have commandment nor example of Jesus Christ nor of his Apostles, but is the mere invention of man, proceeding from a false opinion, which also hath been the gesture of idolaters, of whom, alas! no small number remaineth unto this day. . . . These and more causes deeply considered, we doubt not but their fervent desire to Christ's glory shall move them boldly to speak. So shall your Honours' careful diligence provide that Christ's religion in this realm—all praise and honour be unto God-now tending to perfection and maturity-so surely be founded upon Christ and upon his express Word, that not only it may abide the stormy wars of men's judgment, but also the warfare, the trial of God's secret Word we mean, which when it cometh, as it must needs consume and burn away the stubble, hay and wood, without respect of persons, so must it try and declare to be fine the gold, silver, and precious stones, how contemned [soever] that other builder appeared that builded such fine stuff upon the sure fundament!

Our weak judgment touching the reformation of other ceremonies contained in the foresaid book, we have committed to writing in the Latin tongue, being ready upon commandment to put the same also in English. Unfeignedly beseeching the Father of all mercies that so your hearts may be ruled by the Holy Ghost, that in all the actions of your life, you may prefer the will

* For evidence in support of this suggestion see notes appended to the "Confession" in Part II., where also the name of Roger Hutchinson, of Eton College, is conjectured, with some degree of probability, to have been associated with that of Knox.

and pleasure of God, contained within his sacred Word, to long process of time [and] consuetude of man's authority; and so, no doubt but when that great Bishop and only Pastor of our souls, Jesus Christ our Saviour, shall appear, at whose presence shall tremble and ever be confounded all tyrannous oppressors of his truth; He shall acknowledge you his true professors, purged with his blood, clad with justice and grace, with Him made inheritors of life everlasting. So be it."

Let it be noticed in the paragraph last quoted that this "Confession" was sent in to the Privy Council by itself. Other judgments of the writers upon the Articles submitted to them, and upon other ceremonies of the Prayer-book, were for the present withheld, and would be sent in by-and-by, and in an English form if the Council desired it. Why, then, this haste to send in at once this English confession upon the 38th Article, and upon the single ceremony of kneeling in the Sacrament? Evidently for some special reason, and one involving urgency for immediate action. There was plainly some particular object to be gained by this proceeding, and which there would have been no chance of gaining if instant action had not been taken. But this again implies that the final decision upon the question argued in the "Confession " had not yet been arrived at. If it had been already decided where would have been the use of sending in an earnest representation upon this single point? The withholding of their judgment on other ceremonies which they objected to, was due to there being no prospect at the moment of those other ceremonies being taken into consideration at the Council table. The expediting of their confession on this single point of kneeling as plainly implied that this question was still subjudice, and that what Knox and his coadjutors deemed a right decision might still be hoped for. And the hope thus cherished was not entirely disappointed. The "Confession" was in time for the meeting of the 27th of October, and was no doubt maturely considered. We know nothing of the discussion which ensued, except that the councillors who assisted at the decision arrived at were the Lord Chancellor (Bishop Goodrich of Ely), the Lord Treasurer (Marquis of Winchester), the Duke of Suffolk, the Lord Chamberlain (Marquis of Northampton), Mr. Comptroller (Sir Anthony Wyngfield), Mr. Vice-Chamberlain (Sir John Gates), Mr. Secretary Cecil, and Sir Robert Bowes. The decision itself was thus recorded in the Register of Council:

"At Westminster, the xxvii. day of October, 1552.

"A letter to the Lord Chancellor, to cause to be joined unto the Book of Common Prayer lately set forth a certain declaration signed by the King's Majesty, and sent unto his Lordship touching the kneeling at the receiving of the Communion.”

The "declaration" appeared accordingly in all copies of the new Prayer-book, which had not been issued before the injunction sent to the publisher on the 26th September preceding. The publication of the Service had been suspended for a whole month, awaiting the issue of the deliberations of the Council. The printing and the correction of the press had been finished for weeks, and all that could now be done was to insert the "declaration" on a separate leaf at the end of the Communion office. It interrupted the pagination. All readers could see at once that it was an extra leaf, and that the insertion of it had been an afterthought carried into effect at the last moment. There are still preserved in the great libraries of the kingdom a considerable number of copies of this first edition of Edward VI.'s Second Prayer-book which exhibit this intercalated leaf, though there are other copies also extant which do not contain it-the two classes of copies thus remaining a palpable memorial of the whole curious and important transaction of which Knox had been the sudden and sole originator, and which both by pulpit and pen he had powerfully contributed to bring to a conclusion-a conclusion which, though not realizing all he wished, was something upon which he congratulated himself and others who shared his views, and which continues, even to our own time, a highly important feature of the English liturgy. The "Declaration on Kneeling" is not, indeed, an object of equal admiration to all Anglicans; to many of them, we fear, it is a "black Rubric," a bête noire; but to all except the un-Protestant section of the Church of England it is a truly valuable element of her liturgy, and a standing monument of the Reformation-truth and Reformation-life from which she sprang.

"The Declaration on Kneeling," and the Rubric which it explains, stand thus in the Second Prayer-book of Edward VI.:The Rubric.-"Then shall the minister first receive the Communion in both kinds himself, and next deliver it to other