Knox, at Berwick, on the other hand, bade his congregation sit, as he conceived that to have been the usage at the first institution of the rite.

Possibly the Apostles, in fact, supped in a recumbent attitude, as Cranmer justly remarked later (John xiii.

25), but Knox supposed them to have sat.

In a letter to his Berwick flock, he reminds them of his practice on this point; but he would not dissent from kneeling if "magistrates make known, as that they" (would ?) "have done if ministers were willing to do their duties, that kneeling is not retained in the Lord's Supper for maintenance of any superstition," much less as "adoration of the Lord's Supper." This, "for a time," would content him: and this he obtained.
{33a} Here Knox appears to make the civil authority--"the magistrates"-- governors of the Church, while at the same time he does not in practice obey them unless they accept his conditions.
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.