{56} Calvin replied that the quarrel might be all very well if the exiles were happy and at ease in their circumstances, though in the Liturgy, as described, there were "tolerable (endurable) follies." On the whole he sided with the Knoxian party.

The English Liturgy is not pure enough; and the English exiles, not at Frankfort, merely like it because they are accustomed to it.

Some are partial to "popish dregs." To the extreme Reformers no break with the past could be too abrupt and precipitous: the framers of the English Liturgy had rather adopted the principle of evolution than of development by catastrophe, and had wedded what was noblest in old Latin forms and prayers to music of the choicest English speech.

To this service, for which their fellow-religionists in England were dying at the stake, the non-Frankfortian exiles were attached.

They were Englishmen; their service, they said, should bear "an English face": so Knox avers, who could as yet have no patriotic love of any religious form as exclusively and essentially Scottish.
A kind of truce was now proclaimed, to last till May 1, 1555; Knox aiding in the confection of a service without responses, "some part taken out of the English book, and other things put to," while Calvin, Bullinger, and three others were appointed as referees.