"Manners and religion so sincerely reformed I have not yet seen in any other place." The genius of Calvin had made Geneva a kind of Protestant city state [Greek text]; a Calvinistic Utopia--everywhere the vigilant eyes of the preachers and magistrates were upon every detail of daily life.

Monthly and weekly the magistrates and ministers met to point out each other's little failings.

Knox felt as if he were indeed in the City of God, and later he introduced into Scotland, and vehemently abjured England to adopt, the Genevan "discipline." England would none of it, and would not, even in the days of the Solemn League and Covenant, suffer the excommunication by preachers to pass without lay control.
It is unfortunate that the ecclesiastical polity and discipline of a small city state, like a Greek [Greek word polis], feasible in such a community as Geneva at a moment of spiritual excitement, was brought by Knox and his brethren into a nation like Scotland.

The results were a hundred and twenty-nine years of unrest, civil war, and persecution.
Though happy in the affection of his wife and Mrs.Bowes, Knox, at this time, needed more of feminine society.

On November 19, 1556, he wrote to his friend, Mrs.Locke, wife of a Cheapside merchant: "You write that your desire is earnest to see me.