gift from the Crown what they should have received rather as due from the parishes and the people. This came out very instructively in the Assembly of December 1566. The Queen was now courting the Protestants, and had signed an offer for a considerable sum for the maintenance of the ministers. What was to be said to her offer? The Assembly first requested the opinion of Knox and the other ministers, as the persons concerned. They retired for conference, and 'very gravely' answered-- 'That it was their duty to preach to the people the Word of God truly and sincerely, and to crave of the auditors the things that were necessary for their _sustentation_, as of duty the pastors might justly crave of their flock.'[99] This striking reversion to the Apostolic rule--all the more striking because it is easily reconcilable with the now accepted doctrine of toleration--was, no doubt, not only in substance but in form the utterance of Knox. But so also, if we are to judge by internal evidence, was the formal answer of the Assembly. They accepted the Queen's gift under the pressure of present necessity, but Not the less, in consideration [of] the law of God ordains the persons who hear the doctrine of salvation at the mouths of his ministers, and thereby receive special food to the nourishment of their souls, to communicate temporal _sustentation_ on [to] their preachers: Their answer is, That having just title to crave the bodily food at the hands of the said persons, and finding no others bound unto them, they _only require at their own flock_, that they will sustain them according to their bounden duty, and what it shall please them to give for their sustentation, if it were but bread and water, neither will they refuse it, nor desist from the vocation. But to take from others contrary to their will, whom they serve not, they judge it not their duty, nor yet reasonable.'[100]