Its more immediate personal effect, as we have conjectured, was the transference of Knox from Berwick to Newcastle, where he continued to administer word and sacraments in the same manner as he had been accustomed to follow. On the banks of the Tyne he was as faithful and fearless in his pulpit utterances, and as simple in his ritual observances, as he had been on the {45} banks of the Tweed. "God is witness," said he in a letter to his Newcastle friends, written by him from the continent in 1558; "and I refuse not your own judgments, how simply and uprightly I conversed and walked among you, that neither for fear did I spare to speak the simple truth unto you; neither for hope of worldly promotion, dignity, or honour, did I wittingly adulterate any part of God's Scriptures, whether it were in exposition, in preaching, contention, or writing; but that simply and plainly, as it pleased the merciful goodness of my God to give unto me the utterance, understanding, and spirit, I did distribute the bread of life, as of Christ Jesus I had received it;"[1] and again, "How oft have ye assisted to baptism? How oft have ye been partakers of the Lord's Table prepared, and used, and ministered, in all simplicity, not as a man had devised, neither as the king's proceedings did allow, but as Christ Jesus did institute, and as it is evident that Saint Paul did practise?"[2] How it came that he was permitted to administer the sacrament in that manner does not appear; but the fact that he did so is incontrovertible, and that he did not stand quite alone in taking such a course is evident from these words in Becon's "Displaying of the Mass," written in the reign of Queen Mary: "How oft have I seen here, in England, people sitting at the Lord's Table!" It is well known also that the opinions of Hooper, on this subject, were in full accord with those of Knox; and though we have not been able {46} to find any distinct statement that he had actually reduced them to practice, yet it is all but certain that he did so.