Knox, at the same time that he laid this letter before his congregation, craved the advice of Calvin and the other ministers of Geneva. They gave it as their opinion, “that he could not refuse the call without showing himself rebellious to God, and unmerciful to his country.” His congregation agreed to sacrifice their particular interest to the greater good of the church; and his own family silently acquiesced. Upon this, he returned an answer to the letter of the nobility, signifying that he meant to visit them with all reasonable expedition. The congregation chose as his successor William Whittingham,[289] a learned Englishman, with whom he had been long united by the ties of friendship and congeniality of sentiment. Having settled his other affairs, he took an affectionate leave of his friends at Geneva, and went to Dieppe, in the month of October. But on his arrival there, he received letters from Scotland, written in a very different strain from the former. By these he was informed, that new consultations had been held among the protestants in that country; that some of them began {198} to repent of the invitation which they had given him to return; and that the greater part seemed irresolute and faint‑hearted. This intelligence exceedingly disconcerted and embarrassed him. He instantly dispatched a letter to the nobility who had invited him, upbraiding them for their timidity and inconstancy. The information which he had just received, had (he said) confounded him, and pierced his heart with sorrow. After taking the advice of the most learned and godly in Europe, to satisfy his own conscience and theirs as to the propriety of this enterprise, the abandonment of it must reflect disgrace either on him or them――it argued either that he had been marvellously forward and vain, or that they had betrayed great imprudence and want of judgment in the invitation which they had given him. To some it might appear a small matter that he had left his poor family destitute of a head, and committed the care of his little but dearly‑beloved flock to another; but, for his part, he could not name the sum that would induce him to go through that scene a second time, and to behold so many grave men weeping at his departure. What answer could he give to those who enquired, why he did not prosecute his journey? He could take God to witness, that the personal inconveniences to which he had been subjected, and the mortification which he felt at the disappointment, were not the chief causes of his grief. He was alarmed at the awful consequences which would ensue――at the bondage and misery, spiritual and temporal, which they would entail on themselves {199} and their children, their subjects and their posterity, if they neglected the present opportunity of introducing the gospel into their native country. In his conscience, he could exempt none that bore the name of nobility in Scotland from blame in this affair. His words might perhaps appear