It has been insinuated that Knox gave his approbation to the resolutions of the convention at Leith to restore the episcopal office; and the articles sent by him to the General Assembly, in August, 1572, {202} have been appealed to as a proof of this. But all that can be fairly deduced from these articles is, that he desired the conditions and limitations agreed upon by that convention to be strictly observed in the election of bishops, in opposition to the granting of bishoprics to laymen,[258] and to the simoniacal pactions which the ministers made with the nobles on receiving presentations. Provided one of the propositions made by him to the Assembly had been enforced, and the bishops had been bound to give an account of the whole of their rents, and either to support ministers in the particular places from which they derived these, or else to pay into the funds of the church the sums requisite for this purpose, it is evident that the mercenary views both of patrons and presentees would have been defeated, and the church would have gained her object, the use of the episcopal revenues. The prospect of this induced some honest ministers to agree to the proposed regulations, at the convention held in Leith. But it required a greater portion of disinterested firmness than falls to most men, to act upon this principle;[259] and the nobles were able to find, even at that period, a sufficient {203} number of pliant, needy, or covetous ministers, to be the partners or the dupes of their avarice.