This would seem to have been the chief work of Knox during the visit which, in the midst of his Geneva ministry, he paid to his native land: and it is easy to perceive that it was of supreme importance as identifying and separating the converts into a definite community, bound together by that sacrament of fealty, an oath more binding than any expressed only in words. Hitherto the preaching and teaching of the Word, which was itself a discovery, and came with all the freshness of a new revelation, had been the only sacred office carried on by the Reformers. The Sacraments were all in the hands of ecclesiastics, who had been for generations past losing the confidence and respect of the nation--though one cannot but believe there must still have been here and there a humble curate, a parish priest like Chaucer's Parsoune, to strengthen the hold of the accustomed ordinances upon men's minds, who, however strongly they might turn against the miracle of transubstantiation, could not cast aside the only means of partaking in the great mystery of the body and blood of Christ. To all such here was now the answer set forth, and the hope--the holy Table, the communion of saints, the bread and wine of the great and ceaseless commemoration. It would be doing the greatest wrong to these small devout assemblies, and to the fervent preacher, devoured with eagerness to make them all, not almost but altogether such men as himself, to call this an act of policy. Yet that it was so, and that a bond was thus established to consolidate the party, more sacred, more binding than any other, there can be no reasonable doubt.