Beza says, "He was a man dear to all the learned, who would have been a distinguished ornament of Scotland if that country had recovered the light of the Gospel at an earlier period; and who, when rejected by both Scotland and England, was most eagerly embraced by the evangelical church of Saxony, and continued to be warmly cherished and esteemed by her to the day of his death." The man who was held in such high esteem by the reforming Archbishops of Cologne and Canterbury; who was the bosom friend of Melanchthon; who was highly thought of by Luther, and warmly eulogised by Beza and Johnston, was certainly not one whose memory his countrymen should willingly let die. He was unquestionably the most cultured, probably also the most liberal and conciliatory, of the Scottish theologians of the sixteenth century. He was the first to plead publicly before the authorities of the nation for the right of every household and every individual to have access to the Word of God in the vernacular tongue, and to impress on parents the sacred duty of sedulously inculcating its teaching on their children, and therefore, as Christopher Anderson has said, "the man who struck the first note in giving a tone to that character," for which his native country has since been known, and often since commended, as Bible-loving Scotland. Had his countrymen not so long lost sight of him, perhaps some stone of remembrance might have been found to his memory in Germany; but surely, though he was so long an exile, the chief memorial of his birth and death ought to be in Edinburgh or St Andrews. "There, in reference to the cause he advocated, no inappropriate emblem" would be "a father and his child reading the same sacred volume; and, for a motto, in remembrance of his position at the moment, perhaps his own memorable quotation of the Athenian, 'Strike, but hear me.'"[320] FOOTNOTES: [283] [Alesius thus proceeds: "Et in mari inter tempestates et 18 diebus subtus terram in teterrimo specu inter bufones et serpentes custodivit (oportet enim me haec alicubi commemorare pro gratitudine erga Deum). Hic igitur Salvator omnium, maxime fidelium, perficiet id quod per me facere instituit" (In Alteram ad Timotheum expositio. Autore Alexandro Alesio. D. Lipsiae, 1551, sign. A 2).]