Page:The Early Kings of Norway.djvu/233

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THE PORTRAITS OF JOHN KNOX. 223 personally had the least acquaintance with Knox, never in all likelihood seen him with eyes; which latter on strict examination of the many accurate par- ticulars to bo found in the Lives of Beza, and espe- cially in Bayle's multifarious details about him, comes to' seem your legitimate conclusion. Knox's journeys to Geneva, and his two several residences, as preacher to the Church of the English Exiles there, do not coincide with Bcza's contemporary likelihoods ; nor does Beza seem to have been a person whom Knox would have cared to seek out. Beza was at Lau- sanne, teaching Greek, and not known otherwise than as a much- censured, fashionable young Frenchman and too erotic Poet ; nothing of theological had yet come from him, — except, while Knox was far off, the questionable Apology for Calvin's burning of Servetus, which cannot have had much charm for Knox, a man by no means fond of public burning as an argument in matters of human belief, rather the reverse by all symptoms we can trace in him. During Knox's last and most important ministration in Geneva, Beza, still officially Professor of Greek at Lausanne, was on an intricate mission from the