WE cannot describe the relative characters of Huss and Jerome better than in the words of the late Dr. Wylie. He says that the two men “were alike in their great qualities and aims, and were yet in minor points sufficiently diverse to be the complement the one of the other. Huss was the more powerful character, Jerome the more eloquent orator. Greater in genius, and more popular in gifts, Jerome maintained, nevertheless, towards Huss the relation of a disciple. It was a beautiful instance of Christian humility. The calm reason of the master was a salutary restraint upon the impetuosity of the disciple. The union of these two men gave a sensible impulse to the cause. While Jerome debated in the schools and thundered in the popular assemblies, Huss expounded the Scriptures in his chapel, or toiled with his pen at the refutation of some manifesto of the doctors of the university, or some bull of the Vatican. Their affection for each other ripened day by day, and continued unbroken till death came to set its seal upon it, and unite them in an eternal friendship."
With no such intention as part of their program, and indeed, without any program at all, but simply being led on step by step, they were about to appear on a platform and act a part in the eyes of all Christendom, whether they would or no.
At this time the western part of Christendom presented a frightful picture. Not only had corruptions and abuses reached an infamous height, but the morals of the priesthood, with some exceptions, and including dignitaries of all degrees, were gross and execrable. In addition to these things, there were three rival popes. The Italians had chosen Balthazar Casso (John XXIII.); the French had elected Agelo Corario (Gregory XII.); and the Spaniards had chosen Peter de Luxe (Benedict XIII.). Each claimed to be the successor of St. Peter, and the vicegerent of God; and each hurled the fiercest denunciation against his rivals. Huss read the Bible, studied the early Fathers, and compared these with the spectacles passing before his eyes. He saw more and more clearly that Rome was more like the Antichrist of John and Paul, than the fair bride of Christ. He would have reformed, washed and transformed her if he could, but he could do little but “cry aloud and spare not," and oppose the teaching of Holy Scripture to all the errors and evils of Rome.
There was a severe struggle going on in the mind of Huss, and there were commotion and tumult all around him. Once more Prague was placed under an interdict; this time by the archbishop, who, so far, had befriended Huss, but now requested him to leave the city, as the interdict would abide in force so long as he continued there. In his absence he believed all would subside into peace. But how could that be? Truth and error, the Word of God and the commandments of men, the spirit of the Reformation and the spirit of Antichrist were in conflict, and it was not in the power of Huss or any man to stay the struggle, and Huss would not, if he could. Fearing his presence in Prague might embarrass his friends, Huss again withdrew to Husinetz.
Thence he wrote letters to his friends, letters which display a mind full of calm courage and steadfast faith, from which true courage springs. In one of them, Huss is said to have first used the prophetic words, which he afterwards repeated on more than one occasion: " If the goose " (such is the signification of his name in the Bohemian language), "which is but a timid bird, and cannot fly very high, has been able to burst its bonds, there will come afterwards an eagle, which will soar high into the air and draw to it all the other birds." The reference to Luther will not escape the reader. Equally worthy of remembrance, too, are the words that follow the above prediction. “It is in the nature of truth," wrote Huss to his friends, "that the more we obscure it the brighter it will become."
Huss had now completed one period of his remarkable career, though he was not many years above forty, and another, a shorter, but more grand and far-reaching in its results, lay before him. In the calm of his native village or town he dug deep into the mine of Holy Scripture, and, by communion with his God and Savior, fortified his mind for the coming conflict. For himself he seems to have had no fears, and to have been inwardly emancipated from the thralldom of Rome, and the darkness of its slavish teaching. What God had thus far done for him he sought to be the means of doing for his native land of Bohemia, which he loved so well. But events were not yet ready for the development of the glorious Reformation which was to follow. He had prepared the ground, he had sowed the good seed, and some fruit already appeared, but the harvest was not yet. His testimony from the pulpit of his beloved Bethlehem, and by his various writings, had produced happy results, but now, soon, he was to mount another rostrum, and bear witness to the truth in another form: in other words, to light up a fire which should illuminate far-stretching regions, and shed its light on nations yet unborn and ages yet to come. If by his teaching he had in part emancipated Bohemia, by his death he should help to emancipate Christendom.
The state of the western empire at this period was one of fearful convulsions, and there were tokens of a coming storm which made men's hearts fail them. The gathering forces of the rival popes within, and the threatened invasion of the Turkish hordes without, all portended "lamentations, mourning and woe." Huss was in temporary quiet at Husinetz; but for him also the storm was gathering.
The Emperor Sigismund, in the midst of his perplexities and fears, resolved to call a general council. To heal the schism that was rending his empire and to extirpate heresy was its object. The council, in the calling of which Pope John concurred, assembled at Constance, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, on the 1st of November, 1414. There were present thirty cardinals, twenty archbishops, one hundred and fifty bishops, as many prelates, a multitude of abbots and doctors, eighteen hundred priests, princes and nobles of all degrees, and a host of pilgrims from all parts. The three principal figures were the Emperor Sigismund, Pope John XXIII., and, chief and greatest of all, John Huss.
The pope entered Constance with the greatest magnificence, but he left it a conscience-stricken coward, a fugitive, and a criminal, convicted of murder and other flagrant sins, for the which crimes he was formally deposed —too vile a wretch was he for even the Papists to endure.
The first work of the council was to patch up the dubious claims of one Bridget, a lady of Swedish nationality, to saint ship. Then came the trial of John Wycliffe. He had been in his grave thirty years, but that mattered not; forty-five propositions culled from his writings were condemned, and their author sentenced to the flames.
If Satan ever laughs, he must have laughed at the doings of this learned ecclesiastical body, venting their spite upon the bones of a man whose spirit had been praising God in paradise for more than a quarter of a century. The next step was to take away the cup from the “laity "; that is, un-ecclesiastical persons. Then came the depositions of the infamous John, and his less infamous rivals.
The condemnation of the pope was virtually the vindication of Huss; howbeit, his judges read it not so. As to Huss himself, we are not left to surmise his opinions. Writing to a friend, he says, in a letter still extant: " They will know when winter cometh what they did in summer. Consider, I pray you, that they have judged their head—the pope—worthy of death by reason of his horrible crimes. Answer to this, you teachers who preach that the pope is a god upon earth; that he may sell and waste in what manner he pleaseth the holy things, as the lawyers say; that he is the head of the entire holy Church, and governeth it well; that he is the heart of the Church, and governeth it spiritually; that he is the well-spring from whence floweth all virtue and goodness; that he is the sun of the Church, and a very safe refuge to which every Christian ought to fly. Yet, behold now that head, as it were, severed by the sword; his sins laid bare; this never-failing source dried up; this divine sun dimmed; this heart plucked out and branded with reprobation, that no one should seek an asylum in it."
When Huss reached Constance he had with him several important documents, the most important of all being the emperor's safe-conduct. It was addressed: "To all ecclesiastical and secular princes, etc., etc, and to all our subjects." It ran thus: “We recommend to you with a full affection, to all in general and to each in particular, the honorable Master John Huss, Bachelor in Divinity, and Master of Arts, the bearer of these presents. Journeying from Bohemia to the Council of Constance, whom we have taken under our protection and safeguard," etc., etc. How solemn and sacred was the pledge of security! and yet how falsely the man that signed it acted, upon the flimsy and unjust pretext that "no faith is to be kept with heretics." But Huss's trust and confidence was reposed elsewhere. “I confide altogether," said he, writing to a friend, “in the all-powerful God—in my Savior. He will accord me His Holy Spirit to fortify me in His truth, so that I may face with courage temptations, prison, and, if necessary, a cruel death."
On the twenty-sixth day after his arrival Huss was arrested and carried before the council. After a conversation of some hours he was placed in confinement under the charge of the clerk of the cathedral, and after a week he was removed to the prison of the monastery of the Dominicans, on the banks of the Rhine. The sewer of the monastery flowed close by, and the stench and the pestilential air of the dungeon brought on a raging fever. It seemed as if his enemies would lose their grip of him, and they sent physicians to attend him. As soon as he had somewhat recovered, they lost no time in hastening on his trial. The Bohemian barons had indeed appealed to the emperor for his immediate release, and probably he would have set him free but for the sophistry of the ecclesiastics, who pleaded that the interests of the Church stood above even an emperor's pledge of safe-conduct, and that he must regard the voice of the Church as the voice of God. Instead of being released he was removed to the Castle of Golaleven, on the other side of the Rhine, where he was shut up, and loaded with chains.
While these things were proceeding, the deposed Pope John made his escape, but was captured, brought back to Constance, and, strange to say, thrown into the same prison where Huss was confined.
Huss was brought to trial on the 5th of June, 1415. There he stood, in the face of the vast throng of ecclesiastics, weak through his recent illness, but strong in the Lord; heavily chained, but free in spirit. He acknowledged the authorship of his books which were produced. The articles of crimination were read; some of them were fair statements of his opinions, others were perversions, and some were wholly false. He began to reply, but the assembly made such a clamor that he could not be heard. When quiet was restored he resumed, but when he appealed to Holy Scripture the storm was renewed, and the sitting broke up in confusion. On the 7th the trial was continued. An almost total eclipse of the sun threw the assembly into terror and the inhabitants of the city into dismay. There was almost complete darkness, which hung over the city, the lake, and the surrounding plains, as if the day of doom had come. When the light returned Huss was led in by a body of armed men. The council prepared a form of abjuration for him to sign. He declared that what had been faithfully deduced from his writings he had been taught by the grace of God, and he would never abjure what he believed to be the truth of God.
On the 6th of July, 1415, the anniversary of his birth (if born in 1369, he was forty-six, and if in 1373, forty-two years of age), Huss was brought forth for the last time. He was preached at by the bishop of Lodi, who pointed to him as "that obstinate heretic," then degraded from the priesthood, and otherwise ignominiously treated, and finally condemned. When they took the cup from his hand they used these words: “O accursed Judas, who, having abandoned the councils of peace, have taken part in that of the Jews, we take from you this cup filled with the blood of Jesus Christ."
“I hope, by the mercy of God," said Huss,” that this very day I shall drink of His cup in His own kingdom; and in one hundred years you shall answer before God and before me." He was led forth to a meadow outside the city. The stake was driven deep into the ground; his feet were placed upon the faggots, and fastened to the stake with ropes, wood being piled around up to his chin. Before the torch was applied Louis of Bavaria and the marshal of the empire implored him to have a care for his soul, and renounce his errors. “What errors," said Huss, “shall I renounce? I know myself guilty of none. I call God to witness that all that I have written and preached has been with the view of rescuing souls from sin and perdition; and, therefore, most joyfully will I confirm with my blood that which I have written and preached."
The fire was kindled, and as it blazed upward Huss began to sing with a loud voice, “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy upon me." "When he began to say this the third time," says Foxe, "the wind so blew the flame in his face that it choked him." A second and a third time was the fire kindled that his limbs, his body, his heart, and every thread of his raiment might be consumed, The ashes were collected, the soil dug up, and the whole carted away and thrown into the Rhine. They could do no more.
For a further description of his character we have no space; nor can we do more than refer to the growth of Protestantism in Bohemia, and how when, a century afterwards, Luther began his great work in Germany, Michael Weis, the author of the hymn "Christ the Lord is risen again, Hallelujah," and other "Bohemian Brethren," sent messengers with their brotherly greetings. An unbroken succession of faithful witnesses can be traced from Huss to the present Moravians, sometimes indeed few and feeble, but true to the fundamentals of the Gospel of Salvation. To God be all the glory! May the present and the future not be unworthy of the past. R. S.