It is truly satisfactory to know, that the blessed soul-saving truths of the gospel, which had been taught by Wycliffe and his followers, were already producing results of a wide and lasting importance: that in spite of all the burnings and slayings of Rome, they were sinking deep into the hearts of thousands and hundreds of thousands, and spreading in nearly all parts of Europe. The Bishop of Lodi in the council of Constance, A.D. 1416—a year before the martyrdom of Cobham, and thirty-six years after the translation of the Bible—declared that the heresies of Wycliffe and Huss were spread over England, France, Italy, Hungary, Russia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and through all Bohemia. Thus a bitter enemy is unconsciously, or unintentionally, the witness of the influence and the unextinguishable vitality of the good seed of the word of God.
But here it will be necessary to clear our way by saying a few words on the great papal schism, before tracing the broad silver line of God's grace in the testimony and martyrdom of Huss and Jerome.