ders, is toiling on, now threading the narrow defiles, and now descending the dizzy heights. Sometimes the chamois is swung over a ravine, that the hunters, with their poles, may leap across it unincumbered, and sometimes the game is carried between the two hardy mountaineers. Light-hearted they proceedbut now they come to a difficult point of the rock, a fearful pass, for the ledge, with a precipice below, is hardly broad enough to stand on. Aiguilles and spires and mountainous crags are above them, ravines and rifts, and rugged rocks and watercourses, are below, with the valley seen in the distance. Ritzer, bearing the chamois, has crossed the pass, but his comrade-dreadful! dreadful! his foot has slipped-he tries to recover himself in vain-he falls headlong from the craggy ledge. Danger how unexpected is thy arrival!-O Death, how sudden is thy approach! Hapless Adolphe! what a tale to tell the sharer of thy cot! what tidings to relate to the mother that bore thee!

Be ready, Ritzer, on thy mountains drear,
For life is brief, and death is ever near.

*

The bright sun has withdrawn himself from view, though the peak tops and summits of the mountains are yet sparkling with his beams. The glaciers glitter not as they did, with a silvery effulgency, but the stately aiguilles still wear their golden crowns. A subdued ånd sober light is prevailing among the mountains and the valleys.

The glowing orb of day recalls his fires,
And now, to light up other lands, retires.

Through a telescope from the valley Alphonse was seen to fall, and Rumour, with her hundred tongues, has spread the report that Ritzer is numbered with the dead. Pale is the cheek of Annette, his wife, and loud the lament of his only boy;-even now, half frantic with fear, the twain are toiling up the steeps. And didst thou, Annette, at the dawn of day, commit, on thy bended knees, thy husband to almighty care? Fear not, for he shall yet fold thee in his arms! But who are those descending from the heights! Ritzer, with the chamois on his shoulder, and can it be? Yes, it is Alphonse! A mountain stream broke his fall, and bruised, but with no bone broken, he is returning to his cottage. See! they meet! they meet! A shriek from Annette is echoed by the

ALTHOUGH king Wenceslaus for a time withdrew his protection from the Hussites, yet he does not appear to have severely persecuted them. This avaricious and rapacious prince found an advantage in secretly favouring their doctrines, and when, from the first rise of the disturbances in Bohemia, he was urged to destroy John Huss, he answered, "Let him alone, he is the bird that lays for me many a golden egg.' Some of the sentiments of Huss, especially those which he derived from Wickliffe, respecting tithes and church property, ` were very much to the taste of Wenceslaus. He said, "The temporal lords, when they please, have power to take away temporal property from ecclesiastics who live in the practice of sin." This maxim Huss supported by the authority of Scripture and of the fathers, not forgetting these words, uttered in the presence of St. Bernard, by the famous German prophetess, St. Hildegarde, "The Almighty Father has divided all things well, he has given heaven to heavenly men, and the earth to earthly men, so that, according to this division, spiritual and secular men, each possessing that which belongs to them, should not usurp that of the other; for it is not the will of God that either of his children should wear at once the robe and the cloak. He has given the cloak to the secular, the robe to the spiritual order, and when both are found in possession of the same man, the cloak should be taken away, and given to the poor." As for tithes, Huss maintained, with Wickliffe, that they are merely alms he concluded that churchmen are neither the masters nor the owners of these revenues, but only their keepers and

s;

dispensers; that they have no right to retain from them beyond what their own wants require, and that unless they give the residue to the poor, they will be judged at the last day as guilty of robbery and sacrilege.

Wenceslaus adopted these doctrines, which were held by most of the Reformers, and which rendered many princes favourable to them. He declared himself accordingly to be a judge as to the employment of church property, but as he cared not for the poor, the misused treasures of the church passed into his treasury, and when he appeared publicly to support the new opinions, his severities and his exactions increased the number of those who adhered to Huss. Several wealthy ecclesiastics professed themselves Hussites; the desire of saving their wealth induced them to become advocates of those doctrines which directed its rightful use.

Another cause of the progress of the Hussites was, the very contempt into which the church dignitaries of Bohemia had fallen, chiefly on account of the covetousness of the sovereign, who sold the offices to the highest bidder. The disgraceful elevation of Albicus to the episcopal see of Prague has been already mentioned; that unworthy prelate dreading .lest the king should confiscate the whole of the revenues of his office, hastened to sell it in his turn to Conrad, bishop of Olmutz, and Romish writers themselves admit, that the buyer was no better than the seller.

Conrad showed, at first, much earnestness in resisting the new doctrines, which, however, he subsequently embraced, after he had completely alienated the revenues of his see. He refused to allow Huss to preach, but the latter was aware of his own power, and also believed that he was not to obey any earthly authority that forbade him to preach the gospel,

When summoned to Rome a second time, he did not even attempt to justify his refusal to appear.

In the town of Prague, many copies of the writings of Wickliffe had escaped the flames kindled by archbishop Shinko. Huss recommended men to read them, and forcibly reproved the condemnation of the forty-five articles extracted from the works of the celebrated English teacher. He published, in the name of the faculty of theology at Prague, a powerful treatise, in which he defended the

opinions of Wickliffe on tithes and church property, and on some other leading points. He observed, "Those who cease to preach, or to hear the word of God, will be accounted traitors at the day of judgment. Every deacon and every priest is permitted to preach the word of God, without the authority of any bishop, or the apostolic see; and all temporal lords, every prelate, every bishop, living in mortal sin, in fact is not a temporal lord, a prelate, or a bishop.

Huss softened these doctrines by the manner in which he explained them. On the latter point, his opinion, literally considered, did not require a serious refutation; but he added, that the power of wicked rulers is not sanctioned by God, and that such are not kings and bishops after his own heart.

John Huss preached also, with much popular approbation, against the worship of images. He taught that priests ought to be poor; that auricular confession was of no use; that the burial of the dead in churchyards was not necessary for the welfare of their souls; and that the observance of canonical hours, and abstinence from food, were only the traditions of men, without any authority from the word of God.

The Romish priests declaimed with no less vehemence; every head seemed on fire, the city every day exhibited fresh scenes of bloodshed; there was no safety in Prague for any one, the monarch himself left it, and went hastily from place to place.

A powerful league, however, was formed against Huss, by several doctors of theology at Prague. Among these, the most distinguished were Stephen Paletz, (already mentioned,) Andrew Broda, and Stanislaus Zonna, a professor of theology, once the tutor of Huss, and, like him, an admirer of Wickliffe, whom he now insulted. These doctors, in their writings, accused Huss of belonging to the Armenian sect, who relied only on the authority of Scripture, and not on that of the church, or the fathers. Huss replied, that in this respect he agreed with St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. Gregory, who recognised the Scripture alone as the foundation of their faith. The divines also alleged that Huss erred greatly as to the power of

* De secta Armenorum. They said this of any from the word of God, and the reasons of the law. man who required information as to his doubts Huss, Hist. et Mon. Vol. I., p. 63.

spiritual and temporal authorities. "To hear him," they said, "it seems that the orders of popes, emperors, kings, princes, and other rulers, are only to be obeyed when they are founded upon testimony and reasoning, which tends to no less than the destruction of all civil order.'

To this weighty argument, John Huss opposed the example of the Maccabees, showing that the orders of princes are not to be obeyed when they are contrary to the laws of God. 66 According to our doctors," he said, "if they were commanded by the pope, or the king, to slay all the Jews in Prague, and were furnished with troops for that purpose, they would have no objection to obey. Neither would they hesitate to slaughter us at the first word, especially to kill me, who, in their opinion, teaches such a dangerous error. Yet surely such orders no less require consideration, than the letters of Artaxerxes, that required the massacre of all the Jews. Neither was Paul bound to obey the orders of the sanhedrim, by delivering over the disciples of Christ to the executioner,"

Such a debate never fails to show that human reasoning never loses its claims, and that we almost always wander out of the way when pushing the best principles to their farthest consequences by logical arguments. To admit that examination and approval must always go before obedience, is to render all government impossible; but to forbid all investigation, is to renounce the faculties of a man, and to degrade oneself, according to circumstances, into a senseless machine, or a ferocious brute.

Irritated by the disobedience of Huss, and alarmed at the progress of his doctrines, John XXIII. stirred up the secular power against him. He wrote to Wenceslaus, and also the king, and universities of France. Gerson answered this appeal in the name of the university of Paris; he wrote to Conrad, the Bohemian archbishop, respecting Huss. This letter has been preserved by a popish historian, John Cochleus; it shows the angry passion of the times. Gerson says, "Hitherto various means, like so many different scythes, have been used to destroy the heresies arising in the field of the church. The first scythe which cut them down was the power of miracles, by which God gave testimony to the catholic truth, and that of the times of the apostles. Then they were rooted out by our doctors with the force of argument and

disputation, by the scythe of our holy councils. At length this evil is growing desperate, and recourse must be had to the secular arm, as holding an axe with which to cut down heresies and heretics, and to cast them into the fire. By this merciful cruelty, the discourses of such men will be kept from spreading to their own ruin, and that of others. Should the false teachers, who scatter among you the seeds of heresy, ask for miracles, let them know, the time for miracles is now passed away.

"Men are no longer permitted to tempt God, by requiring miracles to confirm our faith, as if it were a new thing. They have not only Moses and the prophets, but the apostles and ancient doctors, with the holy councils. They have also modern divines assembled in the universities, especially in that of Paris, the mother of studies, which has hitherto been free from the monsters of heresy, and will, with the Divine help, always continue so. They have all these; let them believe these, or they will not believe, even if the dead were raised. Moreover, there is no end of disputing with such presumptuous men. On the contrary, as Seneca has said, when disputation is pushed too far, people are offended, and charity is hurt. To their obstinate effrontery the language of the poet may be applied. The remedy increases the evil." Therefore, if the present remedies are ineffectual, nothing remains but to apply the axe of the secular power to the root of this unfruitful and accursed tree. Do you implore the assistance of this power in every possible way; it is your duty, for the sake of the souls committed to your care.

Peter d'Ailly, cardinal of Cambray, in a treatise upon reformation, touched upon the very point which made these efforts useless, and thereby gained over the hearts of many to the novelties, or rather to what appeared such. He said: "It is owing to the heresy of simony, and the other iniquities of the court of Rome, that so many sects have arisen in Bohemia and Moravia, which have spread from the head to the other members of that kingdom, where a thousand things injurious to the pope are publicly debated. Thus the glaring vices of the Romish court confound the catholic faith, and corrupt it by its errors. It were well if these heresies and their authors were rooted out from these provinces; but I * Mater studiorum. † (Egrescit medendo.)

Thus Peter d'Ailly pointed out the disease and the remedy, but not the method of applying it. Daily did the schism furnish the adherents of Huss with new arguments for resisting the authority of the pope. "If he is to be obeyed, then whom shall we obey?" they inquired. "Balthazar Cossa, called John XXIII., is at Rome; Angelo Corario, named Gregory XII., is at Rimini. Peter de Luna, calling himself Benedict XIII., is in Aragon. If one of these is to be obeyed as our most holy father, how is he to be distinguished from the others, and why does he not begin by reducing them to submission?"

Thus the troubles in Bohemia still continued, and the archbishop, finding his admonitions ineffectual, had recourse to other measures. He put in force an edict against the opponents, which had been drawn up by the doctors of the faculty of theology. This decree required every man who filled any public office at Prague to sign a papistical form, and also severely condemned the Hussites. The bishop of Litomissels, an eager opponent of John Huss, even surpassed these severe requirements. He desired that a chancellor for the university might be elected, who would exercise a strict inquisition over the masters and scholars, and should be required to punish the favourers of heresy. He required that John Huss and his supporters should be forbidden to preach, and should be expelled from the chapel of Bethlehem; that Huss should be banished from the society of the faithful; that those books should be prohibited in which his opinions were set forth in the vulgar tongue, and that all who sold or read these books should be excommunicated.

A decree to this effect was drawn up and published, confounding the ancient dispensation with the present; it applied to the see of Rome what is said in the book of Deuteronomy, about the place which the Lord should choose, repeating, that all who refused to obey the high priest should be put to death.

"It is well known to all," said this decree, "that the church of Rome is the place which God has chosen, under the New Testament dispensation; that he has given to it the primacy over all the church; that the pope presides in it as

the true and manifest successor of St. Peter; that the cardinals, like priests of the Levitical race, are associated with him in the sacerdotal office, and that they should be resorted to in all ecclesiastical matters. It is not for the clergy of Prague to judge whether or not the excommunication of Huss is just or unjust: it ought to consider it as just, since it has been fulminated by apostolical authority.'

This decree, though approved by the king, was powerless. The Hussites resisted it, and the evangelical_clergy refuted the arguments of the Romish clergy. They referred to the pacificatory edict of the nobles and the royal council, which was signed by archbishop Sbinko, and stated that that primate had found in Huss neither error nor heresy. The king had been requested to order a notice in every city, that John Huss was ready, publicly, to give reasons for his faith. If no one should appear to convince him of heresy, then the kingdom must be cleared of his accusers, and they should be sent to Rome, to receive the wages due for their calumnies. The Hussite party said, that Jesus Christ alone, and not the pope, is the head of the church, and all the faithful are the members. They added, that the ecclesiastics of Prague had condemned, without sufficient authority, the forty-five articles of Wickliffe; that the church of Rome could not herself be admitted to pass sentence upon this matter, because at present there was no certainty as to where the church could be found, for the authority in which three popes contested. Those three popes, they repeated, contradict themselves, when they blame us for our attachment to Holy Scripture, and allege this very Scripture against us! They are punishable for falsehood, because they falsify Scripture and the canons, saying that the pope is to be obeyed in all things, while it is evident that there have been several heretical popes. In short, it is absurd to pretend that the orders of the court of Rome are to be put in force against John Huss, and to allege as a reason, that the clergy of Prague have always submitted to its authority. "It would follow from hence, that we should be heathens because our fathers were so or even that we must obey the devil, because our first parents did so!"