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John Huss and Jerome, who, by decree of the council of Constance, were committed to the flames for heresy; and Wishart, in England, whose end was similar, together with such as co-operated with them and succeeded them in the same holy warfare, are to be viewed as answering to the mystic angel.
The assembled clergy may be divided roughly into two parties, the reformers, and the conservative or ultramontane party. The reformers were not in favor of any radical change in the Church. They were, if anything, more vehemently opposed than their antagonists to the doctrines of Wycliffe and Huss. Such reform as they desired was aristocratic rather than democratic.
The attack on the omnipotence of Rome was like a sunrise amid the darkness of the night, only so long as it was made by the colossal figures of a Huss, a Calvin, or a Luther. Yet when the mass joined in the procession against the Catholic monster, it was no less cruel, no less bloodthirsty than its enemy. Woe to the heretics, to the minority, who would not bow to its dicta.
They summoned Huss to appear before them, and in spite of his protest that he was only answerable to the whole council, they committed him to prison. The news that his safe-conduct had been so insultingly disregarded reached Sigismund as he was starting for Constance after the coronation ceremony at Aachen. He arrived on Christmas Day, and at once demanded that Huss should be released.
The attacks upon Church abuses redoubled in boldness, as its authority declined. Towards the end of the fourteenth century, the doctrines of Wicklif had made great progress in the land. Early in the fifteenth, the executions of Huss and Jerome of Prague, produce the Bohemian rebellion. The Pope proclaims a crusade against the Hussites.
But the emperor interfered, and Huss appeared before them, ready to retract whatever was contrary to Scripture: but whenever he attempted to plead, a savage outcry arose around, till the voice of truth was drowned in the din.
Huss was condemned to the stake; and his disciple, Jerome of Prague, having retracted his anti-Catholic doctrines, and then relapsed, shared his fate a year afterwards."
The central and prominent figure in the movement is Luther; but the way was prepared for him by a host of illustrious men, in different countries, by Savonarola in Italy, by Huss and Jerome in Bohemia, by Erasmus in Holland, by Wyclif in England, and by sundry others, who detested the corruptions they ridiculed and lamented, but could not remove. How flagrant those evils! Who can deny them?
Luther's friends trembled lest he should share the fate of Huss; his enemies trembled lest he should escape it; and both, in their several ways, tried to keep him back.
The council did not consider it its business to decide whether Huss was right or wrong, but simply whether his doctrines, which they gathered from his books, were in accordance with the traditional views of the Church. Finally, the council condemned Huss as a convicted and impenitent heretic. On July 6, 1415, he was taken out before the gates of the city and given one more chance to retract.
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