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"I know you are right," said he, "but if I joined your ranks I should be reviled on every hand."7 But these listeners were not to be cowed. The more they studied Peter's writings, the more they lost faith in Rockycana. As Rockycana refused to lead them, they left his church in a body, and found a braver leader among themselves.
For a while the Utraquist priests themselves, like Rockycana of yore, thundered in a hundred pulpits against the Church of Rome; and Luther, taking the keenest interest in the growing movement, wrote a letter to the Bohemian Diet, and urged the ecclesiastical leaders in Prague to break the last fetters that bound them to Rome.
His chief works were his Net of Faith, his Reply to Nicholas of Pilgram, his Reply to Rockycana, his Image of the Beast, his theological treatise On the Body of Christ, his tract The Foundation of Worldly Laws, his devotional commentary, Exposition of the Passion according to St. John, and, last, though not least, his volume of discourses on the Gospel lessons for the year, entitled Postillia.
As they wished here to appeal to all classes, they published hymns both ancient and modern, and tunes both grave and gay. Among the hymn-writers were John Hus, Rockycana, Luke of Prague, Augusta, and Martin Luther; and among the tunes were Gregorian Chants and popular rondels of the day. The hymns and tunes were published in one volume.
His conscience was stricken, his heart bled, and, wringing his hands in agony, he moaned: "Oh, my Gregory, my Gregory, would I were where thou art." When Gregory recovered, Rockycana pleaded for him, and the King allowed the good old Patriarch to return in peace to Kunwald. He issued an order that all his subjects were to join either the Utraquist or the Roman Catholic Church.
Gregory the Patriarch laid the scheme before his uncle Rockycana; Rockycana, who sympathized with their views and wished to help them, brought the matter before King George; the King, who owned the estate, gave his gracious permission; and Gregory and his faithful friends wended their way to Kunwald, and there began to form the first settlement of the Church of the Brethren.
Again and again they appealed to Rockycana to be their head, to act up to his words, and to lead them out to the promised land. The great orator hemmed and hawed, put them off with excuses, and told them, after the manner of cowards, that they were too hasty and reckless.
"Where," he asked, in his Reply to Rockycana, "has God recalled His commands, 'Thou shalt not kill, 'Thou shalt not steal, 'Thou shalt not take thy neighbour's goods'? If God has not repealed these commands, they ought still to be obeyed to-day in Prague and Tabor.
As soldiers desert a cowardly general and rally round the standard of a brave one, so these listeners in the old Thein Church fell away from halting Rockycana, and rallied round Gregory the Patriarch.
No wonder they cried in their simple zeal: "Behold, a second John Hus has arisen." But John Rockycana was no second John Hus. For all his fire in the pulpit, he was only a craven at heart. "If a true Christian," said he to a friend, "were to turn up now in Prague, he would be gaped at like a stag with golden horns." But he was not a stag with golden horns himself.
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