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First in rank and first in power came the Utraquists or Calixtines.2 For some reason these men laid all the stress on a doctrine taught by Hus in his later years. As he lay in his gloomy dungeon near Constance, he had written letters contending that laymen should be permitted to take the wine at the Communion. For this doctrine the Utraquists now fought tooth and nail.
Accordingly, while the Calixtines endeavoured to soothe and conciliate, the Taborites rushed to arms; and under Ziska, their renowned leader, achieved triumphs such as attend only on the exertions of men whose actuating principle is a strong religious fanaticism. The career of Ziska, his ferocity and his zeal, are well known.
When at the Council of Basel an agreement was patched up with the Calixtines on the footing which I have just named, 1433, a few further promises being thrown in which might mean anything and, as the issue proved, did mean nothing, the Taborites would not listen to the compromise.
Their ceremonies, more offensively superstitious than those of Rome herself, gave extreme umbrage to the Hussites, and the matter which they had been commissioned to effect, fell to the ground. It was at this juncture that the final separation between the Taborites and the Calixtines took place. The former renounced all connexion with Rome, and for awhile laid aside their very priesthood.
John of Rokysan, one of the most popular among the Hussite divines, attended there to plead the cause of his party, and for a space of nearly two months, the four points of which I have spoken as claimed by the Calixtines, were debated. But for the present, no results ensued. The papists would yield nothing, and John and his brother delegates returned home.
The Confession of faith of the Calixtines and Taborites, signed at the Synod of Cuttenburgh in 1541; The Confession of the faith of the Bohemians, inserted in the "Harmony of Confessions," published at Cambridge in 1680. The Consent of faith at Sendomer. VIII. The symbolic book of the ARMINIANS, is The Declaration of the Remonstrants, drawn up by Episcopius, and signed in 1622.
From the first dawn of the Reformation in Bohemia, there were among the Reformers two parties, which came, in course of time, to be respectively known as the Calixtines and the Taborites.
None succeeded: One description of persons, who engaged in this design, was denominated Syncretists, or Calixtines, from George Calixtus their leader: the other, from their calling men from controversy to holiness of life, received the appellation of Pietists: A third party, perhaps we may style them, the Ultra-orthodox, more hostile to the former than to the latter arose in opposition to both, and accused them of sacrificing the doctrines of faith to a mistaken zeal for union and sanctity.
Whether the Church of Rome made the concessions to the Calixtines which she did, with the intention of retracting them at the first opportunity, it is impossible to say.
The better to conciliate both the pope and the emperor, he had dealt harshly with the Taborites, who, rejecting the terms offered them, had withstood and sustained a defeat from the Calixtines. He found, however, that after the council had decided in his favour, his election to the See of Prague was made by the pope contingent on his renunciation of the privileges just granted to Bohemia.
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