Page:A history of Bohemian literature.pdf/355

338 discord reigned among them, and therefore mutual distrust. One section, which conformed to the Church of Rome, assumed the name of Catholics or communicants in one kind. The other section, which loved to worship and serve God according to the definitions and rules of the Holy Scripture, and not according to the fancies of men, are called communicants under both kinds (Utraquists), or Evangelicals or Hussites, from the name of their teacher, that true martyr for Christ, John Hus, or 'of Husinec,' who in his time re-established pure doctrine in the Bohemian land, and from the darkness of Papacy raised it to light. . . . Many years ago regulations, which the Bohemians obtained by the bravery with which they defended God's truth, stipulated that nobody who did not receive the flesh and blood of our Lord Christ in both kinds should occupy the offices of the state and of the towns. . . . Thus almost all men acknowledged the salutary doctrine that man is redeemed by his faith in Christ and through His holy merit, and that he thus obtains eternal salvation."

But afterwards Skála says: "The Jesuits endeavoured, with all their might, to disseminate among imprudent young men, whose confidence they obtained by flattery, not only the teaching of the Roman school, but also hatred against the National Church and contempt for the glorious rights, regulations, and constitutions of the land; and thus they strove to form them according to their own will; but yet more they approached with flattery the highest officials and judges of the land also, as well as some of the greatest lords; and then, when they had inspired them with their own Jesuitical spirit, then, as if they had been soulless bodies, possessing neither reason nor common-sense, they ruled them ac-