Page:Adventures of Baron Wenceslas Wratislaw of Mitrowitz (1862).djvu/37

 priests, and that whether the number attending such meetings were large or small; and that transgressors of this law were arrested, punished, and imprisoned; but meetings for evil purposes, whether large or small, were fully permitted.’

“After considerable search and inquiry abroad to find an ecclesiastical constitution to their mind, and after spending considerable time in fasting and prayer to ascertain whether it was God’s will that they should proceed, the brethren at length resolved utterly to renounce the power and authority of the Pope and his hierarchy, and to introduce amongst themselves an order after the constitution of the primitive Church.’ In the midst of the wars of the year 1467, on a day which is still unknown, the principal members of the brotherhood in Bohemia and Moravia met, to the number of seventy persons, in the village of Lhatka, not far from Reichenau, at the house of a householder named Duchek, who had not the least knowledge of what was about to happen. After many prayers, under the direction of Michael, the parish priest of Lenkenberg, nine men in the company, who were considered the most worthy, were chosen, and twelve lots prepared, nine of which were blank, and three signed with the word ‘gest,’ ‘it is.’ A boy named Procop, who knew nothing whatever about what was going on, distributed the lots among the nine men, to the share of three of whom, Mathias of Kunwald, Toma of Przelaucz, and Elias Müller of Chrzenkow, fell those marked with “gest.’ These men were then presented to a priest in Romish orders, and one of the Waldenses, who occupied the position of chief elder among his co-religionists, in order to be confirmed by imposition of hands after the order of the primitive Church, and conformably to Apostolic directions. Next came the confirmation itself in the case of all three, and, in that of one of the three, assumption of the first rank in the authority