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 brethren, and sent out innumerable armies for our destruction, God Himself fought for us and drove the enemies from our frontier." The letter concluded with an expression of hope that the Eastern Church would continue to show favour and love to Bohemia. The fall of Constantinople in the following year (1453) put an end to these negotiations, which may well be thought to have attracted too little attention in our days.

The activity of theological speculation did not decrease in Bohemia with the end of the Hussite wars. With the possible exception of England at the time of the Commonwealth, there never was a country where theology possessed the all-absorbing interest that we notice in Bohemia at this period. Numerous small sects sprang up which had mostly only an ephemeral existence, and require no notice. The foundation of the Church of the Bohemian Brethren, or Moravians, which had already been alluded to, is an exception. This sect, which came into existence about this time, gradually increased in importance, and at a later period—the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century—played a not inconsiderable part in Bohemian history. The intellectual originator of the "Unity" of the Bohemian Brethren, though he founded no sect, was a layman of the name of Peter Chelčicky, as to whom even the laborious researches of recent years have yielded us little information. The year of his birth was probably some time before the beginning of the fifteenth century. As it is likely that his latest writings are not of earlier date than the year 1443, he must have lived through the whole stirring period of the Hussite wars. The horrors of that time may have confirmed him in his most original doctrine, the one most completely opposed to the spirit of his age—that is, his belief in the absolute and unconditional sinfulness of bloodshed. He shared with most reformers of that period the desire to return to the primitive Church,