Page:Gregor The story of Bohemia.pdf/223

 guished men, whose religious views were far ahead of their times. And yet, at this time, no one was so far advanced in intellectual development as to advocate freedom of religious opinion. All believed it right to burn heretics. However beloved Hus had been, and however his death had been mourned, the people never complained that the Council of Constance had no right to burn him if he were a heretic, but because they burned him having failed to prove his heresy. The rock upon which Hus was wrecked was the dogma of the infallibility of the Pope and Church. And yet the followers of Hus, each in his own person, claimed this very infallibility. They claimed the right of private interpretation of Scripture, and the conclusion they reached seemed to them the only true one; and they were as ready to charge with heresy all who differed from them, as the Church was ready to persecute them for disagreeing with her teachings.

At this time the two great occupations of the Bohemian people were war and the study of religious doctrines; and as each one claimed the right to interpret the Scripture in his own way, there were taught by the different priests all the creeds of the modern Protestant Churches. The priests that were the leaders, were the monk John Zelivsky, Master Jacobek of Meis, Master John of Pribram, and Peter Payne the Englishman, who usually went by the name of Master English. Payne, on account of his zeal for the teachings of Wycliffe, had been expelled from Oxford, but had received a warm welcome at Prague, being made one of the masters of the university. At first he sided with the Utraquists; but later he became a most zealous Taborite. What varied opinions were held in re-