Page:History of the Thirty Years' War - Gindely - Volume 1.djvu/87

 commands of the imperial letter. Its purpose was to separate the royal cities from the nobility, so that when the Protestant Diet should reassemble, it would at least have no representatives from the burghers. This plan so far succeeded that some of the cities, with Prague at their head, expressed themselves in terms friendly to the government.

Intoxicated with the result in the capital, the government would now venture an attempt to divide the Protestant clergy, and induce a part of them to return to the Utraquism, which had been abolished in 1609. The Utraquists had, in a body, in 1609, accepted the Bohemian Confession; this was evidently not done, either on the side of the clergy or the laity, with a uniform zeal; in both classes were numerous persons who did not object to the continuance of the old Utraquism. The generation of those who were indifferent, or less favorable to the innovations, had not yet died out, and the skilful use of influence might bring many of these to renounce the Bohemian Confession and unfurl anew the old banner of the Utraquists, honored in history, and, as a memorial of Huss, still ever sacred in the eyes of the multitude.

A convenient pretext for the introduction of such a split offered itself in the ordinance of worship, which had been in force since the year 160g9. In the minds of those who had once been Utraquists there existed an attachment to the solemn ceremonies of the Catholic Church, and the greater simplicity of the worship since 1609 offended old prejudices and memories. In order to make use of this state of the public mind to destroy Protestantism, Michna, the clerk of the royal chancery, invited a number of the clergy, whose firmness he supposed to be wavering, and whose predilections for the existing rela-