Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/173

 His friends in Prague he exhorted to remember that Christ came to separate man and man and it was predicted that many false prophets should arise and seduce men. But they should also remember the promise that not a hair of their heads shall perish and remain true to the Word of Christ. “What, after all, do we lose if for his cause we suffer loss of goods, friends, the honors of this world, and our wretched life itself? Certainly, at last, we shall be delivered from the misery of this present world and, having received a hundredfold more goods and friends and more perfect joy, death shall not deprive us of these things. For whoso dies for Christ, he conquers. He is delivered from all misery and attains that eternal joy unto which the Saviour deigns to bring us all.” He begged his correspondents to offer up their prayers for those who were preaching the Word of God with grace, and for himself that he might be permitted yet more abundantly to preach and write against the malice of antichrist. No excommunication but God’s excommunication can do injury. May the most excellent Bishop give to us all the benediction, saying: “Come, ye blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” Although he was not yet shut up in prison, yet was he prepared, if called upon, so he wrote, to die for Christ’s sake.

Five of the letters written during the exile period were addressed to his friend Christian of Prachaticz, rector of the university, and abound in the consolations offered in the Scriptures to those who are oppressed for righteousness’ sake. “I want,” Huss wrote, “to live godly, and it behooves me to suffer in the name of Christ and thus to imitate Christ in his trials.” He exhorts Prachaticz and his colleagues to be prepared for the great conflict which he expected to follow the preliminary skirmishes which were going on with antichrist. With reference to the action of the theological faculty, he wrote: “So Christ our Lord help me. I would not heed its