Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/286

 voke so real an interest. The Catholic historian and reader cannot pass Huss by any more than the Protestant. To the Protestant world his sufferings and death stand for an evangelical preacher and scholar who, for the sake of conscience, was willing to suffer and to die a violent death.

It is a striking fact that no charges were brought against Huss touching his moral character during his life in the city of Prague, or at Constance during his trial nor yet after his death. In this regard his memory is in marked contrast to the memories of three of the greater Reformers. Charges were brought during his life against Calvin by his enemies, touching the course of his youth, which are false. Against John Knox, after his death, false charges were also brought, which Catholic historians now pronounce inventions. But against Luther’s purity of life the bitterest attacks are still being made by Catholic controversialists like Denifle and Grisar. In the absence of any trustworthy testimonies by contemporaries, these writers draw incriminating conclusions from Luther’s words, not allowing for the fact that his language was often exaggerated and that those who knew him best testified to the purity of his life. It was otherwise with Huss. No charge against his moral conduct was ever made by his enemies, and those who knew him from day to day bore strong testimony to his exemplary character.

The charges against Huss were that he had disobeyed the discipline of the church and rejected sundry of its doctrinal tenets. He himself died assured of his orthodoxy. “Be confident,” to quote again what he wrote to the university of Prague the week before his death, “I have not revoked nor abjured a single article. I refuse to renounce unless what the council charged against me shall be proved false from Scripture.” In the same communication he stated that with his whole heart he professed every article required to be believed. For two years he had looked forward to the possibility of a judicial death, and from the earliest period of