Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/310

 promise was a pledge to protect Huss on the way to Constance and back—libere ut Constantiam veniens e converso redire ad Bohæmiam.

(4) Henry Lefl and others, so Huss asserts, assured him that the king had pledged himself for Huss’s safe return to Prague.

(5) During the period of his imprisonment, Huss declared that Sigismund had acted treacherously and broken his word, that he ought not to put the sentence of Constance into execution and ought at least to have sent him back to Bohemia. Christ deceived no man. His safe-conduct could be relied on.

(6) There were some at Constance-how many we do not know—who believed that Sigismund had broken his promise. This is evident from the action taken in the council, September 23, 1415, to justify Sigismund’s conduct.

(7) This was the view taken by Huss’s followers after his death, and in 1432 the Bohemian delegates to the council of Basel, having an eye to Huss’s fate and the alleged deception passed on him, demanded a distinct insertion of a clause pledging them safe return. One hundred and six years after Huss’s death, Luther declared faith had been broken with Huss, and he, being of the same mind, also demanded an express stipulation from the emperor, Charles V, for his safe return from Worms. He said that even a promise of safe-conduct given to the devil must be kept, much more, then, a promise to a heretic.

(8) As for Sigismund’s own understanding of his promise of safe-conduct, we have no statement written by him before the execution of the death sentence or after it on which we can base a definite opinion except the letter of the safe-conduct, which is his one distinct statement. All that we know besides is that Sigismund indignantly resisted Huss’s arrest