Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/313

 sent Huss back to Bohemia. It was, as a Protestant historian, Karl Müller, has said, simply a question of power between Sigismund and the council as to whether Sigismund was to keep his promise or not. The king put aside the promises which he had made to induce Huss to go to Constance.

Atrocious as the principle is that faith is not to be kept with a heretic, it was the principle upon which Sigismund and the council acted and the council defined. The Spanish king, Ferdinand, knew well the methods of the papal inquisition when he stated that it is not breaking faith to break faith with a man who breaks his faith with God—non est frangere fidem ei qui Deo fidem frangit.

Considering the centuries which have elapsed since 1415, we may distinctly trace Huss’s influence in the history of the Protestant Reformation. The great statue at Worms, designed to commemorate the Reformation, rightly gives places to Wyclif, Huss and Savonarola as forerunners of that religious movement. By Wyclif, Luther was not directly influenced. The Reformer made no reference to Wyclif’s writings. Savonarola influenced him to some extent and Luther edited the Meditations on the XXXII and LI Psalms which Savonarola prepared in prison. He knew, he said, that