Page:John Huss by Hastings Rashdall (1879).pdf/27

 On each occasion he debated the question of conscience presented to him with singular simplicity. He was willing to die; but his imagination was not excited by the prospect of the martyr’s crown. Yet when the Imperial safe-conduct was offered him, it was clearly his duty to go: although from the fact that he left a letter behind him with directions that it should not be opened till the news of his death was received, it is clear that he was far from placing implicit confidence in the protection which was promised him.

For his own part, there was nothing which Huss desired more than an opportunity of clearing himself before such an assembly from accusations which he believed to be founded on nothing but misrepresentation. Innocent of many of the heresies laid to his charge, he imagined that all the opinions which he really held were conformable to the doctrine of the Church. He was aware that worldly men had denied the evangelical truths which he preached; and he was aware that, in these latter days, worldly men were predominant in the Church. But the Sacerdotalism which he denounced appeared to him so entirely opposed to those truths, that he could not understand how any spiritually-minded man could seriously believe in the teaching of Christ and in the teaching of the indulgence-hawkers also. He had, in short, no conception of the extent to which Sacerdotalism had imposed upon the minds of good and great men. And hence, although he was far from expecting a triumph at Constance, he did not despair of an acquittal. He hoped that at all events he should find some in that assembly who had not bowed the knee to Baal: he was confident that if he were only allowed an opportunity of preaching before the Council, a minority at least of its members would come over to his side. Even after his imprisonment at Constance, these hopes were never entirely laid aside until the final refusal of the Council to grant him such a hearing as he desired.

Before taking his departure for Constance, Huss appeared once more in Prague. Even those who from their position would have seemed the least likely to favour one accused of heresy, appear to have recognised that the character of the nation was to some extent involved in the character of John Huss: they felt that he was being betrayed by malicious enemies into the hands of foreigners who hated their nation. He was, indeed, refused admittance to the Synod then sitting: but the Synod which had opposed him so strenuously in former years, does not now seem to have taken any prominent part against him. The new Archbishop, Conrad of Vechta, who had been appointed to the see on account of his supposed zeal for orthodoxy, gave Huss a letter in which he stated that he had nothing to allege against him, but the fact of his excommunication. The “Inquisitor of heretical