Page:Letters of John Huss Written During His Exile and Imprisonment.djvu/138

 me, I cannot fully express to you how grateful I feel for all the constancy and charitable kindness that you have shewn to me a poor sinner, but a servant in the hope of our Lord Jesus Christ. I trust the Divine Jesus, our Creator, Redeemer, and Saviour, will reward you in the present life, and give himself unto you, as the most precious gift in the life to come. I exhort you, therefore, by his mercy, to bind yourselves strongly to his law and holy commandments.

Noble Lord Wenceslaus, in taking a spouse, live purely in marriage, and renounce the vanities of the age; and you, Lord John of Chlum, you who already serve no longer the kings of the earth, dwell with your wife and your children under the yoke of the Lord.

You behold how the wheel of the vanities of the world turns round, raising one man and depressing another, but giving to all whom it raises a fleeting joy; after which comes the eternal punishment in fire and darkness.

You know of what description are these spiritual princes who call themselves the true vicars of Christ and his Apostles; who proclaim themselves the Holy Church, and the very Sacred Council that is infallible; and which, nevertheless, transgressed in adoring John XXIII., and in calling him most holy, when they knew him to be a manslayer, impure, a simonist, and a heretic, as they have declared him to be in the sentence which condemns him. Behold how they have struck off the head of the