Page:Letters of John Huss Written During His Exile and Imprisonment.djvu/191

 me, to give me for confessor either him or another. And I said, “Paletz is my principal adversary; I wish to confess to him; or, at least, give me in his stead a man qualified to hear me: I conjure you to do so in the name of the Lord.” This last desire was accorded: I confessed to a monk, who piously and most patiently listened to me; he gave me absolution, and counselled me, but did not enjoin me, to follow the advice of others.

Paletz came: he wept with me when I besought him to pardon me for having uttered before him some offensive words, and especially for having called him a forger of writings. And as I reminded him that, in a public audience, when he heard me deny the articles cited by the witnesses, he rose up and cried: “This man does not believe in God,”—he denied it, but truly he said it, and perhaps you heard him do so. I reminded him, in what manner he said to me in prison, in presence of the Commissioners, “Since the birth of Christ, no heretic has written more dangerously than Wycliffe and thou.” He also insisted, that all those who have read my sermons are infected with the error concerning the sacrament of the altar. He has now denied it, adding, “I did not say all, but a great number.” And yet it is certain that he said it. And when I took him up by saying, “Oh! Master Paletz, how much you wrong me in accusing my auditory of heresy!” he did not reply anything, and he exhorted me, like the others, always repeating, that