Page:Letters of John Huss Written During His Exile and Imprisonment.djvu/194

 deign to bestow on my Father eternal life, for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ!

Reverend Father, I am most grateful for your benevolent and paternal interest. I dare not submit myself to the Council in the limits that you trace out to me; whether because I should be obliged to condemn many truths that they term fraudulent; or because I should be obliged to perjure myself by abjuring and confessing that I had held errors, by which I have greatly scandalized the people of God, who have heard me say the contrary in my preaching.

If, then, in the Book of the Maccabees, it is written of Eleazar, a man of the ancient law, that he refused to lie, by confessing that he had eaten meats prohibited by the ancient law, for fear of acting thus against God, and leaving a bad example to posterity; how should I, a priest of the new law, although unworthy, through the terror of pain of a short duration, consent gravely to transgress the law of God, by keeping back from the truth, by perjuring myself, and, lastly, by offending my neighbour?

Truly, it is more advantageous to die than to fall into the hands of God by flying from a momentary evil, and perhaps afterwards to fall into the fire, and into eternal

4em