Page:Letters of John Huss Written During His Exile and Imprisonment.djvu/70

 were ignorant that its very essence and characteristic consisted in this, that the more attempts were made to dim its lustre, the more it shone brightly forth—the greater the endeavour to suppress it, the more it soared aloft.

Pontiffs and priests, the scribes and Pharisees, Herod and Pilate, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, formerly condemned the Truth; they crucified it and buried it; but it rose from the tomb and conquered them all, sending forth in its stead twelve preachers of the Word.

This same Truth, instead of acting feebly and inefficiently, has sent to Prague mighty eagles, surpassing all other birds, by their piercing sight, and which, by the grace of God, fly aloft in the air, and win over others to Jesus Christ, who will strengthen all those who are faithful to Him. He has said— “I will be always with you, even unto the end of the world.” If, then, God, the most powerful and just of defenders, is with us, what evil work can prevail against us? What fear, what death, can separate us from Him? In what shall we be the worse, if, for His sake, we were to lose our friends, the honours of the world, or even our miserable life itself? We shall, at last, be delivered from our load of misery; we shall receive a hundredfold riches infinitely more precious, friends more dear, delight more perfect, of which death cannot despoil us; for he who dies for Christ will surely partake the triumph: he is freed from all