Page:Maria Felicia.pdf/179

 he dealt so with her because she opposed his selfish, ambitious plans? Who will think that she deserved praise for her behavior rather than punishment? As with her, so it was with a little band of people who, disgusted with the avarice and corruption of this world, turned away from the rest of the people and established a settlement by themselves, where they served God according to their belief. ‘The Bohemian-Moravian Union of Brethren and Sisters,’ they called their society. Like a sacred ark it floated above the filth and immorality of those times. In it were saved and preserved for us stores of invaluable principles, which otherwise would have been drowned in the filthy, bloody waves of immorality. The Brethren watched over them like heroic guardians, being ever ready to lay down their lives rather than to give up their sacred doctrines. And for that very noble devotion, for that intense virtue, and not because they had transgressed, they were hated, persecuted and burned. By their humbleness they excited the proud against themselves, by