Page:The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe Volume 3.djvu/530



If my letter be not yet sent to Bohemia, keep it and send it not, for hurt may come thereof, &c.

Item, If the king do ask, who ought to be my judge, since that the council neither did call me, nor did cite me, neither was I ever accused before the council, and yet the council hath imprisoned me, and hath appointed their proctor against me.

Item, I desire you, right noble and gracious lord John! if audience shall be given me, that the king will be there present himself, and that I may have a place appointed near unto him, that he may hear me well, and understand what I say; and that you also, with the lord Henry, and with lord Wincelaus and other nobles, if you may, will be present, and hear what the Lord Jesus Christ, my procurator and advocate, and most gracious judge, will put in my mouth to speak; that whether I live or die, you may be true and upright witnesses with me, lest lying lips shall say hereafter that I swerved away from the truth which I have preached.

Item, Know you that, before witnesses and notaries in prison, I desire the commissioners, that they would depute unto me a proctor and an advocate, who promised so to do, and afterwards would not perform it. Wherefore I have committed myself to the Lord Jesus Christ, that he will be my procurator and advocate, and judge of my cause.

Item, Know you, that they have, as I suppose, no other quarrel against me, but only this, that I stood against the pope's bull, which pope John sent down to Bohemia, to sanctify war with the sign of the cross and full remission of sins to all those who would take the holy cross, to fight for the patrimony of the Romish church against Ladislaus, king of Naples; and they have mine own writing which was read against me, and I do acknowledge it to be mine. Secondly, they have also against me, that I have continued so long in excommunication, and yet did take upon me to minister in the church, and say mass. Thirdly they have against me, because I did appeal from the pope to Christ. For they read my appeal before me, which with a willing mind, smiling, I confessed before them all to be mine. Fourthly, because I left a certain letter behind me, which was read in the church of Bethlehem, which letter my adversaries have very evil-favouredly translated, and sinisterly expounded, in which I did write that I went out with a safe-conduct. Whereunto you yourselves can say and bear me record, that I, in my going out, had no safe-conduct of the pope, neither yet did I know whether you should go out with me, when I wrote that letter.

Item, If audience may be given to me, and that after the same audience the king would suffer me not to be returned again into prison, but that I may have your counsels and those of others my friends; and, if it please God, that I may say something to my sovereign lord the king, for the behalf of Christianity, and for his own profit, &c.

John Huss, in hope, the servant of God, to all the faithful in Bohemia who love the Lord, greeting through the grace of God. It cometh in my mind, wherein I must needs admonish you, who be the faithful and beloved of the Lord, how that the council of Constance, being full of pride, avarice, and all council abomination, hath condemned my books, written in the Bohemian tongue, for heretical, which books they never saw, nor ever heard them read. And if they which had heard them, yet they could not understand the same, being some Italians, some Frenchmen, some Britons, some Spaniards, Germans, with other people of other nations besides; unless, peradventure, John, bishop of Litomysl, understood them, who was present in that council, and certain other Bohemians, and priests, who are against me, and labour all they may, how to deprave both the