Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/181

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The founder of the German Reformation has written somewhere that man could change but that only God could better. But oddly Luther – the son of a peasant – failed to explain why God worked so exclusively on the side of the ruling classes. Chelc̄icky̍ – the son of a nobleman, if the Za̍horka theory proves correct – insisted that the devil rather preferred working with the ruling noblemen and churchmen!

The nobility and the priesthood have "alienated the people from God." Naturally, Chelčicky did not accept Wyclif's division of men into three estates (noblemen, priests, and the working people). Such division, said, he, amounts to an enforced grouping of men into the following professions:

Chap.LXXIX, p.237*.

Chaps. XXX, XXVIII,.

Chap. XXX, p.140*.