Page:The Net of Faith.pdf/447

119* The poison of worldly wisdom is best revealed in that it leaves people wounded and turned away from God, hateful and scheming how to rise up against truth. They whose veins are filled with the earthly poison consider truth their worst enemy Yea, when the Emperor joined Christian faith with pagan lordship he has planted a seed which grew and bore multitudes of transgressors, who prospered and produced such a terrible number of evils that not even the devil himself could invent them all. All these wicked and pious hordes, coated with a veneer of specious holiness have so discredited faith that very few are willing to follow it. They turned the rest of the crowd to paganism.

Only that can sprout and grow which has been planted. The Emperor has been planted with his authority into the Christian soil, he grew strongly and having grown, blossomed and produced seed which, planted, multiplied and spread paganism everywhere with its authority, laws, and administration. For, it being in the nature of paganism to deny all faith and all the gospel of

These persecuted remnants finally gathered around the person of Peter Waldo who simply "corrected their order" (i.e. he did not found it!); he also studied the Scripture and inspired them to action "in accordance with the way of poverty." Hence the origin of the Waldensians. By this legend the Waldensians wanted to justify their separation from the Church of Rome and their continuity as true descendants of the original "pure" Church. Chelcicky is much closer to this Waldensian interpretation of the Donation than to Wyclif's; on it he bases his logic of separation of "Christ" and "Caesar." Rudolf Holinka,, Prague, Melantrich, 1940, p.30f.