Page:The letters of John Hus.djvu/303

 gospel I have spread abroad, was with me and is still; yea, and will be, I trust, to life’s end, and will keep me in His grace unto death. I write this on Wednesday after the Feast of St. John Baptist in prison, bound in chains and awaiting death. Yet by virtue of God’s hidden counsels I dare not say this in my last letter; for even now Almighty God can set me free.

The reference in the to Jerome, and Hus’s comparison of his own weakness with Jerome’s strength, is interesting for many reasons. As often happens, the apparently stronger man proved the weaker. For Jerome lacked the moral conviction which made Hus a martyr. The strain of his sickness and imprisonment told also fatally upon the restless knight-errant. He grew fitful—‘now wishful to stand fast in his obstinacy, now desirous to be wholly convicted’—as we learn from an anonymous writer present at Constance (Doc. 596). The result was that on September 11 he read a paper before the Council, recanting his errors, and adding his ‘approval of the condemnation of both Wyclif and Hus.’ Fortunately Hus was not spared to receive this stab from his old friend.

The after career of Jerome must be briefly told. He retracted his recantation, and after a defence of his creed before the Council which charmed by its eloquence the fastidious taste of Poggio Bracciolini, was condemned and burnt (May 30, 1416). So in spite of lapse, Jerome and Hus were again one; in their death they were not divided (see Age of Hus, pp. 333–44).

God be with you! I had many reasons for suspecting that I was to die on the morrow after sending you my last letter. But I hear that my death is put off, so I am writing to you once more, kind and faithful friends in God, to assure you of my gratitude as long as I have opportunity. I always find it a