Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/38

 Vitek and Litold, and that monks, married men, and people of all sorts were admitted there.”

The impression produced on pious men by such conduct, which appeared to them not only as a sin and scandal but also as a sacrilege, cannot be exaggerated. Though the reading of Scripture was discouraged, the Bible was in the hands of many pious men. They felt certain that so sinful a world would perish shortly. Thence sprang the constant reference to the appearance of Antichrist, with which we meet not only in the writings of Hus, but also in those of his forerunners and successors.

There were thus many reasons why the general opposition to papacy caused by the schism and the coarse and even blasphemous polemics which accompanied it was stronger in Bohemia than elsewhere, and had in that country more permanent and more weighty results.