is only founded on the wickedness of humanity, and that the ideal state should be ruled by Christ alone, did not escape Chelčicky. In the last chapter of the first part of the "Net" he writes: "From these things (i.e. statements) some one might say that I insult the (worldly) power. Let him say nothing of the sort, though he may wish (to do so); for I do not insult it (i.e. power), but honour it, as is seemly, and I say that it is good when God uses it well, and through it carries out what He considers good. But the evil which men do and wish to carry out through it (worldly power), that I blame before the people. . . . God is Lord of the world, and could rule and restrain it without that power if He wished to do so; therefore if we maintain that He wishes to rule the world by means of temporal authority, and that those men rule the world as officials of the Lord God, then those who have power over the world can restrain and command it easily if they ordain that which they see is good for the world." It is evident that this passage is evasive, and contains no answer to the questions to which the former quotation naturally gives rise.
The second part of the Net of Faith has as a second heading the words, "Of the bands, and of each of them separately;" but it must not be confused with Chelčicky's lost work, Of the Bands in Bohemia. Chelčicky deals first, and deals very severely, with the "band" of the nobles. His animosity against those who bear arms is sometimes very quaintly expressed. He writes: "All the value of noble birth is founded on an unjust invention of the heathens, who obtained coats of arms from emperors or kings in reward of some deed of prowess. And some buy these coats of
