learning, that the Antichristian spirit of all those ravens did not possess sufficient learning to extinguish in him the true faith. . . . What the principal Antichrist's popes, cardinals, bishops, abbots, the bands of monks and parsons, could not obtain for their own advantage, and for the benefit of their dishonest cause, adverse to Christ, that the masters of colleges have succeeded in obtaining. Thus these college-men, as if they grieved for their father Antichrist, and for the shame that befell him when truth was proclaimed, have employed all their learning at two councils, which lasted several years, one at Constance and the other at Basel, for the purpose of skilfully laying snares against the truth; and for this have they sought the aid of worldly power, that they might carry through that which their learning had discovered, and on which they had deliberated, and thus prove the truth of their teaching, and they had already won over to their side[1] the entire might of the empire, so that having pronounced the truth heretical and condemned it, they might destroy it by means of the imperial power. But God, who observes the thoughts and counsels of the wicked, did not allow them to obtain that which in their deliberations they had aimed at, and for which they had employed their learning."
I will give a last quotation from the Net of Faith, illustrating Chelčicky's views as to the manner in which the Church first became possessed of worldly goods. It will be noticed how naïvely he here refers to the grievances of the Bohemian peasants of his time, and without
- ↑ In this passage Chelčicky's style, as is frequently the case, is rather involved. His meaning is that, in distinction from all other ecclesiastics, the doctors of theology had been successful in obtaining the aid of the temporal power for the purpose of suppressing the views which they had declared heretical.
