hesitation speaks of them as existing at the time of Constantine. "The emperor," Chelčicky writes, "having made a lord of the Pope by means of the gift of a royal estate, and having given him the honour of royal glory, ordered that everywhere in his dominions churches should be built, and fields with ploughs attached to them. Then the apostles of Antichrist, having settled down in these churches, and being clever and thrifty men, amply enlarged the gift of Constantine; besides their (church) farms, they obtained lordly donations, woods, fishponds, taxes on the people, rich tithes; they taxed all religious functions and their services, and for the purpose of obtaining money they introduced the ringing of bells, and in all the land near their church they sell (religious rites) at the burial of the dead."
I have dealt somewhat more fully with the Net of Faith, as being Chelčicky's most valuable and most characteristic work. It will therefore be sufficient to notice but briefly his remaining writings, particularly as there is a marked decline in the interest of what he composed after the year 1340, when the Net of Faith appeared. Of the four books which—following Dr. Goll—I have called Chelčicky's principal works, it only remains to notice his Reply to Rokycan, which is generally considered the most important of his polemical writings. While Rokycan, the Utraquist archbishop, was in exile from Prague, he met Chelčicky, and a conversation between them began concerning "the men who are called priests, and the slight advantage they have conferred on men." The conversation was followed by a correspondence of which only this treatise has been preserved. It is a lengthy diatribe against the "band" of the ecclesiastics, and attacks not only the Roman clergy, but also
