Page:Letters of John Huss Written During His Exile and Imprisonment.djvu/206

 

LETTER XLVII.^[1]

 

TO HIS FRIENDS AT PRAGUE.

 

[He encourages and exhorts them not to be frightened on account of the Council having delivered his writings to the flames. He reminds them of the corrupted morals of that assembly, and of the condemnation of Pope John.]

 

I ought to warn you, my well-beloved, not to let yourselves be alarmed by the sentence of those who have condemned my books to be burned. Remember that the Israelites burned the writings of the prophet Jeremiah, without, nevertheless, being able to avoid the lot which he predicted for them. God even commanded, after the destruction by fire of this prophecy, that a new and more extended one should be written, which was done; for Jeremiah dictated it in his prison, and Baruch wrote, as it is written in chapter xxxvi. or xiv. of Jeremiah. It is also written in the Book of Maccabees, that impious men burned the law of God, and killed all those who were the depositaries of it. Under the new alliance they burned the saints with the books of the divine law. The Cardinals condemned and delivered to the flames many books of St Gregory, and would have burned them all, if they had not been preserved by his servant Peter. Two

 

1. Hist. et Monum. Johann. Huss, Epist. xiii.