ARTICLE III.

THE ANTECEDENTS OF THE MORAVIANS.

In one of the eastern Circles of the hereditary possessions of the House of Austria, remote from the capitol, girt round on three sides by the Carpathian ranges, is situated a Margraviate, whose size scarce dots the map of Europe, but whose fame seems destined to endure as long and

Far as His name is known.

Ecclesiastical historians relate, on what they deem good authority, that the Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, in one of his foreign wars, was reduced to great suffering and imminent peril, from want of water and from intense heat. Being informed that his "Melytenian legion, composed entirely of Christians, were accustomed to obtain whatever they asked, by their prayers," he commanded them for his relief to call upon the God they worshipped. In obedience to this direction, the whole legion simultaneously fell upon their knees and earnestly besought divine interposition. Almost immediately thereupon, the sky was overcast, and, while a refreshing shower descended upon the imperial troops, a terrific storm of thunder, lightning and rain, burst upon the panic-stricken enemy, and they broke and fled in wild dismay.

The Roman annalist fixes the time of this incident as the year one hundred and seventy-eight, and designates the place of its occurrence, as the land of the barbarous Quadi.

Often vanquished but never subjugated, these fierce Teutons migrated westward. Of their tribal successors the Scyri, the Rugi, and the Heruli, little beyond their uncouth names is known. The Heruli were followed by the warlike Lombards, who, in their turn, were in the year 550, swept away by a Sclavonic irruption from the banks of the Danube. To distinguish this colony from other numerous offshoots of the same fruitful stock, the inhabitants, from a river of their country-Morava-were called Moravians.

That such a sequestered and fractional nook of one of the most ignorant and papistically bigoted realms of Europe, should by the primitive purity and virtues of its not very remote inhabitants, furnish the best synonym and living symbol of apostolic faith and zeal, we are aware will by most readers be regarded as a marvel if not a veritable myth. Sure we are, that a sketch of the religious antecedents of this wonderful and “ “peculiar people," cannot fail of interesting, and we would fain hope, of stimulating the lagging zeal and faith and alms of some, who think they are living for the conversion of the world to God.

In the year 1373, John Huss was born in Bohemia. At the University of Prague, then in its zenith, he acquired, for that age, a very thorough and sound theological education. In the year 1402, he was appointed "Bohemian preacher" in the Bethlehem chapel, at Prague. The sanctity of his manners, his erudition, his eloquence and withal the novelty of his doctrine, soon gave the young preacher a wide reputation and a strong personal influence.

More than twenty years had elapsed since the setting, in England, of the 'morning star of the Reformation,' but some beams thereof had penetrated the mountains of Bohemia.

Huss adopted and boldly preached the sentiments of the English heretic. With the aid of his assistants, Jerome and Jacobellus, he translated Wycliffe's version of the Scriptures. His own treatise on the six errors of the Romish Church, Luther like, he nailed to the walls of his Bethlehem Chapel. These and other similar acts of boldness and independence, could not long go unnoticed. In the year 1410, two hundred volumes of copies of Wycliffe's writings were burned in the archbishop's palace at Prague, and further preaching was prohibited in the Bethlehem Chapel.

At length, the tidings reached Rome, and Huss, after being publicly summoned, was excommunicated. He did not, however, intermit his labors; wherever he went immense crowds continued to flock around him eager to catch his words.'

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In the year 1414, under the passport of the Emperor Sigismund, he appeared at Constance, to defend his opinions before the clergy of all nations.' That famous council which could find time to make one pope and depose three, examine the doctrines of the dead Wycliffe, adjudge his bones to be exhumed and burned, had not sufficient leisure patiently to hear and try the living Bohemian preacher.

Notwithstanding he held the papal and imperial' safe conduct,' soon after his arrival at Constance, for yet safer keeping and, that he might be forthcoming when wanted, he was thrust into the dungeon of the Dominican monastery. Despite the indignant remonstances of the Bohemian and Moravian nobles, he remained imprisoned from November, to the following July. On the sixth of that month, which was his forty-third birth day, he was wanted; the long foregone conclusion was finally arrived at, and the same day executed. As the fagots were filled up to his chin, "What," said he,

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are you going to burn a goose? In one century you will have a swan,* you can neither roast nor boil. Instead of a feeble goose, the truth will send forth eagles and keen-eyed falcons."

The ashes of this intrepid John the Baptist, were carefully collected and thrown into the Rhine, and in their onward flow into the North, to every duchy and principality and kingdom they touched, they published and protested the foul wrong done, and the atrocious violation of papal and of imperial faith.

As before intimated, the writings of Wycliffe, and his translations of the Bible, had already found their way to the continent. Lord Cobham, one of the Lollard leaders, in England, at the request of Huss, caused all the works of Wycliffe to be copied and sent to France, Spain, Germany, &c. Nowhere was the good seed more plenteous, and nowhere did it seem to find and fall upon such good ground,' as in Bohemia. Queen Anne, of that kingdom, who died in 1394, is said to have possessed and constantly read' the gospels in the English, German, Bohemian and Latin languages. There have survived and come down to us ten different translations of the New, and fourteen of the Old Testament, in the Bohemian language. Huss, more than any of his predecessors or contemporaries, appealed to the Scriptures in all his sermons, and controversial discussions with priest and pope and people, not only as supreme authority, but as a book known and understood by all classes. Nothing excited greater surprise in the Councils of Constance and Basle, than the profound learning, and familiarity with the Word, displayed in all religious points discussed by the Bohemian and Moravian members.

* Huss, in Bohemian, signifies goose. Luther's coat of arms or device, was a swan.

In the long and bloody wars which followed, if they were not caused by the martyrdom of Huss, the principles of the book of peace, however widely diffused, were seemingly almost entirely disregarded. The adherents of the faith of Huss were speedily divided into two great antagonistic parties-Calixtines and Taborites. The Calixtines at first embraced only those who advocated the giving the laity the chalice; subsequently they beeame for a time, one of the dominant Protestant sects of Europe. At the Council of Basle, Nov. 14th, 1433, after making some concessions, their representatives were recognised as a religious sect and parcel of ecclesiastical Germany. Under George Podiobrad, they had the ascendency in Bohemia over all religious sectaries from 1450 to 1470. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they often appear as taking part in the civil and religious wars that raged; persecuting and being persecuted; assisting to elect and depose kings and emperors; now victors, and anon exiles. They united with the Lutherans and Bohemian brethren, in petitioning Rodolph I. to establish and confirm certain church privileges, and religious toleration generally; and, with all Protestants, in defence of that imperial grant, they became active partisans in the Thirty Years War.

After the disastrous overthrow of the Protestant cause in 1620, their name, as a present living sect, disappears from the page of history; with Calvinist and Lutheran their remains were gathered and garnered among their ancient lineal kith, the Bohemian Brotherhood.

The Taborites originally included those who followed the leadership of the renowned Ziska, under whose aus