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deem from damnation his elect, was troubled in spirit; yet he, though sore troubled, said to his disciples, Let not your hearts be troubled,'" &c.

The papal clergy, in order to degrade him, put on him the priestly garments, and placed the sacramental cup in his hand. The devoted martyr recollected, to his comfort, how his Redeemer had been arrayed with royal robes in mockery. When they addressed him in their form of degradation, " O cursed Judas! who having forsaken the council of peace, art entered into that of the Jews, we take this chalice from thee, in which is the blood of Jesus Christ." "I trust," cried the martyr, " in the mercy of God, I shall drink of it new this very day in his kingdom." When they had finished stripping him, they placed on his head a paper coronet, painted with devils, saying, "We devote thy soul to the infernal devils."—" I am glad," said Huss, "to wear this crown of ignominy for the love of Him who wore a crown of thorns." Thus was he led to the stake, crying, "Lord Jesus, I humbly suffer this cruel death for thy sake, and I pray thee to forgive all mine enemies." When he was the last time called upon to retract, he said, "What I have written and taught, was in order to rescue souls from the power of the devil, and to deliver them from the tyranny of sin; and I do gladly seal with my blood what I have written and taught."

As for poor Jerome, who was so ready to go with him to prison and to death, he was permitted to know his weakness; and afterwards, out of weakness, was made strong indeed. Through fear of the dreadful death, he had been induced to retract, to anathematise the articles both of Wickliff and of Huss, and to declare that he believed every thing that the council believed. The council, not content with their victory, would bring him to a second trial, that they might enjoy a second triumph; but now it was that Jerome rose superior from his fall, and discovered a fortitude, a wisdom, and an eloquence, that extorted the admiration of his enemies, so that they seemed almost to feel some relenting. Nevertheless, they hardened their hearts, and delivered him to death, as he renounced his retractation, bitterly lamenting, " I am not ashamed here to make public confession of my cowardice. I confess, and tremble while I think of it, that through fear of punishment by fire, I basely consented, against my conscience, to the condemnation of the doctrine of Wickliff and Huss." The assembly that condemned

1 1 Poggins. See Milner, vol. iv. p. 265.

every

him, as a Roman catholic writer1 then present declares, was " very unruly and indecent;" though, he says, at the same time, in admiration of his eloquence, "every ear was captivated, and heart touched." In the midst of scorn and insult, he was led to execution, singing the Apostles' Creed and the hymns of the church, with a loud voice and cheerful countenance. He kneeled at the stake, and prayed. Being then bound, he raised his voice, and sang a paschal bymn then much in vogue in the church, for they that put him to death had a form of godli

ness.

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Hail! happy day, and ever be adored,

When hell was conquered by great heaven's Lord.

Another Roman catholic historian records, both of John Huss and of Jerome, that " they went to the stake as to a banquet; not a word fell from them which discovered the least timidity. They sang in the flames to the last gasp, without ceasing."

The murder of Huss was highly resented in Bohemia, as a national affront. It is said, that a Bohemian nobleman, known by the name of Zisca, the one-eyed, being asked by the king what he was musing upon, replied: "I was thinking on the affront offered to our kingdom by the death of John Huss."— "It is out of your power or mine to revenge it," said the king; "but if you know which way to do it, exert yourself." From that time, Zisca meditated those military projects, for which he was afterwards so famous in history. Thus, although the true Christian is forbidden to revenge himself, the persecutor often finds to his cost, that all parties interested, are not of the same spirit; but some, instead of being content to be counted as sheep for the slaughter, meet them as ravening wolves, or "as the bear robbed of her whelps."

The favourers of Huss, under the command of Zisca1 and Nicholas de Hussinetz, exerted themselves in opposition to the hierarchy, in open warfare, carrying fire and sword into their territories and possessions. They are said, to the number of forty thousand, to have collected together at a mountain, called afterwards Tabor, from the circumstance of their erecting their tents there. The distinguishing tenet of these military reformers, was their use of the cup in the sacrament, which the Romanists had of late years denied to the laity. This contest caused much bloodshed, and threw the whole kingdom of Bohemia into confusion. A furious war was carried on for three years, under the

'A.D. 1417.

famous Zisca, and for ten years after his death. They obtained almost incredible victories over the emperor, and the warfare is marked by inhuman cruelties on both sides.

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When the work of vengeance was complete, these Hussites obtained what they fought for the use of the cup in the sacrament, and the administration of the ordinance in their own language." After the effusion of a deluge of blood, these points were given up by the papal party, in the year 1433, and a treaty of peace was made, of which these formed the basis. In other respects, the Calixtines resembled the papists, by whose artifices they were even induced to persecute the genuine followers of Huss, those who desired a real reformation of the church, and the establishment of purity of doctrine and discipline'.'

From among these reformers first appeared the Moravians, though they date, among themselves, their origin at a much higher antiquity. About the year 1453, a number of them obtained permission to withdraw to the lordship of Lititz, on the confines of Silesia and Moravia, and there to regulate a plan of worship according to their own consciences. Michael Bradazius was appointed their minister; idolatrous rites were prohibited, and a strictness of discipline, resembling that of the primitive church, was instituted, so that the church of the United Brethren may be called the most ancient of the reformed churches; for, with respect to the Waldenses, the evidence perhaps is not complete, that they had at any time been united to apostate Rome. The severest persecution was their lot for ten years, when they were driven out of the country, and compelled to hide themselves in mountains and woods, and to live in the wilderness. They afterwards' received a great increase of their numbers, from the accession of the Waldensian refugees, who had escaped out of Austria, where Stephen, the last bishop of the Waldenses in that province, was burnt alive. A union was easily formed between the Waldenses and Hussites, on account of the similarity of their sentiments and manners. In the following year, the Hussites were banished from Moravia; but they returned into that country six years afterwards. In the beginning of the sixteenth century, they counted two hundred congregations in Bohemia and Moravia.

1 Milner.

2 A.D. 1457.

A.D. 1480.

A

SHORT HISTORY

OF

THE CHURCH OF CHRIST,

ETC. ETC.

PART THE THIRD.

THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH OF CHRIST FROM THE REFORMATION TO OUR OWN TIMES.

INTRODUCTION.

AFTER pursuing our course through a thousand years of obscurity and darkness, we proceed with the history of the church during the last three centuries, which includes the history of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, with the convulsions which it immediately produced among the nations of Europe, and of the events which have since more remotely flowed from that same source. This is the last ACCOMPLISHED ERA of ecclesiastical history; and its boundaries may perhaps not improperly be fixed in the age in which we have lived. The spread, the decay or corruption, and the partial revivals of that same blessed truth, which then seemed afresh to illuminate the minds of men, form the leading topics of this portion of the history of the church.

66

"This grand revolution," it has also been observed 1, may justly be considered as the main spring which has moved the nations from that illustrious period, and has occasioned the greater part of the civil as well as religious revolutions that

1 Mosheim.

fill the annals of history to our own times." I shall, therefore, as far as my limits permit, endeavour to trace —

I. The rise, the struggles, and the victorious issue of the Reformation in Germany.

II. Its immediate effects in the mighty convulsions it produced in the other nations of Europe.

III. In a very brief and general narrative, not trespassing much upon the secret and confidential retreats of biography, where the events and characters of this last period will be studied to the best advantage, I shall bring down the history of the church of Christ to our own times, during which we seem all sensible that a new era has gone forth.

A revolution in opinions, as great, though not so blessed in its objects, as that which took place at the Reformation, has again torn up the boundaries of civilised nations, and is still replete with events probably more momentous still to churches and nations, and to the whole family of mankind. Before the commencement of this period, except in some few favoured spots, the lights of scriptural knowledge, rekindled in the churches of the reformed, had every where waxed dim, and seemed ready to be extinguished. Through the corruptions of infidelity and the ravages of war-"the pestilence that walked in darkness," and the destruction which wasted at noon-day"- the very profession of the Christian religion was thought, indeed, to be in danger. But even in the midst of these troublous times, religion has begun anew to flourish, especially in those parts of the earth over which the British kingdoms and their offspring are spread. The professors of the truth, in every part of the world, having stemmed the torrent of the infidel philosophy, have been encouraged to aim at greater things for the propagation of the everlasting Gospel;' and notwithstanding the awful prospects around, and even the apprehension in some quarters, in the present political state of Europe, of the danger of a temporary relapse into the superstitions of the church of Rome, they may justly fill their breasts with the expectations of great and wonderful events shortly to come to pass, according to the sure word of prophecy. But, on this new era, the latent causes of its rise, its devastations, and the prospects which now disclose themselves in the partially retiring storm, this history does not enter1.

The parts of prophecy which the reader will compare with this portion of the history of the church, will be, 1. The death and resurrection of the Wit

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