supper; on the ground of which interpretation the Hussites afterwards restored, as the ancient church had instituted, the communion of infants. Like Matthias of Janow, Huss, too, encouraged the frequent participation of the Lord's supper among the laity; and he found occasion to complain that even the rule prescribing the act of communion once a-year was not observed; that many received the Lord's supper only at the last extremity, and several not at all. He says of such : "How shall these people be ready to die for Christ, who have no pleasure in the food which is best for them, and which has been provided for them by infinite grace and love, to enable them to overcome all evil?"

Meantime, after Huss had left Prague, another controversy arose, by occasion of which the antagonism to the dominant church could not fail to be still more decidedly expressed. This controversy related to a point which Huss had never as yet made a subject of particular inquiry. After his own removal, the most important theologian of his party was his friend Jacob of Misa, or Mies, a parish priest attached to the church of St. Michaels, commonly called, on account of his diminutive stature, Jacobellus. This person came out openly in opposition to the withholding of the cup from the laity; and insisted that, by the institution, the holy supper in both forms should be extended to the laity also. It was for a long time currently reported that a certain Peter, originally from Dresden, who had been driven, as an adherent to Waldensian doctrines, from his native country and come to Prague, was the original means of leading Jacobellus to introduce this point also among the matters requiring reform. This story is, in itself, extremely improbable. If we consider that, in the writings of Matthias of Janow, the necessity to the laity of a complete participation of the Lord's supper is assumed; and if we consider the great influence Matthias had on the whole movement, we shall find it impossible to believe that a man who might be a personal disciple of Matthias of Janow,* who at any rate must have been, in spirit and bent, one of his disciples, that such a man could need the influence of an unknown

* As Palacky, p. 332, note, remarks-Jacobellus, a year before the death of Matthias of Janow, in the year 1393, was a Bachelor in Prague university.

Waldensian to direct his attention to a subject which had already been deemed of so much importance by his own master. In contemporaneous writings not a word is to be found concerning this Peter of Dresden; in the controversial tracts on this subject no mention is made of him; and yet it would from the first have been hailed as a very welcome fact, by the defenders of the withdrawal of the cup, if they had the least reason whatever to trace the first attacks of this practice to the influence of a man who belonged to a sect so decried. This story is found for the first time in writings of opponents to the Hussite party some score of years later.* Whether such a person as Peter of Dresden ever existed or not, his history at all events lies altogether in the dark, and we have nothing to do with him here; but it does not admit of a question that the influence proceeded from Matthias of Janow by which Jacobellus was led, first in disputations, to come out openly, somewhere near the close of the year 1414, against the withholding of the cup. His arguments convinced many; and he began to reduce his theory to practice as a parish priest, and to distribute the holy supper once more, in both forms, to the laity. Among the adherents of Huss a controversy arose on this point; for the more practical bent of his disposition had always kept him from entering into this question. His opinion was now requested. The principle on which he uniformly went, of deciding every question by the law of Christ as laid down in holy writ, would soon bring him to a decision of this question after his attention had once been directed to it, and also to a declaration of his views; nor did he hesitate to declare them openly, though he could not but foresee that by so doing he would probably injure his own cause.† Even before his imprisonment, Huss had composed a small tract on the question then in dispute; and from the collected declarations of the New Testament and

* Thus it occurs in Æneas Sylvius, Hist. Bohemia, cap. 35, p. 52. + So already, among the articles of complaint set forth by Michael de Causis, one was, that at Prague he had preached to the people that the Lord's Supper should be received in both the forms. The fact, indeed, brought forward to prove this, could prove nothing of the sort. It was that his disciples in Prague distributed the elements thus: Patet iste articulus, quia jam in Praga sui discipuli ministrant illud sub utraque specie. Hist. Hussi, Opp. I. fol. 6, 1.

of the ancient church teachers he came to the conclusion that, although both the body and blood of Christ were present under each form, yet because Christ would not without special reasons have directed that each kind should be taken separately, it was permitted and would be profitable to the laity, to take the blood of Christ under the form of the wine.* Meantime, on the 21st of March, occurred that event of which we have already spoken, the flight of pope John, the immediate instrument by whom Huss had been deprived of his liberty. This event led to an important change in the situation of the prisoner. Huss perceived from what transpired immediately about him, that something of this sort had occurred. He managed to get information of the movements produced by this event in the council. He ascribed them all to one cause, that men were attempting to effect an innovation in the kingdom of God by measures of human policy. "The council," he writes, "is disturbed on account of the flight of the pope, as I believe. The reason is this: I have learned that, in whatever we undertake, God should ever be placed before human reason—a lesson which they have not learned." The pope sent for all his officers and servants to meet him at Schaffhausen. In consequence of this, Huss was deserted by his keepers. No one was left to provide for his daily wants. He was deprived of the means of subsistence. He was in constant fear lest the marshal of the pope's court, who was intending to follow his master, would secretly take him away with himself. Late in the evening of Palm Sunday, March 24th, he communicated his fears to the knight of Chlum, and begged him, in conjunction with the Bohemian knights, to take measures to prevent this by requesting the emperor either to send him new keepers, or to set him at liberty, lest he might be to him the occasion of sin and of shame. The Bohemian knights, who, previous to these events, had never

*Licet et expedit laicis fidelibus sumere sanguinem Christi sub specie vini. Nam licet corpus et sanguis Christi sit sub utraque specie sacramentali, tamen Christus non sine ratione nec gratis instituit utrumque modum sacramentalem suis fidelibus, sed ad magnum profectum. De Sanguine Christi, Opp. I. fol. 43, 2.

† Ratio, quia didici, quod omnibus in factis peragendis sive peractis debet præponi Deus humanæ rationi. Ibid. fol. 75, 1; Ep. 55.

Ne habeat et peccatum et confusionem de me. Ibid. Ep. 56.

ceased pressing the emperor to set Huss at liberty, sought to take advantage also of the present juncture.* But the advocates of the hierarchical system exerted themselves to defeat this purpose; and after consultation with the council, the emperor delivered Huss over to the surveillance of the bishop of Constance, who at four o'clock the next morning had him removed, in chains, to the castle of Gottleben.† In the castle of Gottleben the situation of Huss was changed much for the worse. His prison was a tower. In the daytime he was chained, yet so as to be able to move about; at night on his bed, he was chained by the hand to a post. Here he no longer experienced that mild treatment from his keepers which mitigated the severity of his former imprisonment. His friends were not allowed to visit him. New attacks of disease, violent headaches, hæmorrhage, colic, followed in consequence of this severe confinement. Speaking of this in one of his later letters, he says: "These are punishments brought on me by my sins, and proofs of God's love to me." In the midst of these severe trials he wrote shortly before Easter, which in this year fell on the 31st of March, to his Bohemian friends at Constance : May the God of mercy keep and confirm you in his grace and give you constancy in Constance ;§ for if we are constant we shall witness God's protection over us.' "Now for the first time," he writes, "I learn rightly to understand the Psalter, rightly to pray, and rightly to represent to myself the sufferings of Christ and of the martyrs. For Isaiah says

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* A letter written from Constance to one of the zealous followers of the dominant church-a portion of which has been cited from the manuscript by Palacky-shows that the hierarchical party did at the beginning undoubtedly fear that these circumstances might be taken advantage of to set Huss at liberty. The words are as follows: De Hus fuit periculum, ne eriperetur de carceribus ordinis Prædicatorum, situati ultra muros civitatis, quia custodes jam erant pauci et remissi; sed ex diligentia facta et clamore zelatorum fidei, ex decreto concilii, præsentatus est ad quoddam castrum et ad carceres domini episcopi Constantiensis. Palacky, III. 1, p. 339, note 448.

† When Huss, in the letter cited, says the bishop of Constance wrote him, that he would have nothing to do with him, either this must have occurred before the agreement into with the emperor, or the bishop must have been seeking to conceal the purpose which he had in view. Opp. I. fol. 69, 2; Ep. 37.

§ A play on words: Det vobis constantiam in Constantia.

(xxviii. 19), When brought into straits, we learn to hear-;* or, What does he know who has never struggled with temptation? Rejoice, all of you who are together in the Lord; greet one another, and seasonably prepare yourselves to partake worthily, before the passover, of the Lord's body; of which privilege, so far as it regards the sacramental participation, I am for the present deprived, and so shall continue to be as long as it is God's will. Nor ought I to wonder at this, when the apostles of Christ and many other saints, in prisons and deserts, have in like manner been deprived of the same. I am well, as I hope in Jesus Christ, and shall find myself still better after death, if I keep the commandments of God to the end." Since the council no longer recognised, as pope, Balthazar Cossa, the committee nominated under his administration had no further authority to examine into the affair of Huss, and it was necessary to appoint a new one. This was done on the 6th of April, 1415, and the new commissioners were Cardinal d'Ailly, Cardinal St. Marci, the bishop of Dola, and the abbot of the Cistercian order. Meantime the cause of Huss assumed a worse aspect on account of the distribution of the sacrament under both forms, which now commenced in Prague. This gave rise to the most injurious reports, and the whole blame had to fall upon Huss. The bishop John of Leitomysl, had made great use of these rumours to confirm the prejudice against Huss, in his report to the council-had stated that the blood of Christ was carried about by the laity in flasks, and that they gave the communion to each other. Upon this, the Bohemian knights present at Constance handed in to the council, on the 13th of May, a paper complaining in the most violent language that, contrary to all justice, and in violation of the emperor's word, Huss, without being heard, though he had ever declared himself ready to answer to the charge of heresy, had been harshly shut up in prison, where he was compelled to lie in fetters and supplied with the most wretched fare, where he had to suffer from hunger and thirst, and it was to be feared must in consequence of this harsh treatment become disordered in mind. They complained, at

* Opp. I. fol. 73; Ep. 50.