that they may make wholesome and prudent decrees.
Let there now leap to the front some mannikin master
of an heretical faction, let him arch his eyebrows,
turn up his nose, rub his forehead, and scurrilously
take upon himself to judge his judges, what sport,
what ridicule will he excite! There was found
a Luther to say that he preferred to Councils the
opinions of two godly and learned men (say his own
and Philip Melanchthon’s) when they agreed in
the name of Christ. Oh what quackery! There
was found a Kemnitz to try the Council of Trent by
the standard of his own rude and giddy humour.
What gained he thereby? Infamy. While he,
unless he takes care, shall be buried with Arius,
the Synod of Trent, the older it grows, shall flourish
the more, day by day, and year by year. Good God!
what variety of nations, what a choice assembly of
Bishops of the whole world, what a splendid representation
of Kings and Commonwealths, what a quintessence of
theologians, what sanctity, what tears, what fears,
what flowers of Universities, what tongues, what subtlety,
what labour, what infinite reading, what wealth of
virtues and of studies filled that august sanctuary!
I have myself heard Bishops, eminent and prudent men,—and
among them Antony, Archbishop of Prague, by whom I
was made Priest,—exulting that they had
attended such a school for some years; so that, much
as they owed to Kaiser Ferdinand, they considered
that he had shown them no more royal and abundant
bounty than this of sending them to sit in that Academy
of Trent as Legates from Bohemia. The Kaiser
understood this, and on their return he welcomed them
with the words, “We have kept you at a good
school.” Invited as our adversaries have
been under a safe conduct, why have they not hastened
thither, publicly to refute those against whom they
go on quacking like frogs from their holes? “They
broke their promise to Huss and Jerome,” is their
reply. Who broke it? “The Fathers of
the Council of Constance.” It is false;
they never gave any promise. But anyhow, not even
Huss would have been punished had not the perfidious
and pestilent fellow been brought back from that flight
which the Emperor Sigusmund had forbidden him under
pain of death; had he not violated the conditions
which he had agreed to in writing with the Kaiser
and thereby nullified all the value of that safe-conduct.
Huss’s hasty wickedness played him false.
For, having instigated deeds of savage violence in
his native Bohemia, and being bidden thereupon to
present himself at Constance, he despised the prerogative
of the Council, and sought his safe-conduct of the
Kaiser. Caesar signed it; the Christian world,
greater than Caesar, cancelled the signature.
The heresiarch refused to return to a sound mind,
and so perished. As for Jerome of Prague, he
came to Constance protected by no one; he was detected
and arraigned; he spoke in his own behalf, was treated
very kindly, went free whither he would; he was healed,
abjured his heresy, relapsed, and was burnt. Why