Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 124 pages of information about Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name.

Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 124 pages of information about Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name.
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
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Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.