BOOK ONE: The Bohemian Brethren: 1457-1673
Chapters 9-16
BOOK ONE: THE BOHEMENIAN BRETHREN
Chapter 9
“The Brethren In Poland, 1548-1570.”
It is easy to see what Ferdinand expected. He had no desire to shed more blood; he wished to see Bohemia at peace; he knew that the Brethren, with all their skill, could never sell out in six weeks; and therefore he hoped that, like sensible men, they would abandon their Satanic follies, consider the comfort of their wives and children, and nestle snugly in the bosom of the Church of Rome. But the Brethren had never learned the art of dancing to Ferdinand’s piping. As the King would not extend the time, they took him at his word. The rich came to the help of the poor,39 and before the six weeks had flown away a large band of Brethren had bidden a sad farewell to their old familiar haunts and homes, and started on their journey north across the pine-clad hills. From Leitomischl, Chlumitz and Solnic, by way of Frankenstein and Breslau, and from Turnau and Brandeis-on-the-Adler across the Giant Mountains, they marched in two main bodies from Bohemia to Poland. The time was the leafy month of June, and the first part of the journey was pleasant. “We were borne,” says one, “on eagles’ wings.” As they tramped along the country roads, with wagons for the women, old men and children, they made the air ring with the gladsome music of old Brethren’s hymns and their march was more like a triumphal procession than the flight of persecuted refugees. They were nearly two thousand in number. They had hundreds with them, both Catholic and Protestant, to protect them against the mountain brigands. They had guards of infantry and cavalry. They were freed from toll at the turn-pikes. They were supplied with meat, bread, milk and eggs by the simple country peasants. They were publicly welcomed and entertained by the Mayor and Council of Glatz. As the news of their approach ran on before, the good folk in the various towns and villages would sweep the streets and clear the road to let them pass with speed and safety to their desired haven far away. For two months they enjoyed themselves at Posen, and the Polish nobles welcomed them as Brothers; but the Bishop regarded them as wolves in the flock, and had them ordered away. From Posen they marched to Polish Prussia, and were ordered away again; and not till the autumn leaves had fallen and the dark long nights had come did they find a home in the town of Königsberg, in the Lutheran Duchy of East Prussia.
And even there they were almost worried to death. As they settled down as peaceful citizens in this Protestant land of light and liberty, they found, to their horror and dismay, that Lutherans, when it suited their purpose, could be as bigoted as Catholics. They were forced to accept the Confession of Augsburg. They were forbidden to ordain their own priests or practise their own peculiar customs. They were treated, not as Protestant brothers, but as highly suspicious foreigners; and a priest of the Brethren was not allowed to visit a member of his flock unless he took a Lutheran pastor with him. “If you stay with us,” said Speratus, the Superintendent of the East Prussian Lutheran Church, “you must accommodate yourselves to our ways. Nobody sent for you; nobody asked you to come.” If the Brethren, in a word, were to stay in East Prussia, they must cease to be Brethren at all, and allow themselves to be absorbed by the conquering Lutherans of the land.
Meanwhile, however, they had a Moses to lead them out of the desert. George Israel is a type of the ancient Brethren. He was the son of a blacksmith, was a close friend of Augusta, had been with him at Wittenberg, and was now the second great leader of the Brethren. When Ferdinand issued his decree, Israel, like many of the Brethren’s Ministers, was summoned to Prague to answer for his faith and conduct on pain of a fine of one thousand ducats; and when some of his friends advised him to disobey the summons, and even offered to pay the money, he gave one of those sublime answers which light up the gloom of the time. “No,” he replied, “I have been purchased once and for all with the blood of Christ, and will not consent to be ransomed with the gold and silver of my people. Keep what you have, for you will need it in your flight, and pray for me that I may be steadfast in suffering for Jesus.” He went to Prague, confessed his faith, and was thrown into the White Tower. But he was loosely guarded, and one day, disguised as a clerk, with a pen behind his ear, and paper and ink-horn in his hand, he walked out of the Tower in broad daylight through the midst of his guards, and joined the Brethren in Prussia. He was just the man to guide the wandering band, and the Council appointed him leader of the emigrants. He was energetic and brave. He could speak the Polish tongue. He had a clear head and strong limbs. For him a cold lodging in Prussia was not enough. He would lead his Brethren to a better land, and give them nobler work to do.
As the Brethren had already been driven from Poland, the task which Israel now undertook appeared an act of folly. But George Israel knew better. For a hundred years the people of Poland had sympathised to some extent with the reforming movement in Bohemia. There Jerome of Prague had taught. There the teaching of Hus had spread. There the people hated the Church of Rome. There the nobles sent their sons to study under Luther at Wittenberg. There the works of Luther and Calvin had been printed and spread in secret. There, above all, the Queen herself had been privately taught the Protestant faith by her own father-confessor. And there, thought Israel, the Brethren in time would find a hearty welcome. And so, while still retaining the oversight of a few parishes in East Prussia, George Israel, by commission of the Council, set out to conduct a mission in Poland {1551.}. Alone and on horseback, by bad roads and swollen streams, he went on his dangerous journey; and on the fourth Sunday in Lent arrived at the town of Thorn, and rested for the day. Here occurred the famous incident on the ice which made his name remembered in Thorn for many a year to come. As he was walking on the frozen river to try whether the ice was strong enough to bear his horse, the ice broke up with a crash. George Israel was left on a solitary lump, and was swept whirling down the river; and then, as the ice blocks cracked and banged and splintered into thousands of fragments, he sprang like a deer from block to block, and sang with loud exulting voice: “Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy wind fulfilling his word.” There was a great crowd on the bank. The people watched the thrilling sight with awe, and when at last he reached firm ground they welcomed him with shouts of joy. We marvel not that such a man was like the sword of Gideon in the conflict. He rode on to Posen, the capital of Great Poland, began holding secret meetings, and established the first evangelical church in the country. The Roman Catholic Bishop heard of his arrival, and put forty assassins on his track. But Israel was a man of many wiles as well as a man of God. He assumed disguises, and changed his clothes so as to baffle pursuit, appearing now as an officer, now as a coachman, now as a cook. He presented himself at the castle of the noble family of the Ostrorogs, was warmly welcomed by the Countess, and held a service in her rooms. The Count was absent, heard the news, and came in a state of fury. He seized a whip. “I will drag my wife out of this conventicle,” he exclaimed; and burst into the room while the service was proceeding, his eyes flashing fire and the whip swinging in his hand. The preacher, Cerwenka, calmly went on preaching. “Sir,” said George Israel, pointing to an empty seat “sit down there.” The Count of Ostrorog meekly obeyed, listened quietly to the discourse, became a convert that very day, turned out his own Lutheran Court Chaplain, installed George Israel in his place, and made a present to the Brethren of his great estate on the outskirts of the town.
For the Brethren the gain was enormous. As the news of the Count’s conversion spread, other nobles quickly followed suit. The town of Ostrorog became the centre of a swiftly growing movement; the poor Brethren in Prussia returned to Poland, and found churches ready for their use; and before seven years had passed away the Brethren had founded forty congregations in this their first land of exile.
They had, however, another great mission to fulfil. As the Brethren spread from town to town, they discovered that the other Protestant bodies–the Lutherans, Zwinglians and Calvinists–were almost as fond of fighting with each other as of denouncing the Church of Rome; and therefore the people, longing for peace, were disgusted more or less with them all. But the Brethren stood on a rather different footing. They were cousins to the Poles in blood; they had no fixed and definite creed; they thought far more of brotherly love than of orthodoxy in doctrine; and therefore the idea was early broached that the Church of the Brethren should be established as the National Church of Poland. The idea grew. The Lutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinists and Brethren drew closer and closer together. They exchanged confessions, discussed each other’s doctrines, met in learned consultations, and held united synods again and again. For fifteen years the glorious vision of a union of all the Protestants in Poland hung like glittering fruit just out of reach. There were many walls in the way. Each church wanted to be the leading church in Poland; each wanted its own confession to be the bond of union; each wanted its own form of service, its own form of government, to be accepted by all. But soon one and all began to see that the time had come for wranglings to cease. The Jesuits were gaining ground in Poland. The Protestant Kingdom must no longer be divided against itself.
At last the Brethren, the real movers of the scheme, persuaded all to assemble in the great United Synod of Sendomir, and all Protestants in Poland felt that the fate of the country depended on the issue of the meeting {1570.}. It was the greatest Synod that had ever been held in Poland. It was an attempt to start a new movement in the history of the Reformation, an attempt to fling out the apple of discord and unite all Protestants in one grand army which should carry the enemy’s forts by storm. At first the goal seemed further off than ever. As the Calvinists were the strongest body, they confidently demanded that their Confession should be accepted, and put forward the telling argument that it was already in use in the country. As the Lutherans were the next strongest body, they offered the Augsburg Confession, and both parties turned round upon the Brethren, and accused them of having so many Confessions that no one knew which to take. And then young Turnovius, the representative of the Brethren, rose to speak. The Brethren, he said, had only one Confession in Poland. They had presented that Confession to the King; they believed that it was suited best to the special needs of the country, and yet they would accept the Calvinists’ Confession as long as they might keep their own as well.
There was a deadlock. What was to be done? The Brethren’s work seemed about to come to nought. Debates and speeches were in vain. Each party remained firm as a rock. And then, in wondrous mystic wise, the tone of the gathering softened.
“For God’s sake, for God’s sake,” said the Palatine of Sendomir in his speech, “remember what depends upon the result of our deliberations, and incline your hearts to that harmony and love which the Lord has commanded us to follow above all things.”
As the Palatine ended his speech he burst into tears. His friend, the Palatine of Cracow, sobbed aloud. Forthwith the angry clouds disparted and revealed the bow of peace, the obstacles to union vanished, and the members of the Synod agreed to draw up a new Confession, which should give expression to the united faith of all. The Confession was prepared {April 14th.}. It is needless to trouble about the doctrinal details. For us the important point to notice is the spirit of union displayed. For the first, but not for the last, time in the history of Poland the Evangelical Protestants agreed to sink their differences on points of dispute, and unite their forces in common action against alike the power of Rome and the Unitarian40 sects of the day. The joy was universal. The scene in the hall at Sendomir was inspiring. When the Committee laid the Confession before the Synod all the members arose and sang the Ambrosian Te Deum. With outstretched hands the Lutherans advanced to meet the Brethren, and with outstretched hands the Brethren advanced to meet the Lutherans. The next step was to make the union public. For this purpose the Brethren, a few weeks later, formed a procession one Sunday morning and attended service at the Lutheran Church; and then, in the afternoon, the Lutherans attended service in the Church of the Brethren {May 28th, 1570.}. It is hard to believe that all this was empty show. And yet the truth must be confessed that this “Union of Sendomir” was by no means the beautiful thing that some writers have imagined. It was the result, to a very large extent, not of any true desire for unity, but rather of an attempt on the part of the Polish nobles to undermine the influence and power of the clergy. It led to no permanent union of the Protestants in Poland. Its interest is sentimental rather than historic. For the time–but for a very short time only–the Brethren had succeeded in teaching others a little charity of spirit, and had thus shown their desire to hasten the day when the Churches of Christ, no longer asunder, shall know “how good and how pleasant it is for Brethren to dwell together in unity.”
And all this–this attempt at unity, this second home for the Brethren, this new Evangelical movement in Poland–was the strange result of the edict issued by Ferdinand, King of Bohemia.
Chapter 10
“The Martyr-Bishop, 1548-1560.”
Meanwhile, John Augusta, the great leader of the Brethren, was passing through the furnace of affliction.
Of all the tools employed by Ferdinand, the most crafty, active and ambitious was a certain officer named Sebastian Schöneich, who, in the words of the great historian, Gindely, was one of those men fitted by nature for the post of hangman.
For some months this man had distinguished himself by his zeal in the cause of the King. He had seized sixteen heads of families for singing hymns at a baker’s funeral, had thrown them into the drain-vaults of the White Tower at Prague, and had left them there to mend their ways in the midst of filth and horrible stenches. And now he occupied the proud position of town-captain of Leitomischl. Never yet had he known such a golden chance of covering himself with glory. For some time Augusta, who was now First Senior of the Church, had been hiding in the neighbouring woods, and only two or three Brethren knew his exact abode. But already persecution had done her work, and treachery now did hers.
Among the inhabitants of Leitomischl were certain renegade Brethren, and these now said to the Royal Commissioners: “If the King could only capture and torture Augusta, he could unearth the whole conspiracy.”
“Where is Augusta?” asked the Commissioners.
“He is not at home,” replied the traitors, “but if you will ask his friend, Jacob Bilek, he will tell you all you want to know.”
The wily Schöneich laid his plot. If only he could capture Augusta, he would win the favour of the King and fill his own pockets with money. As he strolled one day through the streets of Leitomischl he met a certain innocent Brother Henry, and there and then began his deadly work.
“If you know,” he said, “where Augusta is, tell him I desire an interview with him. I will meet him wherever he likes. I have something special to say to him, something good, not only for him, but for the whole Brethren’s Church. But breathe not a word of this to anyone else. Not a soul–not even yourself–must know about the matter.”
The message to Augusta was sent. He replied that he would grant the interview on condition that Schöneich would guarantee his personal safety.
“That,” replied Schöneich, “is quite impossible. I cannot give any security whatever. The whole business must be perfectly secret. Not a soul must be present but Augusta and myself. I wouldn’t have the King know about this for a thousand groschen. Tell Augusta not to be afraid of me. I have no instructions concerning him. He can come with an easy mind to Leitomischl. If he will not trust me as far as that, let him name the place himself, and I will go though it be a dozen miles away.”
But Augusta still returned the same answer, and Schöneich had to strengthen his plea. Again he met the guileless Brother Henry, and again he stormed him with his eloquent tongue.
“Have you no better answer from Augusta?” he asked.
“No,” replied Brother Henry.
“My dear, my only Henry,” pleaded Schöneich, “I do so long for a little chat with Augusta. My heart bleeds with sympathy for you. I am expecting the King’s Commissioners. They may be here any moment. It will go hard with you poor folk when they come. If only I could have a talk with Augusta, it would be so much better for you all. But do tell him not to be afraid of me. I have no instructions concerning him. I will wager my neck for that,” he said, putting his finger to his throat. “I am willing to give my life for you poor Brethren.”
The shot went home. As Augusta lay in his safe retreat he had written stirring letters to the Brethren urging them to be true to their colours; and now, he heard from his friends in Leitomischl that Schöneich was an evangelical saint, and that if he would only confer with the saint he might render his Brethren signal service, and deliver them from their distresses. He responded nobly to the appeal. For the sake of the Church he had led so long, he would risk his liberty and his life. In vain the voice of prudence said “Stay!”; the voice of love said “Go!”; and Augusta agreed to meet the Captain in a wood three miles from the town. The Captain chuckled. The time was fixed, and, the night before, the artful plotter sent three of his trusty friends to lie in wait. As the morning broke of the fateful day {April 25th, 1548.}, Augusta, still suspecting a trap, sent his secretary, Jacob Bilek, in advance to spy the land; and the three brave men sprang out upon him and carried him off to Schöneich. And then, at the appointed hour, came John Augusta himself. He had dressed himself as a country peasant, carried a hoe in is hand, and strolled in the woodland whistling a merry tune. For the moment the hirelings were baffled. They seized him and let him go; they seized him again and let him go again; they seized him, for the third time, searched him, and found a fine handkerchief in his bosom.
“Ah,” said one of them, “a country peasant does not use a handkerchief like this.”
The game was up. Augusta stood revealed, and Schöneich, hearing the glorious news, came prancing up on his horse.
“My lord,” said Augusta, “is this what you call faith?”
“Did you never hear,” said Schöneich, “that promises made in the night are never binding? Did you never hear of a certain Jew with his red beard and yellow bag? Did you never hear of the mighty power of money? And where have you come from this morning? I hear you have plenty of money in your possession. Where is that money now?”
As they rode next day in a covered waggon on their way to the city of Prague, the Captain pestered Augusta with many questions.
“My dear Johannes,” said the jovial wag, “where have you been? With whom? Where are your letters and your clothes? Whose is this cap? Where did you get it? Who lent it to you? What do they call him? Where does he live? Where is your horse? Where is your money? Where are your companions?”
“Why do you ask so many questions?” asked Augusta.
“Because,” replied Schöneich, letting out the murder, “I want to be able to give information about you. I don’t want to be called a donkey or a calf.”
And now began for John Augusta a time of terrible testing. As the Captain rapped his questions out he was playing his part in a deadly game that involved the fate, not only of the Brethren’s Church, but of all evangelicals in the land.
For months King Ferdinand had longed to capture Augusta. He regarded him as the author of the Smalkald League; he regarded him as the deadliest foe of the Catholic faith in Europe; he regarded the peaceful Brethren as rebels of the vilest kind; and now that he had Augusta in his power he determined to make him confess the plot, and then, with the proof he desired in his hands, he would stamp out the Brethren’s Church for once and all.
For this purpose Augusta was now imprisoned in the White Tower at Prague. He was placed in the wine vaults below the castle, had heavy fetters on his hands and feet, and sat for days in a crunched position. The historic contest began. For two hours at a stretch the King’s examiners riddled Augusta with questions. “Who sent the letter to the King?”41 they asked. “Where do the Brethren keep their papers and money? To whom did the Brethren turn for help when the King called on his subjects to support him? Who went with you to Wittenberg? For what and for whom did the Brethren pray.”
“They prayed,” said Augusta, “that God would incline the heart of the King to be gracious to us.”
“By what means did the Brethren defend themselves?”
“By patience,” replied Augusta.
“To whom did they apply for help?”
Augusta pointed to heaven.
As Augusta’s answers to all these questions were not considered satisfactory, they next endeavoured to sharpen his wits by torturing a German coiner in his presence; and when this mode of persuasion failed, they tortured Augusta himself. They stripped him naked. They stretched him face downwards on a ladder. They smeared his hips with boiling pitch. They set the spluttering mess on fire, and drew it off, skin and all, with a pair of tongs. They screwed him tightly in the stocks. They hung him up to the ceiling by a hook, with the point run through his flesh. They laid him flat upon his back and pressed great stones on his stomach. It was all in vain. Again they urged him to confess the part that he and the Brethren had played in the great revolt, and again Augusta bravely replied that the Brethren had taken no such part at all.
At this the King himself intervened. For some months he had been busy enough at Augsburg, assisting the Emperor in his work; but now he sent a letter to Prague, with full instructions how to deal with Augusta. If gentle measures did not succeed, then sterner measures, said he, must be employed. He had three new tortures to suggest. First, he said, let Augusta be watched and deprived of sleep for five or six days. Next, he must be strapped to a shutter, with his head hanging over one end; he must have vinegar rubbed into his nostrils; he must have a beetle fastened on to his stomach; and in this position, with his neck aching, his nostrils smarting, and the beetle working its way to his vitals, he must be kept for two days and two nights. And, third, if these measures did not act, he must be fed with highly seasoned food and allowed nothing to drink.
But these suggestions were never carried out. As the messenger hastened with the King’s billet-doux, and the Brethren on the northern frontier were setting out for Poland, Augusta and Bilek were on their way to the famous old castle of Pürglitz. For ages that castle, built on a rock, and hidden away in darkling woods, had been renowned in Bohemian lore. There the mother of Charles IV. had heard the nightingales sing; there the faithful, ran the story, had held John Ziska at bay; there had many a rebel suffered in the terrible “torture-tower”; and there Augusta and his faithful friend were to lie for many a long and weary day.
They were taken to Pürglitz in two separate waggons. They travelled by night and arrived about mid-day; they were placed in two separate cells, and for sixteen years the fortunes of the Brethren centred round Pürglitz Castle.
If the Bishop had been the vilest criminal, he could not have been more grossly insulted. For two years he had to share his cell with a vulgar German coiner; and the coiner, in facetious pastime, often smote him on the head.
His cell was almost pitch-dark. The window was shuttered within and without, and the merest glimmer from the cell next door struggled in through a chink four inches broad. At meals alone he was permitted half a candle. For bedding he had a leather bolster, a coverlet and what Germans call a “bed-sack.” For food he was allowed two rations of meat, two hunches of bread, and two jugs of barley-beer a day. His shirt was washed about once a fortnight, his face and hands twice a week, his head twice a year, and the rest of his body never. He was not allowed the use of a knife and fork. He was not allowed to speak to the prison attendants. He had no books, no papers, no ink, no news of the world without; and there for three years he sat in the dark, as lonely as the famous prisoner of Chillon. Again, by the King’s command, he was tortured, with a gag in his mouth to stifle his screams and a threat that if he would not confess he should have an interview with the hangman; and again he refused to deny his Brethren, and was flung back into his corner.
The delivering angel came in humble guise. Among the warders who guarded his cell was a daring youth who had lived at Leitomischl. He had been brought up among the Brethren. He regarded the Bishop as a martyr. His wife lived in a cottage near the castle; and now, drunken rascal though he was, he risked his life for Augusta’s sake, used his cottage as a secret post office, and handed in to the suffering Bishop letters, books, ink, paper, pens, money and candles.
The Brethren stationed a priest in Pürglitz village. The great Bishop was soon as bright and active as ever. By day he buried his tools in the ground; by night he plugged every chink and cranny, and applied himself to his labours. Not yet was his spirit broken; not yet was his mind unhinged. As his candle burned in that gloomy dungeon in the silent watches of the night, so the fire of his genius shone anew in those darksome days of trial and persecution; and still he urged his afflicted Brethren to be true to the faith of their fathers, to hold fast the Apostles’ Creed, and to look onward to the brighter day when once again their pathway would shine as the wings of a dove that are covered with silver and her feathers with yellow gold. He comforted Bilek in his affliction; he published a volume of sermons for the elders to read in secret; he composed a number of stirring and triumphant hymns; and there he penned the noble words still sung in the Brethren’s Church:–
Praise God for ever. Boundless is his favour, To his Church and chosen flock, Founded on Christ the Rock.
As he lay in his cell he pondered much on the sad fate of his Brethren. At one time he heard a rumour that the Church was almost extinct. Some, he knew, had fled to Poland. Some had settled in Moravia. Some, robbed of lands and houses, were roaming the country as pedlars or earning a scanty living as farm labourers. And some, alas! had lowered the flag and joined the Church of Rome.
And yet Augusta had never abandoned hope. For ten years, despite a few interruptions, he kept in almost constant touch, not only with his own Brethren, but also with the Protestant world at large. He was still, he thought, the loved and honoured leader; he was still the mightiest religious force in the land; and now, in his dungeon, he sketched a plan to heal his country’s woes and form the true disciples of Christ into one grand national Protestant army against which both Pope and Emperor would for ever contend in vain.
Chapter 11
“The Last Days Of Augusta, 1560-1572.”
To Augusta the prospect seemed hopeful. Great changes had taken place in the Protestant world. The Lutherans in Germany had triumphed. The religious peace of Augsburg had been consummated, The German Protestants had now a legal standing. The great Emperor, Charles V., had resigned his throne. His successor was his brother Ferdinand, the late King of Bohemia. The new King of Bohemia was Ferdinand’s eldest son, Maximilian I. Maximilian was well disposed towards Protestants, and persecution in Bohemia died away.
And now the Brethren plucked up heart again. They rebuilt their chapel at their headquarters, Jungbunzlau. They presented a copy of their Hymn-book to the King. They divided the Church into three provinces–Bohemia, Moravia and Poland. They appointed George Israel First Senior in Poland, John Czerny First Senior in Bohemia and Moravia, and Cerwenka secretary to the whole Church.
But the Brethren had gone further still. As Augusta was the sole surviving Bishop in the Church, the Brethren were in a difficulty. They must not be without Bishops. But what were they to do? Were they to wait till Augusta was set at liberty, or were they to elect new Bishops without his authority? They chose the latter course, and Augusta was deeply offended. They elected Czerny and Cerwenka to the office of Bishops; they had them consecrated as Bishops by two Brethren in priests’ orders; and they actually allowed the two new Bishops to consecrate two further Bishops, George Israel and Blahoslaw, the Church Historian.
And even this was not the worst of the story. As he lay in his dungeon forming plans for the Church he loved so well, it slowly dawned upon Augusta that his Brethren were ceasing to trust him, and that the sun of his power, which had shone so brightly, was now sloping slowly to its setting. He heard of one change after another taking place without his consent. He heard that the Council had condemned his sermons as too learned and dry for the common people, and that they had altered them to suit their own opinions. He heard that his hymns, which he had desired to see in the new Hymn-book, had been mangled in a similar manner. His Brethren did not even tell him what they were doing. They simply left him out in the cold. What he himself heard he heard by chance, and that was the “most unkind cut of all.” His authority was gone; his position was lost; his hopes were blasted; and his early guidance, his entreaties, his services, his sufferings were all, he thought, forgotten by an ungrateful Church.
As Augusta heard of all these changes, a glorious vision rose before his mind. At first he was offended, quarrelled with the Brethren, and declared the new Bishops invalid. But at last his better feelings gained the mastery. He would not sulk like a petted child; he would render his Brethren the greatest service in his power. He would fight his way to liberty; he would resume his place on the bridge, and before long he would make the Church the national Church of Bohemia.
The door was opened by a duke. The Archduke Ferdinand, brother of the King, came to reside at Pürglitz {1560.}. Augusta appealed for liberty to Ferdinand; the Archduke referred the matter to the King; the King referred the matter to the clergy; and the clergy drew up for Augusta’s benefit a form of recantation. The issue before him was now perfectly clear. There was one road to freedom and one only. He must sign the form of recantation in full. The form was drastic. He must renounce all his previous religious opinions. He must acknowledge the Holy Catholic Church and submit to her in all things. He must eschew the gatherings of Waldenses, Picards and all other apostates, denounce their teaching as depraved, and recognise the Church of Rome as the one true Church of Christ. He must labour for the unity of the Church and endeavour to bring his Brethren into the fold. He must never again interpret the Scriptures according to his own understanding, but submit rather to the exposition and authority of the Holy Roman Church, which alone was fit to decide on questions of doctrine. He must do his duty by the King, obey him and serve him with zeal as a loyal subject. And finally he must write out the whole recantation with his own hand, take a public oath to keep it, and have it signed and sealed by witnesses. Augusta refused point blank. His hopes of liberty vanished. His heart sank in despair. “They might as well,” said Bilek, his friend, “have asked him to walk on his head.”
But here Lord Sternberg, Governor of the Castle, suggested another path. If Augusta, said he, would not join the Church of Rome, perhaps he would at least join the Utraquists. He had been a Utraquist in his youth; the Brethren were Utraquists under another name; and all that Augusta had to do was to give himself his proper name, and his dungeon door would fly open. Of all the devices to entrap Augusta, this well-meant trick was the most enticing. The argument was a shameless logical juggle. The Utraquists celebrated the communion in both kinds; the Brethren celebrated the communion in both kinds; therefore the Brethren were Utraquists.42 At first Augusta himself appeared to be caught.
“I, John Augusta,” he wrote, “confess myself a member of the whole Evangelical Church, which, wherever it may be, receives the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ in both kinds. I swear that, along with the Holy Catholic Church, I will maintain true submission and obedience to her chief Head, Jesus Christ. I will order my life according to God’s holy word and the truth of his pure Gospel. I will be led by Him, obey Him alone, and by no other human thoughts and inventions. I renounce all erroneous and wicked opinions against the holy universal Christian apostolic faith. I will never take any part in the meetings of Picards or other heretics.”
If Augusta thought that by language like this he would catch his examiners napping, he was falling into a very grievous error. He had chosen his words with care. He never said what he meant by the Utraquists. He never said whether he would include the Brethren among the Utraquists or among the Picards and heretics. And he had never made any reference to the Pope.
His examiners were far too clever to be deceived. Instead of recommending that Augusta be now set at liberty, they contended that his recantation was no recantation at all. He had shown no inclination, they said, towards either Rome or Utraquism. His principles were remarkably like those of Martin Luther. He had not acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope, and when he said he would not be led by any human inventions he was plainly repudiating the Church of Rome. What is the good, they asked, of Augusta’s promising to resist heretics when he does not acknowledge the Brethren to be heretics? “It is,” they said, “as clear as day that John Augusta has no real intention of renouncing his errors.” Let the man say straight out to which party he belonged.
Again Augusta tried to fence, and again he met his match. Instead of saying in plain language to which party he belonged, he persisted in his first assertion that he belonged to the Catholic Evangelical Church, which was now split into various sects. But as the old man warmed to his work he threw caution aside.
“I have never,” he said, “had anything to do with Waldenses or Picards. I belong to the general Evangelical Church, which enjoys the Communion in both kinds. I renounce entirely the Popish sect known as the Holy Roman Church. I deny that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ. I deny that the Church of Rome alone has authority to interpret the Scriptures. If the Church of Rome claims such authority, she must first show that she is free from the spirit of the world, and possesses the spirit of charity, and until that is done I refuse to bow to her decrees.”
He defended the Church of the Brethren with all his might. It was, he said, truly evangelical. It was Catholic. It was apostolic. It was recognised and praised by Luther, Calvin, Melancthon, Bucer, Bullinger and other saints. As long as the moral life of the Church of Rome remained at such a low ebb, so long would there be need for the Brethren’s Church.
“If the Church of Rome will mend her ways, the Brethren,” said he, “will return to her fold; but till that blessed change takes place they will remain where they are.”
He denied being a traitor. “If any one says that I have been disloyal to the Emperor, I denounce that person as a liar. If his Majesty knew how loyal I have been, he would not keep me here another hour. I know why I am suffering. I am suffering, not as an evil-doer, but as a Christian.”
The first skirmish was over. The clergy were firm, and Augusta sank back exhausted in his cell. But the kindly Governor was still resolved to smooth the way for his prisoners. “I will not rest,” he said, “till I see them at liberty.” He suggested that Augusta should have an interview with the Jesuits!
“What would be the good of that?” said Augusta. “I should be like a little dog in the midst of a pack of lions. I pray you, let these negotiations cease. I would rather stay where I am. It is clear there is no escape for me unless I am false to my honour and my conscience. I will never recant nor act against my conscience. May God help me to keep true till death.”
At last, however, Augusta gave way, attended Mass, with Bilek, in the castle chapel, and consented to an interview with the Jesuits, on condition that Bilek should go with him, and that he should also be allowed another interview with the Utraquists {1561.}. The day for the duel arrived. The chosen spot was the new Jesuit College at Prague. As they drove to the city both Augusta and Bilek were allowed to stretch their limbs and even get out of sight of their guards. At Prague they were allowed a dip in the Royal Bath. It was the first bath they had had for fourteen years, and the people came from far and near to gaze upon their scars.
And now, being fresh and clean in body, Augusta, the stubborn heretical Picard, was to be made clean in soul. As the Jesuits were determined to do their work well, they laid down the strict condition that no one but themselves must be allowed to speak with the prisoners. For the rest the prisoners were treated kindly. The bedroom was neat; the food was good; the large, bright dining-room had seven windows. They had wine to dinner, and were waited on by a discreet and silent butler. Not a word did that solemn functionary utter. If the Brethren made a remark to him, he laid his fingers on his lips like the witches in Macbeth.
The great debate began. The Jesuit spokesman was Dr. Henry Blissem. He opened by making a clean breast of the whole purpose of the interview.
“It is well known to you both,” said he, “for what purpose you have been handed over to our care, that we, if possible, may help you to a right understanding of the Christian faith.”
If the Jesuits could have had their way, they would have had Augusta’s answers set down in writing. But here Augusta stood firm as a rock. He knew the game the Jesuits were playing. The interview was of national importance. If his answers were considered satisfactory, the Jesuits would have them printed, sow them broadcast, and boast of his conversion; and if, on the other hand, they were unsatisfactory, they would send them to the Emperor as proof that Augusta was a rebel, demand his instant execution, and start another persecution of the Brethren.
Dr. Henry, made the first pass.
“The Holy Universal Church,” he said, “is the true bride of Christ and the true mother of all Christians.”
Augusta politely agreed.
“On this is question,” he said, “our own party thinks and believes exactly as you do.”
“No one,” continued the doctor suavely, “can believe in God who does not think correctly of the Holy Church, and regard her as his mother; and without the Church there is no salvation.”
Again Augusta politely agreed, and again the learned Jesuit beamed with pleasure. Now came the tug of war.
“This Holy Christian Church,” said Blissem, “has never erred and cannot err.”
Augusta met this with a flat denial. If he surrendered here he surrendered all, and would be untrue to his Brethren. If he once agreed that the Church was infallible he was swallowing the whole Roman pill. In vain the doctor argued. Augusta held his ground. The Jesuits reported him hard in the head, and had him sent back to his cell.
For two more years he waited in despair, and then he was brought to the White Tower again, and visited by two Utraquist Priests, Mystopol and Martin. His last chance, they told him, had now arrived. They had come as messengers from the Archduke Ferdinand and from the Emperor himself.
“I know,” said one of them, “on what you are relying and how you console yourself, but I warn you it will avail you nothing.”
“You know no secrets,” said Augusta.
“What secrets?” queried Mystopol.
“Neither divine nor mine. My dear administrators, your visit is quite a surprise! With regard to the recantation, however, let me say at once, I shall not sign it! I have never been guilty of any errors, and have nothing to recant. I made my public confession of faith before the lords and knights of Bohemia twenty-eight years ago. It was shown to the Emperor at Vienna, and no one has ever found anything wrong with it.”
“How is it,” said Mystopol, “you cannot see your error? You know it says in our confession, ‘I believe in the Holy Catholic Church.’ You Brethren have fallen away from that Church. You are not true members of the body. You are an ulcer. You are a scab. You have no sacraments. You have written bloodthirsty pamphlets against us. We have a whole box full of your productions.”
“We never wrote any tracts,” said Augusta, “except to show why we separated from you, but you urged on the Government against us. You likened me to a bastard and to Goliath the Philistine. Your petition read as if it had been written in a brothel.”
And now the character of John Augusta shone forth in all its grandeur. The old man was on his mettle.
“Of all Christians known to me,” he said, “the Brethren stick closest to Holy Writ. Next to them come the Lutherans; next to the Lutherans the Utraquists; and next to the Utraquists the—!”
But there in common honesty he had to stop. And then he turned the tables on Mystopol, and came out boldly with his scheme. It was no new idea of his. He had already, in 1547, advocated a National Protestant Church composed of Utraquists and Brethren. Instead of the Brethren joining the Utraquists, it was, said Augusta, the plain duty of the Utraquists to break from the Church of Rome and join the Brethren. For the last forty years the Utraquists had been really Lutherans at heart. He wanted them now to be true to their own convictions. He wanted them to carry out in practice the teaching of most of their preachers. He wanted them to run the risk of offending the Emperor and the Pope. He wanted them to ally themselves with the Brethren; and he believed that if they would only do so nearly every soul in Bohemia would join the new Evangelical movement. De Schweinitz says that Augusta betrayed his Brethren, and that when he called himself a Utraquist he was playing with words. I cannot accept this verdict. He explained clearly and precisely what he meant; he was a Utraquist in the same sense as Luther; and the castle he had built in the air was nothing less than a grand international union of all the Evangelical Christians in Europe.
“My lords,” he pleaded in golden words, “let us cease this mutual accusation of each other. Let us cease our destructive quarrelling. Let us join in seeking those higher objects which we both have in common, and let us remember that we are both of one origin, one nation, one blood and one spirit. Think of it, dear lords, and try to find some way to union.”
The appeal was pathetic and sincere. It fell on adders’ ears. His scheme found favour neither with Brethren nor with Utraquists. To the Brethren Augusta was a Jesuitical juggler. To the Utraquists he was a supple athlete trying to dodge his way out of prison.
“You shift about,” wrote the Brethren, “in a most remarkable manner. You make out the Utraquist Church to be different from what it really is, in order to keep a door open through which you may go.” In their judgment he was nothing less than an ambitious schemer. If his scheme were carried out, they said, he would not only be First Elder of the Brethren’s Church, but administrator of the whole united Church.
At last, however, King Maximilian interceded with the Emperor in his favour, and Augusta was set free on the one condition that he would not preach in public {1564.}. His hair was white; his beard was long; his brow was furrowed; his health was shattered; and he spent his last days amongst the Brethren, a defeated and broken-hearted man. He was restored to his old position as First Elder; he settled down again at Jungbunzlau; and yet somehow the old confidence was never completely restored. In vain he upheld his daring scheme of union. John Blahoslaw opposed him to the teeth. For the time, at least, John Blahoslaw was in the right. Augusta throughout had made one fatal blunder. As the Utraquists were now more Protestant in doctrine he thought that they had begun to love the Brethren. The very contrary was the case. If two people agree in nine points out of ten, and only differ in one, they will often quarrel more fiercely with each other than if they disagreed in all the ten. And that was just what happened in Bohemia. The more Protestant the Utraquists became in doctrine, the more jealous they were of the Brethren. And thus Augusta was honoured by neither party. Despised by friend and foe alike, the old white-haired Bishop tottered to the silent tomb. “He kept out of our way,” says the sad old record, “as long as he could; he had been among us long enough.” As we think of the noble life he lived, and the bitter gall of his eventide, we may liken him to one of those majestic mountains which tower in grandeur under the noontide sun, but round whose brows the vapours gather as night settles down on the earth. In the whole gallery of Bohemian portraits there is none, says Gindely, so noble in expression as his; and as we gaze on those grand features we see dignity blended with sorrow, and pride with heroic fire.43
Chapter 12
“The Golden Age, 1572-1603.”
As the Emperor Maximilian II. set out from the Royal Castle in Prague for a drive he met a baron famous in all the land {1575.}. The baron was John von Zerotin, the richest member of the Brethren’s Church. He had come to Prague on very important business. His home lay at Namiest, in Moravia. He lived in a stately castle, built on two huge crags, and surrounded by the houses of his retainers and domestics. His estate was twenty-five miles square. He had a lovely park of beeches, pines and old oaks. He held his court in kingly style. He had gentlemen of the chamber of noble birth. He had pages and secretaries, equerries and masters of the chase. He had valets, lackeys, grooms, stable-boys, huntsmen, barbers, watchmen, cooks, tailors, shoemakers, and saddlers. He had sat at the feet of Blahoslaw, the learned Church historian: he kept a Court Chaplain, who was, of course, a pastor of the Brethren’s Church; and now he had come to talk things over with the head of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Emperor offered the Baron a seat in his carriage. The Brother and the Emperor drove on side by side.
“I hear,” said the Emperor, “that the Picards are giving up their religion and going over to the Utraquists.”
The Baron was astounded. He had never, he said, heard the slightest whisper that the Brethren intended to abandon their own Confessions.
“I have heard it,” said the Emperor, “as positive fact from Baron Hassenstein himself.”
“It is not true,” replied Zerotin.
“What, then,” said the Emperor, “do the Utraquists mean when they say that they are the true Hussites, and wish me to protect them in their religion?”
“Your gracious Majesty,” replied Zerotin, “the Brethren, called Picards, are the true Hussites: they have kept their faith unsullied, as you may see yourself from the Confession they presented to you.”44
The Emperor looked puzzled. He was waxing old and feeble, and his memory was failing.
“What!” he said, “have the Picards got a Confession?”
He was soon to hear the real truth of the matter. For some months there had sat in Prague a committee of learned divines, who had met for the purpose of drawing up a National Protestant Bohemian Confession. The dream of Augusta seemed to be coming true. The Brethren took their part in the proceedings. “We are striving,” said Slawata, one of their deputies, “for peace, love and unity. We have no desire to be censors of dogmas. We leave such matters to theological experts.” The Confession45 was prepared, read out at the Diet, and presented to the Emperor. It was a compromise between the teaching of Luther and the teaching of the Brethren. In its doctrine of justification by faith it followed the teaching of Luther: in its doctrine of the Lord’s Supper it inclined to the broader evangelical view of the Brethren. The Emperor attended the Diet in person, and made a notable speech.
“I promise,” he said, “on my honour as an Emperor, that I will never oppress or hinder you in the exercise of your religion; and I pledge my word in my own name and also in the name of my successors.”
Let us try to grasp the meaning of this performance. As the Edict of St. James was still in force, the Brethren, in the eyes of the law, were still heretics and rebels; they had no legal standing in the country; and at any moment the King in his fury might order them to quit the land once more. But the truth is that the King of Bohemia was now a mere figurehead. The real power lay in the hands of the barons. The barons were Protestant almost to a man.
As the Emperor lay dying a few months later in the castle of Regensburg, he was heard to murmur the words, “The happy time is come.” For the Brethren the happy time had come indeed. They knew that the so-called Utraquist Church was Utraquist only in name; they knew that the Bible was read in every village; they knew that Lutheran doctrines were preached in hundreds of Utraquist Churches; they knew that in their own country they had now more friends than foes; and thus, free from the terrors of the law they trod the primrose path of peace and power. We have come to the golden age of the Brethren’s Church.
It was the age of material prosperity. As the sun of freedom shone upon their way, the Brethren drifted further still from the old Puritan ascetic ideas of Peter and Gregory the Patriarch. They had now all classes in their ranks. They had seventeen rich and powerful barons, of the stamp of John Zerotin; they had over a hundred and forty knights; they had capitalists, flourishing tradesmen, mayors, and even generals in the Army, and the Lord High Chamberlain now complained that two-thirds of the people in Bohemia were Brethren.46 Nor was this all. For many years the Brethren had been renowned as the most industrious and prosperous people in the country; and were specially famous for their manufacture of knives. They were noted for their integrity of character, and were able to obtain good situations as managers of estates, houses, wine cellars and mills; and in many of the large settlements, such as Jungbunzlau and Leitomischl, they conducted flourishing business concerns for the benefit of the Church at large. They made their settlements the most prosperous places in the country; they built hospitals; they had a fund for the poor called the Korbona; and on many estates they made themselves so useful that the barons, in their gratitude, set them free from the usual tolls and taxes. To the Brethren business was now a sacred duty. They had seen the evils of poverty, and they did their best to end them. They made no hard and fast distinction between secular and sacred; and the cooks and housemaids in the Brethren’s Houses were appointed by the Church, and called from one sphere of service to another, just as much as the presbyters and deacons. The clergy, though still doing manual labour, were now rather better off: the gardens and fields attached to the manses helped to swell their income; and, therefore, we are not surprised to hear that some of them were married.
Again, the Brethren were champions of education. They had seen the evil of their ways. As the exiles banished by Ferdinand I. came into contact with Lutherans in Prussia they heard, rather to their disgust, that they were commonly regarded by the German Protestants as a narrow-minded and benighted set of men; and, therefore, at the special invitation of the Lutheran Bishop Speratus, they began the practice of sending some of their students to foreign universities. It is pathetic to read how the first two students were sent {1549.}. “We granted them,” says the record, “their means of support. We gave them £7 10s. a-piece, and sent them off to Basle.” We are not informed how long the money was to last. For some years the new policy was fiercely opposed; and the leader of the opposition was John Augusta. He regarded this new policy with horror, condemned it as a falling away from the old simplicity and piety, and predicted that it would bring about the ruin of the Brethren’s Church. At the head of the progressive party was John Blahoslaw, the historian. He had been to Wittenberg and Basle himself; he was a master of Greek and Latin; and now he wrote a brilliant philippic, pouring scorn on the fears of the conservative party. “For my part,” he said, “I have no fear that learned and pious men will ever ruin the Church. I am far more afraid of the action of those high-minded and stupid schemers, who think more highly of themselves than they ought to think.” It is clear to whom these stinging words refer. They are a plain hit at Augusta. “It is absurd,” he continued, “to be afraid of learning and culture. As long as our leaders are guided by the Spirit of Christ, all will be well; but when craft and cunning, and worldly prudence creep in, then woe to the Brethren’s Church! Let us rather be careful whom we admit to the ministry, and then the Lord will preserve us from destruction.” As we read these biting words, we can understand how it came to pass that Augusta, during his last few years, was held in such little honour. The old man was behind the times. The progressive party triumphed. Before long there were forty students at foreign Universities. The whole attitude of the Brethren changed. As the Humanist movement spread in Bohemia, the Brethren began to take an interest in popular education; and now, aided by friendly nobles, they opened a number of free elementary schools. At Eibenschütz, in Moravia, they had a school for the sons of the nobility, with Esrom Rüdinger as headmaster; both Hebrew and Greek were taught; and the school became so famous that many of the pupils came from Germany. At Holleschau, Leitomischl, Landskron, Gross-Bitesch, Austerlitz, Fulneck, Meseretoch, Chropin, Leipnik, Kaunic, Trebitzch, Paskau, Ungarisch-Brod, Jungbunzlau, and Prerau, they had free schools supported by Protestant nobles and manned with Brethren’s teachers. As there is no direct evidence to the contrary, we may take it for granted that in these schools the syllabus was much the same as in the other schools of the country. In most the Latin language was taught, and in some dialectics, rhetoric, physics, astronomy and geometry. The education was largely practical. At most of the Bohemian schools in those days the children were taught, by means of conversation books, how to look after a horse, how to reckon with a landlord, how to buy cloth, how to sell a garment, how to write a letter, how to make terms with a pedlar, how, in a word, to get on in the world. But the Brethren laid the chief stress on religion. Instead of separating the secular and the sacred, they combined the two in a wonderful way, and taught both at the same time. For this purpose, they published, in the first place, a school edition of their Catechism in three languages, Bohemian, German, and Latin; and thus the Catechism became the scholar’s chief means of instruction. He learned to read from his Catechism; he learned Latin from his Catechism; he learned German from his Catechism; and thus, while mastering foreign tongues, he was being grounded at the same time in the articles of the Christian faith. He lived, in a word, from morning to night in a Christian atmosphere. For the same purpose a Brother named Matthias Martinus prepared a book containing extracts from the Gospels and Epistles. It was printed in six parallel columns. In the first were grammatical notes; in the second the text in Greek; in the third a translation in Bohemian; in the fourth in German; in the fifth in Latin; and in the sixth a brief exposition.
Second, the Brethren used another text-book called the “Book of Morals.” It was based, apparently, on Erasmus’s “Civilitas Morum.” It was a simple, practical guide to daily conduct. It was written in rhyme, and the children learned it by heart. It was divided into three parts. In the first, the child was taught how to behave from morning to night; in the second, how to treat his elders and masters; in the third, how to be polite at table.
Third, the Brethren, in all their schools, made regular use of hymn-books; and the scholar learnt to sing by singing hymns. Sometimes the hymns were in a separate volume; sometimes a selection was bound up with the Catechism. But in either case the grand result was the same. As we follow the later fortunes of the Brethren we shall find ourselves face to face with a difficult problem. How was it, we ask, that in later years, when their little Church was crushed to powder, these Brethren held the faith for a hundred years? How was it that the “Hidden Seed” had such vitality? How was it that, though forbidden by law, they held the fort till the times of revival came? For answer we turn to their Catechism. They had learned it first in their own homes; they had learned it later at school; they had made it the very marrow of their life; they taught it in turn to their children; and thus in the darkest hours of trial they handed on the torch of faith from one generation to another.
We come now to another secret of their strength. Of all the Protestants in Europe the Bohemian Brethren were the first to publish a Hymn-book; and by this time they had published ten editions. The first three were in Bohemian, and were edited by Luke of Prague, 1501, 1505, 1519; the fourth in German, edited by Michael Weiss, 1531; the fifth in Bohemian, edited by John Horn, 1541; the sixth in German, edited by John Horn, 1544; the seventh in Polish, edited by George Israel, 1554; the eighth in Bohemian, edited by John Blahoslaw, 1561; the ninth in German, 1566; the tenth in Polish, 1569. As they wished here to appeal to all classes, they published hymns both ancient and modern, and tunes both grave and gay. Among the hymn-writers were John Hus, Rockycana, Luke of Prague, Augusta, and Martin Luther; and among the tunes were Gregorian Chants and popular rondels of the day. The hymns and tunes were published in one volume. The chief purpose of the hymns was clear religious instruction. The Brethren had nothing to conceal. They had no mysterious secret doctrines; and no mysterious secret practices. They published their hymn-books, not for themselves only, but for all the people in the country, and for Evangelical Christians in other lands. “It has been our chief aim,” they said, “to let everyone fully and clearly understand what our views are with regard to the articles of the Christian faith.” And here the hymns were powerful preachers of the faith. They spread the Brethren’s creed in all directions. They were clear, orderly, systematic, and Scriptural; and thus they were sung in the family circle, by bands of young men in the Brethren’s Houses, by shepherds watching their flocks by night, by sturdy peasants as they trudged to market. And then, on Sunday, in an age when congregational singing was as yet but little known, the Brethren made the rafters ring with the sound of united praise. “Your churches,” wrote the learned Esrom Rüdinger, “surpass all others in singing. For where else are songs of praise, of thanksgiving, of prayer and instruction so often heard? Where is there better singing? The newest edition of the Bohemian Hymn-book, with its seven hundred and forty-three hymns, is an evidence of the multitude of your songs. Three hundred and forty-six have been translated into German. In your churches the people can all sing and take part in the worship of God.”
But of all the services rendered by the Brethren to the cause of the evangelical faith in Bohemia the noblest and the most enduring was their translation of the Bible into the Bohemian tongue. In the archives of the Brethren’s Church at Herrnhut are now to be seen six musty volumes known as the Kralitz Bible (1579-93). The idea was broached by Blahoslaw, the Church historian. The expense was born by Baron John von Zerotin. The actual printing was executed at Zerotin’s Castle at Kralitz. The translation was based, not on the Vulgate, but on the original Hebrew and Greek. The work of translating the Old Testament was entrusted to six Hebrew scholars, Aeneas, Cepollo, Streic, Ephraim, Jessen, and Capito. The New Testament was translated by Blahoslaw himself (1565). The work was of national interest. For the first time the Bohemian people possessed the Bible in a translation from the original tongue, with the chapters subdivided into verses, and the Apocrypha separated from the Canonical Books. The work appeared at first in cumbersome form. It was issued in six bulky volumes, with only eight or nine verses to a page, and a running commentary in the margin. The paper was strong, the binding dark brown, the page quarto, the type Latin, the style chaste and idiomatic, and the commentary fairly rich in broad practical theology. But all this was no use to the poor. For the benefit, therefore, of the common people the Brethren published a small thin paper edition in a plain calf binding. It contained an index of quotations from the Old Testament in the New, an index of proper names with their meanings, a lectionary for the Christian Year, references in the margin, and a vignette including the famous Brethren’s episcopal seal, “The Lamb and the Flag.” The size of the page was only five inches by seven and a half; the number of pages was eleven hundred and sixty; the paper was so remarkably thin that the book was only an inch and a quarter thick;47 and thus it was suited in every way to hold the same place in the affections of the people that the Geneva Bible held in England in the days of our Puritan fathers. The Kralitz Bible was a masterpiece. It helped to fix and purify the language, and thus completed what Stitny and Hus had begun. It became the model of a chaste and simple style; and its beauty of language was praised by the Jesuits. It is a relic that can never be forgotten, a treasure that can never lose its value. It is issued now, word for word, by the British and Foreign Bible Society; it is read by the people in their own homes, and is used in the Protestant Churches of the country; and thus, as the Catholic, Gindely, says, it will probably endure as long as the Bohemian tongue is spoken.
But even this was not the end of the Brethren’s labours. We come to the most amazing fact in their history. On the one hand they were the greatest literary force in the country;48 on the other they took the smallest part in her theological controversies. For example, take the case of John Blahoslaw. He was one of the most brilliant scholars of his day. He was master of a beautiful literary style. He was a member of the Brethren’s Inner Council. He wrote a “History of the Brethren.” He translated the New Testament into Bohemian. He prepared a standard Bohemian Grammar. He wrote also a treatise on Music, and other works too many to mention here. And yet, learned Bishop though he was, he wrote only one theological treatise, “Election through Grace,” and even here he handled his subject from a practical rather than a theological point of view.
Again, take the case of Jacob Bilek, Augusta’s companion in prison. If ever a man had just cause to hate the Church of Rome it was surely this humble friend of the great Augusta; and yet he wrote a full account of their dreary years in prison without saying one bitter word against his persecutors and tormentors.49 From this point of view his book is delightful. It is full of piety, of trust in God, of vivid dramatic description; it has not a bitter word from cover to cover; and thus it is a beautiful and precious example of the broad and charitable spirit of the Brethren.
Again, it is surely instructive to note what subject most attracted the Brethren’s attention. For religious debate they cared but little; for history they had a consuming passion; and now their leading scholars produced the greatest historical works in the language. Brother Jaffet wrote a work on the Brethren’s Episcopal Orders, entitled, “The Sword of Goliath.” Wenzel Brezan wrote a history of the “House of Rosenberg,” containing much interesting information about Bohemian social life. Baron Charles von Zerotin wrote several volumes of memoirs. The whole interest of the Brethren now was broad and national in character. The more learned they grew the less part they took in theological disputes. They regarded such disputes as waste of time; they had no pet doctrines to defend; they were now in line with the other Protestants of the country; and they held that the soul was greater than the mind and good conduct best of all. No longer did they issue “Confessions of Faith” of their own; no longer did they lay much stress on their points of difference with Luther. We come here to a point of great importance. It has been asserted by some historians that the Brethren never taught the doctrine of Justification by Faith. For answer we turn to their later Catechism prepared (1554) by Jirek Gyrck.
“In what way,” ran one question, “can a sinful man obtain salvation?”
“By the pure Grace of God alone, through Faith in Jesus Christ our Lord who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”
What sort of picture does all this bring before us? It is the picture of a body of men who had made remarkable progress. No longer did they despise education; they fostered it more than any men in the country. No longer did they speak with contempt of marriage; they spoke of it as a symbol of holier things. It was time, thought some, for these broad-minded men to have their due reward. It was time to amend the insulting law, and tear the musty Edict of St. James to tatters.
Chapter 13
“The Letter of Majesty, 1603-1609″
Of all the members of the Brethren’s Church, the most powerful and the most discontented was Baron Wenzel von Budowa. He was now fifty-six years of age. He had travelled in Germany, Denmark, Holland, England, France and Italy. He had studied at several famous universities. He had made the acquaintance of many learned men. He had entered the Imperial service, and served as ambassador at Constantinople. He had mastered Turkish and Arabic, had studied the Mohammedan religion, had published the Alcoran in Bohemian, and had written a treatise denouncing the creed and practice of Islam as Satanic in origin and character. He belonged to the Emperor’s Privy Council, and also to the Imperial Court of Appeal. He took part in theological controversies, and preached sermons to his tenants. He was the bosom friend of Baron Charles von Zerotin, the leading Brother of Moravia. He corresponded, from time to time, with the struggling Protestants in Hungary, and had now become the recognised leader, not only of the Brethren, but of all evangelicals in Bohemia.
He had one great purpose to attain. As the Brethren had rendered such signal service to the moral welfare of the land, it seemed to him absurd and unfair that they should still be under the ban of the law and still be denounced in Catholic pulpits as children of the devil. He resolved to remedy the evil. The Emperor, Rudolph II., paved the way. He was just the man that Budowa required. He was weak in body and in mind. He had ruined his health, said popular scandal, by indulging in dissolute pleasures. His face was shrivelled, his hair bleached, his back bent, his step tottering. He was too much interested in astrology, gems, pictures, horses, antique relics and similar curiosities to take much interest in government; he suffered from religious mania, and was constantly afraid of being murdered; and his daily hope and prayer was that he might be spared all needless trouble in this vexatious world and have absolutely nothing to do. And now he committed an act of astounding folly. He first revived the Edict of St. James, ordered the nobles throughout the land to turn out all Protestant pastors {1602-3.}, and sent a body of armed men to close the Brethren’s Houses at Jungbunzlau; and then, having disgusted two-thirds of his loyal subjects, he summoned a Diet, and asked for money for a crusade against the Turks. But this was more than Wenzel could endure. He attended the Diet, and made a brilliant speech. He had nothing, he said, to say against the Emperor. He would not blame him for reviving the musty Edict. For that he blamed some secret disturbers of the peace. If the Emperor needed money and men, the loyal knights and nobles of Bohemia would support him. But that support would be given on certain conditions. If the Emperor wished his subjects to be loyal, he must first obey the law of the land himself. “We stand,” he said, “one and all by the Confession of 1575, and we do not know a single person who is prepared to submit to the Consistory at Prague.” He finished, wept, prepared a petition, and sent it in to the poor invisible Rudolph. And Rudolph replied as Emperors sometimes do. He replied by closing the Diet.
Again, however, six years later, Budowa returned to the attack {1609.}. He was acting, not merely on behalf of the Brethren, but on behalf of all Protestants in the country. And this fact is the key to the situation. As we follow the dramatic story to its sad and tragic close, we must remember that from this time onward the Brethren, for all intents and purposes, had almost abandoned their position as a separate Church, and had cast in their lot, for good or evil, with the other Protestants in Bohemia. They were striving now for the recognition, not of their own Confession of Faith, but of the general Bohemian Protestant Confession presented to the Emperor, Maximilian II. And thus Budowa became a national hero. He called a meeting of Lutherans and Brethren in the historic “Green Saloon,” prepared a resolution demanding that the Protestant Confession be inscribed in the Statute Book, and, followed by a crowd of nobles and knights, was admitted to the sacred presence of the Emperor.
Again the Diet was summoned. The hall was crammed, and knights and nobles jostled each other in the corridors and in the square outside {Jan. 28th, 1609.}. For some weeks the Emperor, secluded in his cabinet, held to his point like a hero. The debate was conducted in somewhat marvellous fashion. There, in the Green Saloon, sat the Protestants, preparing proposals and petitions. There, in the Archbishop’s palace, sat the Catholics, rather few in number, and wondering what to do. And there, in his chamber, sat the grizzly, rickety, imperial Lion, consulting with his councillors, Martinic and Slawata, and dictating his replies. And then, when the king had his answer ready, the Diet met in the Council Chamber to hear it read aloud. His first reply was now as sharp as ever. He declared that the faith of the Church of Rome was the only lawful faith in Bohemia. “And as for these Brethren,” he said, “whose teaching has been so often forbidden by royal decrees and decisions of the Diet, I order them, like my predecessors, to fall in with the Utraquists or Catholics, and declare that their meetings shall not be permitted on any pretence whatever.”
In vain the Protestants, by way of reply, drew up a monster petition, and set forth their grievances in detail. They suffered, they said, not from actual persecution, but from nasty insults and petty annoyances. They were still described in Catholic pulpits as heretics and children of the devil. They were still forbidden to honour the memory of Hus. They were still forbidden to print books without the consent of the Archbishop. But the King snapped them short. He told the estates to end their babble, and again closed the Diet {March 31st.}.
The blood of Budowa was up. The debate, thought he, was fast becoming a farce. The King was fooling his subjects. The King must be taught a lesson. As the Diet broke up, he stood at the door, and shouted out in ringing tones: “Let all who love the King and the land, let all who care for unity and love, let all who remember the zeal of our fathers, meet here at six to-morrow morn.”
He spent the night with some trusty allies, prepared another declaration, met his friends in the morning, and informed the King, in language clear, that the Protestants had now determined to win their rights by force. And Budowa was soon true to his word. He sent envoys asking for help to the King’s brother Matthias, to the Elector of Saxony, to the Duke of Brunswick, and to other Protestant leaders. He called a meeting of nobles and knights in the courtyard of the castle, and there, with heads bared and right hands upraised, they swore to be true to each other and to win their liberty at any price, even at the price of blood. He arranged for an independent meeting in the town hall of the New Town. The King forbade the meeting. What better place, replied Budowa, would His Majesty like to suggest? As he led his men across the long Prague bridge, he was followed by thousands of supporters. He arrived in due time at the square in front of the hall. The Royal Captain appeared and ordered him off. The crowd jeered and whistled the Captain away.
And yet Budowa was no vulgar rebel. He insisted that every session in the hall should be begun and ended with prayer. He informed the King, again and again, that all he wished was liberty of worship for Protestants. He did his best to put an end to the street rows, the drunken brawls, that now disgraced the city.
For the third time the King summoned the Diet {May 25th.}. The last round in the terrible combat now began. He ordered the estates to appear in civilian’s dress. They arrived armed to the teeth. He ordered them to open the proceedings by attending Mass in the Cathedral. The Catholics alone obeyed; the Protestants held a service of their own; and yet, despite these danger signals, the King was as stubborn as ever, and again he sent a message to say that he held to his first decision. The Diet was thunderstruck, furious, desperate.
“We have had enough of useless talk,” said Count Matthias Thurn; “it is time to take to arms.” The long fight was drawing to a finish. As the King refused to listen to reason, the members of the Diet, one and all, Protestants and Catholics alike, prepared an ultimatum demanding that all evangelical nobles, knights, citizens and peasants should have full and perfect liberty to worship God in their own way, and to build schools and churches on all Royal estates; and, in order that the King might realise the facts of the case, Budowa formed a Board of thirty directors, of whom fourteen were Brethren, raised an army in Prague, and sent the nobles flying through the land to levy money and troops. The country, in fact, was now in open revolt. And thus, at length compelled by brute force, the poor old King gave way, and made his name famous in history by signing the Letter of Majesty and granting full religious liberty to all adherents of the Bohemian National Protestant Confession. All adherents of the Confession could worship as they pleased, and all classes, except the peasantry, could build schools and churches on Royal estates {July 9th.}. “No decree of any kind,” ran one sweeping clause, “shall be issued either by us or by our heirs and succeeding kings against the above established religious peace.”
The delight in Prague was boundless. The Letter of Majesty was carried through the streets in grand triumphal procession. The walls were adorned with flaming posters. The bells of the churches were rung. The people met in the Church of the Holy Cross, and there sang jubilant psalms of thanksgiving and praise. The King’s couriers posted through the land to tell the gladsome news; the letter was hailed as the heavenly herald of peace and goodwill to men; and Budowa was adored as a national hero, and the redresser of his people’s wrongs.
But the work of the Diet was not yet complete. As the Brethren, led by the brave Budowa, had borne the brunt of the battle, we naturally expect to find that now the victory was won, they would have the lion’s share of the spoils. But they really occupied a rather modest position. The next duty of the Diet was to make quite sure that the Letter of Majesty would not be broken. For this purpose they elected a Board of Twenty-four Defenders, and of these Defenders only eight were Brethren. Again, the Brethren had now to submit to the rule of a New National Protestant Consistory. Of that Consistory the Administrator was a Utraquist Priest; the next in rank was a Brethren’s Bishop; the total number of members was twelve; and of these twelve only three were Brethren. If the Brethren, therefore, were fairly represented, they must have constituted at this time about one-quarter or one-third of the Protestants in Bohemia.50 They were now a part, in the eyes of the law, of the National Protestant Church. They were known as Utraquist Christians. They accepted the National Confession as their own standard of faith, and though they could still ordain their own priests, their candidates for the priesthood had first to be examined by the national Administrator.
And, further, the Brethren had now weakened their union with the Moravian and Polish branches. No longer did the three parts of the Church stand upon the same footing. In Poland the Brethren were still the leading body; in Moravia they were still independent; in Bohemia alone they bowed to the rule of others. And yet, in some important respects, they were still as independent as ever. They could still hold their own Synods and practise their own ceremonies; they still retained their own Confession of faith; they could still conduct their own schools and teach their Catechism; and they could still, above all, enforce as of old their system of moral discipline. And this they guarded as the apple of their eye.
As soon as the above arrangements were complete they addressed themselves to the important task of defining their own position. And for this purpose they met at a General Synod at Zerawic, and prepared a comprehensive descriptive work, entitled “Ratio Disciplinæ”–i.e., Account of Discipline.51 It was a thorough, exhaustive, orderly code of rules and regulations. It was meant as a guide and a manifesto. It proved to be an epitaph. In the second place, the Brethren now issued (1615) a new edition of their Catechism, with the questions and answers in four parallel columns–Greek, Bohemian, German and Latin;52 and thus, once more, they shewed their desire to play their part in national education.
Thus, at last, had the Brethren gained their freedom. They had crossed the Red Sea, had traversed the wilderness, had smitten the Midianites hip and thigh, and could now settle down in the land of freedom flowing with milk and honey.
Chapter 14
“The Downfall, 1616-1621″
The dream of bliss became a nightmare. As the tide of Protestantism ebbed and flowed in various parts of the Holy Roman Empire, so the fortunes of the Brethren ebbed and flowed in the old home of their fathers. We have seen how the Brethren rose to prosperity and power. We have now to see what brought about their ruin. It was nothing in the moral character of the Brethren themselves. It was purely and simply their geographical position. If Bohemia had only been an island, as Shakespeare seems to have thought it was, it is more than likely that the Church of the Brethren would have flourished there down to the present day. But Bohemia lay in the very heart of European politics; the King was always a member of the House of Austria; the House of Austria was the champion of the Catholic faith, and the Brethren now were crushed to powder in the midst of that mighty European conflict known as the Thirty Years’ War. We note briefly the main stages of the process.
The first cause was the rising power of the Jesuits. For the last fifty years these zealous men had been quietly extending their influence in the country. They had built a magnificent college in Prague. They had established a number of schools for the common people. They had obtained positions as tutors in noble families. They went about from village to village, preaching, sometimes in the village churches and sometimes in the open air; and one of their number, Wenzel Sturm, had written an exhaustive treatise denouncing the doctrines of the Brethren. But now these Jesuits used more violent measures. They attacked the Brethren in hot, abusive language. They declared that the wives of Protestant ministers were whores. They denounced their children as bastards. They declared that it was better to have the devil in the house than a Protestant woman. And the more they preached, and the more they wrote, the keener the party feeling in Bohemia grew.
The next cause was the Letter of Majesty itself. As soon as that Letter was closely examined, a flaw was found in the crystal. We come to what has been called the “Church Building Difficulty.” It was clearly provided in one clause of the Letter of Majesty that the Protestants should have perfect liberty to build churches on all Royal estates. But now arose the difficult question, what were Royal estates? What about Roman Catholic Church estates? What about estates held by Catholic officials as tenants of the King? Were these Royal estates or were they not? There were two opinions on the subject. According to the Protestants they were; according to the Jesuits they were not; and now the Jesuits used this argument to influence the action of Matthias, the next King of Bohemia. The dispute soon came to blows. At Klostergrab the land belonged to the Catholic Archbishop of Prague; at Brunau it belonged to the Abbot of Brunau; and yet, on each of these estates, the Protestants had churches. They believed, of course, that they were in the right. They regarded those estates as Royal estates. They had no desire to break the law of the land. But now the Catholics began to force the pace. At Brunau the Abbot interfered and turned the Protestants out of the church. At Klostergrab the church was pulled down, and the wood of which it was built was used as firewood; and in each case the new King, Matthias, took the Catholic side. The truth is, Matthias openly broke the Letter. He broke it on unquestioned Royal estates. He expelled Protestant ministers from their pulpits, and put Catholics in their place. His officers burst into Protestant churches and interrupted the services; and, in open defiance of the law of the land, the priests drove Protestants with dogs and scourges to the Mass, and thrust the wafer down their mouths. What right, said the Protestants, had the Catholics to do these things? The Jesuits had an amazing answer ready. For two reasons, they held, the Letter of Majesty was invalid. It was invalid because it had been obtained by force, and invalid because it had not been sanctioned by the Pope. What peace could there be with these conflicting views? It is clear that a storm was brewing.
The third cause was the famous dispute about the Kingship. As Matthias was growing old and feeble, it was time to choose his successor; and Matthias, therefore, summoned a Diet, and informed the Estates, to their great surprise, that all they had to do now was to accept as King his adopted son, Ferdinand Archduke of Styria. At first the Diet was thunderstruck. They had met to choose their own King. They intended to choose a Protestant, and now they were commanded to choose this Ferdinand, the most zealous Catholic in Europe. And yet, for some mysterious reason, the Diet actually yielded. They surrendered their elective rights; they accepted Ferdinand as King, and thus, at the most critical and dangerous point in the whole history of the country, they allowed a Catholic devotee to become the ruler of a Protestant people. For that fatal mistake they had soon to pay in full. Some say they were frightened by threats; some say that the Diet was summoned in a hurry, and that only a few attended. The truth is, they were completely outwitted. At this point the Protestant nobles of Bohemia showed that fatal lack of prompt and united action which was soon to fill the whole land with all the horrors of war. In vain Budowa raised a vehement protest. He found but few to support him. If the Protestants desired peace and good order in Bohemia, they ought to have insisted upon their rights and elected a Protestant King; and now, in Ferdinand, they had accepted a man who was pledged to fight for the Church of Rome with every breath of his body. He was a man of fervent piety. He was a pupil of the Jesuits. He regarded himself as the divinely appointed champion of the Catholic faith. He had already stamped out the Protestants in Styria. He had a strong will and a clear conception of what he regarded as his duty. He would rather, he declared, beg his bread from door to door, with his family clinging affectionately around him, than allow a single Protestant in his dominions. “I would rather,” he said, “rule over a wilderness than over heretics.” But what about his oath to observe the Letter of Majesty? Should he take the oath or not? If he took it he would be untrue to his conscience; if he refused he could never be crowned King of Bohemia. He consulted his friends the Jesuits. They soon eased his conscience. It was wicked, they said, of Rudolph II. to sign such a monstrous document; but it was not wicked for the new King to take the oath to keep it. And, therefore, Ferdinand took the oath, and was crowned King of Bohemia. “We shall now see,” said a lady at the ceremony, “whether the Protestants are to rule the Catholics or the Catholics the Protestants.”
She was right. Forthwith the Protestants realised their blunder, and made desperate efforts to recover the ground they had lost. Now was the time for the Twenty-four Defenders to arise and do their duty; now was the time, now or never, to make the Letter no longer a grinning mockery. They began by acting strictly according to law. They had been empowered to summon representatives of the Protestant Estates. They summoned their assembly, prepared a petition, and sent it off to Matthias. He replied that their assembly was illegal. He refused to remedy their grievances. The Defenders were goaded to fury. At their head was a violent man, Henry Thurn. He resolved on open rebellion. He would have the new King Ferdinand dethroned and have his two councillors, Martinic and Slawata, put to death. It was the 23rd of May, 1618. At an early hour on that fatal day, the Protestant Convention met in the Hradschin, and then, a little later, the fiery Thurn sallied out with a body of armed supporters, arrived at the Royal Castle, and forced his way into the Regent’s Chamber, where the King’s Councillors were assembled. There, in a corner, by the stove sat Martinic and Slawata. There, in that Regent’s Chamber, began the cause of all the woe that followed. There was struck the first blow of the Thirty Years’ War. As Thurn and his henchmen stood in the presence of the two men, who, in their opinion, had done the most to poison the mind of Matthias, they felt that the decisive moment had come. The interview was stormy. Voices rang in wild confusion. The Protestant spokesman was Paul von Rican. He accused Martinic and Slawata of two great crimes. They had openly broken the Letter of Majesty, and had dictated King Matthias’s last reply. He appealed to his supporters crowded into the corridor outside.
“Aye, aye,” shouted the crowd.
“Into the Black Tower with them,” said some.
“Nay, nay,” said Rupow, a member of the Brethren’s Church, “out of the window with them, in the good old Bohemian fashion.”
At this signal, agreed upon before, Martinic was dragged to the window. He begged for a father confessor.
“Commend thy soul to God,” said someone. “Are we to allow any Jesuit scoundrels here?”
“Jesus! Mary!” he screamed.
He was flung headlong from the window. He clutched at the window-sill. A blow came down on his hands. He had to leave go, and down he fell, seventy feet, into the moat below.
“Let us see,” said someone, “whether his Mary will help him.”
He fell on a heap of soft rubbish. He scrambled away with only a wound in the head.
“By God,” said one of the speakers, “his Mary has helped him.”
At this point the conspirators appear to have lost their heads. As Martinic had not been killed by his fall, it was absurd to treat Slawata in the same way; and yet they now flung him out of the window, and his secretary Fabricius after him. Not one of the three was killed, not one was even maimed for life, and through the country the rumour spread that all three had been delivered by the Virgin Mary.
>From that moment war was inevitable. As the details of the struggle do not concern us, it will be enough to state here that the Defenders now, in slipshod fashion, began to take a variety of measures to maintain the Protestant cause. They formed a national Board of Thirty Directors. They assessed new taxes to maintain the war, but never took the trouble to collect them. They relied more on outside help than on their own united action. They deposed Ferdinand II.; they elected Frederick, Elector Palatine, and son-in-law of James I. of England, as King of Bohemia; and they ordered the Jesuits out of the kingdom. There was a strange scene in Prague when these Jesuits departed. They formed in procession in the streets, and, clad in black, marched off with bowed heads and loud wailings; and when their houses were examined they were found full of gunpowder and arms. For the moment the Protestants of Prague were wild with joy. In the great Cathedral they pulled off the ornaments and destroyed costly pictures. What part did the Brethren play in these abominations? We do not know. At this tragic point in their fateful story our evidence is so lamentably scanty that it is absolutely impossible to say what part they played in the revolution. But one thing at least we know without a doubt. We know that the Catholics were now united and the Protestants quarrelling with each other; we know that Ferdinand was prompt and vigorous, and the new King Frederick stupid and slack; and we know, finally, that the Catholic army, commanded by the famous general Tilly, was far superior to the Protestant army under Christian of Anhalt. At last the Catholic army appeared before the walls of Prague. The battle of the White Hill was fought (November 8th, 1620). The new King, in the city, was entertaining some ambassadors to dinner. The Protestant army was routed, the new King fled from the country, and once again Bohemia lay crushed under the heel of the conqueror.
At this time the heel of the conqueror consisted in a certain Prince Lichtenstein. He was made regent of Prague, and was entrusted with the duty of restoring the country to order. He set about his work in a cool and methodical manner. He cleared the rabble out of the streets. He recalled the Jesuits. He ordered the Brethren out of the kingdom. He put a Roman Catholic Priest into every church in Prague; and then he made the strange announcement that all the rebels, as they were called, would be freely pardoned, and invited the leading Protestant nobles to appear before him at Prague. They walked into the trap like flies into a cobweb. If the nobles had only cared to do so, they might all have escaped after the battle of the White Hill; for Tilly, the victorious general, had purposely given them time to do so. But for some reason they nearly all preferred to stay. And now Lichtenstein had them in his grasp. He had forty-seven leaders arrested in one night. He imprisoned them in the castle tower, had them tried and condemned, obtained the approval of Ferdinand, and then, while some were pardoned, informed the remaining twenty-seven that they had two days in which to prepare for death. They were to die on June 21st. Among those leaders about a dozen were Brethren. We have arrived at the last act of the tragedy. We have seen the grim drama develop, and when the curtain falls the stage will be covered with corpses and blood.
Chapter 15
“The Day of Blood at Prague”
The City of Prague was divided into two parts, the Old Town and the New Town. In the middle of the Old Town was a large open space, called the Great Square. On the west side of the Great Square stood the Council House, on the east the old Thein Church. The condemned prisoners, half of whom were Brethren, were in the Council House: in front of their window was the scaffold, draped in black cloth, twenty feet high, and twenty-two yards square; from the window they stepped out on to a balcony, and from the balcony to the scaffold ran a short flight of steps. In that Great Square, and on that scaffold, we find the scene of our story.
When early in the morning of Monday, June 21st, the assembled prisoners looked out of the windows of their rooms to take their last view of earth, they saw a splendid, a brilliant, a gorgeous, but to them a terrible scene {1621.}. They saw God’s sun just rising in the east and reddening the sky and shining in each other’s faces; they saw the dark black scaffold bathed in light, and the squares of infantry and cavalry ranged around it; they saw the eager, excited throng, surging and swaying in the Square below and crowding on the house-tops to right and left; and they saw on the further side of the square the lovely twin towers of the old Thein Church, where Gregory had knelt and Rockycana had preached in the brave days of old. As the church clocks chimed the hour of five a gun was fired from the castle; the prisoners were informed that their hour had come, and were ordered to prepare for their doom; and Lichtenstein and the magistrates stepped out on to the balcony, an awning above them to screen them from the rising sun. The last act of the tragedy opened.
As there was now a long morning’s work to be done, that work was begun at once; and as the heads of the martyrs fell off the block in quick succession the trumpets brayed and the drums beat an accompaniment. Grim and ghastly was the scene in that Great Square in Prague, on that bright June morning well nigh three hundred years ago. There fell the flower of the Bohemian nobility; and there was heard the swan song of the Bohemian Brethren. As the sun rose higher in the eastern sky and shone on the windows of the Council House, the sun of the Brethren’s pride and power was setting in a sea of blood; and clear athwart the lingering light stood out, for all mankind to see, the figures of the last defenders of their freedom and their faith. Among the number not one had shown the white feather in prospect of death. Not a cheek was blanched, not a voice faltered as the dread hour drew near. One and all they had fortified themselves to look the waiting angel of death in the face. As they sat in their rooms the evening before–a sabbath evening it was–they had all, in one way or another, drawn nigh to God in prayer. In one room the prisoners had taken the Communion together, in another they joined in singing psalms and hymns; in another they had feasted in a last feast of love. Among these were various shades of faith–Lutherans, Calvinists, Utraquists, Brethren; but now all differences were laid aside, for all was nearly over now. One laid the cloth, and another the plates; a third brought water and a fourth said the simple grace. As the night wore on they lay down on tables and benches to snatch a few hours of that troubled sleep which gives no rest. At two they were all broad awake again, and again the sound of psalms and hymns was heard; and as the first gleams of light appeared each dressed himself as though for a wedding, and carefully turned down the ruffle of his collar so as to give the executioner no extra trouble.
Swiftly, in order, and without much cruelty the gory work was done. The morning’s programme had all been carefully arranged. At each corner of the square was a squad of soldiers to hold the people in awe, and to prevent an attempt at rescue. One man, named Mydlar, was the executioner; and, being a Protestant, he performed his duties with as much decency and humanity as possible. He used four different swords, and was paid about £100 for his morning’s work. With his first sword he beheaded eleven; with his second, five; with his two last, eight. The first of these swords is still to be seen at Prague, and has the names of its eleven victims engraven upon it. Among these names is the name of Wenzel von Budowa. In every instance Mydlar seems to have done his duty at one blow. At his side stood an assistant, and six masked men in black. As soon as Mydlar had severed the neck, the assistant placed the dead man’s right hand on the block; the sword fell again; the hand dropped at the wrist; and the men in black, as silent as night, gathered up the bleeding members, wrapped them in clean black cloth, and swiftly bore them away.
The name of Budowa was second on the list. As many of the records of the time were destroyed by fire, we are not able to tell in full what part Budowa had played in the great revolt. He had, however, been a leader on the conquered side. He had fought, as we know, for the Letter of Majesty; he had bearded Rudolph II. in his den; he had openly opposed the election of Ferdinand II.; he had welcomed Frederick, the Protestant Winter King, at the city gates; and, therefore, he was justly regarded by Ferdinand as a champion of the Protestant national faith and an enemy of the Catholic Church and throne. As he was now over seventy years of age it is hardly likely that he had fought on the field of battle. After the battle of the White Mountain he had retired with his family to his country estate. He had then, strange to say, been one of those entrapped into Prague by Lichtenstein, and had been imprisoned in the White Tower. There he was tried and condemned as a rebel, and there, as even Gindely admits, he bore himself like a hero to the last. At first, along with some other nobles, he signed a petition to the Elector of Saxony, imploring him to intercede with the Emperor on their behalf. The petition received no answer. He resigned himself to his fate. He was asked why he had walked into the lion’s den. For some reason that I fail to understand Gindely says that what we are told about the conduct of the prisoners has only a literary interest. To my mind the last words of Wenzel of Budowa are of the highest historical importance. They show how the fate of the Brethren’s Church was involved in the fate of Bohemia. He had come to Prague as a patriot and as a Brother. He was dying both for his country and for his Church.
“My heart impelled me to come,” he said; “to forsake my country and its cause would have been sinning against my conscience. Here am I, my God, do unto Thy servant as seemeth good unto Thee. I would rather die myself than see my country die.”
As he sat in his room on the Saturday evening–two days before the execution–he was visited by two Capuchin monks. He was amazed at their boldness. As they did not understand Bohemian, the conversation was conducted in Latin. They informed him that their visit was one of pity.
“Of pity?” asked the white-haired old Baron, “How so?”
“We wish to show your lordship the way to heaven.” He assured them that he knew the way and stood on firm ground.
“My Lord only imagines,” they rejoined, “that he knows the way of salvation. He is mistaken. Not being a member of the Holy Church, he has no share in the Church’s salvation.”
But Budowa placed his trust in Christ alone.
“I have this excellent promise,” he said, “Whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Therefore, until my last moment, will I abide by our true Church.”
Thus did Budowa declare the faith of the Brethren. The Capuchin monks were horrified. They smote their breasts, declared that so hardened a heretic they had never seen, crossed themselves repeatedly, and left him sadly to his fate.
For the last time, on the Monday morning, he was given another chance to deny his faith. Two Jesuits came to see him.
“We have come to save my lord’s soul,” they said, “and to perform a work of mercy.”
“Dear fathers,” replied Budowa, “I thank my God that His Holy Spirit has given me the assurance that I will be saved through the blood of the Lamb.” He appealed to the words of St. Paul: “I know whom I have believed: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day.”
“But,” said the Jesuits, “Paul there speaks of himself, not of others.”
“You lie,” said Budowa, “for does he not expressly add: ‘and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing.’”
And after a little more argumentation, the Jesuits left in disgust.
The last moment in Budowa’s life now arrived. The messenger came and told him it was his turn to die. He bade his friends farewell.
“I go,” he declared, “in the garment of righteousness; thus arrayed shall I appear before God.”
Alone, with firm step he strode to the scaffold, stroking proudly his silver hair and beard.
“Thou old grey head of mine,” said he, “thou art highly honoured; thou shalt be adorned with the Martyr-Crown.”
As he knelt and prayed he was watched by the pitying eyes of the two kind-hearted Jesuits who had come to see him that morning. He prayed for his country, for his Church, for his enemies, and committed his soul to Christ; the sword flashed brightly in the sun; and one strong blow closed the restless life of Wenzel von Budowa, the “Last of the Bohemians.”
And with his death there came the death of the Ancient Church of the Brethren. From the moment when Budowa’s hoary head fell from the block the destruction of the Church was only a question of time. As Budowa died, so died the others after him. We have no space to tell here in detail how his bright example was followed; how nearly all departed with the words upon their lips, “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit”; how the drums beat louder each time before the sword fell, that the people might not hear the last words of triumphant confidence in God; how Caspar Kaplir, an old man of eighty-six, staggered up to the scaffold arrayed in a white robe, which he called his wedding garment, but was so weak that he could not hold his head to the block; how Otto von Los looked up and said, “Behold I see the heavens opened”; how Dr. Jessen, the theologian, had his tongue seized with a pair of tongs, cut off at the roots with a knife, and died with the blood gushing from his mouth; how three others were hanged on a gallows in the Square; how the fearful work went steadily on till the last head had fallen, and the black scaffold sweated blood; and how the bodies of the chiefs were flung into unconsecrated ground, and their heads spitted on poles in the city, there to grin for full ten years as a warning to all who held the Protestant faith. In all the story of the Brethren’s Church there has been no other day like that. It was the day when the furies seemed to ride triumphant in the air, when the God of their fathers seemed to mock at the trial of the innocent, and when the little Church that had battled so bravely and so long was at last stamped down by the heel of the conqueror, till the life-blood flowed no longer in her veins.
Not, indeed, till the last breath of Church life had gone did the fearful stamping cease. The zeal of Ferdinand knew no bounds. He was determined, not only to crush the Brethren, but to wipe their memory from off the face of the earth. He regarded the Brethren as a noisome pest. Not a stone did he and his servants leave unturned to destroy them. They began with the churches. Instead of razing them to the ground, which would, of course, have been wanton waste, they turned them into Roman Catholic Chapels by the customary methods of purification and rededication. They rubbed out the inscriptions on the walls, and put new ones in their places, lashed the pulpits with whips, beat the altars with sticks, sprinkled holy water to cleanse the buildings of heresy, opened the graves and dishonoured the bones of the dead. Where once was the cup for Communion was now the image of the Virgin. Where once the Brethren had sung their hymns and read their Bibles were now the Confessional and the Mass.
Meanwhile the Brethren had been expelled from Bohemia. It is a striking proof of the influence of the Brethren that Ferdinand turned his attention to them before he troubled about the other Protestants. They had been the first in moral power; they had done the most to spread the knowledge of the Bible; they had produced the greatest literary men of the country; and, therefore, now they must be the first to go. What actually happened to many of the Brethren during the next few years no tongue can tell. But we know enough. We know that Ferdinand cut the Letter of Majesty in two with his scissors. We know that thirty-six thousand families left Bohemia and Moravia, and that the population of Bohemia dwindled from three millions to one. We know that about one-half of the property– lands, houses, castles, churches–passed over into the hands of the King. We know that the University of Prague was handed over to the Jesuits. We know that the scandalous order was issued that all Protestant married ministers who consented to join the Church of Rome might keep their wives by passing them off as cooks. We know that villages were sacked; that Kralitz Bibles, Hymn-books, Confessions, Catechisms, and historical works of priceless value– among others Blahoslaw’s “History of the Brethren”–were burned in thousand; and that thus nearly every trace of the Brethren was swept out of the land. We know that some of the Brethren were hacked in pieces, that some were tortured, that some were burned alive, that some swung on gibbets at the city gates and at the country cross-roads among the carrion crows. For six years Bohemia was a field of blood, and Spanish soldiers, drunk and raging, slashed and pillaged on every hand. “Oh, to what torments,” says a clergyman of that day, “were the promoters of the Gospel exposed! How they were tortured and massacred! How many virgins were violated to death! How many respectable women abused! How many children torn from their mothers’ breasts and cut in pieces in their presence! How many dragged from their beds and thrown naked from the windows! Good God! What cries of woe we were forced to hear from those who lay upon the rack, and what groans and terrible outcries from those who besought the robbers to spare them for God’s sake.” It was thus that the Brethren, at the point of the sword, were driven from hearth and home: thus that they fled before the blast and took refuge in foreign lands; thus, amid bloodshed, and crime, and cruelty, and nameless torture, that the Ancient Church of the Bohemian Brethren bade a sad farewell to the land of its birth, and disappeared from the eyes of mankind.
Let us review the story of that wonderful Church. What a marvellous change had come upon it! It began in the quiet little valley of Kunwald: it ended in the noisy streets of Prague. It began in peace and brotherly love: it ended amid the tramp of horses, the clank of armour, the swish of swords, the growl of artillery, the whistle of bullets, the blare of trumpets, the roll of drums, and the moans of the wounded and the dying. It began in the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount: it ended amid the ghastly horrors of war. What was it that caused the destruction of that Church? At this point some historians, being short of facts, have thought fit to indulge in philosophical reflections; and, following the stale philosophy of Bildad–that all suffering is the punishment of sin–have informed us that the Brethren were now the victims of internal moral decay. They had lost, we are told, their sense of unity; they had relaxed their discipline; they had become morally weak; and the day of their external prosperity was the day of their internal decline. For this pious and utterly unfounded opinion the evidence usually summoned is the fact that Bishop Amos Comenius, in a sermon entitled “Haggai Redivivus,” had some rather severe remarks to make about the sins of his Brethren. But Bishops’ sermons are dangerous historical evidence. It is not the business of a preacher to tell the whole truth in one discourse. He is not a witness in the box; he is a prophet aiming at some special moral reform. If a Bishop is lecturing his Brethren for their failings he is sure to indulge, not exactly in exaggeration, but in one-sided statements of the facts. He will talk at length about the sins, and say nothing about the virtues. It is, of course, within the bounds of possibility that when the Brethren became more prosperous they were not so strict in some of their rules as they had been in earlier days; and it is also true that when Wenzel von Budowa summoned his followers to arms, the deed was enough, as one writer remarks, to make Gregory the Patriarch groan in his grave. But of any serious moral decline there is no solid proof. It is absurd to blame the Brethren for mixing in politics, and absurd to say that this mixing was the cause of their ruin. At that time in Bohemia religion and politics were inseparable. If a man took a definite stand in religion he took thereby a definite stand in politics. To be a Protestant was to be a rebel. If Budowa had never lifted a finger, the destruction of the Brethren would have been no less complete. The case of Baron Charles von Zerotin proves the point. He took no part in the rebellion; he sided, in the war, with the House of Hapsburg; he endeavoured, that is, to remain a Protestant and yet at the same time a staunch supporter of Ferdinand; and yet, loyal subject though he was, he was not allowed, except for a few years, to shelter Protestant ministers in his castle, and had finally to sell his estates and to leave the country. At heart, Comenius had a high opinion of his Brethren. For nearly fifty weary years–as we shall see in the next chapter–this genius and scholar longed and strove for the revival of the Brethren’s Church, and in many of his books he described the Brethren, not as men who had disgraced their profession, but as heroes holding the faith in purity. He described his Brethren as broad-minded men, who took no part in religious quarrels, but looked towards heaven, and bore themselves affably to all; he said to the exiles in one of his letters, “You have endured to the end”; he described them again, in a touching appeal addressed to the Church of England, as a model of Christian simplicity; and he attributed their downfall in Bohemia, not to any moral weakness, but to their neglect of education. If the Brethren, he argued, had paid more attention to learning, they would have gained the support of powerful friends, who would not have allowed them to perish. I admit, of course, that Comenius was naturally partial, and that when he speaks in praise of the Brethren we must receive his evidence with caution; but, on the other hand, I hold that the theory of a serious moral decline, so popular with certain German historians, is not supported by evidence. If the Brethren had shown much sign of corruption we should expect to find full proof of the fact in the Catholic writers of the day. But such proof is not to hand. Not even the Jesuit historian, Balbin, had anything serious to say against the Brethren. The only Catholic writer, as far as I know, who attacked their character was the famous Papal Nuncio, Carlo Caraffa. He says that the Brethren in Moravia had become a little ambitious and avaricious, “with some degree of luxury in their habits of life”;53 but he has no remarks of a similar nature to make about the Brethren in Bohemia. The real cause of the fall of the Brethren was utterly different. They fell, not because they were morally weak, but because they were killed by the sword or forcibly robbed of their property. They fell because Bohemia fell; and Bohemia fell for a variety of reasons; partly because her peasants were serfs and had no fight left in them; partly because her nobles blundered in their choice of a Protestant King; and partly because, when all is said, she was only a little country in the grip of a mightier power. In some countries the Catholic reaction was due to genuine religious fervour; in Bohemia it was brought about by brute force; and even with all his money and his men King Ferdinand found the destruction of the Brethren no easy task. He had the whole house of Hapsburg on his side; he had thousands of mercenary soldiers from Spain; he was restrained by no scruples of conscience; and yet it took him six full years to drive the Brethren from the country. And even then he had not completed his work. In spite of his efforts, many thousands of the people still remained Brethren at heart; and as late as 1781, when Joseph II. issued his Edict of Toleration, 100,000 in Bohemia and Moravia declared themselves Brethren. We have here a genuine proof of the Brethren’s vigour. It had been handed on from father to son through five generations. For the Brethren there was still no legal recognition in Bohemia and Moravia; the Edict applied to Lutherans and Calvinists only; and if the Brethren had been weak men they might now have called themselves Lutherans or Calvinists. But this, of course, carries us beyond the limits of this chapter. For the present King Ferdinand had triumphed; and word was sent to the Pope at Rome that the Church of the Brethren was no more.
Chapter 16
“Comenius and the Hidden Seed, 1627-1672″
But the cause of the Brethren’s Church was not yet lost. As the Brethren fled before the blast, it befell, in the wonderful providence of God, that all their best and noblest qualities–their broadness of view, their care for the young, their patience in suffering, their undaunted faith–shone forth in undying splendour in the life and character of one great man; and that man was the famous John Amos Comenius, the pioneer of modern education and the last Bishop of the Bohemian Brethren. He was born on March 18th, 1592, at Trivnitz, a little market town in Moravia. He was only six years old when he lost his parents through the plague. He was taken in hand by his sister, and was educated at the Brethren’s School at Ungarisch-Brod. As he soon resolved to become a minister, he was sent by the Brethren to study theology, first at the Calvinist University of Herborn in Nassau, and then at the Calvinist University of Heidelberg. For two years (1614-1616) he then acted as master in the Brethren’s Higher School at Prerau, and then became minister of the congregation at Fulneck. There, too, the Brethren had a school; and there, both as minister and teacher, Comenius, with his young wife and family, was as happy as the livelong day. But his happiness was speedily turned to misery. The Thirty Years’ War broke out. What part he took in the Bohemian Revolution we have no means of knowing. He certainly favoured the election of Frederick, and helped his cause in some way. “I contributed a nail or two,” he says,54 “to strengthen the new throne.” What sort of nail he means we do not know. The new throne did not stand very long. The troops of Ferdinand appeared at Fulneck. The village was sacked. Comenius reeled with horror. He saw the weapons for stabbing, for chopping, for cutting, for pricking, for hacking, for tearing and for burning. He saw the savage hacking of limbs, the spurting of blood, the flash of fire.
“Almighty God,” he wrote in one of his books, “what is happening? Must the whole world perish?”
His house was pillaged and gutted; his books and his manuscripts were burned; and he himself, with his wife and children, had now to flee in hot haste from Fulneck and to take refuge for a while on the estate of Baron Charles von Zerotin at Brandeis-on-the-Adler. To the Brethren Brandeis had long been a sacred spot. There Gregory the Patriarch had breathed his last, and there his bones lay buried; there many an historic Brethren’s Synod had been held; and there Comenius took up his abode in a little wood cottage outside the town which tradition said had been built by Gregory himself. He had lost his wife and one of his children on the way from Fulneck; he had lost his post as teacher and minister; and now, for the sake of his suffering Brethren, he wrote his beautiful classical allegory, “The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart.”55 For historical purposes this book is of surpassing value. It is a revelation. It is a picture both of the horrors of the time and of the deep religious life of the Brethren. As Comenius fled from Fulneck to Brandeis he saw sights that harrowed his soul, and now in his cottage at the foot of the hills he described what he had seen. The whole land, said Comenius, was now in a state of disorder. The reign of justice had ended. The reign of pillage had begun. The plot of the book is simple. From scene to scene the pilgrim goes, and everything fills him with disgust. The pilgrim, of course, is Comenius himself; the “Labyrinth” is Bohemia; and the time is the early years of the Thirty Years’ War. He had studied the social conditions of Bohemia; he had seen men of all ranks and all occupations; and now, in witty, satirical language, he held the mirror up to nature. What sort of men were employed by Ferdinand to administer justice in Bohemia? Comenius gave them fine sarcastic names. He called the judges Nogod, Lovestrife, Hearsay, Partial, Loveself, Lovegold, Takegift, Ignorant, Knowlittle, Hasty and Slovenly; he called the witnesses Calumny, Lie and Suspicion; and, in obvious allusion to Ferdinand’s seizure of property, he named the statute-book “The Rapacious Defraudment of the Land.” He saw the lords oppressing the poor, sitting long at table, and discussing lewd and obscene matters. He saw the rich idlers with bloated faces, with bleary eyes, with swollen limbs, with bodies covered with sores. He saw the moral world turned upside down. No longer, said Comenius, did men in Bohemia call things by their right names. They called drunkenness, merriment; greed, economy; usury, interest; lust, love; pride, dignity; cruelty, severity; and laziness, good nature. He saw his Brethren maltreated in the vilest fashion. Some were cast into the fire; some were hanged, beheaded, crucified;56 some were pierced, chopped, tortured with pincers, and roasted to death on grid-irons. He studied the lives of professing Christians, and found that those who claimed the greatest piety were the sorriest scoundrels in the land. “They drink and vomit,” he said, “quarrel and fight, rob and pillage one another by cunning and by violence, neigh and skip from wantonness, shout and whistle, and commit fornication and adultery worse than any of the others.” He watched the priests, and found them no better than the people. Some snored, wallowing in feather beds; some feasted till they became speechless; some performed dances and leaps; some passed their time in love-making and wantonness.
For these evils Comenius saw one remedy only, and that remedy was the cultivation of the simple and beautiful religion of the Brethren. The last part of his book, “The Paradise of the Heart,” is delightful. Comenius was a marvellous writer. He combined the biting satire of Swift with the devotional tenderness of Thomas à Kempis. As we linger over the closing sections of his book, we can see that he then regarded the Brethren as almost ideal Christians. Among them he found no priests in gaudy attire, no flaunting wealth, no grinding poverty; and passing their time in peace and quietness, they cherished Christ in their hearts. “All,” he says, “were in simple attire, and their ways were gentle and kind. I approached one of their preachers, wishing to speak to him. When, as is our custom, I wished to address him according to his rank, he permitted it not, calling such things worldly fooling.” To them ceremonies were matters of little importance. “Thy religion,” said the Master to the Pilgrim–i.e., to the Brethren’s Church–”shall be to serve me in quiet, and not to bind thyself to any ceremonies, for I do not bind thee by them.”
But Comenius did not stay long at Brandeis-on-the-Adler {1628.}. As Zerotin had sided with the House of Hapsburg, he had been allowed, for a few years, to give shelter to about forty Brethren’s ministers; but now commissioners appeared at his Castle, and ordered him to send these ministers away. The last band of exiles now set out for Poland. The leader was Comenius himself. As they bade farewell to their native land they did so in the firm conviction that they themselves should see the day when the Church of the Brethren should stand once more in her ancient home; and as they stood on a spur of the Giant Mountains, and saw the old loved hills and dales, the towns and hamlets, the nestling churches, Comenius raised his eyes to heaven and uttered that historic prayer which was to have so marvellous an answer. He prayed that in the old home God would preserve a “Hidden Seed,” which would one day grow to a tree; and then the whole band struck up a hymn and set out for Poland. Pathetic was the marching song they sang:–
Nought have we taken with us, All to destruction is hurled, We have only our Kralitz Bibles, And our Labyrinth of the World.
Comenius led the Brethren to Lissa, in Poland, and Lissa became the metropolis of the exiles.
What happened to many of the exiles no tongue can tell. We know that some Brethren went to Hungary and held together for thirty or forty years; that some were welcomed by the Elector of Saxony and became Lutherans; that some found their way to Holland and became Reformed Protestants; that some settled in Lusatia, Saxony; that a few, such as the Cennicks, crossed the silver streak and found a home in England; and that, finally, a number remained in Bohemia and Moravia, and gathered in the neighbourhood of Landskron, Leitomischl, Kunewalde and Fulneck. What became of these last, the “Hidden Seed,” we shall see before very long. For the present they buried their Bibles in their gardens, held midnight meetings in garrets and stables, preserved their records in dovecotes and in the thatched roofs of their cottages, and, feasting on the glorious promises of the Book of Revelation–a book which many of them knew by heart–awaited the time when their troubles should blow by and the call to arise should sound.
Meanwhile Comenius had never abandoned hope. He was sure that the Brethren’s Church would revive, and equally sure of the means of her revival. For some years there had flourished in the town of Lissa a famous Grammar School. It was founded by Count Raphael IV. Leszczynski; it had recently become a Higher School, or what Germans call a gymnasium, and now it was entirely in the hands of the Brethren. The patron, Count Raphael V. Leszczynski, was a Brother;57 the director was John Rybinski, a Brethren’s minister; the co-director was another Brethren’s minister, Michael Henrici; and Comenius accepted the post of teacher, and entered on the greatest task of his life. He had two objects before him. He designed to revive the Church of the Brethren and to uplift the whole human race; and for each of these purposes he employed the very same method. The method was education. If the Brethren, said Comenius, were to flourish again, they must pay more attention to the training of the young than ever they had done in days gone by. He issued detailed instructions to his Brethren. They must begin, he said, by teaching the children the pure word of God in their homes. They must bring their children up in habits of piety. They must maintain the ancient discipline of the Brethren. They must live in peace with other Christians, and avoid theological bickerings. They must publish good books in the Bohemian language. They must build new schools wherever possible, and endeavour to obtain the assistance of godly nobles. We have here the key to the whole of Comenius’s career. It is the fashion now with many scholars to divide his life into two distinct parts. On the one hand, they say, he was a Bishop of the Brethren’s Church; on the other hand he was an educational reformer. The distinction is false and artificial. His whole life was of a piece. He never distinguished between his work as a Bishop and his work as an educational reformer. He drew no line between the secular and the sacred. He loved the Brethren’s Church to the end of his days; he regarded her teaching as ideal; he laboured and longed for her revival; and he believed with all the sincerity of his noble and beautiful soul that God would surely enable him to revive that Church by means of education and uplift the world by means of that regenerated Church.
And now for thirteen years, in the Grammar School at Lissa, Comenius devoted the powers of his mind to this tremendous task. What was it, he asked, that had caused the downfall of the Brethren in Bohemia and Moravia? It was their cruel and senseless system of education. He had been to a Brethren’s School himself, and had come to the conclusion that in point of method the schools of the Brethren were no better than the other schools of Europe. “They are,” he declared, “the terror of boys and the slaughter-houses of minds; places where a hatred of literature and books is contracted, where two or more years are spent in learning what might be acquired in one, where what ought to be poured in gently is violently forced and beaten in, and where what ought to be put clearly is presented in a confused and intricate way as if it were a collection of puzzles.” The poor boys, he declared, were almost frightened to death. They needed skins of tin; they were beaten with fists, with canes and with birch-rods till the blood streamed forth; they were covered with scars, stripes, spots and weals; and thus they had learned to hate the schools and all that was taught therein.
He had already tried to introduce a reform. He had learned his new ideas about education, not from the Brethren, but at the University of Herborn. He had studied there the theories of Wolfgang Ratich; he had tried to carry out these theories in the Brethren’s schools at Prerau and Fulneck; and now at Lissa, where he soon became director, he introduced reforms which spread his fame throughout the civilized world. His scheme was grand and comprehensive. He held that if only right methods were employed all things might be taught to all men. “There is,” he said, “nothing in heaven or earth or in the waters, nothing in the abyss under the earth, nothing in the human body, nothing in the soul, nothing in Holy Writ, nothing in the arts, nothing in politics, nothing in the Church, of which the little candidates for wisdom shall be wholly ignorant.” His faith in the power of education was enormous. It was the road, he said, to knowledge, to character, to fellowship with God, to eternal life. He divided the educational course into four stages–the “mother school,” the popular school, the Latin school and the University; and on each of these stages he had something original to say.
For mothers Comenius wrote a book, entitled the “School of Infancy.” In England this book is scarcely known at all: in Bohemia it is a household treasure. Comenius regarded it as a work of first-rate importance. What use, he asked, were schemes of education if a good foundation were not first laid by the mother? For the first six years of his life, said Comenius, the child must be taught by his mother. If she did her work properly she could teach him many marvellous things. He would learn some physics by handling things; some optics by naming colours, light and darkness; some astronomy by studying the twinkling stars; some geography by trudging the neighbouring streets and hills; some chronology by learning the hours, the days and the months; some history by a chat on local events; some geometry by measuring things for himself; some statics by trying to balance his top; some mechanics by building his little toy-house; some dialectics by asking questions; some economics by observing his mother’s skill as a housekeeper; and some music and poetry by singing psalms and hymns. As Comenius penned these ideal instructions, he must surely have known that nine mothers out of ten had neither the patience nor the skill to follow his method; and yet he insisted that, in some things, the mother had a clear course before her. His advice was remarkably sound. At what age, ask mothers, should the education of a child begin? It should begin, said Comenius, before the child is born. At that period in her life the expectant mother must be busy and cheerful, be moderate in her food, avoid all worry, and keep in constant touch with God by prayer; and thus the child will come into the world well equipped for the battle of life. She must, of course, nurse the child herself. She must feed him, when weaned, on plain and simple food. She must provide him with picture books; and, above all, she must teach him to be clean in his habits, to obey his superiors, to be truthful and polite, to bend the knee and fold his hands in prayer, and to remember that the God revealed in Christ was ever near at hand.
Again, Comenius has been justly called the “Father of the Elementary School.” It was here that his ideas had the greatest practical value. His first fundamental principle was that in all elementary schools the scholars must learn in their native language only. He called these schools “Mother tongue schools.” For six or eight years, said Comenius, the scholar must hear no language but his own; and his whole attention must be concentrated, not on learning words like a parrot, but on the direct study of nature. Comenius has been called the great Sense-Realist. He had no belief in learning second-hand. He illustrated his books with pictures. He gave his scholars object lessons. He taught them, not about words, but about things. “The foundation of all learning consists,” he said, “in representing clearly to the senses sensible objects.” He insisted that no boy or girl should ever have to learn by heart anything which he did not understand. He insisted that nature should be studied, not out of books, but by direct contact with nature herself. “Do we not dwell in the garden of nature,” he asked, “as well as the ancients? Why should we not use our eyes, ears and noses as well as they? Why should we not lay open the living book of nature?” He applied these ideas to the teaching of religion and morals. In order to show his scholars the meaning of faith, he wrote a play entitled “Abraham the Patriarch,” and then taught them to act it; and, in order to warn them against shallow views of life, he wrote a comedy, “Diogenes the Cynic, Revived.” He was no vulgar materialist. His whole object was moral and religious. If Comenius had lived in the twentieth century, he would certainly have been disgusted and shocked by the modern demand for a purely secular education. He would have regarded the suggestion as an insult to human nature. All men, he said, were made in the image of God; all men had in them the roots of eternal wisdom; all men were capable of understanding something of the nature of God; and, therefore, the whole object of education was to develop, not only the physical and intellectual, but also the moral and spiritual powers, and thus fit men and women to be, first, useful citizens in the State, and then saints in the Kingdom of Heaven beyond the tomb. From court to court he would lead the students onward, from the first court dealing with nature to the last court dealing with God. “It is,” he said, “our bounden duty to consider the means whereby the whole body of Christian youth may be stirred to vigour of mind and the love of heavenly things.” He believed in caring for the body, because the body was the temple of the Holy Ghost; and, in order to keep the body fit, he laid down the rule that four hours of study a day was as much as any boy or girl could stand. For the same reason he objected to corporal punishment; it was a degrading insult to God’s fair abode. For the same reason he held that at all severe punishment should be reserved for moral offences only. “The whole object of discipline,” he said, “is to form in those committed to our charge a disposition worthy of the children of God.” He believed, in a word, in the teaching of religion in day-schools; he believed in opening school with morning prayers, and he held that all scholars should be taught to say passages of Scripture by heart, to sing psalms, to learn a Catechism and to place their trust in the salvation offered through Jesus Christ. And yet Comenius did not insist on the teaching of any definite religious creed. He belonged himself to a Church that had no creed; he took a broader view of religion than either the Lutherans or the Calvinists; he believed that Christianity could be taught without a formal dogmatic statement; and thus, if I understand him aright, he suggested a solution of a difficult problem which baffles our cleverest politicians to-day.
Again Comenius introduced a new way of learning languages. His great work on this subject was entitled “Janua Linguarum Reserata”–i.e., The Gate of Languages Unlocked. Of all his works this was the most popular. It spread his fame all over Europe. It was translated into fifteen different languages. It became, next to the Bible, the most widely known book on the Continent. For one person who read his delightful “Labyrinth,” there were thousands who nearly knew the “Janua” by heart. The reason was obvious. The “Labyrinth” was a religious book, and was suppressed as dangerous by Catholic authorities; but the “Janua” was only a harmless grammar, and could be admitted with safety anywhere. It is not the works of richest genius that have the largest sale; it is the books that enable men to get on in life; and the “Janua” was popular because, in truth, “it supplied a long-felt want.” It was a Latin grammar of a novel and original kind. For all boys desiring to enter a profession a thorough knowledge of Latin was then an absolute necessity. It was the language in which the learned conversed, the language spoken at all Universities, the language of diplomatists and statesmen, the language of scientific treatises. If a man could make the learning of Latin easier, he was adored as a public benefactor. Comenius’s Grammar was hailed with delight, as a boon and a blessing to men. For years all patient students of Latin had writhed in agonies untold. They had learned long lists of Latin words, with their meanings; they had wrestled in their teens with gerunds, supines, ablative absolutes and distracting rules about the subjunctive mood, and they had tried in vain to take an interest in stately authors far above their understanding. Comenius reversed the whole process. What is the use, he asked, of learning lists of words that have no connection with each other? What is the use of teaching a lad grammar before he has a working knowledge of the language? What is the use of expecting a boy to take an interest in the political arguments of Cicero or the dinner table wisdom of Horace? His method was the conversational. For beginners he prepared an elementary Latin Grammar, containing, besides a few necessary rules, a number of sentences dealing with events and scenes of everyday life. It was divided into seven parts. In the first were nouns and adjectives together; in the second nouns and verbs; in the third adverbs, pronouns, numerals and prepositions; in the fourth remarks about things in the school; in the fifth about things in the house; in the sixth about things in the town; in the seventh some moral maxims. And the scholar went through this book ten times before he passed on to the “Janua” proper. The result can be imagined. At the end of a year the boy’s knowledge of Latin would be of a peculiar kind. Of grammar he would know but little; of words and phrases he would have a goodly store; and thus he was learning to talk the language before he had even heard of its perplexing rules. One example must suffice to illustrate the method. The beginner did not even learn the names of the cases. In a modern English Latin Grammar, the charming sight that meets our gaze is as follows:–
Nom. Mensa.–A table. Voc. Mensa.–Oh, table! Acc. Mensam.–A table. Gen. Mensæ.–Of a table. Dat. Mensæ.–To or for a table. Abl. Mensa.–By, with or from a table.
The method of Comenius was different. Instead of mentioning the names of the cases, he showed how the cases were actually used, as follows:–
Ecce, tabula nigra.–Look there, a black board. O tu tabula nigra.–Oh, you black board! Video tabulam nigram.–I see a black board. Pars tabulæ nigræ.–Part of a black board. Addo partem tabulæ nigræ.–I add a part to a black board. Vides aliquid in tabula nigra.–I see something on a black board.
With us the method is theory first, practice afterwards; with Comenius the method was practice first, theory afterwards; and the method of Comenius, with modifications, is likely to be the method of the future.
But Comenius’s greatest educational work was undoubtedly his “Great Didactic,” or the “Art of Teaching All Things to All Men.” It was a thorough and comprehensive treatise on the whole science, method, scope and purpose of universal education. As this book has been recently translated into English, I need not here attempt the task of giving an outline of its contents. His ideas were far too grand and noble to put in summary form. For us the point of interest is the fact that while the Thirty Years’ War was raging, and warriors like Wallenstein and Gustavus Adolphus were turning Europe into a desert, this scholar, banished from his native land, was devising sublime and broad-minded schemes for the elevation of the whole human race. It is this that makes Comenius great. He played no part in the disgraceful quarrels of the age; he breathed no complaint against his persecutors. “Comenius,” said the Jesuit historian Balbin, “wrote many works, but none that were directed against the Catholic Church.” As he looked around upon the learned world he saw the great monster Confusion still unslain, and intended to found a Grand Universal College, which would consist of all the learned in Europe, would devote its attention to the pursuit of knowledge in every conceivable branch, and would arrange that knowledge in beautiful order and make the garden of wisdom a trim parterre. He was so sure that his system was right that he compared it to a great clock or mill, which had only to be set going to bring about the desired result. If his scheme could only be carried out, what a change there would be in this dreary earth! What a speedy end to wars and rumours of wars! What a blessed cessation of religious disputes! What a glorious union of all men of all nations about the feet of God!
At last Comenius became so famous that his friend, Samuel Hartlib, invited him to England; and Comenius found upon his arrival that our English Parliament was interested in his scheme {1641.}. His hopes now rose higher than ever. At last, he thought, he had found a spot where he could actually carry out his grand designs. He had a high opinion of English piety. “The ardour,” he wrote, “with which the people crowd to the Churches is incredible. Almost all bring a copy of the Bible with them. Of the youths and men a large number take down the sermons word by word with their pens. Their thirst for the word of God is so great that many of the nobles, citizens also, and matrons study Greek and Hebrew to be able more safely and more sweetly to drink from the very spring of life.” Of all countries England seemed to him the best suited for the accomplishment of his designs. He discussed the project with John Dury, with Samuel Hartlib, with John Evelyn, with the Bishop of Lincoln, and probably with John Milton. He wanted to establish an “Academy of Pansophy” at Chelsea; and there all the wisest men in the world would meet, draw up a new universal language, like the framers of Esperanto to-day, and devise a scheme to keep all the nations at peace. His castle in the air collapsed. At the very time when Comenius was resident in London this country was on the eve of a revolution. The Irish Rebellion broke out, the Civil War trod on its heels, and Comenius left England for ever.
>From this moment his life was a series of bitter and cruel disappointments. As the Thirty Years’ War flickered out to its close, Comenius began to look forward to the day when the Brethren would be allowed to return to Bohemia and Moravia {1648.}. But the Peace of Westphalia broke his heart. What provision was made in that famous Peace for the poor exiled Brethren? Absolutely none. Comenius was angry and disgusted. He had spent his life in the service of humanity; he had spent six years preparing school books for the Swedish Government; and now he complained– perhaps unjustly–that Oxenstierna, the Swedish Chancellor, had never lifted a finger on behalf of the Brethren.
And yet Comenius continued to hope against hope. The more basely the Brethren were deserted by men, the more certain he was that they would be defended by God. He wrote to Oxenstierna on the subject. “If there is no help from man,” he said, “there will be from God, whose aid is wont to commence when that of man ceases.”
For eight years the Brethren, undaunted still, held on together as best they could at Lissa; and Comenius, now their chosen leader, made a brave attempt to revive their schools in Hungary. And then came the final, awful crash. The flames of war burst out afresh. When Charles X. became King of Sweden, John Casimir, King of Poland, set up a claim to the Swedish throne. The two monarchs went to war. Charles X. invaded Poland; John Casimir fled from Lissa; Charles X. occupied the town. What part, it may be asked, did the Brethren play in this war? We do not know. As Charles X. was, of course, a Protestant, it is natural to assume that the Brethren sympathised with his cause and hailed him as a deliverer sent by God; but it is one of the strangest features of their history that we never can tell what part they took in these political conflicts. Comenius was now in Lissa. It is said that he openly sided with Charles X., and urged the Brethren to hold out to the bitter end. I doubt it. For a while the Swedish army triumphed. In that army was an old Bohemian general, who swore to avenge the “Day of Blood”; and the churches and convents were plundered, and monks and priests were murdered. For a moment the Day of Blood was avenged, but for a moment only. As the arm of flesh had failed the Brethren in the days of Budowa, so the arm of flesh failed them now.
The Polish army surrounded the walls of Lissa {1656.}. A panic broke out among the citizens. The Swedish garrison gave way. The Polish soldiers pressed in. Again Comenius’s library was burned, and the grammar school where he had taught was reduced to ashes. The whole town was soon in flames. The fire spread for miles in the surrounding country. As the Brethren fled from their last fond home, with the women and children huddled in waggons, they saw barns and windmills flaring around them, and heard the tramp of the Polish army in hot pursuit. As Pastor John Jacobides and two Acoluths were on their way to Karmin, they were seized, cut down with spades and thrown into a pit to perish. For Samuel Kardus, the last martyr of the fluttering fragment, a more ingenious torture was reserved. He was placed with his head between a door and the door-post, and as the door was gently but firmly closed, his head was slowly crushed to pieces.
And so the hopes of Comenius were blasted. As the aged Bishop drew near to his end, he witnessed the failure of all his schemes. Where now was his beloved Church of the Brethren? It was scattered like autumn leaves before the blast. And yet Comenius hoped on to the bitter end. The news of his sufferings reached the ears of Oliver Cromwell. He offered to find a home for the Brethren in Ireland. If Comenius had only accepted that offer it is certain that Oliver would have been as good as his word. He longed to make Ireland a Protestant country; and the whole modern history of Ireland might have been altered. But Comenius had now become an unpractical dreamer. For all his learning he was very simple-minded; and for all his piety he had a weak side to his character. He had listened in his youth to the prophecies of Christopher Kotter; he had listened also to the ravings of Christina Poniatowski; and now he fell completely under the influence of the vile impostor, Drabik, who pretended to have a revelation from heaven, and predicted that before very long the House of Austria would be destroyed and the Brethren be enabled to return to their native home. Instead, therefore, of accepting Cromwell’s offer, Comenius spent his last few years in collecting money for the Brethren; and pleasant it is to record the fact that much of that money came from England. Some was sent by Prince Rupert, and some by officials of the Church of England; and Comenius was able to spend the money in printing helpful, devotional works for the Brethren. His loyalty now to the Brethren was beautiful. It is easy to be faithful to a prosperous Church; Comenius was faithful when the whirl was at the worst. Faster than ever the ship was sinking, but still the brave old white-haired Captain held to his post on the bridge. Few things are more pathetic in history than the way in which Comenius commended the Brethren to the care of the Church of England. “To you, dear friends,” he wrote in hope, “we commit our dear mother, the Church herself. Even in her death, which seems approaching, you ought to love her, because in her life she has gone before you for more than two centuries with examples of faith and patience.” Of all the links between the old Church of the Brethren and the new, Comenius was the strongest. He handed on the Brethren’s Episcopal Orders. He consecrated his son-in-law, Peter Jablonsky; this Peter consecrated his own son, Daniel Ernest; and this Daniel Ernest Jablonsky consecrated David Nitschmann, the first Bishop of the Renewed Church of the Brethren.
He handed on, secondly, the Brethren’s system of discipline. He published an edition of the “Ratio Disciplinæ,” and this it was that fired Zinzendorf’s soul with love for the Brethren’s Church.
But, thirdly, and most important of all, Comenius kept the old faith burning in the hearts of the “Hidden Seed.” For the benefit of those still worshipping in secret in Bohemia and Moravia, he prepared a Catechism, entitled “The Old Catholic Christian Religion in Short Questions and Answers”; and by this Catholic Religion he meant the broad and simple faith of the Bohemian Brethren. “Perish sects,” said Comenius; “perish the founders of sects. I have consecrated myself to Christ alone.” But the purpose of the Catechism had to be kept a secret. “It is meant,” said Comenius, in the preface, “for all the pious and scattered sheep of Christ, especially those at F., G., G., K., K., S., S. and Z.” These letters can be easily explained. They stood for the villages of Fulneck, Gersdorf, Gestersdorf, Kunewalde, Klandorf, Stechwalde, Seitendorf and Zauchtenthal; and these are the places from which the first exiles came to renew the Brethren’s Church at Herrnhut.
Fifty years before his prayers were answered, Comenius lay silent in the grave (1672). Yet never did bread cast upon the waters more richly return.
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE.
THE BOHEMIAN BRETHREN AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
As the relations of the Brethren with England were only of a very occasional nature, it is not easy to weave them into the narrative. But the following particulars will be of special interest; they show the opinion held of the Brethren by officials of the Church of England:–
1. The case of John Bernard.–At some period in the reign of Queen Elizabeth a number of scholarships were founded at Oxford for the benefit of Bohemian students; and in 1583 John Bernard, a Moravian student, took his B.D. degree at Oxford. The record in the University Register is as follows: “Bernardus, John, a Moravian, was allowed to supply B.D. He had studied theology for ten years at German Universities, and was now going to the Universities of Scotland.” This proves that the University of Oxford recognised Bernard as a man in holy orders; for none but men in holy orders could take the B.D. degree.
2. The case of Paul Hartmann.–In 1652 (October 15th) Paul Hartmann was ordained a Deacon at a Synod of the Moravian Church at Lissa. In 1657 he came to England, along with his brother, Adam Samuel Hartmann, to raise funds for the exiles. In 1660 he was ordained a Presbyter by Bishop Robert Skinner, of Oxford, in Christ Church; in 1671 he was admitted Chaplain or Petty Canon of Oxford Cathedral; and in 1676 he became Rector of Shillingford, Berkshire. This proves that Bishop Skinner, of Oxford, recognised Paul Hartmann’s status as a Deacon; and that recognition, so far as we know, was never questioned by any Anglican authorities. But that is not the end of the story. At this period a considerable number of Brethren had found a home in England; the Continental Brethren wished to provide for their spiritual needs, and, therefore, in 1675 they wrote a letter to the Anglican Bishops requesting them to consecrate Hartmann a Bishop. Of that letter a copy has been preserved in the Johannis-Kirche at Lissa. “It is no superstition,” they wrote, “that fills us with this desire. It is simply our love of order and piety; and the Church of England is the only Protestant Church beside our own that possesses this treasure, and can, therefore, come to our help.” For some reason, however, this pathetic request was not carried out. What answer did the Anglican Bishops give? We do not know; no answer has been discovered; and Hartmann remained a Presbyter to the end.
3. The case of Adam Samuel Hartmann.–He was first a minister of the Moravian Church at Lissa (1652-56). In 1657 he came to England to collect money; in 1673 he was consecrated a Moravian Bishop at Lissa; and in 1680 he received the degree of D.D. at Oxford. His diploma refers to him as a Bishop. This suggests, if it does not actually prove, that the University of Oxford recognised him as a valid Bishop.
4. The case of Bishop Amos Comenius.–Of all the Bishops of the Bohemian Brethren Comenius did most to stir up sympathy on their behalf in England. In 1657 he sent the two Hartmanns and Paul Cyrill to the Archbishop of Canterbury with a MS. entitled, “Ultimus in Protestantes Bohemiæ confessionis ecclesias Antichristi furor”; in 1660 he dedicated his “Ratio Disciplinæ” to the Church of England; and in 1661 he published his “Exhortation of the Churches of Bohemia to the Church of England.” In this book Comenius took a remarkable stand. He declared that the Slavonian Churches had been planted by the Apostles; that these Churches had “run up to a head and ripened” in the Unity of the Brethren; and that he himself was now the only surviving Bishop of the remnants of these Churches. In other words, he represented himself as the Bishop of a Church of Apostolic origin. In what way, it may be asked, was this claim received by Anglican authorities? The next case will supply the answer.
5. The case of Archbishop Sancroft.–ln 1683 King Charles II. issued a Cabinet Order on behalf of the Brethren; the order was accompanied by an account of their distresses; the account was “recommended under the hands” of William Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry Compton, Bishop of London; and in that account the statement was deliberately made that the Brethren deserved the assistance of Anglicans, not only because they had “renounced the growing errors of Popery,” but also because they had “preserved the Succession of Episcopal Orders.” The last words can only bear one meaning; and that meaning obviously is that both the Primate and the Bishop of London regarded Moravian Episcopal Orders as valid. The next case tells a similar story.
6. The case of Archbishop Wake.–We have now to step over a period of thirty-three years. As soon as James II. came to the throne, the interest of English Churchmen in the Brethren appears to have waned, and neither William III. nor Queen Anne took any steps on their behalf. And yet the connection of the Brethren with England was not entirely broken. The bond of union was Daniel Ernest Jablonsky. He was Amos Comenius’s grandson. In 1680 he came to England; he studied three years at Oxford, and finally received the degree of D.D. In 1693 he was appointed Court Preacher at Berlin; in 1699 he was consecrated a Moravian Bishop; and in 1709 he was elected corresponding secretary of the S.P.C.K. Meanwhile, however, fresh disasters had overtaken the Brethren. As the sun was rising on July 29th, 1707, a troop of Russians rode into the town of Lissa, and threw around them balls of burning pitch. The town went up in flames; the last home of the Brethren was destroyed, and the Brethren were in greater distress than ever. At this point Jablonsky nobly came to their aid. He began by publishing an account of their distresses; he tried to raise a fund on their behalf; and finally (1715) he sent his friend, Bishop Sitkovius, to England, to lay their case before Archbishop Wake. Again, as in the case of Archbishop Sancroft, this appeal to the Church of England was successful. The Archbishop brought the case before George I., the King consulted the Privy Council, the Privy Council gave consent; the King issued Letters Patent to all the Archbishops and Bishops of England and Wales, and Wake and John Robinson, Bishop of London, issued a special appeal, which was read in all the London churches. The result was twofold. On the one hand money was collected for the Brethren; on the other, some person or persons unknown denounced them as Hussites, declared that their Bishops could not be distinguished from Presbyters, and contended that, being followers of Wycliffe, they must surely, like Wycliffe, be enemies of all episcopal government. Again Jablonsky came to the Brethren’s rescue. He believed, himself, in the Brethren’s Episcopal Orders; he prepared a treatise on the subject, entitled, “De Ordine et Successione Episcopali in Unitate Fratrum Bohemorum conservato”; he sent a copy of that treatise to Wake, and Wake, in reply, declared himself perfectly satisfied.
To what conclusion do the foregoing details point? It is needful here to speak with caution and precision. As the claims of the Brethren were never brought before Convocation, we cannot say that the Anglican Church as a body officially recognised the Brethren as a sister Episcopal Church. But, on the other hand, we can also say that the Brethren’s orders were never doubted by any Anglican authorities. They were recognised by two Archbishops of Canterbury; they were recognised by Bishop Skinner, of Oxford; they were recognised by the University of Oxford. They were recognised, in a word, by every Anglican authority before whose notice they happened to be brought.
End Book I
Tags: Moravian History