such avidity, that though the inquisitors sought them with eagerness, and the archbishop of Prague at one time burnt no less than two hundred volumes, neither the fear of the inquisitors, nor any other consideration deterred his followers from propagating his books and his doctrines, which, as drawn immediately from the Scriptures of truth, could not but correspond in substance with those which have been since received and established in all the churches of the reformed.

AN. 1420. The Bohemians submitted not passively to the butchery of their apostolic chiefs, resolved to have teachers of their faith, who were like their martyred Huss and Jerome, and to enjoy the ordinance of the Lord's Supper according to its primitive institution. Many of them retired to a steep mountain which they called Tabor, and in despite of popes and councils, communicated together both in bread and wine. Their church increasing by fresh accessions; under the famous Ziska, blind, but wise as intrepid, they defied their enemies, and asserted their liberty to worship God according to their consciences. A bloody war was raised against them, and after dreadful carnage on both sides, they maintained their ground against all their enemies. Unhappily they divided among themselves into two parties; and the crafty Sylvius contrived to detach the Calixtines from the Taborites, by granting them the use of the cup in the communion. The Calixtines indeed were very moderate in their demands, whilst the others insisted upon entire reform of

the subsisting abuses; the demolition of the sacerdotal tyranny, and the reduction of the ecclesiastical order to its primitive simplicity. Jacobellus, an affectionate disciple of Huss, was at the head of the Calixtines; Martin Loquis, a Moravian, eminent among the Taborites. Some mistakes and abuses among them, time and experience corrected. These last began to bear the name of Bohemian Brethren. They were numbered among the Beghards, and united with Luther and his associates at the reformation. I apprehend the Moravian brethren in Germany and England, are a scion from this stock, and if the ancients at all resembled the moderns, they were the excellent of the earth.

The

The schoolmen and commentators produced nothing worth remembering. Their jargon tended rather to confound the understanding than to convey information; a kind of literary inanity. mystic divines, with some mixture of fancy and allegory, spoke a language much more intelligible, and which reached the conscience. The wellknown book attributed to Thomas a Kempis, received high commendations from Luther, and deservedly; though whether he, or one Gersen, a Frenchman, were the real author, hath been matter of dispute.

Huss and Savanarola, have left works that speak the hearts of the writers; but they have been succeeded by men so much advanced in spiritual wisdom and knowledge, that little attention hath been paid to them, or indeed to any of the writers.

before Luther. The Church in general continued in great spiritual darkness; sunk in superstition; the people, dupes of sacerdotal jugglers; ready to receive the despotic mandates of popes, and to believe all the absurdities of fraud, and lying miracles, inculcated by priestly craft. And of all crimes, the most dangerous, was the attempt to emancipate the souls of men from this yoke of bondage.

CHAPTER III.

ON THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH, HERESIES, SCHISMS, RITES, AND CEREMONIES.

THE government of the Church was generally

now admitted to be under one visible head. And the Roman pontiff made it his undeviating design to subject to the holy see, all persons, civil as well as ecclesiastical, endeavouring to inculcate this maxim, that all lawful power upon earth was derived from Christ, through his vicegerent, the head of the Romish Church. But as we have seen, to this the temporal sovereigns greatly demurred, and the prelatical order was much disposed to raise a barrier against despotism, by exalting a general council above the Pope, as well as all others. This was a sharp bone of contention, and is not yet settled in the popish creed. But it was generally admitted, as one of the heresies to be punished with fire, that the Church of Christ could subsist (as many then zealousy maintained) without a visible head at all, sufficiently established under the spiritual and invisible guidance of the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls. These revolters from the jurisdiction of Rome, were pursued by all the arms of sophistry, and the schools, the zeal of the mendicants, and the whole body of the clergy; supported by the secular arm of the princes, and the malignity and craft of inquisitors. VOL. II.

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Yet their numbers were not diminished by their sufferings. They continued to spread through every part of Christendom; and nothing contributed more to this, than the obstinate determination of all the ecclesiastics in power to maintain inviolably their claims, as if they were all of divine authority; and the more contrary they were to every holy and heavenly disposition, and the more they favoured their tyranny and their covetousness, the more tenacious they were of them. Nay, where the abuse was even incapable of vindication, it was still to be maintained, least the heretics should triumph. Thus the matter became desperate, and drove necessarily to the great revolt, which was preparing.

The Greeks and Latins contended fierce as ever. The attempts to subjugate the one to the other, awakened jealousy, and envenomed resentment. The East laid all its miseries to the insensibility of their brethren in not flying to their assistance ; and complained, that whilst the Roman pontiffs were grasping at supremacy, Constantinople was lost.

The Franciscans and Dominicans still viewed each other with the eye of rivals. And whether the blood of Christ, shed on the cross, was a part of his divine nature, and to be worshipped, occasioned a new and bitter controversy, which the Pope found it so difficult to decide, that he could only enjoin silence on the noisy disputants, and bid them wait his infallible decision on the subject, which was nevér intended to be given.