The Utraquists, as already mentioned, had been reduced almost to impotence in the time of Ferdinand. The Lutherans, divided among themselves, weak in organisation, and without any hold on the feeling of Bohemia, were almost equally an object of contempt to the Jesuits; but in the Brotherhood they saw a power of organisation, a capacity for intense self-devotion, and great educational faculties, which made them dangerous rivals even to the followers of Loyola. Just at this time the Brothers had taken a step which, while infinitely to their own credit, had yet raised up against them enemies whom the Jesuits could easily call in as their allies. The Brotherhood, as already hinted, had found, even more than most religious communities, a perpetual difficulty in solving that painful problem of the proper relation of the Church to the World; for, while they would never consent to drift tamely into the conventional morality of a comfortable and generally accepted Church, they were yet continually forced to make concessions to the prejudices of the world around them, which endangered the spiritual life of their community. Their concessions in the matter of war had, as we have seen, driven from their ranks some of the stricter members of the Society at a very early stage of their history; and a difficulty which was an even greater vexation to the minds of the Brothers, was the relation between the Community and the nobles. The original conception of the Brotherhood, as a Society of equals working in the main with their hands for their livelihood, had never been wholly lost sight of; and the clergy were still expected to support themselves largely by their own handiwork. But the necessity for protection against the continual outbursts of persecution from other sects had compelled the Brothers to accept the patronage of certain lords who were inclined to their doctrines. The most zealous of these noblemen desired a closer union with the Brotherhood than the position of outside patron could give them; and yet they were by no means willing to make that surrender of their rank and position which the rules of the Brotherhood required. The Brothers had not seen their way to exclude these aristocratic members from an entrance into the Community; and the difficulties of the position naturally increased, when the son or grandson of some zealous nobleman accepted the hereditary connection with the Brotherhood without any of the moral enthusiasm which had led his ancestor to join it. The opposition which the plebeian preachers of the Brotherhood encountered in their attempts to exercise a spiritual control over these aristocratic followers was of course specially great in a century when even champions of religious liberty claimed the right to dictate their creed to their tenants and dependants. Serfdom, it cannot too often be remembered, had gained a new footing in Bohemia at the close of the fifteenth century;