The first embraces a short sketch of the history and death of two among the most eminent of the early Reformers, John Huss, and Jerome of Prague. John Huss, or rather John of Hussinetz (for he derived his name, according to a common usage of that time, from the place of his birth), was a Bohemian priest, educated at the University of Prague. His talents, and the simplicity and severity of his life, raised him through subordinate stations to the high office of Rector of the University. By some means, the nature of which is not quite clear, the opinions and works of our venerable Wiclif, the first translator of the Bible into the English tongue, were conveyed into Bohemia towards the close of the fourteenth century. They struck deep root in that soil: a circumstance to be attributed in no small degree to the effect produced by Wiclif’s character and doctrines upon the mind of Huss; who conceived so deep a veneration for his preceptor, that in his sermons to the people in the chapel of Bethlehem (a chapel endowed by a pious citizen of Prague, to enable two preachers to address the lower orders in the Bohemian tongue), he is said often to have addressed his earnest vows to Heaven, that “whensoever he should be removed from this life, he might be admitted to the same regions where the soul of Wiclif resided; since he doubted not that he was a good and holy man, and worthy of a habitation in heaven.”[210] Already eminent for his philosophical attainments, Huss had obtained another kind of celebrity, so early as the year 1405, by these sermons, in which he inveighed powerfully against the extortions and corruptions by which the papal hierarchy had disfigured the purity of Christian faith. He continued to preach, unchecked, till the year 1409, when the Archbishop of Prague commenced open war on the new doctrines, by ordering all members of the university who possessed Wiclif’s writings to bring them in, that those which were found to be heretical might be publicly burnt. Two hundred volumes are said to have been thus destroyed. Huss, and other members of the university, appealed to the Pope; but, as might have been expected, their cause took an unfavourable turn, and the Archbishop was empowered to suppress the doctrines of Wiclif within his diocese. Huss, however, with his friend, pupil, and fellow–sufferer, Jerome of Prague, master of theology in the university, continued to preach: and the people followed them, in spite of the combination and determined opposition of the clergy in general. Huss was in consequence summoned to appear at Rome. He refused to place himself in the power of the Pope, but sent three deputies to plead his cause. The deputies were insulted and maltreated, and he himself was declared guilty of contumacy, and excommunicated. Against this censure he published a formal protest, in which, after reciting authorities to justify the step which he was taking, narrating his excommunication, and explaining