the upright counsel of a faithful and virtuous friend, for such was the circumstance which completed and crowned the history of his imprisonment; and it should be everywhere recorded, for the honour of human nature. A Bohemian nobleman, named John of Chlum, had attended Huss, whose disciple he was, through all his perils and persecutions, and had exerted throughout the whole affair every method that he could learn or devise to save him. At length, when every hope was lost, and he was about to separate from the martyr for the last time, he addressed him in these terms: ‘My dear master, I am unlettered, and consequently unfit to counsel one so enlightened as you. Nevertheless, if you are secretly conscious of any one of those errors which have been publicly imputed to you, I do entreat you not to feel any shame in retracting it; but if, on the contrary, you are convinced of your innocence, I am so far from advising you to say anything against your conscience, that I exhort you rather to endure every form of torture, than to renounce anything which you hold to be true.’ John Huss replied with tears, that God was his witness, how ready he had ever been, and still was, to retract on oath, and with his whole heart, from the moment he should be convicted of any error, by _evidence from the Holy Scripture_.”[217] He confirmed this assertion in a letter, written on the eve of his execution, to the Senate of Prague, warning them that he had retracted and abjured nothing, but was ready to abjure and express his detestation of every proposition extracted from his books which could be proved contrary to Scripture.