put on his head; and thus attired, the prelates charitably consigned his soul to the infernal devils.[218] Divested thus of the sacred character of priesthood, he was delivered over to the secular power, represented by the Emperor, under whose safe–conduct he had repaired to Constance, and who had yet openly given his voice for causing the heretic to expiate his errors by the torments of fire. The Emperor charged the Elector Palatine with the duty of seeing the penalties of the law inflicted: and it is said, that a succeeding elector, the descendant in the fourth generation of the person thus employed, who was a favourer of the Reformation, and dying childless, witnessed the extinction of his line, was wont to attribute that misfortune to the anger of Heaven, punishing in the fourth generation the bigoted and cruel eagerness with which his ancestor had executed the unholy task intrusted to him on this occasion. Huss was immediately conducted to the stake, and suffered his agonizing death with unshaken firmness. It is told by an old writer of his life, that the people said, hearing the fervency of his address to God, “We do not know what this man has done before; but now, we hear him offer up excellent prayers.” His ashes were carefully collected and cast into the Rhine, lest they should serve to keep up the affection of his friends: but the precaution was vain, for we are told[219] that the very earth of the spot on which he was burnt was collected as a sacred relic, and carried into Bohemia by his disciples. Before the fate of Huss was determined, the Council had wreaked a tardy vengeance on his forerunner and preceptor Wiclif, whose body was ordered “to be taken from the ground, and thrown far away from the burial of any church.” After the lapse of thirteen years, the empty insult was most effectually executed, by disinterring and burning the reformer’s body, and casting the ashes into a neighbouring brook. The often quoted words of Fuller on this occasion may be equally well applied to the good man whose history has just been related:—“The brook did convey his ashes into Avon; Avon into Severn; Severn into the narrow seas; they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wiclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over.”