When I was a divinity student at Erfurt, my hand happened to alight, one day, in the library of the monastery, on a volume of John Huss’s sermons. Having read, on the cover of the work, the words, _Sermons of John Huss_, I was immediately inflamed with a desire to ascertain, by perusing this book, that had escaped from the flames, and was thus preserved in a public library, what heresies he had disseminated. I was struck with amazement as I read on, and was filled with an astonishment difficult to describe, as I sought out for what reason so great a man--a doctor, so worthy of veneration, and so powerful in expounding the Scriptures--had been burned to death. But the name of Huss was, at that period, such an object of execration, that I absolutely believed that if I spoke of him in terms of praise, the heavens would fall on me, and the sun veil his light. Having then closed the book, I withdrew sad at heart, and I remarked to myself, by way of consolation--“Perhaps he wrote those things before he fell into heresy.” At that time I was still ignorant of what had passed in the Council of Constance. All that I could say would only add infinitely to the high character of John Huss. His adversaries render him a striking, though unintentional testimony; for if their clouded eyes could open to the light, they would blush at the remembrance of the things which they themselves narrate. The author of a collection of the acts of the council, written in German, and enriched with very many remarkable details, endeavours, with all his power, to cover with odium the cause of John Huss; and yet he declares, that when Huss beheld himself stripped of all the dignities of his order, he smiled with intrepid firmness. According to the same author, also, Huss, when conducted to the funeral pile, constantly repeated--“Jesus, Son of God, have pity on me!” At the sight of the fatal stake to which he was to be fixed in order to be burned, he fell on his knees and cried out--“Jesus, Son of the living God, who suffered for us all, have pity on me!” Beholding a peasant bringing some wood to feed the flames, he again smiled with mildness, and uttered these words of St Jerome--“O holy simplicity!”[20] A priest having drawn nigh, and demanded if he desired to confess, Huss replied, that he was ready to do so; and the priest having insisted on the necessity of abjuring, John Huss refused, saying that he did not consider himself guilty of any mortal sin.