Rome could absolve men from the most sacred obligations. The Council of Constance, having rid the world of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, began to apply the methods of the Inquisition to the whole kingdom of Bohemia, while making no attempt to check the corruption which had been the chief cause of the growth of heresy. A Bull of Martin V in 1418 urged prelates and Inquisitors to track out the heretics and deliver them to justice, and all secular rulers were commanded to aid the work. In the following year rebellion broke out, and the hardy zealots rivalled the persecutors in atrocities of cruelty. After ten years of struggle peace was restored. The more moderate among the reformers accepted the dogmas of the Church, while the extremists held firmly to their anti-sacerdotal opinions. They were met by another revival of bigotry. An energetic Inquisitor appointed by the Pope in 1436 persecuted throughout Hungary and Austria with extreme severity, but no detailed record of his victims remains. From the rude and miserably poor Hussites arose the sect of Moravian Brethren, which has existed for 400 years to the present day, preserving amid sore trials and persecutions the simplicity and purity of its faith. _The Netherlands._ In the middle of the sixteenth century the most prosperous portion of Europe was the Netherlands or Low Countries, which comprised the provinces now forming the kingdoms of Holland and Belgium. Many large towns adorned these fertile plains, inhabited by an energetic and hard-working people, whose vast commerce extended to every quarter of the globe. Antwerp, the banking centre of Europe, contained nearly as many people as then inhabited London; and splendid public buildings testified to the taste, wealth, and civic spirit of its citizens. The municipal institutions of the country were in advance of those of any other, and even the poorer classes lived in something like comfort, while education was so diffused that there was scarcely a peasant who was unable to read and write. As in the south of France 300 years earlier, a rich and progressive civilization had been developed by a self-reliant and independent people, and had created a predisposition to heresy--that is, it stimulated men’s minds in every department of life, and in none more powerfully than in that of religion. The Church had succeeded in destroying the civilization of Languedoc. It joined zealously in a similar attempt in the Netherlands. But it had to do with a different people.