Your great compatriot, Wycliffe, is rightly considered as the beginner of the Reformation. Wycliffe spoke, and his word was his great mission on earth. But his word in Bohemia became flesh--yea, more than flesh--blood and fire. Human words are never great except when transformed into a drama--when incarnated into life. Wycliffe was never so great in England as he became in Bohemia. Christianity in Bohemia was at that time relatively young, nearly three times younger than in Rome. But since Prince Borivoj was baptised by the Slav Apostle, Methodius, never did Bohemian Christianity stand nearer to the primitive Bohemian paganism than at the time when King Wenceslas ruled in Bohemia, and Pope John XXIII ruled in Rome, and Jan Huss served as preacher in a Prague chapel called the Bethlehemian. The paganism under the style of poor Jesus, against which fought Huss, was much more obstinate and aggressive than the paganism under the style of Perun, against which fought St. Methodius. Everywhere was found a substitute for Christ, everywhere a pretext for an easy life and for a broad way instead of the narrow one. Sins and virtues had been equalised by means of money. The Church buildings had been transformed into public places for the exchange of sins and virtues. "_Repentance_, not _Money!_"--exclaimed Jan Huss. But his voice was stifled by the piercing sounds of the drums by which the sale of absolution for sin was announced in the streets. Again exclaimed Jan Huss: "The whole Bohemian nation is longing after Truth." But the traders in Christ's blood and tears laughed him to scorn. The doctors of theology asked their colleague Huss to confess that "the Pope is the head and the Bishops the body of the Church, and all their orders must be obeyed." But Huss did not care very much either about the head or the body, but principally about the _spirit_ of the Christian Church. And this spirit he saw eclipsed. He saw men again falling back to the creed of serving "two masters." He looked to the heart of the Christian religion and saw that it was sick, and his soul revolted against it. But his righteous revolution was regarded as a malevolent innovation, his words as a scandalous licence, and his tendencies as a deliberate destruction of Christianity. Therefore Jan Huss was brought before a tribunal of Christian judges, condemned to death and burnt to ashes, _ad magnam Dei gloriam_, as the Bishop of Lodi preached on that occasion.