The Presbyterian quarterly review - 1857 Author:Unknown Author Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: their own infallibility in his place; to this Huss refused to bend the knee, and nothing else could save him. Huss indeed approved the doctrine of Jacobel in ... more »regard to the communion of the cup. He wrote a letter to the Bohemians in its favor, hut the Council do not seem to have been aware of it, and indeed it was only after he had been sometime in prison, that the matter was first brought distinctly to his notice. But the great principle for which he suffered, the supreme authority of the word of God, was pregnant with great results, of which he had himself but a feeble conception. All Bohemia seemed at once to adopt it, and the communion of the cup became a national heresy. More than four hundred of the nobles and barons of the kingdom, were cited to appear and answer before the Council to the charge of heresy. Nothing could have been more impolitic than this citation. The Barons of Bohemia were not to be awed by the authority of a council which they despised, and which had become detestable by its condemnation of their countrymen. Had they answered to the citation, they would have appeared at Constance sword in hand. As it was, they were forced to stand committed to an antagonism with the Council, and the so-called Catholic Church. At length the publication of the crusade against them by the Pope, after the dissolution of the Council, forced them to give shape to their demands. These were embodied in four articles:—the free preaching of the Word of God; the liberty of the communion of the cup; the exclusion of the priesthood from civil control and large landed possessions, and the severe repression of gross public sins, whether in clergy or in laity. The Calixtines, or adherents of the communion of the cup, remained faithful to these, without proceeding further. Like Huss and...« less