The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe/Volume 3/Another Letter of John Huss to his Friends of Bohemia
Another Letter of John Huss to his Friends of Bohemia.
O how comfortable was the giving of the hand of lord John de Clum unto me, who was not ashamed to reach forth his hand to me a wretch, and such an abject heretic, lying in fetters of iron, and cried out upon of all men! Now peradventure, I shall not speak much hereafter with you: therefore salute in time, as you shall see them all, the faithful of Bohemia.
Paletz came to me in prison. His salutation in my vehement infirmity was this, before the commissaries: that there hath not risen a more perilous heretic since Christ was born, than were Wickliff and I. Also he said, that all such as came to hear my talk were infected with this heresy, to think that the substance of bread remained in the sacrament of the altar. To whom I answered and said: 'O master! what a grievous salutation have you given me, and how greatly do you sin! Behold I shall die, or peradventure to-morrow shall be burnt; and what reward shall be recompensed to you in Bohemia for your labour.'
This thing, peradventure, I should not have written, lest I might seem to hate him. I have always had this in my heart: 'Trust not in princes,' &c. And again: 'Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh to be his arm.' For God's sake be you circumspect how you stand and how you return. Carry no letters with you. Direct your books not all by one, but diversely by divers friends.
The visions of John Huss by dreams.Know this for certain, that I have had great conflicts by dreams, in such sort, as I had much ado to refrain from crying out. For I dreamed of the pope's escape before he went. And after the lord John had told me thereof, immediately in the night it was told me, that the pope should return to you again. And afterwards also I dreamed of the apprehending of Master Jerome, although not in full manner as it was done. All the imprisonments, whither and how I am carried, were opened to me before, although not fully after the same form and circumstance. Many serpents oftentimes appeared unto me, having heads also in their tail; but none of them could bite me, and many other things more.
These things I write, not esteeming myself as a prophet, or that I extol myself, but only to signify unto you what temptations I had in body, and also in mind, and what great fear I had, lest I should transgress the commandment of the Lord Jesus Christ. A prophecy of Master Jerome of Prague.Now I remember with myself the words of Master Jerome, who said, that if I should come to the council, he thought I should never return home again. In like manner there was a good and godly man, a tailor,[1] who, taking his leave of me at Prague, spake to me in these words: 'God be with you,' said he, 'for I think verily, my dear and good Master John, that you shall not return again to us with your life. The King, not of Hungary, but of Heaven, reward you with all goodness, for the faithful doctrine which I at your hands received,' &c.And shortly after the writing hereof, he sendeth also unto them another prophetical vision of his, to be expounded, touching the reformation of the church, written in his forty-fourth epistle, the contents whereof be these.
- ↑ This tailor's name was Andrew, a Polonian.