Protestantism in Poland and Bohemia - James Aitken Wylie

could secure a Bible, for then they could drink of
the Water of Life at its fountainhead. In January,
1523, we find the Estates of Bohemia and Moravia
assembling at Prague, and having summoned
several orthodox pastors to assist at their
deliberations, they promulgated twenty articles --
"the forerunners of the Reformation," as Comenius
calls them -- of which the following was one: "If
any man shall teach the Gospel without the
additions of men, he shall neither be reproved nor
condemned for a heretic."[5] Thus from the banks
of the Moldau was coming an echo to the voice at
Wittemberg.
"False brethren" were the first to raise the cry
of heresy against John Huss, and also the most
zealous in dragging him to the stake. So was it
again. A curate, newly returned from Wittemberg,
where he had daily taken his place in the crowd of
students of all nations who assembled around the
chair of Luther, was the first in Prague to call for
the punishment of the disciples of that very
doctrine which he professed to have embraced. His
name was Gallus Zahera, Calixtine pastor in the
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