Protestantism in Poland and Bohemia - James Aitken Wylie

Church of Laeta Curia, Old Prague. Zahera joined
himself to John Passek, Burgomaster of Prague, "a
deceitful, cruel, and superstitious man," who
headed a powerful faction in the Council, which
had for its object to crush the new opinions. The
Papal legate had just arrived in Bohemia, and he
wrote in bland terms to Zahera, holding out the
prospect of a union between Rome and the
Calixtines. The Calixtine pastor, forgetting all he
had learned at Wittemberg, instantly replied that he
had "no dearer wish than to be found constant in
the body of the Church by the unity of the faith;"
and he went on to speak of Bohemia in a style that
must have done credit, in the eyes of the legate, at
once to his rhetoric and his orthodoxy.
"For truly," says he, "our Bohemia, supporting
itself on the most sure foundation of the most sure
rock of the Catholic faith, has sustained the fury
and broken the force of all those waves of error
wherewith the neighboring countries of Germany
have been shaken, and as a beacon placed in the
midst of a tempestuous sea, it has held forth a dear
light to every voyager, and shown him a safe
139