Protestantism in Poland and Bohemia - James Aitken Wylie

malicious charges, issued an order for the shutting
up of all their churches. In the five districts
inhabited mainly by the "Brethren," all who refused
to enter the Church of Rome, or at least meet her
more than half-way by joining the Calixtines, were
driven away, and their landlords, on various
pretexts, were arrested.
This calamity fell upon them like a thunderbolt.
Not a few, yielding to the violence of the
persecution, fell back into Rome; but the great
body, unalterably fixed on maintaining the faith for
which Huss had died, chose rather to leave the soil
of Bohemia for ever than apostatise. In a previous
chapter we have recorded the march of these exiles,
in three divisions, to their new settlements in
Prussia, and the halt they made on their journey at
Posen, where they kindled the light of truth in the
midst of a population sunk ill darkness, and laid the
foundations of that prosperity which their Church
at a subsequent period enjoyed in Poland.
The untilled fields and empty dwellings of the
expatriated Bohemians awakened no doubts in the
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