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Protestantism in Poland and Bohemia - James Aitken Wylie

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liberty you desire? Everywhere you shall f<strong>in</strong>d<br />

heresy proscribed. One's native soil is sweet, <strong>and</strong><br />

you will be glad to return to yours, only, it may be,<br />

to f<strong>in</strong>d the door of the emperor's clemency closed."<br />

Numerous conversions were effected before the<br />

adoption of a s<strong>in</strong>gle harsh measure; but wherever<br />

the Scriptural knowledge of Huss's Reformation<br />

had taken root, there the monks found the work<br />

much more difficult.<br />

The first great tentative measure was the<br />

expulsion of the Anabaptists from Moravia. The<br />

most unbefriended, they were selected as the first<br />

victims. The Anabaptists were gathered <strong>in</strong>to some<br />

forty-five communities or colleges, where they had<br />

all th<strong>in</strong>gs <strong>in</strong> common, <strong>and</strong> were much respected by<br />

their neighbors for their quiet <strong>and</strong> orderly lives.<br />

Their l<strong>and</strong>s were skillfully cultivated, <strong>and</strong> their<br />

taxes duly paid, but these qualities could procure<br />

them no favor <strong>in</strong> the eyes of their sovereign. The<br />

order for their banishment arrived <strong>in</strong> the beg<strong>in</strong>n<strong>in</strong>g<br />

of autumn, 1622, <strong>and</strong> was all the more severe that<br />

it <strong>in</strong>ferred the loss of the labors of the year.<br />

Leav<strong>in</strong>g their fields unreaped <strong>and</strong> their grapes to<br />

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