prayers." They would rather, they said, spend weeks in gaol than
take the oath as councillors. They built cottages, tilled the land,
opened workshops, and passed their time in peace and quietness. For
a law and a testimony they had the Bible and the writings of Peter
of Chelcic. In Michael Bradacius, a Utraquist priest, they found a
faithful pastor. They made their own laws and appointed a body of
twenty-eight elders to enforce them. They divided themselves into
three classes, the Beginners, the Learners and the Perfect;10 and
the Perfect gave up their private property for the good of the
common cause. They had overseers to care for the poor. They had
priests to administer the sacraments, They had godly laymen to teach
the Scriptures. They had visitors to see to the purity of family
life. They were shut off from the madding crowd by a narrow gorge,
with the Glatz Mountains towering on the one side and the hoary old
castle of Lititz, a few miles off, on the other; and there in that
fruitful valley, where orchards smiled and gardens bloomed, and neat
little cottages peeped out from the woodland, they plied their
trades and read their Bibles, and kept themselves pure and unspotted
from the world under the eye of God Almighty.11

But it was not long before these Brethren had to show of what metal
they were made. With each other they were at peace, but in Bohemia
the sea still rolled from the storm. It is curious how people
reasoned in those days. As the Brethren used bread instead of wafer
at the Holy Communion, a rumour reached the ears of the King that
they were dangerous conspirators, and held secret meetings of a
mysterious and unholy nature. And King George held himself an
orthodox King, and had sworn to allow no heretics in his kingdom.
As soon therefore, as he heard that Gregory the Patriarch had come
on a visit to Prague, and was actually holding a meeting of