and other Reformers as they became prominent.

Then came destruction, when the religious liberty of Bohemia and Moravia
was extinguished in blood, by the Church of Rome. The great Comenius
went forth, a wanderer on the face of the earth, welcomed and honored
in courts and universities, introducing new educational principles
that revolutionized methods of teaching, but ever longing and praying
for the restoration of his Church; and by his publication of its Doctrine
and Rules of Discipline, and by his careful transmission of the Episcopate
which had been bestowed upon him and his associate Bishops,
he did contribute largely to that renewal which he was not destined to see.

In the home lands there were many who held secretly, tenaciously, desperately,
to the doctrines they loved, "in hope against hope" that the great oppression
would be lifted. But the passing of a hundred years brought no relief,
concessions granted to others were still denied to the children of those
who had been the first "protestants" against religious slavery and corruption,
and in 1722 a small company of descendants of the ancient Unitas Fratrum
slipped over the borders of Moravia, and went to Saxony,
Nicholas Lewis, Count Zinzendorf, having given them permission
to sojourn on his estates until they could find suitable homes elsewhere.

Hearing that they had reached a place of safety, other Moravians
took their lives in their hands and followed, risking the imprisonment
and torture which were sure to follow an unsuccessful attempt
to leave a province, the Government of which would neither allow them
to be happy at home nor to sacrifice everything and go away.
Among these emigrants were five young men, who went in May, 1724,
with the avowed intention of trying to resuscitate the Unitas Fratrum.
They intended to go into Poland, where the organization of the Unitas Fratrum