crowd in
German, telling them that he suffered for errors which he
did not hold, and he was cut short. When bound to the stake,
two cartloads of fagots and straw were piled up around him,
and the palsgrave and vogt for the last time adjured him to
abjure. Even yet he could save himself, but only repeated
that he had been convicted by false witnesses on errors
never entertained by him. They clapped their hands and then
withdrew, and the executioners applied the fire. Twice Huss
was heard to exclaim, "Christ Jesus, Son of the living God,
have mercy upon me!" then a wind springing up and blowing
the flames and smoke into his face checked further
utterances, but his head was seen to shake and his lips to
move while one might twice or thrice recite a paternoster.
The tragedy was over; the sorely-tried soul had escaped from
its tormentors, and the bitterest enemies of the reformer
could not refuse to him the praise that no philosopher of
old had faced death with more composure than he had shown in
his dreadful extremity. No faltering of the voice had
betrayed an internal struggle. Palsgrave Louis, seeing
Huss's mantle on the arm of one of the executioners, ordered
it thrown into the flames lest it should be reverenced as a
relic, and promised the man to compensate him. With the same
view the body was carefully reduced to ashes and thrown into
the Rhine, and even the earth around the stake was dug up
and carted off; yet the Bohemians long hovered around the
spot and carried home fragments of the neighboring clay,
which they reverenced as relics of their martyr. The next
day thanks were returned to God in a solemn procession in
which figured Sigismund and his queen, the princes and
nobles, nineteen cardinals, two patriarchs, seventy-seven
bishops, and all the clergy of the council. A few days later
Sigismund, who had delayed his departure for Spain to see
the matter concluded, left Constance, feeling that his work
was done.

#Hell-Fire#

If such a scene could be witnessed in the world today, it would only
be in some remote and wholly savage place, such as the mountains of
Hayti, or the Solomon Islands. It could no longer happen in any
civilized country; the reason being, not any abatement of the
pretensions of the priesthood, but solely the power of scienc