The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 102
In that age this sentence, whenever pronounced, created widespread
alarm. The ceremonies by which it was accompanied were well
adapted to strike terror to a people who looked upon the pope as
the representative of God Himself, holding the keys of heaven and
hell, and possessing power to invoke temporal as well as spiritual
judgments. It was believed that the gates of heaven were closed against
the region smitten with interdict; that until it should please the pope
to remove the ban, the dead were shut out from the abodes of bliss.
In token of this terrible calamity, all the services of religion were
suspended. The churches were closed. Marriages were solemnized in
the churchyard. The dead, denied burial in consecrated ground, were
interred, without the rites of sepulture, in the ditches or the fields.
Thus by measures which appealed to the imagination, Rome essayed
to control the consciences of men.
The city of Prague was filled with tumult. A large class denounced
Huss as the cause of all their calamities and demanded that he be given
up to the vengeance of Rome. To quiet the storm, the Reformer withdrew
for a time to his native village. Writing to the friends whom he had
left at Prague, he said: “If I have withdrawn from the midst of you,
it is to follow the precept and example of Jesus Christ, in order not to
give room to the ill-minded to draw on themselves eternal condemnation,
and in order not to be to the pious a cause of affliction and persecution.
I have retired also through an apprehension that impious priests might
continue for a longer time to prohibit the preaching of the word of God
amongst you; but I have not quitted you to deny the divine truth, for
which, with God’s assistance, I am willing to die.”—Bonnechose, The
Reformers Before the Reformation, vol. 1, p. 87. Huss did not cease
his labors, but traveled through the surrounding country, preaching to
eager crowds. Thus the measures to which the pope resorted to suppress
the gospel were causing it to be the more widely extended. “We can do
nothing against the truth, but for the truth.” 2 Corinthians 13:8.
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