The Great Controversy The Great Controversy | Page 119

The papal leaders, despairing of conquering by force, at last resorted
to diplomacy. A compromise was entered into, that while professing
to grant to the Bohemians freedom of conscience, really betrayed them
into the power of Rome. The Bohemians had specified four points as the
condition of peace with Rome: the free preaching of the Bible; the right
of the whole church to both the bread and the wine in the communion,
and the use of the mother tongue in divine worship; the exclusion of
the clergy from all secular offices and authority; and, in cases of crime,
the jurisdiction of the civil courts over clergy and laity alike. The papal
authorities at last “agreed that the four articles of the Hussites should be
accepted, but that the right of explaining them, that is, of determining
their precise import, should belong to the council—in other words, to
the pope and the emperor.”—Wylie, b. 3, ch. 18. On this basis a treaty
was entered into, and Rome gained by dissimulation and fraud what she
had failed to gain by conflict; for, placing her own interpretation upon
the Hussite articles, as upon the Bible, she could pervert their meaning
to suit her own purposes.
A large class in Bohemia, seeing that it betrayed their liberties, could
not consent to the compact. Dissensions and divisions arose, leading
to strife and bloodshed among themselves. In this strife the noble
Procopius fell, and the liberties of Bohemia perished.
Sigismund, the betrayer of Huss and Jerome, now became king
of Bohemia, and regardless of his oath to support the rights of the
Bohemians, he proceeded to establish popery. But he had gained little by
his subservience to Rome. For twenty years his life had been filled with
labors and perils. His armies had been wasted and his treasuries drained
by a long and fruitless struggle; and now, after reigning one year, he
died, leaving his kingdom on the brink of civil war, and bequeathing to
posterity a name branded with infamy.
Tumults, strife, and bloodshed were protracted. Again foreign
armies invaded Bohemia, and internal dissension

118