Notice Concerning the Followers of John Huss

When John Huss began to teach in Bohemia in the fifteenth century, and gained a great number of followers, many Waldenses joined them. They rejoiced, and hoped that by this the light of the Gospel, which until then had for so long been so abominably quenched and persecuted by the papists, would begin to shine more clearly, burn more strongly, and go forward with less hindrance. But then, after the death of John Huss and Jerome of Prague, who had both been burned by the papists at Constance, on the Lake of Constance, against the safe conduct granted by the Emperor, the Hussites in Bohemia began a cruel and bloody war against Emperor Sigismund and the German electors and other princes, which they carried on for a long time and at last settled. And when these same Hussites, wholly estranged from their teacher and leader, John Huss, united with the papists in many points of doctrine and in church ceremonies, many of the Waldenses, who had at first joined the Hussites, found themselves shamefully deceived in their hope, and thought better of it, that is, according to the doctrine of the holy Gospel, to have nothing at all to do with such a bloody war. Again, they also began to protest against it. They also turned away from the Hussites in points of doctrine and in church practices, and set up a separate church, being afterward called Taborites, Grubenheimer* dwellers in caves, and so on. [n494-3]

This greatly grieved the so-called Hussites, and therefore, at the instigation of M. John Rockenzahns and others, they began to hate and persecute dreadfully not only the old faithful Waldenses, who had never been united with them, but also these newer ones, who had separated from them. Jac. Mehrn., Bapt. Hist., second part, from Lydius, in the Hist. of the Waldensibus. [n494-2]