ict;
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said: "If I have withdrawn from the midst of you, it is to follow the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."(128) 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."(129)

"The mind of Huss, at this stage of his career, would seem to have been
the scene of a painful conflict. Although the church was seeking to
overwhelm him by her thunderbolts, he had not renounced her authority. The
Roman Church was still to him the spouse of Christ, and the pope was the
representative and vicar of God. What Huss was warring against was the
abuse of authority, not the principle itself. This brought on a terrible
conflict between the convictions of his understanding and the claims of
his conscience. If the authority was just and infallible, as he believed
it to be, how came it that he felt compelled to disobey it? To obey, he
saw, was to sin; but why should obedience to an infallible church lead to
such an issue? This was the problem he could not solve; this was the doubt
that tortured him hour by hour. The nearest approximat