In the meantime Augusta had been trying to strengthen the union between the Brotherhood and the foreign Protestants. He had visited Bucer and Calvin at Geneva, had received a kindly welcome from them, and had accepted many of Calvin’s doctrines about Predestination. But his greatest hope and his strongest personal sympathies were always directed to Wittenberg; and his translation and eulogy of a pamphlet written by Luther excited Ferdinand’s indignant attention even during the Turkish war. Threatened with arrest and imprisonment in consequence of this publication, Augusta fled once more to Wittenberg. There he was again welcomed by Luther and Melancthon; and he complained to them of the growing corruptions of the Church in Bohemia, and of the increase of luxury, even in the Brotherhood. Finally, he implored Luther to interfere in these matters, and to establish a new system of church discipline in Bohemia. Some suggestion of the kind had apparently been made by other Bohemian exiles; but Luther was far too wise to listen to the proposal. He had been willing enough to discuss matters of doctrine with the Brothers, and to welcome them as friends and allies; but he had none of the national mania for Germanising other countries; and he recognised to the full the necessity for a variety of customs, and even for modifications in the expression of doctrine. “Do you,” He said to Augusta and his friends, “be the Apostles of the Bohemians; I and mine will be the Apostles of the Germans. Do you act according to the opportunities presented to you, and so will we.” If Joseph II., in the eighteenth century, had been half as wise as Luther was in the sixteenth, the relations of Germans and Bohemians to each other might even now be considerably more friendly than they are. After this interview Augusta returned to Bohemia, and devoted himself, for the next year or two, partly to a defence of the Brothers against the attacks of the Utraquists, partly to an effort to restore the Brotherhood itself to that simpler mode of life from which it was drifting away.
In the meantime, the progress of Protestant doctrine in Germany had produced considerable influence on many of the old-fashioned Utraquists in Bohemia; and they now offered fresh hindrances to Ferdinand’s efforts after uniformity. Mistopol, the Administrator of the Utraquist Consistory, and Mitmánek, a leading preacher, had been particularly prominent in their attacks on the Catholics; and when, in 1543, Ferdinand once more called together the Bohemian Assembly, he found that his offer to enforce the Compacts of Basel was met by a reaffirmation of the Four Articles of Prague in their simplest and extremest form. This roused him to great indignation; and he now insisted on further restrictions, both in ritual and preaching, and even forbade any general meeting of the Utraquists, under penalty to person and property. He insisted, however, that the celebration of the anniversary of the death of Hus should be maintained as one of the ordinary observances of the Church. But Mistopol succeeded in seizing the opportunity of this anniversary for a violent sermon against the Catholics, which he preached in the old Bethlehem chapel of Hus. For this defiance Mistopol was summoned before the Court of Prague; and though his sentence was deferred for a time, Mitmánek, his chief supporter, was banished from the country. The attempt to conciliate the Utraquists having thus failed, Ferdinand opened negotiations with the Pope, which were to lead to the calling of the Council of Trent. Such was the relation of parties to each other when, in 1546, the death of Luther removed the last hindrance to the outbreak which was to change the conditions both of Germany and Bohemia.
