Petr Chelčický

Our faith obliges us to bind wounds, not to make blood run.

Petr Chelčický (c. 1390 – c. 1460) was a Christian and political author in 15th century Bohemia (now the Czech Republic).

Quotes

The Net of Faith (c. 1443)

Online translation by Enrico C. S. Molnár

• He who obeys God needs no other authority.

• Our faith obliges us to bind wounds, not to make blood run.

• Wars and other kinds of murder have their beginning in the hatred of the enemy and in the unwillingness to be patient with evil. Their root is in intemperate self-love and in immoderate affection for temporal possessions. These conflicts are brought into this world because men do not trust the Son of God enough to abide by his commandments.

• Facts witness to the reality that [Christians] have abandoned God, that they have entered the world and become one with the world. Whatever the world considers praiseworthy – vanity, comfort, wealth, fancy notions, blasphemies – the Christians, too, praise with one accord, quite blatantly without shame and without conscience. We can find with difficulty one man in a thousand who does not conform himself to the world.
  • Chapter 95

• A world contrary to God must be kept within bounds by the world’s sword. But true Christians love God and their neighbors as themselves; they commit no evil by the grace of God. It is not necessary to compel them to goodness since they know better what is good than the law imposing authority.
  • Chapter 95

External links

• Chelcicky's Nonviolence
• "The Bohemian Brethren" in Communism in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation by Karl Kautsky
• Molnár's A Study of Peter Chelcický’s Life and a Translation from Czech of Part One of his Net of Faith as one web page, as a page per chapter, and as a PDF file.
• The Birth, Life, and Death of the Bohemian Revival