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The Net of Faith
The Corruption of the Church, Caused by its Fusion and Confusion with Temporal Power
Having thus learned the essence of Chelcicky’s teaching, I with much greater impatience waited
for the appearance of The Net of Faith in the journal of the Academy. But
a year, two, three years passed, and the book did not appear. Only in 1888 I learned that the
printing of the book, which had been begun, had come to a stop. I got the proof-sheets of as much
as had been printed, and I read the book.
The book is in every respect remarkable.
The contents are quite correctly rendered by Pypin. Chelcicky’s fundamental idea is this, that
Christianity, having united with the power in the time of Constantine and having continued to
develop under these conditions, has become absolutely corrupt and has ceased to be Christianity.
The title The Net of Faith, was given by Chelcicky to his work, because, taking for his motto the
verse of the Gospel about calling the disciples to become fishers of men, Chelcicky, continuing
this comparison, says, Christ by means of His disciples caught in His net of faith the whole
world, but the larger fish, tearing the net, jumped out of it, and through the holes, which these
larger fish had made, all the others went away, and the net was left almost empty.
Leo Tolstoy
The large fish that broke through the net are the rulers, emperors, popes, kings, who, in not
renouncing their power, did not accept Christianity, but its semblance only.
