§ 4-4. JOHN HUSS OP BOHEMIA. 369
He thus set himself clearly against the whole ultramontane theory of the Church and its head. The Roman bishop, he said, was on an equality with other bishops until Constantine made him pope. It was then that he began to usurp authority. Through ignorance and the love of money the pope may err, and has erred, and to rebel against an erring pope is to obey Christ. 1 There have been depraved and heretical popes. Such was Joan, whose case Huss dwelt upon at length and refers to at least three times. Such was also the case of Liberius, who is also treated at length. Joan had a son and Liberius was an Arian.^
In the second part of the De ecdesia, Huss pronounced the bulls of Alexander and John XXIII. anti-christian, and therefore not to be obeyed. Alexander's bull, prohibiting preaching in Bohemia except in the cathedral, parish and monastic churches was against the Gospel, for Christ preached in houses, on the seaside, and in synagogues, and bade his disciples to go into all the world and preach. No papal excommunication may be an impediment to doing what Christ did and taught to be done.^
Turning to the pope's right to issue indulgences, the Reformer went over the ground he had already traversed in his replies to John's two bulls calling for a crusade against Ladislaus. He denied the pope's right to go to war or to make appeal to the secular sword. If John was minded to follow Christ, he should pray for his enemies and say, " My kingdom is not of this world." Then the promised wisdom would be given which no enemies would be able to gainsay. The power to forgive sins belongs to no mortal man any more than it belonged to the priest to whom Christ sent the lepers. The lepers were cleansed before they reached the priest. Indeed, many popes who conceded the most ample indulgences were themselves damned.^
1 Numb, ed., I. 260, 284, 294, etc.
2 Huss also in his Letters repeatedly refers to Joan and Liberius, e.g. he writes, " I should like to know if pope Liberius the heretic, Leo the heretic and the pope Joan, who was delivered of a boy, were the heads of the Roman Church." Workman : Hus' Letters, p. 125. ^ Ntirnb. ed., I. 302.
* Be indulgentiis, Niirnb. ed., pp. 220-228, 2b
370 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
Confession of the heart alone is sufficient for the soul's salvation where the applicant is truly penitent. / In denying the infallibility of the pope and of the Church yisible, and in setting aside the sacerdotal power of the priestnood to open and shut the kingdom of heaven, Huss broke /with the accepted theory of Western Christendom ; he com- /mitted the unpardonable sin of the Middle Ages. These fun- ' damental ideas, however, were not original with the Bohemian Reformer. He took them out of "Wy^'^'^'^ A^rif.in^s., Mnrl hft also incorporated whole paragraphs of those writings in his pages.
Teacher"Tr5ver had a more devoted pupil tlian the English Reformer had in Huss. The first three chapters of De ecdesia are little more than a series of extracts from Wyclif s treatise on [ the Church. What is true of this work is also true of most of I Huss' other Latin writings.^ Huss, however, was not a mere j copyist. The ideas he got from Wyclif he made thoroughly his own. When he quoted Augustine, Bernard, Jerome and other writers, he mentioned them by name. If he did not mention Wyclif, wlien he took from him arguments and entire paragraphs, a good reason can be assigned for his silence. It was well known that it was Wyclif 's cause which he was representing and Wycliffian views that he was defending, and Wyclif's writings were wide open to the eye of membersof the university [faculties. Jle. made nosecret of following Wyclif, and being Willing to die for the views Wyclif taught. — As he wrolb l?o
1 Losertb wrote his Wicliff and litis to show the dependence of Huss upon his English predecessor, and the latter half of this work gives proof of it by printing in parallel columns portions of the two authors' compositions. He says, p. Ill, that the De ecdesia is only "a meagre abridgement of Wyclif's work on the same subject. This author affirms that in his Latin tractates IIuss "has drawn all his arguments from Wyclif," and that "the most weighty parts are taken word for word from his English predecessor," pp. xiv, 13!), 141, 15(5, etc. Neander made a mistake in rating the influence of Matthias of Janow upon Huss higher than the influence of Wyclif. He wrote before the Wyclif Society began its publications. Even Palacky, in his Church History of Bohemia, IIL 190-197, pronounced it uncertain how far Huss was influenced by Wyclif's writings, and questions whether he had attached himself closely to llie English Reformer. The publications of the I Wyclif Society, which make a comparison i)0.ssible, siiow that~5Tre-uaiter 'could scarcely be more dependent upon anollier than Huss was upon Wyclif?' L