a destructionist; and Huss himself, in defending these principles, was led to say many things which doubtless were liable to misapprehension. We have already remarked that, with Wickliff, he looked upon it as the destination of the clergy to copy, in all things, the example of Christ, who took upon him the form of a servant, and to resemble him, therefore, in poverty. Whatever the clergy obtained for their support, should be regarded simply as gift of free love. The spontaneous affection of those for whose spiritual benefit they laboured, should afford them what was necessary for the body.* But they should require only what was absolutely needful for their support, and nothing which ministered to superfluity. From the superfluous abundance of temporal goods, he derived the corruption of the worldly clergy. He was forced to complain that, especially in Bohemia, the fourth part of all the landed estates were in the hands of the clergy. Accordingly, with Wickliff, he finds the princes to be in the right; and looks upon it as a work of Christian charity in them to deprive the clergy of that superfluity of earthly goods which they abused, and which was the means of their corruption.§ Thus should the clergy be brought back to poverty and to the holy life of the primitive apostolical church. This was an error, indeed, in the case of Huss as well as of Wickliff; an error that was followed by mischievous consequences, and which arose from their not paying sufficient regard to the course things had actually taken in history, and from their supposing that a glorious condition of the church, connected with an altogether different stage of progress, was to be thus suddenly restored from without. In expressing these views, Huss attached them to a proposition already laid down by the ancient teachers of the church, which, theoretically considered, contained in it a sublime truth, leading the mind back to Christ himself and the * De Trinitate, Opp. I. fol. 107, 2.

+ Compare his tract De Decimis, of the year 1412.

Cum plus quam quarta pars regni sit devoluta ad manum mortuam. De Ablatione Bonorum, vol. I. 1412, Opp. I. fol. 122, 2.

§ L. a. fol. 120, 2: Rectificatio facillima cleri ad vitam Christi et apostolorum et pertinentior laicis, ne ipsi clerici vivant Christo contrarie, videtur esse eleemosynarum subtractio et collatarum ablatio.

apostles; but which, empirically apprehended and applied to practice, might lead to the overthrow of all social order; the proposition, namely, that all rightful holding of property, in the sight of God, was conditioned on the subjective worth of the owner; that ownership could be predicated only of the righteous; in support of which it was already customary among the ancients to quote Prov. xvii. 6, according to the Septuagint version and the Vulgate. Now when this proposition was employed in justification of the act of depriving the unworthy of their property, the consequences, no doubt, would be very bad. Huss cites, in favour of it, 1 Cor. iii. 21.* To the same category belongs, also, his defence of Wickliff's proposition, that No man is lord over any possession, no man can be king, or bishop, if he is in mortal sin. Huss distinguished three kinds of property-that grounded in nature, that grounded in civil law, and that proceeding from grace and justice. It never entered his thoughts to make sovereignty and supreme authority dependent on the personal worth of the incumbent, or to approve of rebellion against authority not so founded. The very distinction just set forth stood opposed to any such mode of apprehending and applying the proposition. He affirms what, rightly understood, could not be denied, that mortal sin infected not the whole life only, but as well every single action of the man in detail; that everything depended on the governing disposition, which gave to everything its moral character. But nothing could be gained by this; nothing but mischief could ensue when a proposition, correct in itself, was so paradoxically expressed, and applied to questions of right, a province of life where it ought never to be applied. Had it not been for the barren, subtle method of scholasticism in which the fifteenth century was still entangled to a far greater degree than the flourishing period of scholasticism had been in the thirteenth century, Huss would not have expended so much labour in demonstrating a point so unfruitful in its practical application and so liable to be misapprehended. But Huss defends

* Temporales autem Domini procedentes secundum caritatis regulam juste possident illa temporalia, cum justorum sunt omnia. De Ablat. Bon., Opp. I. fol. 119, 2.

himself against the reproach, that by his mode of representing office as being conditioned on the personal worth of the holder, he destroyed its objective efficiency. He says: "We concede that a bad pope, bishop, or priest, is an unworthy minister of those sacraments by which God baptizes and consecrates, or in other ways operates for the advancement of his church. But in the same way he ordains much that is good through the instrumentality of the devil as his minister, being very mighty, glorious, and praiseworthy in this, that he effects such glorious ends by so reprobate a minister. But the minister effects it to his own condemnation."* We have already remarked that the adversaries of Huss, who would have been very glad to represent him as an opponent of the doctrine of transubstantiation, since this would have served beyond anything else to fix upon him. the charge of heresy, availed themselves for this purpose (perverting his words) of that spiritual apprehension of this sacrament in its significance for the internal Christian life, which was made specially prominent by Huss in his preaching. As Huss ever laid great stress on the expression that Christ is himself the bread of the soul, the provision for eternal life, his enemies seized on such expressions to create a suspicion that he did not really believe in the flesh and blood of Christ in the Lord's supper, as that into which the bread and wine had been transformed. It was the whispering about of such a suspicion which seems to have led Huss to compose his tract De Corpore Christi. In this treatise, also, we see how he gives prominence only to the practical side of religion; how very far he is from wishing to contend against the doctrine of transubstantiation. He portrays, in this tract, first the character of the gross Jews (grossi Judæi), who would not acknowledge Christ to be the bread of the soul, who said the body of Christ was broken, comminuted with the teeth, seen with the bodily eyes, and touched with the hands. We recognise here the same class of people that appeared first against Berenger, who, for the purpose of cutting off all possibility of a spiritual apprehension of

*

Responsio ad Scripta Paletz, Opp. I. fol. 256.

the mystery, selected the most carefully-sought crass style of expression respecting the body of Christ in the supper, and who were ready to detect, in every more spiritual mode of expression, a denial of transubstantiation. He says of these people that in grossness of apprehension they were to be compared with those Jews who murmured against Christ in the synagogue of Capernaum. (John vi.) He joins those opponents of the crass phraseology respecting the body of Christ produced by the consecration, Ĥugo de St. Victor, Hildebert of Mans, and even Innocent III., in saying that "Christ is manducated spiritually. He abides in his divinity and his body wholly in heaven, and he abides in his divinity and his humanity wholly within the heart, so long as the sacrament is with thee. But when thou art not receiving the sacrament, and art without mortal sin, although he does not sacramentally and in his humanity abide in thee, he still, in his divinity and through grace, dwells in thy heart." He thinks it of importance to note, distinctly, that what the senses perceive is one thing, and what the eye of faith discerns quite another; a distinction which could be made without affecting the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Meantime the cause of Huss assumed a much darker aspect in the Roman court. The report of archbishop Zbynek relative to the Bohemian disturbances met with a far more cordial reception than the appeal of Huss, which was scarcely noticed. The pope committed the matter for investigation into the hands of cardinal Otto of Colonna, the same who was afterwards chosen pope by the council of Constance. This cardinal confirmed the sentence passed by archbishop Zbynek, and cited Huss to appear at Bologna, where the pope was then residing. This mode of proceeding aroused the indignation of the important party of Huss in Bohemia. Huss and his friends could with justice affirm that, owing to the great number of his enemies in Germany it would not be safe for him to undertake such a journey; that it would be sacrificing his life for nothing. In truth, the worst, and nothing but the worst, was to be expected, even should Huss succeed in getting to the Roman court, where there were so many to

whom he had made himself odious by attacking the corruptions that prevailed at that court.* Queen Sophia used all her interest in behalf of her father confessor. Wenceslaus, who looked upon archbishop Zbynek as the author of all the disturbances, the man who had brought his kingdom under suspicion, wrote in favour of Huss to the pope in Bologna and to the college of cardinals. He begged the pope to put a stop to the whole process, to impose silence on the enemies of Huss, to suppress the dispute concerning the books of Wickliff; since it was evident, that in his kingdom no man had fallen into error or heresy by occasion of those writings. "It is our will too," he wrote, "that Bethlehem Chapel, which, for the glory of God and the saving good of the people, we have endowed with franchises for the preaching of the gospel, should stand, and should be confirmed in its privileges; so that its patrons may not be deprived of their rights of patronage, and that Master Huss (whom he styles the loyal, devout, and beloved) may be established over this chapel and preach the word of God in peace.' He demanded of the pope, moreover, that the personal citation of Huss should be revoked; and if any one had anything to object to him, that he should present his objections there within the realm and before the university of Prague, or some other competent tribunal.† King Wen

* The abbot of Dola, in his Dialogue written in the year 1414, represents the "Goose," that is, Huss, his name signifying this in the Bohemian language, as saying, "I have many reasons for not obeying the citation to Rome. It was my intention, at first, to appear there, but my counsel and the counsel of the other party wrote me, that I should not come, because it would be sacrificing my life to no purpose. I refused, then, because I did not wish to neglect the people in the word of God, nor to expose my life when nothing was to be gained by it; for when a man stands before him as his judge, whose sins he has recklessly attacked, he manifestly gives himself up to death." To this his antagonist replied: "Huss, placing his confidence in God, had nothing to fear, and, after the example of Christ, ought to have appeared even before an unjust judge.' Steph. Dol. Dialogus Volatilis, Pez IV. 2, pp. 464 et 465 auca et passer.

The letter, according to a manuscript in the Imperial library at Vienna, in Palacky III. 1, p. 258, and the letter to the cardinals in Pelzel, Urkundenbuch, Nr. 221.