Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/143

 sale remitting from penalty and guilt savors of a deluge of satisfaction for offenses; so that the more people a man might put to death the more would God and man be under obligation to pardon. The man enlisting in the crusade might kill priests and even papal commissioners themselves and appropriate their money, and yet he would come under the terms of the indulgence. However, Huss does not know whether in the last case the pope would allow the validity of the indulgence unless the moneys were restored.

The pope’s call to a crusade, involving the killing of Christians under Ladislaus’s rule and their spoliation is plainly against Christ’s word to Peter to put up his sword and the rebuke of the disciples who called for vengeance upon the Samaritan village. Therefore, it deserves no obedience. The Scriptures give not a single case of a saint saying: “I have forgiven thy sin. I have absolved thee.” Nor can the case of a saint be discovered who gave indulgence for a given number of years or days from the penalty and guilt of sin.

Huss closes his fiery tract by comparing a pontiff who uses the Scriptural power in an unwarranted way to a tyrant. One is to be disobeyed as well as the other. If the papal utterances agree with the law of Christ, they are to be obeyed. If they are at variance with it, then Christ’s disciples must stand loyally and manfully with Christ against all papal bulls whatsoever and be ready, if necessary, to endure malediction and death. When the pope uses his power in an unscriptural way, to resist him is not a sin, it is a mandate.