Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/148

 to hold or preach any of the articles on pain of being held a heretic and called upon the king to execute civil penalties even to exile from the Bohemian kingdom. To these XLV Articles were appended six, or perhaps nine, others, pronouncing the penalty due heresy upon all who did not hold to the sacraments and the power of the keys in the sense held by the Holy Roman Church, who denied that reverence should be paid to relics or asserted that “the great antichrist predicted in Holy Writ” had already come. The same punishment was invoked upon those who affirmed that customs of the church not plainly contained in the Scriptures have no binding force, that priests do no more than declare the penitent confessor absolved, and that the pope has no right to call upon Christians to fight against their fellow Christians in defense of the apostolic see and solicit moneys for that purpose in return for absolution.

Accepting this sweeping sentence, the king had the resolution to order those holding the XLV Articles banished from the realm. At the same time he bade the doctors attempt to compose the difficulty by peaceable measures. At the call of the city magistrates week later, masters of the university and clergy met at the city hall and reaffirmed the condemnation of the articles. At the same time, however, other masters, bachelors, and many students met at the university building and protested the articles had been condemned without reasonable examination. In an elaborate defense made at the university, Huss vindicated at least five of them. No article, he affirmed, should be condemned which is not explicitly or by fair implication condemned in the Scriptures. He contended that those who cease preaching the Word of God or give up hearing it preached out of regard for a sentence of excommunication will be found traitors at the day of judgment, that every deacon and priest has the right to preach irrespective of a permission from the apos-