Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/156

 horizons of thought and feeling, human society is under an unspeakable debt. Theirs is the cause of progress.

To the latter group Huss belongs. In his case his former colleagues not only failed to approve of the wisdom of his course in threatening to break with the old, but it is quite possible they also felt a certain amount of jealousy for the popular feeling in his favor and, as Huss charged, fear of offending their superiors. In the case of Luther, the element of rivalry does not seem to have been an appreciable factor in the opposition to him when he entered upon his Reformatory career. No intimate friends turned against him and took a positively hostile attitude toward him.

At the beginning of the year 1412, Huss was attacked by one whom he designates “a hidden assailant of the truth or an inquisitor.” In his spirited reply entitled Against the Hidden Adversary—a writing which played a part in the council of Constance—Huss took occasion to defend his course in attacking the vices of the clergy. The charges made by his opponent were first, that Huss by his preaching had discredited the law, and second, that he was destroying the influence of the priesthood. Huss replied that he was not attempting to discredit the priesthood but to abash vicious and unfaithful priests. In taking this course, he was following Christ, who wept over Jerusalem, which was later destroyed by Titus. Christ entered into the temple, rebuked those who sold doves and cast them out. Charles IV, king of Bohemia, had protected the Word of God by restraining and reprimanding insolent and unfaithful priests. It is for kings to purge the church as Nebuchadnezzar released the three young men from the fire. There is an order of priesthood which continues in heaven; it consists of all those who make an offering of themselves unto the Lord. This priesthood, as well as the priests who officiate at the altar in this world, do justly in rebuking, evil and unfaithful priests.

Upon the whole, the papal court of the Pisan line, next