Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/180

 people, an error, he affirmed, which had often been condemned, as in the case of the Waldenses and Beghards. In his humble opinion—parvitati meæ—it seemed that such a tenet should be destroyed by fire and the sword rather than the attempt made to overcome it by a process of subtle ratiocination. Power to govern on earth was not derived from the title of predestination, which is manifestly uncertain, but from ecclesiastical and civil laws. Among the other tenets condemned by Gerson were: that those popes only are of the church who imitate in their lives Christ and the Apostles, an error, he affirmed, in faith and morals full to the brim of arrogance and temerity; that the pope should not be called most holy, nor are his feet blessed and to be kissed; that Christ alone, and not the pope, is the head of the church; that tithes and gifts to the church and to ecclesiastics are pure alms; that an excommunicate person is to be spared if he appeals to Christ; that ecclesiastics evil in their lives may and ought to be coerced by laymen by the withdrawal of tithes and other temporalities; and that all acts done without love are sinful.

Some of these errors had been held by the Donatists in the fifth century and more recently, so Gerson declares, by Marsiglius of Padua and John of Jandun and had been condemned. In regard to Huss’s insistence upon the right to preach. Gerson insists that there is a zeal against the vices of the clergy which is without knowledge. Vices and errors cannot be uprooted by vices. In Beelzebub’s kingdom demons were not cast out by demons. Not to set oneself against such errors as those cherished by Huss is to approve them. Princes and prelates are under obligation to proceed with diligence against such errors and to punish their asserters with the severest penalties of the law.

John XXIII also wrote to Konrad, calling upon him to do his duty. Simon, cardinal of Rheims, reminded the archbishop of the case of Arius and, resorting to the