Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/206

 mission with the XLV Articles of Wyclif and forty-two articles taken from his own Treatise on the Church and other writings. To these he was given opportunity to make reply. On the one hand, he entered a protest that many of the charges were flat misrepresentations and that others containing extracts from his works also misrepresented his views by taking his words out of their connection. Some of the charges he pronounced to be pure inventions of Palecz and others. On the other hand, he reaffirmed others as right, as, for example, that no one stained with mortal sin belongs to the true church, that the predestinate have a radical grace from which it is not possible for them to fall, and that princes have authority to sequestrate church possessions and expel unworthy priests. In regard to the last tenet, he bade John of Chlum to tell Sigismund that if it were condemned as heresy the king himself would be open to condemnation as a heretic for having deprived bishops of their temporal goods, as his father, Charles IV, had done before him. The commission’s recommendation that his case be set before a jury of twelve doctors, Huss rejected. Later on Jesenicz took the ground that Huss had committed a technical error in making any reply whatsoever as a prisoner.

In addition to these charges, the formal articles sent by Gerson, of which mention has already been made, were brought in evidence against him. He promised to reply to them, if he lived. These divers accusations were renewed again and again during the progress of the trial with small modification.

Many also were the insinuations with which Huss was vexed. For example, a bishop accused him of setting up a new law as well as having preached all the XLV and the forty-two articles. Writing to John of Chlum, he expressed the opinion that the commission had not much against him except that he had preached against the crusading bulls, administered the sacraments while under excommunication,