Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/247

 the accusations based upon Huss’s writings and once more pronounced the text of his writings as more worthy of condemnation than the formulated articles.

In reading over the proceedings, it does not occur to us to accuse Palecz of unworthy motives or to doubt that there were perhaps a number of men in the council who were anxious to give Huss a certain amount of protection and to grant him a fair opportunity of extricating himself from the position in which he was placed. Among these were d’Ailly and Zabarella, men who had no doubt of his serious departure from Catholic doctrine.

The majority of the councillors, as is often the case in ecclesiastical assemblies sitting in judgment upon erroneous doctrines, real or alleged, seem not to have been ready to listen to a reasonable discussion. They had prejudged the case. Explanations were useless. Retraction was their demand. Huss was a dangerous heretic. A heretic had no standing. He was the embodiment of all conceivable wickedness, fit only for the flames and perdition.

Sigismund, as we may believe, with an eye to his promise of safe-conduct and his standing with the Bohemian and Moravian nobles, sought to save Huss from the worst fate. Of the obligations under which he was placed by the passport, we shall speak further on.

Huss was an innovator whose statements struck at the root of church authority. The rule of belief and action he placed in the Scriptures as interpreted by the individual. From our standpoint, the principle he was contending for was the right of the individual conscience in the presence of the open Bible. D’Ailly and the council took the opposite ground. The eminent French cardinal knew nothing but the supreme authority of the church. As represented in the council at Constance, it had deposed a pope, John XXIII. It had the right to settle doctrine and what it said was law. No in-