Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/249

 fabric built up by councils and Schoolmen, and not a lonely priest’s opinion, was determinative and final.

What disappoints the student of the council of Constance is that no testimony was offered by any of the councillors in favor of Huss. And after its adjournment not a single voice, so far as we know, was raised by an authoritative teacher of Europe to indicate that he felt that the council of which he was a member had made any mistake. Gerson’s statement that if Huss had had an attorney he would have been saved, was a remark he made in pique, in view of the council’s refusal to condemn tyrannicide.

Huss’s clerical friends in Bohemia had no theological weight. His lay friends were numerous and powerful, but laymen were no judges in matters of doctrine. The emperor and the council were unanimously against him.