Page:John Huss, his life, teachings and death, after five hundred years.pdf/257

 selves Christ’s vicars, with the Apostles. They announced themselves to be “the holy church and the most holy council, which cannot err.” By its own decree the council had declared itself the highest authority on earth. Nevertheless, Huss continues, it did err by falling at the knees of John and kissing his feet—the recent pope, who, according to the council’s own declaration, was a base murderer and sodomite, simoniac and heretic. In regard to himself, the council had erred at least in three ways—by making up false articles from his books, by putting false interpretations upon some of them and by its curtailed quotations, which misrepresented him. He, therefore, had good reason for believing that the council was not infallible, and happy were those who rejected the pomp, avarice and hypocrisy of antichrist and held to Christ as the head of the church.

As for the pope, how mistaken the opinion was which Stanislaus and Palecz had set forth, that he is the head of the church, its sufficient ruler, its vivifying heart, its neverfailing fountain of authority and the all-sufficient refuge to which Christians should flee-seeing that at the time he was writing there was no pope at all; but the church abides without a pope, having Christ for its all-sufficient head, its lifegiving fountain, its unfailing refuge. Again he returned to the fallibility of the council and of the pope, whom the council had sentenced for the “crime of heresy.” Let the preachers take note that the head is cut off, he whom once the councillors pronounced God on earth, incapable of doing sin or practising simony—even the pope who is the heart of the church, its spiritual life-giver, the fountain from whom proceed all goodness and power, the sun of the holy church, the unfailing refuge to whom Christians should run. He, the head, is cut off. God on earth is bound. His sins are openly declared, the fountain dried up, the sun obscured, the heart torn out, the refuge fled from Constance. The very men who