Page:John Huss by Hastings Rashdall (1879).pdf/38

 than among the Reformers of Constance; the morals of the town suffered from the presence of the Council, as they would have suffered from the neighbourhood of an English race-course. Neither the advocacy of the King of France nor the authority of the University of Paris was sufficient to procure the unqualified condemnation of one who had unblushingly defended assassination. Those who deposed one Pope, failed to put any effectual check upon the despotism of the next. The most considerable achievement of the deliberations of three years and six months was the burning of two heretics, one of whom had been promised freedom to return to his own country by the Emperor and by the Pope. Such a termination of a Council from which such magnificent results were promised, could not but shake the faith of mankind in the wisdom of such assemblies, and their confidence in the religion which represented either such assemblies, or the Popes whom they could depose, as mouthpieces of the Holy Spirit “in matters of Faith and of Morals.”

To inveigh against the Fathers of Constance for sending a heretic to the stake, would indeed be to judge of the conduct of one age by the standard of another. But that is not the crime which has fixed upon the memory of the Council, and of the Church which it represented, a stain which can never be wiped off so long as that Church calls herself infallible. Huss was condemned for heresies certainly, but also for opinions which do not affect religious belief at all, for opinions which he had never held, for opinions which no one could seriously have believed that he had held. Implicit credence was given to the testimony of his bitterest enemies: he was not allowed to cross-examine the witnesses; he had no opportunity of fully explaining and defending his opinions. Above all, the safe-conduct which the Emperor had granted, and which the Pope had promised to observe, was violated by his arrest even more shamelessly than by his execution. The Council of Constance pronounced a formal divorce between Religion and Morality. Christendom was now made aware that her infallible guides were not bound by that respect for plighted faith which forms the basis of all social life, which places some restraint even upon the actions of savages in their dealings with their enemies, and of brigands in their dealings with their captives.