Page:John Huss by Hastings Rashdall (1879).pdf/42

 what higher footing than that of the Pope. But the Apostolical succession would seem in his estimation to confer upon them no power whatsoever except that of conveying Orders. He sets exactly the same limits to the duty of canonical obedience in the case of Bishops as he does to the Papal supremacy. A Bishop in mortal sin is no Bishop. His commands are only to be obeyed when they are in accordance with the law of Christ, and the inferior is bound to examine them before he obeys them.

Huss entirely denies both to Bishops and Clergy what may be called destructive powers. That excommunication which shuts a man off “from participation in the favour of God, from a worthy participation of the Sacraments, and from a participation in the prayers which prepare for eternal life” can only be pronounced when the Bishop knows by special revelation that the offender is already excommunicated by God. And he nowhere implies that such revelations were to be expected. Practically, the only excommunication which he recognises is “the public exclusion from the conversation of Christians by the sentence of a spiritual or secular judge;” and this is only to be pronounced as a punishment for mortal sin. In short, he makes excommunication a purely temporal penalty, and it is to be disregarded when unjustly imposed.

On Absolution his doctrine is much the same. No priest ought to pronounce unconditional absolution, unless he knows by special revelation that the penitent is absolved by God. “Wherefore,” he says, “the wise priests of Christ do not assert simply that the person confessing is loosed from his sins, but only under the condition, ‘If he is sorry, and will sin no more, or has faith in the mercy of God, and will henceforward observe the commandments of God.’”

We hope that we have already shown sufficient grounds for rejecting the conclusion of Dean Milman, that the heresy of John Huss “has never been clearly defined,” and that it did not consist in “any of those tenets of belief rejected afterwards by the German and English Reformers.” It is perfectly true that “he was the martyr to the power of the hierarchy,” but that was because he had denied the powers of the hierarchy; and a belief in those powers was as essential a part, as it was, in our estimation, by far the most dangerous part of the Roman Creed.

But whatever may have been his opinions upon other points, there is one matter in which he is absolutely, unhesitatingly, a Protestant: in which he is as opposed to the teaching of one half of the Anglican Church as to the teaching of the whole of the Roman Church. He denies the claim of any man, or any body of men, to Infallibility. He will own no authority in matters of Faith but