Page:Letters of John Huss Written During His Exile and Imprisonment.djvu/140

 keeping his law, perceive, detest, and avoid vain pomp, avarice, hypocrisy, the fraud of Christ’s enemies, and who wait with patience the coming of the Sovereign Judge and his angels.

I conjure you, by the bowels of Jesus Christ, to avoid bad priests, and to love good ones, according to their works. I conjure you and the faithful Barons, not to permit, according to your power, worthy priests to be oppressed. It is for that purpose that God has raised you above others; and I think there will be in Bohemia a great persecution of the faithful servants of God, if he does not relieve them by the arms of the secular lords whom he has enlightened by his Word, more than by our spiritual chiefs. Oh! what madness to condemn as erroneous the Gospel of Christ and the Epistle of St Paul, who professes to have received the truth, not from men, but from God; and to reject the example of Jesus Christ himself, of his apostles, and of the other saints, in condemning the Communion of the Cup of our Lord, instituted for all adult believers. Do they not say, the permission given to devout laymen to participate with the lips in the Cup of Christ is an error! And if a priest presents them this Cup to drink of, he is reputed in fault, and, should he persist, is condemned as a heretic!

O, St Paul, thou hast said unto all the faithful—“For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do