Page:Letters of John Huss Written During His Exile and Imprisonment.djvu/229

 The sermons and discourses of John Huss, collected in his works, amount to about forty, amongst which several were pronounced before his rupture with his ecclesiastical superiors, and his interdiction. In them might be already recognised that pure and ardent zeal for morality, and that horror for the vices of the clergy, which animated his bosom in every circumstance of his life—a manifestation at once noble and rash in an age when the clergy were as powerful as they were corrupt, and which accumulated on the head of John Huss such implacable resentment.

In some sermons, delivered at a later period, and when he was already exposed to the attacks of his enemies, he expresses himself openly against the abuses springing from the doctrines of the Roman Church. He energetically censures the pomp and ostentation displayed in the festivals in honour of the saints. He reproves the lying flatteries of funeral eulogiums, and the profit derived from them by the priest. He alludes to this verse—

and adds: “What is the use of multiplying vigils in the house of a rich defunct, unless, indeed, for empty praise? Neither he who pays, nor he who is paid, care much about the psalms that are sung. What utility is there in this pompous cortege of the rich at the burial of a corpse? Why are so many priests sitting luxuriously on