Page:Letters of John Huss Written During His Exile and Imprisonment.djvu/236

 those whose interests it was to perpetuate them, and that the corruption of the external and visible Church was then so profound, that to introduce a reform in it, it was necessary first to leave it altogether.

Of all John Huss’s treatises, that on The Church is the most complete and celebrated. We must insert here an of it, which will terminate this work.

John Huss defines the universal Church to be the assembly of all the predestined, past, present, and to come, including the angels. “The Church,” writes he, “is the most excellent thing created by God. We ought not therefore to believe in the Church, because it is not God; but we should believe that there is a holy universal Church, of which Jesus Christ is the sole Chief. The entire Church and all its parts ought to honour God; but it ought not to wish that divine worship should be rendered her.”

“Reprobates,” says Huss, “are not members of the