Page:Letters of John Huss Written During His Exile and Imprisonment.djvu/43

 testified to his learning. Thirty years back, I heard several able theologians declare that “John Huss was an exceedingly superior doctor, and that he surpassed in erudition and knowledge all the persons composing the council.” His writings, and, amongst others, his Treatise on the Church, and his Sermons, confirm this eulogium.

When I was a divinity student at Erfurt, my hand happened to alight, one day, in the library of the monastery, on a volume of John Huss’s sermons. Having read, on the cover of the work, the words, Sermons of John Huss, I was immediately inflamed with a desire to ascertain, by perusing this book, that had escaped from the flames, and was thus preserved in a public library, what heresies he had disseminated. I was struck with amazement as I read on, and was filled with an astonishment difficult to describe, as I sought out for what reason so great a man—a doctor, so worthy of veneration, and so powerful in expounding the Scriptures—had been burned to death. But the name of Huss was, at that period, such an object of execration, that I absolutely believed that if I spoke of him in terms of praise, the heavens would fall on me, and the sun veil his light. Having then closed the book, I withdrew sad at heart, and I remarked to myself, by way of consolation—“Perhaps he wrote those things before he fell into heresy.”