Page:The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe Volume 3.djvu/484

 heretical, erroneous or offensive; he answered, that he durst not agree thereunto, for offending his conscience, and especially for these articles: that Silvester the pope, and Constantine, did err in bestowing those great gifts and rewards upon the church. Also, that the pope or priest, being in mortal sin, cannot consecrate or baptize. "This article," said he, "I have thus determined, as if I should say, that he doth unworthily consecrate or baptize, when he is in deadly sin, and that he is an unworthy minister of the sacraments of God." Here his accusers, with their witnesses, were earnest and instant that the article of Wickliff was written in the very same words of the treatise which John Huss made against Stephen Paletz. "Verily," said John Huss, "I fear not to submit myself, even under the danger of death, if you shall not find it so as I have said." When the book was brought forth, they found it written as John Huss had said. He added also, moreover, that he durst not agree unto them who had condemned Wickliff's articles, for this article," The tenths are pure alms."

Here the cardinal of Florence objected unto him this argument, as touching the alms: "It is required that it should be given freely without bond or duty. But tenths are not given freely without bond or duty; therefore are they no alms." John Huss, denying the major of this syllogism, brought this reason against him: "Forasmuch as rich men are bound, under the pain of eternal damnation, unto the fulfilling of the six works of mercy, which Christ repeateth in Matthew xxv., and these works are pure alms; ergo, alms are also given by bond and duty." Then an archbishop of England, stepping up, said : "If we all be bound unto those six works of mercy, it doth follow that poor men, who have nothing at all to give, should be damned." "I answer," said Huss, "unto your antecedent, that I spake distinctly of rich men, and of those who had wherewithal to do those works. They, I say, are bound to give alms under pain of damnation."

He answered moreover, unto the minor of the first argument, that tenths were at first given freely, and afterward made a bond and duty; and when he would have declared it more at large, he could not be suffered. He declared also divers other causes why he could not, with safe conscience, consent unto the condemnation of Wickliff's articles. But howsoever the matter went, he did affirm and say, that he did touching never obstinately confirm any articles of Wickliff's, but only that he did uot allow and consent that Wickliff's articles should be condemned, before sufficient reasons were alleged out of the holy Scripture for their condemnation.

'And of the same mind,' saith John Huss, 'are a great many other doctors and masters of the university of Prague; for when Swinco the archbishop commanded all Wickliff's books to be gathered together in the whole city of Prague, and to be brought unto him, I myself brought also certain books of Wickiiff's, which I gave unto the archbishop, desiring him, that if he found any error or heresy in them, he would note and mark them, and I myself would publish them openly. But the archbishop, albeit that he showed me no error nor heresy in them, burned my books, together with those that were brought unto him, notwithstanding he had no such commandment from pope Alexander V. But, by the notwithstanding, by a certain policy, he obtained a bull from the said pope by means of Jaroslaus, bishop of Sarepta, of the order of Franciscans, that all Wickliff's books, for the manifold errors contained in them (whereof there were none named), should be taken out of all men's hands. The archbishop, using the