Page:The Church, by John Huss.pdf/17

Rh tinctly, is not the bond of Christian unity, and nowhere does he represent the sacraments as the bond of unity.

Following Augustine, Huss proceeds to show that the church is a mixed body, made up of predestinate and præsciti, or reprobate, and he uses the parable of the net and other parables to prove it. Although according to the popular opinion—vocationem vulgarem et reputationem ecclesiasticam—all Christians are members of the church militant, yet it is one thing, Huss affirmed, to be in the church and another to be of the church. Judas was in the church for a season, but ultimately lost, and Paul by predestination was of it even during the period of his persecuting activity, when he was not in it.

These definitions set aside the following views which prevailed in Huss's time.

The pope and the cardinals do not constitute the church. This was a wide-spread popular conception and Huss is at great pains to prove its fallacy. The document of the eight doctors had so defined the church. Wyclif, before Huss, had said that "the public understands by the Roman church the pope and the cardinals."

The church is not confined to the body over which the apostolic see has jurisdiction. The particular Roman church is a company of the faithful living under the obedience of Rome, as the companies of the faithful living under the obedience of Antioch and Constantinople were called the church of Antioch and the church of Constantinople. In a notable passage in one of his letters to Prachaticz, Huss said succinctly: "The Roman church is not the catholic apostolic church, for no partial church can be the holy catholic church.