Page:The Church, by John Huss.pdf/223

Rh as a publican and gentile. What ground, therefore, is there for the argument from comparison [with those who put Christ to death]? Under the old law the disobedient person was to be put to death, therefore, also under the law of grace. Even Christ's disciples have been deceived by this argument from comparison, for after the manner of Elijah the prophet, they wanted the Samaritans who refused to receive Christ to be consumed by fire from heaven, saying: "Lord, wilt thou that we bid fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" That most good priest and best of masters reproved them, for the words follow that he, turning around, rebuked them, saying: "Ye know not what spirit ye are of, for the Son of Man came not to destroy souls but to save them," Luke 9:54–56.

This good Gospel the doctors did not turn to and so they have joined to their statements this sanguinary corollary—sanguinolentum corollarium —and say: "If any of the clergy be found in Bohemia acting contrary to these premises or a single one of them, such an one is to be corrected by ecclesiastical censure and, if he refuses to be corrected, he is to be turned over to the secular tribunal." For a certainty in this