Page:The Church, by John Huss.pdf/29

xxv last chapter of the Ephesians, a passage he frequently expounded.

Indeed, heresy has its uses, and heretics are to be reclaimed to Christ's sheepfold by methods of persuasion, so Huss affirmed. As for himself, he professed that excommunication and the harshest treatment are rather to be chosen than a pretended absolution from guilt and punishment, for he is more likely to be absolved from guilt and punishment who, in God's cause, suffers malediction and contumely even unto death, than he who prevaricates to himself or persecutes Christians.

Thus, a hundred years before Luther wrote his famous words against the burning of heretics, Huss took the same position. But, so far as we know, there was not a single individual in the great council of Constance who had any sympathy with the views of the Bohemian heretic. Nay, the council went further than to burn Huss: it supplemented its verdict by a solemn declaration that faith is not to be kept with a heretic. The pity is that Bullinger—in the Second Helvetic Confession, John Calvin and other leaders of the emancipation of the sixteenth century did not fully conform to the principle set forth by Huss and Luther and shake themselves free from the method of the inquisition practised by our religious ancestors of the Middle Ages.

These fundamental principles, in regard to the church, the papal office, the keys and the Scriptures, for which Huss stood were adapted to shake the ecclesiastical organization of his day to its very foundations. The council of Constance when it stated them in its thirty charges fully appreciated the grave menace. Had that solemn assembly accepted Huss's principles it would have set aside the construction built up by the pride of the medieval hierarchy and the laborious reasoning of the Schoolmen.

IV. . The leading principles