Page:The Church, by John Huss.pdf/30

xxvi set forth in his Treatise on the Church, Huss found in the writings of Wyclif and particularly in Wyclif's treatise on the same subject. Not only has he the main principles in common with Wyclif, and also many of his quotations from the Fathers and the canon law and his proofs from Scripture. Huss appropriated paragraph after paragraph from his predecessor and transferred them often with little verbal change to his own pages. The agreement has been convincingly shown by Loserth, who prints the corresponding paragraphs side by side. It is not necessary here to repeat what he has done.

Huss's reverend respect for Wyclif has already been indicated. Whereas Stephen Palecz, Stanislaus of Znaim and other theological colleagues, who at first shared his admiration for the English teacher, came to regard his teaching as honeyed poison—mellatum venenum—Huss continued to bow before him as the "master of deep thoughts." And it was for Wyclif's doctrines and, in a sense, in his stead he died at Constance.

The recent publication of Wyclif's works beginning with 1883, under the auspices of the Wyclif society, has made possible a full estimate of the obligation which Huss owed to his English predecessor. Up to that date only a comparatively small number of his writings, English as well as Latin, were in print, and Wyclif's Treatise on the Church appeared for the first time, 1886. In the light of Wyclif's printed text, the theory advocated at length by Neander that Huss was indebted to Matthias of Janow for his view on the authority of Scripture and other topics is found to be wholly without foundation. And, in fact, nowhere does Huss express any debt to that writer of Prague who, by the way, recanted his views which were pronounced erroneous. Never