Page:The Church, by John Huss.pdf/303

Rh it be lawful for a subject to obey contrary to the custom approved in the church and contrary to the conscience of this subject which resists, or, if he should bid him wander in the middle of the night through woods among cruel wild beasts when there was no necessity for it? And many are the commandments of this kind repugnant to reason. Nor should an argument be made in favor of obedience, if it were anywhere found in the lives of the Fathers, that subjects in the case of works which are without fitness or neutral obeyed, even as certain of the holy Fathers did obey, as Hugo of St. Victor, Libellum Intitulatum, speaking of these things which may not lawfully be done, said: "Just as we read that certain of the holy Fathers commanded subjects many things foreign to human reason that they might teach them the virtue of obedience, such as watering dry parts until they produced seeds or softening hard stones by pouring water over them and taming ferocious beasts by a word of command."

So far as the circumstance of the person is concerned, it is clear that here reason ought to direct as to a work good generically and also neutral. In a work generically good, if the prelate should command the subject to give alms by pauperizing his boys, or to take up penance by fasting which he is not capable of enduring, or to make many prayers even as confessors lay hard tasks upon men—certainly in such cases a pope is not to be hearkened to, since a parent is more bound to nourish his boys than to give alms to others; and he is not bound to bear insufferable burdens. The same is true in works neutral, for, if ever a pope should command me to play on the flute, build towers, to mend or weave garments, and to stuff sausages, ought not my reason to judge that the pope was foolish in so commanding? Why should I not prefer in this matter my common sense to the pope's sentence? Yea, if with all our doctors he should command me do these things, the reason would judge that the sentence of these persons was foolish.