Page:The Church, by John Huss.pdf/33

Rh works and d'Ailly pursued the same method with Ockam's Dialogus.

Huss's Commentary on the Sentences of Peter the Lombard, recently published in a volume of eight hundred pages, has re-established the author’s claims to be a sane and well-balanced theological student. Here he expresses himself independently and shows himself conversant with those phases of theological thought which were a subject of special discussion in his day as well as with the fundamental catholic principles.

Comparing the two treatises on the church along general lines this may be said:

Huss is the more clear and direct of the two writers. Much as he seems to repeat himself, he nevertheless pursues a definite aim. Wyclif, as was his custom, was drawn aside by the exuberance of his intellect into all sorts of discussions germane and not strictly germane. His treatise has extended paragraphs on canonization, mathematics, alms, relic worship, the evils of ecclesiastical endowments. He shows his scholastic bent by that peculiar use of Latin terminology characteristic of medieval scholasticism. Although Huss employs some of Wyclif's characteristic words, as antonomasia, yet he is comparatively free in this respect.