Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/113

 that sin is no more permissible to a priest than to a layman, and indeed more blamable—a theory that appeared paradoxical to most of Hus’s contemporaries, particularly among the priesthood. Thus when preaching on Zacchaeus (St. Luke, chap, xix.) he says: “Those householders are manifest sinners who allow immorality or dice-playing in their houses. I say the same of dancing, by which they mock God on Sundays. As St. Bernard says, those who, particularly if they are priests, allow in their houses dancing or diceing or immorality, commit a mortal sin, and the priests more so than the laymen, for what is venial for a layman is mortal for a priest.” A very early Bohemian work of Hus also is his translation of the Trialogus of Wycliffe. It was probably made between the years 1403 and 1407. If, as has been conjectured on the strength of statements made at the trial of Jerome of Prague at Constance, Jerome assisted Hus in this translation, this would be the only known instance of collaboration between him and Jerome. The translation has been long, and probably irretrievably lost, and its existence is known to us only through the testimony of numerous contemporary writers. Numerous manuscripts of it appear to have existed, but were destroyed during the period of Romanist reaction that followed the battle of the White Mountain. The translation was dedicated to the Margrave Jodocus of Moravia, a cousin of King Venceslas. It is probable that the frequent quotations from this work of Wycliffe which we find in the writings of the later Bohemian reformer, Peter Chelcicky, were derived from this translation.

Among Hus’s Latin works that belong to this early period is one that, though formerly almost unknown, is the largest and may also be considered the greatest of his Latin works. Though Hus here also conforms to the scholastic system which required incessant quotations and “authorities,” he