Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/226

 Husinec felt when first arrayed in academic garb, and again felt doubtful whether he had done his duty when he left Prague for Kozi Hradek.

The last chapter of the treatise on simony endeavours to find a remedy for the terrible abuses which had been so powerfully described in the previous ones. Hus’s suggestions are very bold, and they must have added greatly to the already large number of his enemies among the Bohemian clergy. Hus begins by expressing a somewhat Utopian hope that Christianity would return to the institutions of the primitive church. “The best way” (to prevent simony), he writes, “would be that men be elected bishops and parish priests according to God’s will. Thus did the apostles act, having no revelation as to whom they should receive as bishop in place of Judas. Referring to this, St. Jerome says: ‘As so great a man as Moses was not allowed to choose the priests of the people according to his own sagacity, or to appoint a substitute, who would there be among the people—who are often excited by rumours, vain-glory and material advantages—who also among the priests, who would consider himself worthy (to be a priest or bishop)? He only to whom, after he has implored God and prayed, God manifests this wish that he should become a priest.’” Direct election by God is therefore, according to Hus, the most perfect way by which the priests of the Lord could be appointed. The Bohemian brethren who considered themselves the true successors of Hus actually attempted to carry out this precept. From these ideal heights Hus descends to more matter-of-fact suggestions. He considered the present system of the appointment of bishops and priests as a necessary evil, but thought that strict subjection of the clergy to the secular power would act as a beneficial