Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/227

 control, and check the sins and especially the simony prevalent among the clergy. “As every king,” he writes, “has of God power over his kingdom that he may truly and justly rule his kingdom, and as the priests are in the kingdom, the king must guide them in the path of truth and justice; and he would not guide them in the path of truth and justice did he allow them, like negligent servants, to incur the wrath of the Highest of Kings; he would not thus fulfil the duties of his royal office.”

I must reluctantly refrain from dwelling longer on the treatise O Svatokupectvi, to which I have perhaps already devoted too much space. It is, however, impossible, I think, to exaggerate the importance of this treatise. The positions of the contending parties, of the king and his court, of the opulent and simoniac clergy, and of the church-reformers, with whom was the great mass of the people, appear very clearly. We understand the true causes of the prolonged struggle in Prague which was delineated in the previous chapters. I may here mention that I entirely agree with a remark made some years ago by the late Rev. A. H. Wratislaw, who wrote: The treatise on simony would well bear translation into English as a whole.

That Hus was thoroughly aware of the importance of his book, of its boldness, and of the danger to which it might expose him, is proved by its closing words. “I have written these leaflets,” he tells us, “knowing that I should obtain through them neither praise nor kindness nor bodily advantage either from avaricious priests nor from others who are laymen, for I demand no such things from them, desiring only God’s reward and salvation. And if blame and torment befall me, I have placed it before my mind that it is better to suffer death for the truth than to obtain by flattery earthly reward. Thus also St. Paul said: ‘If I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ.’ Understand then: if I