Page:The life & times of Master John Hus by Count Lützow.djvu/238

 with the power and authority of the pope, which he appears to have defined in a manner similar to that of the most extreme modern ultramontanes. His opinions were thus in direct opposition to those of Hus. As Hus very openly stated, Stanislas was to a great extent influenced by fear. Hus did not omit to draw attention to the strange contrast between Stanislas’s former exaggerated praise of Wycliffe and his present equally exaggerated denunciations of the English divine. Replying to Stanislas’s panegyric of the papal power, Hus naturally, though perhaps hardly fairly, alluded to the infamous character of Pope John XXIII., who then held the dignity of pontiff. After denying that it could be proved from Scripture that God had given unlimited power to a pope chosen at an election influenced by the favour of man, fear, and cupidity, Hus challenges Stanislas to prove John XXIII.’s claim to the throne “by the sanctity of his life and of his deeds, not by his desire for the comforts and honours of the world, not by the fulminations of terrible censures to show his power, not by the plundering of the subject fold, not by extortion and simony; for Christ hath said: Ye shall know them by their fruits.” The book generally somewhat recalls the treatise De Ecclesia. We meet here again with the defence of the claim of the temporal power to control the papacy