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He had learned to know him better since the Leipzig disputation. He now wrote to Spalatin: 'I have hitherto, unconsciously, taught everything that Huss taught, and so did John Staupitz, in short we are all Hussites, without knowing it. Paul and Augustine are also Hussites.
In an older writer this may be a sign that, in his day, Coutances was spoken of in England as Constance. In a modern writer this judgment of charity is hardly possible. It really seems as if some people thought that the Conqueror was accompanied to England by a Bishop of the city where John Huss was burned ages afterwards. We have called the Côtentin a peninsula, and so it is.
But evil is essentially selfish and can gain and hold this kingship only as long as it can deceive. And these kings "live forever." Dynasties and empires disappear, but Socrates and Plato, Luther and Huss, Cromwell and Lincoln, rule an ever-widening kingdom of ever more loyal subjects.
The resistance to the Pope's authority, on the part of the states of Europe generally, is pretty nearly coincident with the rise of the Ottomans. Heresy followed; in the middle of the fourteenth century, the teaching of Wickliffe gained ground in England; Huss and others followed on the Continent; and they were succeeded by Luther.
As his opponents urged, the regularly appointed authorities must be obeyed, not because they are good men but because they govern in virtue of the law. In short, Huss appeared not only to defend the heresies of Wycliffe, but at the same time to preach a doctrine dangerous alike to the power of the civil government and of the Church.
But little did those judges know either the man whom they held in their grasp, or the principles and the power which bore him up. He could die, but he could not be anything but a true man. An emperor's safe-conduct was found to be a worthless thing, and "Trust not in princes" was a portion of the word of God which Huss learned thoroughly to understand.
His first demand was that, like the question to which it was in answer, it should be repeated in German. Next, Eck proceeded to point out that Luther's errors, which were the errors of former heretics, Wyclif, Huss and the like, had been sufficiently condemned by the Church, and particularly by the Council of Konstanz.
Such was the condition of affairs, when a wealthy and pious citizen of Prague, a German, however, by descent, laid the foundations of a church in the Alt Stadt, which he called the Temple of Bethlehem; to it, now the Tyne Church, John Huss, already celebrated for his oratory and extensive learning, was appointed preacher. He saw the corruption of the age, and was not slow in denouncing it.
He declares that the inequality in power amongst the Apostles is a human invention, not founded on the Gospels; that in the Holy Eucharist the priest does not offer the sacrifice of Christ, but only the commemoration of that sacrifice; that the Church has no coercive power, that John Huss was wrongfully condemned at the Council of Constance; that the Holy Spirit was promised to the whole Church, and not only to bishops and priests; that the papacy is a fiction invented by men; and he states many other propositions which must have been somewhat distasteful to the Pope and his followers.
And what has been the effect of such teaching on humanity? It is impossible to doubt that it has led to results deplorably, indescribably wicked. Whence, for instance, arose the horrors of the mediaeval inquisition, the insensate tortures inflicted upon men like Huss and Bruno solely for theological errors, if not from belief in this demon-deity whom the Church worshipped?
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