The opening clause of Boniface’s bull asserting the unity of the church, Wyclif and Huss both accepted, but they put upon it another interpretation from that intended by Boniface. The unity was not in the apostolic see but in predestinating grace as manifesting itself in the exercise of the Christian virtues. The other clauses they wholly repudiated, namely the clause that to the church is given both swords and the clause that it is altogether necessary for salvation that every creature be subject to the Roman pontiff. The latter repeats the very language of Thomas Aquinas. In renouncing these two propositions, Wyclif and Huss set themselves against the fabric of the mediaeval system.
It was Huss’s merit that he kept open the subject of the church by his death and this treatise. He passed Wyclifs views on to a later time, and his volume was the avenue for their transmission. Huss’s tenets and his memory, embodied in the Christian dissenters known as “the Bohemians,” were a constant source of interest and of controversy down to the age of Luther. At the close of the fifteenth century, Wessel exclaimed: “The church cannot err, but what is the church? It is the communion of the saints to which all true believers belong who are bound together by one faith, one love, one hope.” The definition of the nature and the functions of the church was awaiting settlement, and the staggering blow to Boniface VIII’s arrogance was given by the Reformation. In view of our authorities, it would be false to say that
Luther learned directly from Huss, but Luther’s assertions show that he not only took Huss under his protection, but that he was confirmed in his opposition to the pope by his regard for Huss and by his writings. Not to quote again what I have quoted in another place, Luther said: “I rejoice that Huss, a true martyr, is rising before this, our century, that is to be properly canonized even if the papists are broken to pieces. Oh ! that my name were worthy to be associated with such a man.1
Luther’s definition of the church is embodied in the Augsburg Confession. It was due to Luther and Zwingli that the terms visible and invisible were used to designate the true church from the body of the baptized.2
True to the mediaeval conception and only six months before the nailing up of the XCV Theses, Leo X confirmed Boniface’s Unam sanclam, and in reply to Luther Prierias declared the church to be in essence the community of believers but virtually the Roman church and the Roman pontifl — ecclesia universalis essentialiter est convocatio credentium, virtualiter ecclesia Romana et pontifex maximus. The catholic polemic of the seventeenth century, with Bellarmine at its head, made the rule of the papacy of the essence of the definition of the church. He expressly repudiated as heretical the definition of Wyclif, Huss and Calvin.3 Still true to the mediasval idea, Pius IX, in 1873, in a communication addressed to the German emperor, William I, declared that all the baptized are in some sense subject to the Roman pontifl.4
Several matters in Huss’s treatment call for passing note.
1 Letter to Otto Brunfels, 1524, who edited some of Huss’s writings, 1524. See Mon., 1 : 423.
’ In his Com. on Galatians, Luther spoke of the church invisible, est invisibilis habilans in Spiritu, etc, and Zwingli seems to have been the first to use both terms, in his Expos. fidei, 1531 — est autem eccles. aut visibilis aul invisibilis. The XXXIX Articles use the term invisible. Schwane, Dogtnengesch., p. 510, says: “Huss rejected the definition that the church is a visible community of believers in Christ.”
3 Lib. III de Eccles., chap. II.
*Jeder welcher die Taufe empfangen hal, gehort in irgend einer Art und in irgend einer Weise … dem Papste an Mirbt, Quellen, p. 371.
The first is that Huss, as also Wyclif before him, continued to call the church mother and holy mother. Although this designation has the prestige of high antiquity, it is to be used with great caution. The church is not a personality, giving birth to spiritual children. The designation is drawn from Paul’s placing Christ and the church figuratively in the relation of bridegroom and bride. But nowhere in the New Testament is the church called mother or bringing forth ascribed to it. The term is bound up with the conception of the church as a saving institution and its use developed with the development of the sacramental system. From the Protestant standpoint it is fallacious. Wyclif and Huss, again and again, pronounce it a metaphor and so prepared the way for its rejection by the Reformers.1
Another remark is that Huss makes not a little of church history. He had the historical sense and less of the scholastic than we might expect. The age of criticism was dawning not only among the men of the Renaissance but in the church. It is interesting to compare Luther’s conception of the use of history to do away with bad usages. In his Introduction to Dr. Barnes’s History of the Lives of the Popes, issued in 1536, he said that, in the beginning, not being much versed in the lives of the popes, he attacked the papacy a pHori, that is, from holy Scripture, but was wonderfully delighted that others were doing the same a posteriori, that is, from history.2 Huss used history to prove the truth of Scripture.
A third remark is that nowhere in this treatise does Huss use the passage, John 17, “that they may be one as thou,
‘In his Super IV. Sent., p. 469, Huss speaks of the church as our most dear mother, the most worthy mother of predestination, etc. In his Com. on the Decalogue, Flajshans’s ed., p. 19, he says of the fifth commandment: By some ” thy spiritual father” is said to be the priest and truly ” thy mother” is the church. He then went on to speak of another interpretation by which the Christian has three mothers, a mother after the flesh, a spiritual mother, the church, and a celestial mother, Mary. Cyprian presented the mediaeval view when he said: “He cannot have God for his father who does not have the church for his mother.” Schaff, Ch. Hist., II, 173.
2 See Jacobs, Lutheranism m England, p. 182.
Father, art in me and I in thee,” so much quoted in this present age as if corporate union were the test of the fulfilment of the words. Huss’s treatise presents an entirely different test of Christian unity. He must not be pressed too far. Nevertheless, it is plain that he laid stress on particular churches1 and made the bond of union between them and between their members predestinating grace and an active life of Christian virtue.
VI. The Canon Law. The authorities used in this treatise are the Scriptures, accredited writers of the church, the canon law and Wyclif. Among the accredited writers frequently quoted are Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory the Great, Bernard, and Peter the Lombard. It is noticeable that Bonaventura’s name is not mentioned at all, whereas Wyclifs Treatise on the Church quotes him at least sixteen times, and, for some reason, Huss draws upon Thomas Aquinas much less than did his English precursor.
With few exceptions the places where these quotations are found in the volumes of Migne and the Nicene FatJiers series have been noted, and also the references to the canon law as they are found in Friedberg’s edition.2 The verses of the Scripture texts, which in Huss’s time had not yet been marked, have been supplied. All this matter, which the translator is responsible for, is enclosed in brackets, as also an occasional brief explanation.
Like the sacramental system, the universities and the cathedrals, the body of the canon law was one of the imposing constructions of the Middle Ages. It had as its first and chief compiler Gratian who, about 1150, was teaching church law in Bologna as Irnerius was teaching Roman law.
)The XXXIX Articles of Religion speak of “every particular or national church” as having authority, etc.
2 A. Friedberg, Corpus jnris canonici, 1879-1881, 2 vols., pp. 1468, 1340, is pronounced by the Catholic canonical writer, P. Hergenrother, Lehrbuch d. kath. K.-rechts, p. 192, ” the best edition.” A description of the canon law will be found in Friedberg’s Introd. to vol. I and in Hergenrother, pp. 172-196. For a history of the subject of the treatment, see the elaborate work of J. F. von Schulte, Die Cesch. der Qucllen und Lil. des canon. Rechts, Stutt., 3 vols., 1875-1880.