LIX. To the Same (Without date: June 9 or 10, 1415)
I love the counsel of the Lord more than gold and topazes;? therefore I hope by the mercy of Jesus Christ that He will grant me His Spirit, to the end that I may stand firm in the truth; for the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak! The Lord Almighty be the eternal reward of my nobles, who steadfastly, stoutly, and faithfully stand on the side of justice. God will grant them to understand aright the truth in the kingdom of Bohemia. But to pursue the truth they must return to Bohemia laying aside all vainglory to follow a King that cannot die, a Man of sorrows but yet a King of glory Who hath the gift of eternal life.
How delightful it was to shake hands with Lord John, who was not ashamed to hold out his hand to a poor abject heretic, a prisoner in irons and the butt of all men’s tongues. I shall not perchance have much further speech with you. So greet all the faithful Bohemians when you see them. Palecz came to see me in prison when I was very ill. The
[! At the trial of June 8 Hus was questioned as to a gloss upon the]
[bull of February 2, 1413—the Lateran Council decree for the burning]
[of the books of Wyclif. Hus stated that he had never seen it until it]
[was shown him when in the Dominican prison. On being further ques-]
[tioned he confessedthat he had heard that Jesenicz had written the]
[gloss (Doc, 311). Jesenicz was now in Prague (supra, p. 206, ». 3).]
[? I judge the date from Chlum’s hand-shake; see infra and p. 218.]
[Ps, oxviii, 127, Vulg. Matt. xxvi. 41.]
greeting he gave me before the Commissioners?! was this: Since the birth of Christ, there hath not arisen a more dangerous heretic than yourself, excepting Wyclf” He went on to say, ‘ Every one that hath heard you preach is infected with this heresy of yours that the substance of the material bread remains in the sacrament of the altar” “Oh! master,” said I, “what a dreadful greeting this is, and what a dreadful sin you are guilty of! I shall die or be burnt, if perchance I rise from my sick bed. What reward then wil be given you in Bohemia?” and so on. Perhaps I ought not to have written this; it may look as if I hated him sorely. These words are ever in my heart: Put not your trust in princes, etc.? and again: Cursed be the man that trusteth 4n man and maketh flesh his arm? For God’s sake be careful while you are here and when you return. Carry no letters. Forward books by friends sparingly.
You ought to know for a fact that I have had a struggle not to disclose my dreams; for I dreamt of the Pope’s flight before it took place; and after telling Lord John, he said that very night, You will see him again.” I dreamt too of Master Jerome’s imprisonment, though not in its actual form; of my own imprisonments also, where I should be taken and how they were disclosed, although not in their actual form. I have often had apparitions of hosts of serpents with heads at their tails, but not one was able to bite me; and many other visions. I am telling you of these, not because I suppose myself
[! P. 174.? Ps. exlv. 2, Vulg. 3 Jer. xvii. 5 ’ Cf. pp. 191-3. Chlum evidently was sceptical as to these dreams. -]
[Cf, his answer, p. 192 (second sentence),]
to be a prophet and am puffed up, but to show you that I suffered temptation both of body and mind and what I have been most afraid of, to wit, that I might transgress the command of Jesus Christ. The words of Master Jerome came to my mind: “If I come to the Council, methinks I shall never return.” Andrew the Pole, a worthy tailor, said to me also when bidding me farewell:! “God be with you; I think you will not come back.” Beloved in God, faithful and loyal knight, my Lord John [Chlum], the King of heaven—not of Hungary—grant you an everlasting reward for your loyalty and the toils you undertake on my behalf!
[From June 8 until the final scene Hus remained in prison at the]
[Franciscan convent. As his letters show, every day he expected]
[that it would prove to be his last. He little anticipated the four]
[weeks’ respite, if such a name may be attached to the prolonga-]
[tion of his trials, cooped up in a narrow cell amid the sweltering]
[heat of a June that drove Sigismund and others to seek a cooler]
[retreat in the fields. This month’s grace was not as a rule]
[granted to the victims of the Inquisition, unless indeed they]
[were condemned to linger out the remnant of their days in some]
[lonely cell. But Sigismund and the Council were both anxious]
[to obtain a professed ‘penitent, whom they could send back to]
[Bohemia reduced by his recantation to powerlessness. To obtain]
[this end they exhausted, as the Letters of Hus show us, the]
[resources of casuistry. Learned doctors and others plied him]
[with all manner of ingenious illustrations, while great ‘ Fathers’]
[of the Council went out of their way to offer him convenient]
[baskets’ (p. 240), in which, as Paul, he might be let down]
[over the wall. But to all their blandishments Hus stood firm. The student should understand clearly, what Sigismund had]
[shown that he for one did not see (p. 218), the real point at! In Czech from this point to the end. In Mon. i. 68, Neander, and]
[others, the passage is mistranslated by taking the “Lord John” to be]
[Hus, thus ascribing the whole of this beautiful sentence to the tailor]
[Andrew!]
issue between Hus and the Council, the ground on which he was executed. Hus was a martyr not so much to his convictions of the untruth of current beliefs, as because of his fidelity to conscience. As regards his heresies, he was, as he repeatedly told the Council, willing to abjure. Without the individuality of Wyeclif, he was also without Wyclif’s clear conception of the value of the individual judgment. He expressly yielded himself, not once nor twice only, to the teaching of the Church. But he could not acknowledge that he recanted heresies which he had always stoutly disclaimed, and which the Council had attributed to him along with doctrines to which he confessed. Serene Prince, said Hus to Sigismund, ‘I do not want to cling to any error, and I am perfectly willing to submit to the determination of the Council But I may not offend God and my conscience by saying that I hold heresies that I have never held For Hus truth was supreme: ‘I have said that I would not for a chapel full of gold recede from the truth ‘I know, he had written in 1412, that the truth stands and is mighty for ever, and abides eternally, with whom there is no respect of persons “Throughout his letters his chief anxiety is lest liars should say that I have slipped back from the truth I preached Few scenes in history are more touching or ennobling than the fidelity with which Hus refused to swerve from absolute truth even to save his life. He realised that it was better that he should burn than confess that he had ever held doctrines which his soul abhorred, as, for instance, the monstrous article alleged against him by a nameless doctor that he had stated that he was the fourth person in the Trinity!’ (Doc. 318). To Sigismund and worldlings of that ilk recantation of such a charge seemed a bagatelle; the falser the charge the easier to recant. But Hus thought otherwise. To Sigismund the breach of a safe-conduct was a mere matter of expediency; to Hus a falsehood, however great its purchasing power, was a strain upon the soul that no mere “authority” could either sanction or pardon (p. 89). Hus “followed the gleam ” to the end, not counting the cost. It is this emphasis by Hus of the great modern idea that the foundations of truth lie, not so much in unreasoning authority, as in the appeal which it makes to man’s consciousness and i conscience—the two are often one—that gives to the last letters of Hus their undying value, and marks at the same time the
rise of a new age. As Bishop Creighton well points out: “A new spirit had arisen in Christendom when a man felt that his life and character had been so definitely built up round opinions which the Church condemned, that it was easier for him to die than to resign the truths which made him what he was.”’ But of the truth of our estimate of the value and importance of these last letters the reader can judge for himself.
The letters of this last month for the most part are without date, nor are we anxious to date them. They are letters that.deal with the great eternal principles and struggles of the soul. With these the time element has little concern.
The following letter is dated by Palacky as written before the trial. The whole tone of the letter, especially clause two, leads us to attribute it to the three weeks between the trial and the final scene, when Hus was visited by deputation after deputation anxious to overcome what they deemed the scruples of an overnice conscience. Luther’s comment to this epistle prefixed in the Zpistoloe Pussime is most just: Hus fights another battle between the flesh and the spirit over the confession of truth, a fight worthy of the knowledge of pious men.’
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