The “father” Master JoHN Hus (Without date: middle of June 1415)
A form suggested by the “Father” to John Hus for giving in his submission to the decision of the Council, abjuring and recanting.
I being so and so, etc. Over and above the declarations made by me, which I desire to be understood as repeated, I declare anew that although much is laid to my charge which never entered my mind; none the less in the matter of all the charges brought forward, whether raised against myself or extracted from my books or even the depositions of witnesses, I hereby submit myself humbly to the merciful appointment, decision, and correction of the most holy General Council, to abjure, to revoke, to recant, to undergo merciful penance, and to do all things and several that the said most holy Council in its mercy and grace shall deem fit to ordain for my salvation, commending myself to the same with the utmost devotion.
LXVIL Master Joux Hus ro THE ” FATHER”
(Without date: middle of June)
May the Father Almighty, most wise and most loving, be pleased to grant to my “Father,” highly esteemed for Christ Jesus’s sake, the everlasting life of glory. Reverend Father, I am truly grateful for your pious and fatherly kindness. I dare not submit myself to the Council in the terms you have suggested, because
thereby I should have to condemn many truths which, as I have heard from their own lips, they call “scandalous,” and also because I should be guilty of perjury if I abjured and confessed that I have held erroneous views; and thereby I should greatly scandalise God’s people who have heard the contrary in my preaching. If then the holy Eleazar, who lived under the old law, and of whom we read in Maccabees,! refused to make a lying confession that he had eaten flesh forbidden by the law so as not to act against God’s will and to leave an evil example to his descendants, how could I, a priest of the new law, albeit unworthy, for fear of a penalty which will soon be over, be guilty of the more grievous sin of breaking God’s law? In the first place, I should err from the truth, in the second I should commit perjury, and thirdly I should be a stumbling-block to my neighbours. Assuredly it is fitting for me rather to die than to flee a momentary penalty to fall into the Lord’s hand and afterwards, perchance, into everlasting fire and shame. And because I have appealed to Christ Jesus, the most potent and just of all judges, committing my cause to Him, therefore I stand by His judgment and sentence, knowing that He will judge every man not on false and erroneous evidence but on the true facts and merits of the case.
[The “Father” was not satisfied with this reply, or with the]
[appeal with which the letter had concluded. Probably he did]
[not discern the real difficulty of Hus from his reply. At any rate,]
[he would make one more effort. His next letter is a most inter-]
[esting piece of casuistry and special pleading. “The last sentences]
[would seem to indicate sympathy with the life and spirit of Hus.]
[1f so, they rule out Zabarella, or for that matter any cardinal, 2 Macc. vi. 18 ff. P, T9,]
Hus in his reply was uncompromising in his rejection of the basket which the “Father” offered for his escape. With this reply the incident closed, and the Father” left Hus to his fate. But he was still pestered by others eager to prove their powers of argument, among them, we learn with interest, by an old Augustinian monk, the delegate from Luther’s university, Erfurt. No theologian, cried the enthusiastic chronicler, was able to overcome Hus in argument save that old father alone.’
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