corporis condemnare voluit. The furthest limit to which Christ went was to bid the church treat obstinate offenders as heathen and publicans and withdraw from them.[1] Huss speaks of the principle advocated by the doctors, that religious offenders be turned over to the magistrate for punishment, as the sanguinary corollary. It is true that in the presence of d'Ailly, Huss modified his statement, declaring that the suspected heretic should be labored with and instructed and only then, if necessary, punished corporally. But the statement of the Treatise on the Church, even as thus modified, caused a great tumult among the judges. One of the charges made against Huss by Gerson was that he had denied the right of the church to issue the interdict, but, so far as we know, Huss did not go that far. Gerson went on to say that prelates and princes were under obligation, not only to condemn heretics but, under threat of severe penalties, to fight them out of existence.[2]
In general, it may be said that Huss’s treatise leads to the assertion of the principle of the rights of the individual conscience, just as do the words of the Westminster Confession, “God alone is Lord of the conscience,” though the Westminster divines were unconscious of the full application of their noble expression. Along the line of Huss’s appeal from all human tribunals and commandments of men to the law of Christ and to Christ himself, is his far-reaching statement, a statement which deserves to be quoted, to the effect that not the pope, but the Holy Spirit is the teacher of the church and its safest refuge—refugium securissimum ecclesiæ sanctæ.[3]
In the discussion of the power of the church over the lives of heretics, Huss clearly elaborated a consideration in his Reply to the Eight Doctors, a consideration he had barely touched upon before in his Treatise on the Church and in his attack against the papal bulls of indulgence. He made a dis-
