manded of the Waldenses, namely: “We believe with the heart and confess that the one church is not of the heretics, but is the Holy Roman Catholic Church, outside of which no one can be saved.”[1]
Huss, who set himself against this definition, expressly opposed Boniface’s bull Unam sanctam. Wyclif had pronounced its declaration to be detested which made subjection to the Roman pontiff necessary to salvation. In the disputes which followed Boniface’s death, Ockam declared that the church is the body of the faithful, including clerics and laymen, thus setting aside the narrower definition—not confined to the ignorant—that the church is the pope and the cardinals. Konrad of Gelnhausen and others followed Ockam’s definition, including, however, Bernard’s additional statement: “in the unity of the sacraments.” Both claimed that outside the Roman communion, which is a particular church, there may be salvation.
Wyclif’s Treatise on the Church—de Ecclesia—went much further and not only defined the church as the body of the elect, but seems almost to advocate the evangelical theory recognizing the universal priesthood of believers.[2] Beyond this work, which was written only about thirty years before his own, Huss does not go. Huss’s views are Wyclif’s views; his Scriptural proofs, as the case necessarily demands, largely Wyclif’s proofs. His indebtedness to his English forerunner is evident not only in the movement of his ideas, but in large sections which are copied almost verbally from Wyclif’s works.
Huss’s treatise does not occupy a place of importance in the history of ecclesiology by the originality of its teachings. It has, however, its place from the facts that its positions were taken up at the great assembly at Constance, that its author, on account of them, suffered the death penalty, and
