Of Hus's Latin works, as already mentioned, the treatise De Ecclesia requires particular notice. The work, written when Hus was exiled from Prague, and probably finished in the year 1413, is to a great extent a transcript of Wycliffe's work on the same subject, and has therefore little literary interest. But neither the events of the life of Hus nor the ideas expounded in his Bohemian works are intelligible without some knowledge of the treatise De Ecclesia. The Roman Catholic hierarchy, far more powerful and far less dependent on public opinion in the fifteenth century than in the present day, could not but see that — independently of all dogmatic differences of opinion — the acceptation of views such as those contained in the treatise De Ecclesia must necessarily produce a fundamental change in the organisation of the Church.
The keynote of the treatise De Ecclesia[1] is Hus's peculiar doctrine with regard to predestination. He divides all men into two classes, those who are — either conditionally or unconditionally — predestined (predestinati) to eternal bliss, and those who are "foreknown" (presciti) to damnation. The mass of the predestinati form the true Holy Catholic Church,[2] but the Church as at present constituted includes the presciti as well as the predestinati. Of the true Church, Christ is the only Head. As man He is "Head of the Church within it" (caput intrinsecum), as God He is "its Head without it" (caput extrinsecum). Christ is the true Roman Pontiff, the High Priest, and the Bishop of Souls. The Apostles did not call themselves "Holy
