I30
A HISTORY OF BOHEMIAN
LITERATURE
the power to lay his hands on people, so that they might receive the gift of the Holy Ghost ; no, the Apostles laid
their hands on the people, not for money, but gratuitously for their salvation ; obeying the words of their ' Saviour, who said, Freely ye have received, freely give,' And thus they worthily received the Holy Ghost, for the Apostles were worthy bishops, and the people who truly believed truly repented their sins." The last of the great works of Hus, and also the last one which I shall mention, is the Postilla, which Hus finished about the month of September 1413. It may be considered more popular in manner than his other Bohemian works, and, written so shortly before his death, it was long revered as the testament, or the "last will," of the great Bohemian divine. The book consists of expositions, or, as perhaps they should rather explaining the evangel of each Sun( be called, sermons, in the year. The Bible being then very scarce in 1 day Bohemia, the text from the Bible which is referred to precedes in every case the exposition or reading (Cteni^, as Hus himself worded it. The indignation against the corruption of the Roman Church, which becomes more accentuated in each successive work of Hus, finds here " The evil priests," he writes, its strongest expression. " do not tell the people that Christ said, ' If you do not repent your sins you will all perish.' They have so obscured the truth, which is Christ, that preachers mention the Pope more than Christ, and they praise and defend the institution of papacy more than the law of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore are His faithful sons oppressed in the lands ; for in Bohemia, in Moravia, in Meissen, in England, and elsewhere there is much suffering, as I know. They murder, torture,
