did a man owe more to mortal teacher than Huss did to John Wyclif.[1] In the fundamental doctrines concerning the predestinate, the church, the papacy, the power of the keys and the authority of the Bible Huss agrees exactly with his predecessor.[2] They are one in their denunciation of Boniface VIII's bull, Unam sanctam, and of Constantine's donation. All the reformatory—and we may say revolutionary—principles affirmed by the former will be found in Wyclif.
However, Huss was not a servile imitator of Wyclif and it seems never to have occurred to his opponents in Prague to twit him on the use he made of Wyclif's writings. It must be borne in mind, that from no other source outside the pages of Scripture could Huss have learned what he came to believe as from the pages of Wyclif. Reading him was like taking clear water from a vessel filled at a spring rediscovered. And, it must be remembered, that Huss had no sooner left the university than he found himself in an atmosphere charged with the controversial spirit, himself the chief figure.
To these considerations the following must also be taken into account. Instead of transferring to his pages paragraphs from Wyclif bodily, Huss might easily have introduced into them words of his own or taken the meaning and re-expressed it in his own language. That he did not pursue this method is evidence that he had no intention of using the garments of his great teacher to make a reputation for himself. He was ready to die for his convictions and in this treatise the chief consideration was to give the most forcible expression possible to the views he and Wyclif were known to hold in
- ↑ A succinct and authoritative statement of the extent to which Wyclif's writings were put into print before 1883 may be found in Loserth's thorough article on Wyclif in the German Herzog, 21: 225 sq. With that year the printing of the Latin writings was begun. The Trialogus, however, which gives Wyclif's distinctive views was published in Basel, 1525. The English writings had been gathered by two editors, Thomas Arnold, 1869-71, 3 vols., and F. D. Mathew, 1880, 1 vol.
- ↑ See Schaff, Ch. Hist., V, part 2: 325–349.
