Page:The letters of John Hus.djvu/164

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126
LETTERS WRITTEN

Leo the heretic, and Pope John,[1] who was delivered of a boy, were the heads of the Roman Church. If that be the case, then it matters not if some time afterwards a harlot or an Antichrist of the first order should be the head of the Holy Roman Church. Then, of course, Antichrist wishes to be placed on an equality with Christ. But what fellowship hath Christ with Belial?[2] It is not sufficient for him and his satraps[3] that he is Christ’s vicar (at all events, if he strenuously fulfils Christ’s law), and that they themselves are the ministers of the Church, performing regularly the duty of preaching the gospel after the manner of the holy apostles, who claimed to be the ministers given to the Church to teach the very law of Christ.

I would like to see the argument of that doctor[4]—what he would prove by the fact that Christ was the Head of the Church, as without doubt He was, for the three days He was in the tomb.[5] For from the beginning of His incarnate life He was the essential Head of the Church by virtue of His humanity,[6] which He did not lay aside during the three days.[7] The consequence was that he was the Head of the Holy Church for three days, as being the most worthy Person in the human race, excelling the

  1. i.e., Joan, whose papal name was supposed to be John VIII., and whose date was given as between Leo IV. (855) and Benedict IV. (858).
  2. 2 Cor. vi. 15.
  3. See p. 50, n. 7.
  4. Stanislaus.
  5. An argument taken from Wyclif’s De Ecclesia, p. 403.
  6. See Thom. Aquinas, Op. v. 51 (ed. Venet., 1774), and compare Wyclif, De Eccles. 132.
  7. Wyclif dwells on this in his De Benedicta Incarnacione, cc. 3 and 4. The humanity of Christ was one of Wyclif’s strong points, in the clear realisation of which he seems more modern than mediæval.