obedience. Item, the blessed Bernard[1] in a certain epistle saith: To do evil at the bidding of another is not obedience but disobedience. Item, the blessed Isidore[2] (and it is found in Cause xi., question 3[3]): If any one in authority do anything, or order anything to be done apart from the Lord, or commit or command a transgression of Scripture, the opinion of St. Paul is to be brought home to him, to wit, “though we, or an angel from heaven preach a gospel to you besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema,”[4] from which it followeth that if any one prevent you from doing the Lord’s bidding, or command what the Lord hath forbidden, let him be accursed to all that love the Lord. It further followeth that if any one in authority state or command anything which is clearly opposed to God’s will or the Holy Scriptures, let him be held a false witness of God or guilty of sacrilege.
From these examples you may see that those who forbid preaching are false witnesses, guilty of sacrilege, and by consequence excommunicated of God, according to the saying of the prophet who pronounces the sentence of excommunication: Cursed
- ↑ P.: Benedictus, with the sole MS. But in Mon. i. 94 the correct reading Bernardus is given, as also in Hus, De Ecclesia (Mon. i. 239d) and De Sex Erroribus (Mon. i. 192b), where the reference “In quadam epistola ad Adam monachum” is added. See Migne, Op. Bernard, i. 95 C. This seems to be one of the few original references of Hus, and he was evidently very fond of it. Cf. Doc. 480.
- ↑ So Gratian, loc. cit.—to whom for once Hus gives a reference. But the words are really from Basil, Regulæ brevius tractatæ, Interrog. 114, ed. Garnier, ii. 631. At his trial in Constance Hus referred to the authorities here cited, and especially to the passage from Isidore (see Documenta, p. 214). Compare also Wyclif, De Offic. Regis, 110–11, from which Wyclif may have taken it. Cf. Hus’s use of ‘satraps’ infra, p. 50, with comment.
- ↑ i.e., Gratian, loc. cit. c. 101. Copied exactly.
- ↑ Gal. i. 8.
