Opinion will always differ with regard to the question whether Hus should be considered as the last of the mediæval reformers who wished only to purify the church and restore it to its primitive simplicity, or as a forerunner of the great church-reformers of the sixteenth century. Extreme writers of both parties have unanimously adopted the latter supposition. Moderate writers—who it is unnecessary to say are few in number—have alone sometimes expressed doubts. That Hus was a forerunner of Luther has been constantly maintained by ultramontane writers, and they extend to him the unconditionally adverse judgment which they pronounce on the German reformer. On the other hand, most German Protestant writers on the Hussite movement, such as Krummel, Lechler, Neander, have also declared Hus to be the precursor of the German reformation, and have praised him as such. Dr. Harnack alone has expressed a contrary opinion.[1] Luther himself undoubtedly considered Hus as his forerunner. In a well-known passage of his letters, written when he had just begun to study the works of Hus, he remarks: “We have all been Hussites without knowing it.” On many occasions Luther expressed his admiration for Hus in a manner not dissimilar from that in which the great Bohemian lauded Wycliffe. Thus in the introduction to his edition of Hus's letters, the German reformer calls him optimum et piisimum virum—to quote but one of many instances.[2] Elsewhere Luther writes: “If this man was not a noble, strong, and dauntless martyr and confessor of Christ, then will it indeed be hard for any man to obtain salvation.”
- ↑ “Die wiclifitisch—hussitische Bewegung . . . muss als die reifste Ausgestaltung der mittelalterlichen Reformbewegungen gelten. Allein es wird sich zeigen dass auch sie zwar vieles gelockert und vorbereitet, jedoch keinen reformatorischen Gedanken zum Ausdrucke gebracht hat: auch sie hält sich auf dem augustinisch—franciscanischem Boden” (Dr. Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, vol. iii. pp. 412–413).
- ↑ It is a proof of Luther’s great admiration for Hus that when sending a wedding-present to his friend Nicholas Specht he chose a portrait of “the saintly John Hus.” (Letter to Nicholas Specht, December 12, 1538—The Letters of Martin Luther. Selected and translated by Margaret A. Currie.)
