6. Huss and Jerome. 101
ill-minded to draw on themselves eternal condemnation, and in order not to be to the pious a cause of affliction and persecution, I have retired also through an apprehension that impious priests might continue for a longer time to prohibit the preaching of the word of God amongst you; but I have not quitted you to deny the divine truth, for which, with God ' s assistance, I am willing to die.” 128 Huss did not cease his labors, but traveled through the surrounding country, preaching to eager crowds. Thus the measures to which the pope resorted to suppress the gospel, were causing it to be the more widely extended.“ We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth.” 129 [ 102 ]
“ The mind of Huss, at this stage of his career, would seem to have been the scene of a painful conflict. Although the church was seeking to overwhelm him by her thunderbolts, he had not renounced her authority. The Roman Church was still to him the spouse of Christ, and the pope was the representative and vicar of God. What Huss was warring against was the abuse of authority, not the principle itself. This brought on a terrible conflict between the convictions of his understanding and the claims of his conscience. If the authority was just and infallible, as he believed it to be, how came it that he felt compelled to disobey it? To obey, he saw, was to sin; but why should obedience to an infallible church lead to such an issue? This was the problem he could not solve; this was the doubt that tortured him hour by hour. The nearest approximation to a solution which he was able to make, was that it had happened again, as once before in the days of the Saviour, that the priests of the church had become wicked persons, and were using their lawful authority for unlawful ends. This led him to adopt for his own guidance, and to preach to others for theirs, the maxim that the precepts of Scripture, conveyed through the understanding, are to rule
128 Bonnechose,“ The Reformers before the Reformation.” Vol. I, p. 87( ed. 1844). 129 2 Cor. 13:8.